Leadership Training
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Leadership Training is the live team training from BGS Strategies for the managers, technicians, sales people and office staff inside an independent HVAC or plumbing company, delivered with weekly reinforcement across the United States and Canada. It covers the four conversations that decide most of a company's year, so the work runs when the owner is not in the room.
Great technicians get promoted because they were great technicians, and then nobody teaches them how to lead. This leadership training exists for that gap. Your business grows only as much as your management team can handle, so the training is not aimed at the owner. It is aimed at the people who will be running the work long after the owner stops doing it. It sits inside the 90-Day Plan.
Live every Thursday, 11 AM to noon Central. Register and get the book free.
01 / What it covers
What the Training Covers, and What It Does Not
The training covers four subjects, and each one is a conversation a member of your team has with somebody else every single day.
It does not cover business valuations, which BGS Strategies refers out, and it does not issue any certificate or credential. What it produces is people who can run a call, a conversation and a number without being told how each time.
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Sales Calls
How the conversation actually runs. What gets asked before anything gets offered, what gets offered and in what order, and what happens to a quote after it leaves the kitchen table. Most companies have never agreed on this out loud, which is why two of their people get two different results from the same job.
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Service to Membership Conversion
Turning a one time service call into a customer who is still yours next year. This is the quietest money in a home-service company: the maintenance base decides how much of next winter is already sold before the weather turns, and it is built one call at a time by technicians who know how to ask.
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Office to Field Communication
The information dispatch needs, the information the truck needs, and the handoffs where jobs go quietly wrong. Half of what looks like a technician problem is an information problem that started on the phone three hours earlier.
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Accountability
Turning a number on a report into a coaching conversation that changes what somebody does on Tuesday. Accountability is the part most managers were never taught and most owners assume is a personality trait. It is a skill, and it can be practiced.
Kerry WebbStop Firefighting. Start Coaching.
02 / How it runs
How the Training Runs
Live training first, then weekly reinforcement. One session does not change behavior, and anyone who has sent a team to a one day seminar already knows it. The reinforcement is the part that does the work.
It is hands-on skill development for the whole team, technicians through to sales people and CSRs, run as practice labs and role-play rather than a slide deck and a lunch. People practice the call on each other before they run it on a customer, which is the only order that makes sense and almost never the order it happens in.
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The technical credentials your team already holds come from somewhere else. The EPA's Section 608 refrigerant certification is issued by the regulator, not by a coach, and nothing in this training replaces or duplicates it. This training is about what happens in the conversation, not what happens at the condenser.
03 / On paper
The Leadership Team Blueprint
Part of the work is getting the leadership team to agree, on paper, on four things: the major risks facing the company, the top opportunities in front of it, the top five priorities in order, and the major strengths worth building on.
Most leadership teams have never written these down together. Most of them do not agree when they do, and finding that out in a training room is considerably cheaper than finding it out in a bad quarter. The Blueprint is the document the rest of the training hangs on, because a priority list everybody signed is the only thing that makes accountability fair.
Kerry WebbAccountability is the part most managers were never taught and most owners assume is a personality trait. It is a skill, and it can be practiced.
04 / Standards
The Two Designations
Two named tracks run inside the training work: GM Operational Excellence and Elite Service Manager. One is aimed at the general manager who has to run the whole operation, the other at the person responsible for the service department.
Neither of these is a certificate. BGS Strategies is not issuing certifications, and nothing in this training entitles anybody to put letters after a name. They are the standards the training is built to, and the point of naming them is that a manager knows what they are being trained toward.
05 / Who attends
Who Sits in the Room
The owner buys this. The team uses it.
Training works best when the whole line is in it: the general manager, the service manager, the sales manager, the technicians who are next in line for a lead role, the sales people, and the CSRs who answer the phone before any of the rest of it matters. Companies doing $3 million to $20 million usually have all of those roles and usually have never had them in the same room learning the same language.
