Earlier this year I interviewed a veteran rep about a job he should have won.
His lines were basis of design on the chillers, the pumps, and the cooling towers. Top to bottom, the system was his. Then a competitor quoted a lighter-built air handler packaged with their chiller, value engineered the scope down, and offered a faster lead time. When the dust settled, he got an order for towers and pumps. The competitor got the air handlers and the chillers.
“When you’re basis of design top to bottom,” he told me, “you don’t lose.” Except he did. And then he said the line I haven’t been able to shake: in a fair fight, the smaller manufacturer never wins. His job is to make the fight not fair.
If you lead sales or marketing at a $30 million to $300 million manufacturer, you know that feeling. And here’s the hard part. That loss will never show up in your CRM with a useful reason next to it.
The loss reason you can’t see
This year I also helped a manufacturer client dig through their closed-lost data. The top loss reason was value engineering or a design change. Some projects were redesigned until their scope disappeared entirely. The third most common reason was “lost,” with nothing else written down.
That pattern isn’t unusual. A lost spec doesn’t come with an exit interview. The engineer stays with the brand they already know, the contractor swaps you out at VE, and the job shows up on someone else’s books. Your team logs “VE” and moves on to the next bid.
But VE is rarely the real reason. It’s the moment the real reason caught up with you. Somewhere earlier, the contractor didn’t know your install story, the owner never asked for you by name, or the engineer couldn’t defend you when the swap came up.
Over the last year I listened back through dozens of conversations with manufacturers, reps, and engineers. The same gap kept showing up. The product was good. The spec sheet was accurate. The people deciding whether to buy it each needed a different reason, and that reason lived in someone’s head instead of on the page.
If you want to see where your own spec sheet stands before reading further, run one product through our free tool at specsheet.nerdherdpro.com. It takes a couple of minutes.
You know your buyers. Your materials don’t show it.
You don’t need me to explain who’s in the buying chain. You’ve lived it. But look at your spec sheet and ask who it was written for. Usually the answer is everyone, which means no one.
The consulting engineer is protecting their stamp. They need certified ratings at stated test conditions, sound power by octave band, and a submittal they can defend.
The contractor is protecting their margin and schedule. Shipping splits, rigging weights, whether it fits through the existing opening. This is the person deciding your fate at VE.
The owner with a design standard, the school district, health system, or university, can write you in or out of every future project. Most manufacturers never give them a reason.
And your rep carries fifteen or twenty lines. They’ll lead with whichever manufacturer made the story easiest to tell that day. That’s competition most leadership teams underestimate. It isn’t only the brand on the basis of design. It’s every other line in your rep’s bag.
What your reps are actually asking for
When I asked that same rep what would help him win more often, he didn’t ask for a better brochure. He asked for documentation.
He wanted the cooling coil, the fan, and the electrical detail, MCA and all, in one clean package an engineer could approve without chasing anyone. He wanted a Revit model early in the job, because almost every engineer he works with designs in it now. And he wanted selections fast. His current selection took 18 minutes. His expectation was about five, with reasonable accuracy on the first pass.
None of that is marketing in the traditional sense. All of it is translation. It’s the factory taking what engineering knows and packaging it the way the people downstream need to use it.
That’s the part I think most leadership teams miss. Your rep firm isn’t only comparing you to the brand on the basis of design. They’re comparing how much work it takes to sell you against how much work it takes to sell the other fifteen lines in their bag. Every missing number, slow selection, or vague claim is friction. Friction decides where a good rep spends their Tuesday afternoon.
The manufacturers who win more than their size suggests have usually figured this out. They make it easy for the engineer to defend them, easy for the contractor to install them, and easy for the rep to tell the story. That’s how you make the fight not fair.
What translation actually looks like
Here’s a line that could come from almost any catalog in our industry:
“High-efficiency variable speed compressor delivers quiet, reliable operation.”
It’s accurate. It’s also useless to every person in the buying chain, because none of them can do anything with it.
Here’s the same product, translated:
For the engineer: “IEER of [insert AHRI-certified value] at AHRI 340/360 conditions. Sound power by octave band available per [insert test standard].” Now they have something they can put in a spec section, and the brackets tell your team exactly what data to pull.
For the contractor: “Variable speed compressor ships factory-wired and tested. [Insert rigging weight] and [insert curb dimensions] for retrofit fit-up.” Now they know what it means for their crew on install day, which is the conversation that decides VE.
For the owner: “Variable speed operation reduces compressor cycling, with [insert warranty term] on the compressor.” Now the facility director has a reason to tell their engineer what they want on the next job.
Same product. Same specs. Three reasons to buy, each one built only from data you already have or can get.
That’s the whole idea. The fix is almost never more content. It’s translating the content you have into the sentence each decision-maker needs to hear, with the proof they’ll actually check. And every claim has to trace back to the spec sheet. If the data isn’t there, you don’t stretch it. You flag it and go get it.
Want to see your own product translated this way? Paste in a spec sheet at specsheet.nerdherdpro.com and you’ll get a free preview in a couple of minutes.
