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"Now that my husband
has passed away, I am
depending on you - an
incredible team - an
outstanding
"Band of
Brothers."
Peggie H., Charlotte
"I truly believe that
he saved my house from severe damage..."
Dawn K., Charlotte
"Clearly you set your
guys up for success with trucks full of parts, technology and technicians who
know what to do..."
Mel F., Charlotte
"If service people in
all fields matched his standards, there would be a population of very satisfied
consumers."
Richard D., Rock Hill
"Thank you for all the
time you spent with me "under the house"...
Terrence S., Charlotte
"Imagine how pleased I
was with the clean-up job the men had preformed, (and) to listen to the pleasant
sound of my handsome new furnace..."
Anne B., Matthews
"I just wanted to thank you for all the
excellent service we have received."
Kim J., Charlotte
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Twenty years ago, Donald and Roger Costner had
just about all the business they could handle. Their twenty employees were
repairing and installing heating and air conditioning systems at a hectic pace.
There was only one problem: “We weren’t making any money,” Roger explains.
Since then, a combination of marketing savvy, an aggressive
advertising campaign, and a bold expansion has turned tiny Costner Brothers into
Brothers Air & Heat, the dominant heating and cooling service company in the
southeast, and eighth largest in the nation.
That’s because Roger and Donald took a bold step by investing
heavily in broadcast and print advertising. “We have always been industry
leaders,” Roger says, “and our competition watches our every move. We were the
first to put our faces on the sides of our service vans; the first to use
super-service vans; the first to utilize direct mail; the first to use GPS
mapping software; the first to have computers in our vans; and now we’re the
first to advertise extensively on television infomercials. Our competitors are
always playing catch-up.”
A lot of people learn how to fix heating and air systems, and try
to start their own business. But they try to do everything for everybody.
“Instead we found our niche,” says Donald. “We concentrate on what we do best
and that is repairing and replacing residential and small commercial units.”
They also started advertising beyond their native Rock Hill. “Every time I would
go to Charlotte I would ask myself why we were not servicing them,” Roger adds.
That led to hiring a handful of Charlotte based service technicians, and
business exploded.
In 1997, they took another bold move by selling Costner Brothers to
Encompass Corp. of Houston, Texas. At the time HVAC industry publications were
predicting that a few national companies would eventually take over the cooling
and heating industry, the way Home Depot and Lowe’s have taken over the home
improvement business.
They sold Costner Brothers to Encompass with that in mind and began
working for them. But within a few years, it became apparent that Encompass,
with its headquarters in Texas, couldn’t offer the kind of personalized service.
That’s what made Costner Brothers successful in the first place, so Donald and
Roger left the HVAC business completely.
This gave the brothers a chance to look back and see what had made
Costner Brothers so dominant in a very competitive market the first time. They
realized what it would take to do it again. They found five key items that made
them successful. These items became the cornerstone of their new business,
Brothers Air and Heat Inc.
The first is Trust. “Our customers know that we’ll do what we say,
when we promise to do it, and for how much we quoted it at,” says Roger. “There
have been times when we have lost money just because we overlooked something.
But instead of asking them to cover our mistake, (and lose their confidence) we
finish the job for the price quoted.” The second, is that they make it easy for
consumers to do business with them. “We provide a live person on the phone 24
hours a day. There is nothing worse than walking into a hot or cold house and
then having to wait hours for someone to call you back. Also if the work is not
completed by 5:00pm, we will continue to work at regular rates until all
promised appointments are completed,” Roger says.
The third is well stocked trucks. “We stock more repair parts on our service
vans than any other service company. We fix almost all broken units on the first
visit.”
Fourth, is Up Front Pricing. “For a small fee, we will come out,
find the problem then quote an exact price to fix the problem,” Duck adds.
The fifth item is Training. “We train our technicians to repair all
brands. Years ago if you owned a Trane you called a Trane dealer, or called a
Carrier dealer for their units. With our training program, we work on any
brand."
Using all of the items that made them great in the past, Brothers
Air & Heat quickly became the dominate heating and air repair company in the
Charlotte region again. “People remembered us and how we did business, we had a
backlog of service people wanting to work for us again,” Roger says. Today,
Brothers has over 68 employees, 30 service vans and over nine million in sales.
You can reach Brothers Air and Heat at 803-327-4040.
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