Let’s say you walk into an auto dealer to buy a new car.
You find the model, color and features you want, and the price is right. They even have the very model you want in stock; it just needs to be prepped for delivery. You can’t wait! You can already smell that shiny leather interior. Once your new car is ready, you proudly take the keys and set off for your first ride around town. But as you go to hit the brakes before turning into traffic, the pedal goes right to the floorboard. BAM! Your new car is totaled. Nobody told you about that not-so-trivial item called brakes. How can that be? Didn’t anyone bring up the benefits of brakes?
It’s similar in the pool industry with regard to pool covers — an item almost as important as brakes on a car. Sometimes a pool dealer or builder will shy away from talking about a cover after a client has been handed an invoice for $50,000 on new pool construction. It doesn’t have to be that way — and our experts say it shouldn’t.
Kevin Losee, product manager at automatic safety covers for Latham Pool Products Coverstar division, offers a few discussion points on how to integrate pool covers into your client conversation. “The first is safety,” Losee says. “The automatic cover is a safety cover. For clients with children or who have children in the neighborhood, that cover is a layer of protection. If children wander out onto the pool, that safety cover will prevent catastrophe. There’s also added convenience for the homeowner: When the pool is covered, it is cleaner; they’ll spend a lot less time maintaining it and more time enjoying it.”
LeeAnn Donaton-Pesta runs Loop-Loc Swimming Pool Products, the company her father, Bill Donaton, started in 1978. Donaton-Pesta says talking about safety during a sale can be a positive experience. “Safety is the main reason pool covers are a good investment and the main reason homeowners purchase them,” Donaton-Pesta says. She shares a testimonial letter that gets to the heart of the safety issue. “My two-year-old daughter walked onto our Loop-Loc pool cover today when I turned my head for just an instant. She was standing on the cover, right over the deep end of our pool, which is over 9 feet deep. Thankfully, she came to me when I called her, but knowing that I could have gone out on the pool cover to grab her myself (if needed) made the situation somewhat less panic-inducing.”
Price Objections
What about price? Coverstar’s Losee suggests the conversation be changed to the savings in pool ownership. “The operation costs of a pool can add up rather significantly throughout the year when you consider the amount of electricity used to filter and heat the pool, plus the chemicals themselves,” Losee says. “When that pool is covered and not in use, you dramatically cut down on evaporation.” The Department of Energy did a study of pool-operation costs with and without a cover, he adds, which reported savings of $3,000 to $4,000 a year with a cover. “It really doesn’t take long for a cover to pay for itself based on that study,” he says.
Sean Miner is product manager for Coverstar’s (manual) Solid Mesh Safety Cover product line. He stresses that if a homeowner is against an automatic cover, a standard safety cover is a must. “When a pool professional is talking with a customer about the design and features of a pool, that’s the very best time to let them know of the benefits of a pool cover; if an automatic model is too much for them, a (manual) safety cover should at least be in that budget,” Miner says. It’s a protection and safety benefit that costs pennies a day. Who could say no to pennies a day when the cover could save a life and keep the homeowner off the hook should there be calamity on their property involving the pool? Arouse emotion when discussing the cover with your client. It’s that important.
Automatic Versus Safety
Across the board, pool cover sales on new construction projects lean in favor of automatic covers. Refurbished pools or aftermarket cover purchases tend toward manual safety covers. “Automatic covers look best with a new pool because the track system and mechanical system are hidden,” Miner explains. “On an existing pool, it’s usually mounted on top. Someone who already has a pool is probably paying cash, so the safety cover is a less expensive option. If you’re financing a new pool, the automatic cover price can be included in the financing of the pool construction.”
Barry Greenwald, vice president of sales for Zodiac Cover Pools always advises customers to go with an automatic cover when possible. “We really only do automatics; if you have a 20 by 40 pool and you have a manual, solid cover, I can’t see anybody taking that cover off and then putting it back on every time they use the pool,” Greenwald says.
Kevin Losee says that might be why sales of automatic covers are spiking. “A few years ago, we’d sell an automatic cover on about 3 percent of new pool construction,” he says. “Today that number is 15 to 20 percent.”
One behind-the-scenes industry movement could make the decision to install a safety cover a slam dunk.
Bruce Grogg, general manager of Pool Cover Specialists, and a team recently went to Washington, D.C, to meet with senators, congressmen and the Environmental Protection Agency to secure rebates for homeowners who use automatic pool covers. “If we can get that,” he says, “we can go to power companies and obtain rebates for consumers who use covers because of the energy and water savings they provide. It’s like an Energy Star rating, only for water.”
Measuring
Many manufacturers have smartphone apps to measure an existing pool for a new cover order, but it’s not for amateurs. Donaton-Pesta at Loop-Loc has a policy that its covers be measured and installed by a pool professional, as does Greenwald at Zodiac Cover Pools. “The measuring is the easy part,” he says. “But if there’s a rock waterfall, a raised bond beam, a raised spa, we can’t do a cover.” Shapes, deck layout and many other factors determine whether a particular pool can be covered — and Zodiac takes all that info account before measuring. Greenwald says customers can take a picture of their pool, send it to the company to determine if a cover will work.
