The Steel CodCast

The Steel Cod Retail Council doesn't pull punches — and this week's results are no exception. Jon Beresford and Anthony Fors dig into what the floor is really saying about Whirlpool Corp right now: a brand that feels directionless, is losing builder and designer relationships to delivery delays, and isn't giving independent salespeople anything new to lead with. Jon's diagnosis is clear — and so is his ask of the brand.
Then it gets interesting. Jon goes on record about which major brands have responded to the Steel CodCast's podcast invitation — and which ones haven't. Whirlpool? Zero response. Jenn-Air? Declined, but respectfully — which Jon says he respects far more than silence. Sub-Zero/Wolf? He totally gets it. A major appliance family? Conversations that fizzled. Samsung/Décor? Complicated. The wild part: the four brands the council wants most on the show are the exact four Jon is still chasing. Every other brand? Booked through the end of the calendar year.
From there, the guys tackle how independent retailers can stop fighting a battle they can't win against big box — and start dominating the one they always will. It comes down to the back end: delivery, installation, service, and owning the customer relationship long after the deal closes. Big box can match your showroom. They cannot match that.
Finally, a deep dive into how long it actually takes a new brand to gain real traction on the floor. The council's answers ranged from six months to seven years. Jon thinks six months is a dangerous illusion — and uses the Beko story from Covid as exhibit A. What looked like momentum was a supply chain anomaly. Velocity without foundation is a house of cards. The brands that last are built on rep relationships that hold up under pressure and a service story the floor actually trusts.
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Every salesperson has a system for their wins. You find what worked, you repeat it, you move on. But the customer who left without buying is giving you more information than any closed sale ever does — and most salespeople never actually read it.
This Sales Deep Dive is about the lost sale. Jon walks through the assumptions salespeople make about why things went wrong (and why those assumptions are almost always off), what's happening in the customer's brain and body during a conversation that's breaking down, four specific types of exits and what each one is actually communicating, what's still happening psychologically after the customer drives away, and what you're supposed to do with all of it.
The customer who left is a teacher. This episode is the lesson.
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This is the episode people kept asking for. Jon built five tier definitions first — entry level, mass premium, affordable luxury, luxury, and a fifth tier he created himself that doesn't officially exist anywhere — and then placed every major appliance brand exactly where the definition pointed. He's taking full personal ownership of every placement and standing behind every one of them, while keeping an open standing invitation for anyone — brand, retailer, or listener — who wants to argue a placement to come do it on the show.
The conversations worth catching: why Café's design differentiation doesn't move it out of mass premium. Why the spec sheet at mass premium can look nearly identical to luxury and what that actually costs a customer seven years in. What affordable luxury actually promises — and why floors that oversell it do more damage than they realize. Why Fisher & Paykel is a luxury brand and why the US market is still treating them like they aren't. And what happens in a conversation when a customer encounters an Uber luxury product they already decided they wanted before they ever walked in.
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"Outdoor Rated" is one of the most confidently misunderstood claims in the outdoor kitchen category. Salespeople see the ETL certification checkmark and move on. Customers assume it means the product can handle their backyard. Nobody's asking the right question — and nobody finds out until the compressor burns out that first August.
Anthony and Jon walk through what the certification actually guarantees (electrical safety — the unit won't shock you), the spec that actually matters (ambient temperature operating range — and why many outdoor-labeled products are rated to the same 60-90°F range as indoor units), and why the outdoor environment makes the premium price justification argument for the salesperson in a way that indoor refrigeration simply cannot.
Then they walk through the complete failure sequence — compressor to gaskets to electronics to finish to insulation — and explain what to look for: ambient temperature range, stainless interior, 304 vs. 316L marine grade stainless for coastal and pool environments, sealed electronics, and how to read the warranty as the brand's honest opinion of their own product.
They close with three brand callouts — True, Sub-Zero outdoor, and Perlick — and what separates them from everything else just carrying the checkmark.
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Jon got cornered this week. Shannon asked him to name a brand people would be shocked to hear his honest opinion about, and he actually answered. The brand is Wolf — and the position is more nuanced than the name suggests. Sub-Zero earns everything the market gives them. Wolf makes great luxury product, and their simmer is the best in the category. But Wolf does not deserve the floor share they have by default, and Jon makes the full case for why that's a floor behavior problem, not a product problem.
From there: what silence actually means if Steel Cod has never mentioned your brand, why a customer being happy with their Sub-Zero Wolf doesn't mean they were best served, why lying about commission is costing salespeople the exact trust it was designed to protect, and why general sales training has never been built for what independent luxury appliance retail actually asks of a salesperson.
Jon also teases something that's been in the works — Steel Cod's Advanced Sales Training. Six weeks, ~15 minutes a day, built for every skill level. More soon.

