I sold my 4th Saturday morning which is the reason for this thread. It was an easy sell which almost makes me think the guy had been thinking about them already except for the fact that when I first mentioned it the other day it was to his wife (he was not present) and she acted like she'd never heard of a tankless water heater. I left one of Noritz's brochures behind and when I went back Sat. am it was like signing someone up to vote or something. Just ABC ok I'll take that one with these options.
So far I have sold and installed 1 Rinnai (2 years ago), 1 Takagi (last year), and this is now my 2nd Noritz this year with the other one coming just about a month or so ago. They all seem to be good units but Rinnai, I've heard and don't know if it's true, are beginning to flirt with the box stores which means quality will probably go down, Takagi seems good but is not adequately stocked and ship times I'm told can be too long, Noritz seems to be top quality from what I've heard (but don't have enough of a history with to really know) but one really nice thing about them is that I can get stable pricing for 6 months at a time which means I can price a job on site without having to "get back to ya" which I think makes all the difference in the world. Also, Noritz's commitment to sell only to the contractor seems to be stronger than the others. Not sure yet whether it is in reality but it seems to be doctrine with them, or at least they go out of their way to make a big deal about it. I haven't done a google search to see how many online resellers are selling them though.
What I'd like to do is find or develop a very successful sales presentation because among seriously legitimate prospects my closing ratio is pretty pitiful. For the guy on Sat. it really didn't make any sense not to go tankless because he was looking at replacing 2 40 gal ng units that were on seperate hw dist systems (a straight shot of about 30' of 3/4" pex solves that problem) both of which were located in interior spaces of the house (unnecessary gas leak potential as well as possible CO emissions). One of them also was pre-sealed combustion chamber, was not on a stand or in a pan and would have eventually flooded his house. So with an exterior mounted 751 series he gets continuous hot water and eliminates several potential problems (some of them possibly deadly) for not much more than what it would cost him to install 2 replacement tanked units. I wish they all always made this much sense, but unfortunately they often seem to have to be sold more as a luxury than as a smart investment.
If anybody out there has got these sales wired and doesn't mind sharing with the class, I'd love to hear maybe some selling points that I haven't thought of (which probably won't be too hard to come up with).