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Hiring is part of the same problem, because training a team you cannot keep is expensive. What it takes to find and keep good technicians covers that side, and it is worth reading before you schedule anything.
06 / The talk
Stop Firefighting. Start Coaching.
"Stop Firefighting. Start Coaching." is one of the talks Kerry Webb has delivered to rooms full of owners, general managers and service managers. It is also the shortest description of what this training is for. A manager who spends the day putting out fires is not managing, they are absorbing, and the company stops growing at exactly the size of what they can absorb.
Kerry created and ran the Business Boot Camps for Owners for the Service Nation Alliance in Dallas, four a year from 2011 to 2016, and he has taken this material to contractor associations including the South Carolina Association of Licensed Trades. The full speaking record is on the about page.
Somebody who sat in one of those boot camps:
Ryan Snow, GM, Western Heating & Air Conditioning, Orem, UtahHe has a great way to present the materials and keep everyone focused and engaged.
Ryan Snow wrote that after attending one of Kerry's business boot camp training sessions, and his company went on to retain Kerry as its business coach afterwards. That is the order the work goes in: the training lands in the room first, and the coaching follows when the company wants the rest of it.
08 / Questions
Frequently Asked Questions: Leadership Training
What is Leadership Training?
Leadership Training is live training with weekly reinforcement from BGS Strategies for the managers, technicians, sales people and office staff inside an independent HVAC or plumbing company. It covers sales calls, converting service into membership, communication between the office and the field, and accountability, and it sits inside the 90-Day Plan.
Who should attend the training?
The whole line, which usually means the general manager, the service manager, the sales manager, the technicians next in line for a lead role, the sales people and the CSRs who answer the phone. The owner buys the training and the team uses it, which is the honest shape of it.
Does BGS Strategies issue certifications?
No. BGS Strategies is not issuing certifications, and nothing in this training entitles anybody to put letters after a name. Technical credentials such as refrigerant handling come from the regulator, not from a coach. What the training produces is people who can run a call, a conversation and a number without being told how each time.
What are GM Operational Excellence and Elite Service Manager?
They are the two named tracks inside the training work, one aimed at the general manager running the whole operation and one at the person responsible for the service department. They are standards the training is built to, and they are not certificates and do not carry a credential.
What is the Leadership Team Blueprint?
It is the document the leadership team agrees on paper: the major risks facing the company, the top opportunities in front of it, the top five priorities in order, and the major strengths worth building on. Most teams have never written these down together, and most do not agree when they first try.
How is the training reinforced after the session?
Weekly. One session does not change behavior, so the live training is followed by weekly reinforcement with the same people on the same material. Practice labs and role-play carry through, so the team rehearses the conversation on each other before running it on a customer.
Is this training for the owner as well?
The owner is welcome and usually learns something uncomfortable, but the training is aimed at the people who will run the work when the owner stops doing it. Owner-level work belongs in Coaching for Results, which handles structure, margin and the decisions only the owner can make.
What does Leadership Training cost?
The business assessment is free, and Level 1 of the Skool community is free. It contains the 7 Step Method, and the community on Skool is free to join. There is no trial period and no card required.
To get the full set of the 7 Step Tools, serious clients move to Level 2 membership on Skool at $295 a month. If you want to fast-track your growth and success, sign up for the 90-Day Plan at $7,500. To learn more, register for the $100,000 Conversation webinar.
Get Your Team in a Room
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Book the $100K Conversation.
Live every Thursday, 11 AM to noon Central. Bring the part of the team that worries you most.
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Take the Business Assessment.
If you want to find out which part of the team is costing you the most before you talk to anybody, start there.
You can also call BGS Strategies on 940-441-3231 or email support@bgsstrategies.com, or use the form on the contact page. The phone is answered Monday to Friday, 7 AM to 4 PM Central, and calls before 10 AM usually reach voicemail because Kerry is coaching.
Or send us a note
Tell us what is going on in the business, and Kerry will call you back.