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Four questions this week, and every single one of them hit. The SCRC named the brands being copied most right now — and Jon explains why copying never actually works, no matter how close you get to the original story. Thermador's 1-2-3 promotional structure still dominates the conversation years after everyone copied it, and that tells you everything you need to know about being first versus being second.
The brands whose next-gen products were a step backward came up fast. And the brands that are still pretending otherwise came up even faster. Jon's weed analogy for what ignoring retail feedback looks like over time is going to stick with you.
Then it's into flooring requirements and the real margin math — why the number a manufacturer presents in a pitch meeting and the number a retailer calculates in real time on every transaction are never the same, and why brands keep losing floor space because of it. And the final question goes to customer misconception: induction, front load laundry, steam ovens, heat pump dryers — some of the best technology on the market is losing to outdated fears. Jon's position on the combi steam oven replacing the second wall oven conversation is one he'll die on, and this episode makes the full case.

Every salesperson in this industry is told to learn the product. Compressor types, insulation technology, hinge tolerances — all of it. And then they get on the floor and watch a customer tune out the second any of it comes out of their mouth.
That's the paradox this episode is built around. Because the answer isn't to stop knowing the technical stuff — it's to understand why it almost never gets translated into the conversation, and what happens when it finally does. 
Anthony and Jon walk through the neuroscience behind why this approach works, the framework for actually applying it, and the filter for knowing which specs are worth going deep on versus which ones should stay in your back pocket forever. The salesperson who can make this translation consistently has something on the floor that big box will never be able to touch.
If you haven't heard the previous Sales Deep Dive on the FABEI framework and emotional decision-making, go back and start there — this one builds on it.
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📧 Questions for the mailbag? Send them to: https://tally.so/r/D4ROKb
Andrew Savant, CEO of Pinnacle Sales Group, is back — and he's the first repeat guest in Steel CodCast history. He's here to walk through ASKO's new generation laundry launch, and the conversation goes well beyond spec sheet highlights.
Jon and Andrew dig into why ASKO always required a certain level of blind faith from the floor — and how the new launch is specifically designed to fix that. The Steel Seal eliminates the rubber gasket entirely (95% less bacterial growth, certified). The Quattro construction drops a 70+ pound counterweight into the machine to eliminate vibration at the source. And the capacity conversation gets reframed entirely: this isn't compact laundry — it's a 26.5-pound story, and that changes who you bring it to.
There's also a real ASKO vs. Miele conversation — Jon's not walking back his position on Miele, but he makes the case clearly for where ASKO wins the head-to-head. And the drying cabinet gets its due. Again. Because apparently Jon will keep dying on that hill until the floor finally listens.

Sub-Zero has earned its position — that much isn't up for debate. But True came from commercial refrigeration, and that means the engineering standard was never a choice. It was a requirement.
Anthony and Jon break down both cases and pick a winner. They go through Sub-Zero's legitimate claim to the top, then make the True argument: commercial DNA, forced air refrigeration, interior construction, and a hinging system that's a completely different conversation from anything Sub-Zero is doing. They also cover where dual compressor / dual evaporator lands differently between the two, and the one area where Jon gives Sub-Zero an honest edge.
Then the versus episode tradition holds: Jon picks a winner.
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This Mailbag Monday is the kind of episode that doesn't come along very often — five questions, all submitted by people in the industry, and every single one of them goes somewhere real.
Anthony and Jon tackle what the independent channel is actually supposed to do now that big box has manufacturers' attention, what a rep submitting their own question reveals about what good training should look like, and what the filter is for pulling brands off your floor on day one. They also spend time on a question that has nothing to do with appliances and everything to do with the industry — what happens when a toxic coworker has management's protection and the good people are already walking out the door. And finally: was the shift in how Steel Cod talks about the industry a conscious call?
The answer to that last one is yes. And Jon explains why it has to be.