Answering the hard questions honestly

Some questions have an easy answer that is not quite true and a true answer that is more work. The easy answers used to be safe. They are not any more, because the customer can check, and because the complaint arrives eighteen months later when the system is on the roof and the money has been spent.

Six of them, with what the honest version sounds like.

"Will it definitely be cheaper to run than my gas boiler?"

The easy answer: yes.

The true answer: it depends on the design, and here is the arithmetic.

Gas is cheap per unit and electricity is roughly four times the price. A boiler loses some of the gas it burns, so a heat pump has to produce about three and a half units of heat for every unit of electricity just to draw level. A system designed at 45 degrees will beat that comfortably. A system designed at 55 degrees on unchanged radiators may not.

Saying this plainly does not lose the sale. It reframes the conversation from "is a heat pump cheaper" — which you cannot honestly guarantee — to "what does it take to make this one cheaper", which is a conversation about radiators, and radiators are something you can sell them.

Against oil, LPG or electric heating, incidentally, you can simply say yes.

"Do I really have to change my radiators?"

The easy answer: no, they will be fine.

The true answer: some of them, and here is why, and here is what it buys you.

A radiator at heat pump temperatures gives out about a third of what it gave at boiler temperatures. That is not an opinion, and if you leave the radiators alone the system has to run hot, which is the expensive outcome they are worried about.

The good news is worth leading with: a deeper radiator in the same length and height can nearly double the output without taking any more wall. Most houses need a handful changed, not all of them.

Selling the radiators as part of the job is easier than selling a heat pump that disappoints.

"What happens when it is really cold?"

The easy answer: they work down to minus twenty.

The true answer: they do, and the output drops as it gets colder, which is exactly what the sizing allows for.

The honest version is more reassuring, not less, because it explains the design instead of asserting a fact. The machine is sized to cover the load on the coldest day the location expects, without help from an immersion heater. If it needs the backup heater on an ordinary February morning, it was sized wrongly.

Say that. It tells them the number on the quotation means something.

"So I'll be generating all my own electricity?"

The easy answer: let the impression stand.

The true answer: you will generate about as much as you use over a year, but not at the same times.

Panels make their electricity in the middle of the day; the house uses it morning and evening. Without a battery, something between a sixth and a third of what the roof makes gets used in the house, and the rest is sold back at a lower price.

This is the single most common cause of disappointment with solar, and it is entirely avoidable at the quotation stage. Explaining it costs you a bigger headline number and buys you a customer who is pleased in year two.

It also opens two real conversations: shifting the washing machine and the hot water to the middle of the day, and whether a battery earns its keep on their tariff.

"Is a battery worth it?"

The easy answer: yes, it doubles your self-consumption.

The true answer: it does roughly double it, and whether that pays depends on the gap between what they pay and what they are paid.

Do the sum in front of them. Units shifted, multiplied by the difference between the import and export prices. It usually comes to a few hundred pounds a year against a cost of several thousand, which is a long payback and sometimes longer than the warranty.

Then say what actually makes the case: a time-of-use tariff, where the battery can also charge cheaply overnight and be worth something every day of the year and not only when the sun shines. Or backup in a power cut, if it is specified for it. Or simply that they would rather use their own electricity.

Customers buy batteries after this conversation. They just buy them knowingly, and they do not come back angry.

"What's the payback?"

The easy answer: a confident number.

The true answer: here is the calculation, and here are the two prices it depends on.

Any payback figure rests on the price of electricity and the price of the fuel being replaced, neither of which anybody can predict for fifteen years. Presenting a single number as though it were a fact is where a lot of later grievance starts.

Give the arithmetic instead, with their prices, and say plainly what would change it. A customer who understands that the payback moves with energy prices is not going to feel cheated when energy prices move.

Why the honest version is the better sale

Three reasons, in ascending order of importance.

It survives comparison. When they take three quotes and yours is the one whose numbers hold up under their own checking, the flattering quotes start to look like what they are.

It removes your disputes. Almost every unhappy installation traces back to an expectation set at the sale that the system was never going to meet.

And it is the only version that produces the referral. Somebody whose system does what they were told it would do says so, in specific terms, to their neighbours. That is worth more than any single job.