The refrigerant transition just raised the stakes
If you make anything with a compressor, you’re living through this right now. The move to A2L refrigerants like R-454B and R-32 has every manufacturer rewriting spec sheets, retraining reps, and fielding new questions from engineers.
Those questions are specific. Which edition of UL 60335-2-40 is the unit listed to? What’s the refrigerant charge? Does the application need leak detection and mitigation, and is it factory-installed? Who’s responsible for it in the field?
Engineers are cautious with anything new, and A2L is new to a lot of them. The manufacturer whose spec sheet answers those questions plainly makes the engineer’s job easier. The one that buries them in a footnote makes the engineer call someone, and the engineer doesn’t always call.
This is the moment where a clear, translated spec sheet is worth the most. Your competitors are rewriting theirs too. The ones who get it right first will win specs that don’t come back for years.
We built a tool to do the first pass
Doing this translation by hand takes time, and most teams only get to it for one or two hero products. So we built a free tool for VPs of sales and marketing at commercial and industrial manufacturers. It’s called the Spec Sheet to Sales Kit.
You paste in your spec sheet or upload the PDF, and pick up to four people who influence the purchase. You’ll see a free preview right away, including the message for your primary decision-maker and your readiness score. Enter your name and work email, and you get the full kit on screen plus a PDF in your inbox.
[Image: the spec readiness score card]
The full kit includes:
- A VP brief with where this product wins, where it stalls, the revenue at risk, and a 30-day plan for reps, marketing, and product.
- The message for each decision-maker, with a headline, the proof they’ll check, what to avoid saying, and what to ask for.
- A spec readiness score against 12 checks engineers run before they list a product, including refrigerant and low-GWP status.
- Spec-stage objections with answers built from your own data, a 60-second rep briefing, and a spec-in email to an engineer.
- A PDF you can bring to your next sales meeting or send to your rep firms.
- A VP brief with where this product wins, where it stalls, the revenue at risk, and a 30-day plan for reps, marketing, and product.
- The message for each decision-maker, with a headline, the proof they’ll check, what to avoid saying, and what to ask for.
- A spec readiness score against 12 checks engineers run before they list a product, including refrigerant and low-GWP status.
- Spec-stage objections with answers built from your own data, a 60-second rep briefing, and a spec-in email to an engineer.
- A PDF you can bring to your next sales meeting or send to your rep firms.
[Image: page 1 of a sample kit PDF, showing the VP brief]
Every claim is checked against your spec, with the source line quoted so you can verify it. Missing data shows up in brackets. It won’t invent a feature or round up a number. And we don’t store your spec sheet. We save the kit it produces so your PDF link keeps working.
What to do with your kit this week
Start with the product that should be winning and isn’t. The one with strong performance that keeps losing at VE or to the basis of design. If you have an A2L product launching, start there.
Read the VP brief first. It will tell you whether you’re looking at a messaging problem, a data problem, or both.
Put the 30-day plan on the agenda for your next sales meeting. Send the 60-second briefing to your top rep firms and ask them to use it on their next three engineer calls.
Then ask those reps one question when they report back: which line did the engineer react to? Their answer is better market research than most surveys you could buy. It tells you which proof points carry weight in your territory, and which ones your reps quietly stopped using. Feed that back into the next version of your spec sheet.
Send the spec gaps to product. The gaps are usually data you already have somewhere, like sound power, a points list, or warranty terms. It just isn’t where the engineer is looking.
Then publish what you fix everywhere it matters: the spec sheet, the submittal package, and the product page. That’s what makes you findable by engineers, and by the AI search tools more of them are starting to use.
Make the fight not fair
That rep was right. A mid-size manufacturer rarely wins on brand or scale. You win by being the easiest choice for every person in the chain, before anyone ever gets to VE.
Your engineering team already did the hard part. The gap between your spec sheet and a signed purchase order is translation, and it’s one of the most fixable revenue problems I see.
Run your first kit free at specsheet.nerdherdpro.com.
And tell me something in the comments. What’s the one piece of data engineers ask your reps for that isn’t in your submittal today?
Ashlei Rolloff Founder/CEO, Nerd Herd
Originally published in Ashlei Rolloff’s HVAC Leaders newsletter on LinkedIn.
Quick answers
Why do HVAC manufacturers lose jobs they were basis of design on?
Competitors package equipment, value engineer the scope, and offer faster lead times. When your materials only list specs, reps and contractors have nothing to counter with. Those losses rarely show up in the CRM with a useful reason, so the pattern repeats.
What is a sales kit for an HVAC product?
A sales kit translates your spec sheet into messaging for each buyer who decides on the product, such as the engineer, contractor, owner, and rep. Every conversation then answers what that person cares about.
How can a manufacturer build a sales kit fast?
Paste your spec sheet into the free Nerd Herd sales kit tool at specsheet.nerdherdpro.com. It drafts messaging for each buyer plus a 30-day plan for your team, which gives you a first pass to refine with your reps.
Work with Nerd Herd
Turn your spec sheet into a sales kit
Paste a spec sheet and get messaging for each buyer who decides on your product, plus a 30-day plan for your team.
