If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to be in one of my seminars, you know that I list certain rules. Things like: fire the Yellow Pages; quit using the competition for ad inspiration; your distributor is your friend, not your mother. And on it goes; there are many.

My furnace is just so insensitive. It doesn’t care at all about my economic needs. Here we are on the eve of the vast holiday season, where fun, frivolity, and the collective shooing of over-served relatives will soon be heard throughout the land.

My furnace is just so insensitive. It doesn’t care at all about my economic needs. The holiday season’s extra in-home traffic, increased system usage, and changing of the seasons will equate to more in-home service calls for the 873rd year in a row. Those are givens that can be loosely translated as get ready or get left behind.

It’s not often that I find myself speechless, but that’s exactly what happened at a recent speaking gig. In the middle of explaining tracking what leads come from what source, a voice piped up from the middle of the room.

We all like to think that customer retention is there, working for us because we’re just so darn good at our job. No customer could ever forget how timely, fair, and magnetically unleavable we are. Until they actually leave, taking their business and referrals forever. Contractors are too often swooned by the cheapness of what I call anti-retention.

E-mail has turned into the digital telemarketer during dinner. It’s too much, too often, and - in my lowly estimation - too cheap. I wish they’d charge for it so the spammers, slammers, and scammers could just go bother someone else.

Reacting to others’ needs naturally puts the needy in control. It can understandably make a contractor develop a “wait on the weather” mindset (soon enough, a “wait on the call” outlook). Thus, a “wait for the economy to improve” thought process is not - cannot - be far behind. Danger is written all over that.

HVAC contractors, amid the gloomiest economic times since the Paleozoic era, may be dismissing one of the most lucrative programs ever created. To recap: the federal government allows a tax credit of 30 percent - up to $1,500 - on the purchase of new, high-efficiency air conditioners, heat pumps and furnaces.

From my office window, I see sweating people. They are not engaged in manual labor, nor using a Thigh Master; they are in fact, just standing there. I’m no meteorologist, but in Alabama, this signals summer.

It’s a tricky balance. Techs are technical; salespeople are salesy. (You can quote me on that if you like.) Combining the two is like finding an accountant who’s the life of the party. Yet, the combo of a selling technician can give you a radically effective one-two punch.