I’ve been checking the Halloween weather forecast for Detroit this week, and they’ve been predicting — and I’ll try not to weep when I type this — snow. Now, I’m used to that gross, cold, s-word stuff (I grew up just outside Minneapolis and went trick-or-treating in the Halloween blizzard of 1991), but I’m not really prepared for it. (I did, at least, dig the snow shovels and snow blower out of the shed the other day, though.)

But you best-of-the-best HVAC professionals — which the readers of The NEWS obviously are — don’t have the luxury of not being prepared for winter. In fact, most of you have been preparing for this heating season for months already. You’ve been calling your existing customers to perform preventive maintenance before the cold hits, and you’ve been sending out newsletters and e-blasts urging customers to change their filters, clean their ducts, and tune up their furnaces.

But I’d also be willing to bet many of you have noticed heating prices are expected to rise again this winter and have begun pushing high-efficiency furnaces to your customers with aging systems. Now is certainly the time to do so — when your customers have already had a month or so of cooler weather to remind them just how much it’s going to cost them to heat their homes when it gets really, truly cold outside. I know I’ve been watching my gas bill creep up the past couple months, and I’ve been toying with the idea of upgrading to a high-efficiency furnace. There are many customers like me who are ripe for the picking.

To help you sort through all the high-efficiency equipment flooding the market this season, we have two product showcases you can peruse to get an idea of the kind of heating equipment available to both your commercial and residential customers. You can check out our residential heating equipment showcase here, and view our commercial heating equipment showcase here.

Now is the time to push those high-efficiency units. With another cold, snowy winter likely coming our way, your customers may be more ready to upgrade than you think. 

Publication date: 10/27/2014

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