HVACR and plumbing customers place greater value on service and business relationships than on price, according to Phocas’ State of Sales in Distribution 2026 report. Phocas surveyed more than 100 distribution sales professionals, with HVACR and plumbing professionals accounting for 19% of respondents.
Among HVACR and plumbing respondents, 43% said customers want great service and a business relationship most. Another 29% selected the convenience of buying across multiple product categories, while technical expertise and best price were each selected by 14%.
Across all survey respondents, 55% identified field or outside sales as their most effective sales channel, compared with 5% for e-commerce. Product and usage knowledge was selected by 75% as the most valued attribute of an effective sales representative. Among HVACR sales reps, 40% can have 20–100 accounts across a territory, while another 40% can have more than 400 accounts.
Account prioritization was the most commonly cited internal sales issue, selected by 20% of respondents, followed by pipeline and forecast accuracy at 18%. The report describes sales analytics and guided selling as tools that can use customer and transaction data to identify accounts requiring attention and provide information for sales visits.
Better CRM adoption was selected by 27% of respondents as the capability that would have the biggest impact on their sales team. However, only 34% of distributors with a CRM record at least 75% of customer interactions in the system. The report says connecting analytics, CRM and guided selling can give sales representatives information on customer and product performance, previous activity and potential sales priorities while keeping customer interactions recorded.