The Steel CodCast

Third rack dishwashers have become the default — brands lead with it, salespeople sell it, and customers expect it. But Jon Beresford says the real conversation isn't whether the third rack exists on a dishwasher. It's whether the third rack is actually the right fit for the specific household standing in front of you.
This episode covers what the third rack was actually designed to do, what the genuine trade-offs are, why some customers are better served without one, and why brand quality matters enormously here — because not all third racks perform the same way, and the difference between a well-engineered third rack and a mediocre one shows up in daily use pretty quickly.
The trade-off that rarely gets named on the floor: third racks reduce clearance in the second rack, which matters for some households more than others. They also require a specific loading approach — a system-minded user who thinks about what goes where. Shannon's mom has a third rack dishwasher and treats every load like a magazine shoot, perfectly placing every item. Not everyone wants that kind of relationship with their dishwasher. Jon's wife doesn't use theirs at all, though the option to remove it is its own kind of solution.
The qualifying question makes it simple: does this household run a lot of awkward-shaped items? Tall utensils, spatulas, serving pieces, oversized items that would normally hijack real estate in the main basket? Then the third rack changes the whole equation. Shannon puts it directly — the Forces are third rack people. They have Fisher & Paykel now, miss the third rack from their previous dishwasher, and the difference it made for oddly shaped items was real enough to feel the absence.
The honest answer isn't one size fits all. And that's the conversation worth having before anyone makes a decision.
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Six audience questions, one mailbag, and some of the most direct answers Jon Beresford has given on the show.
The opening question came from a sales manager watching the craft lose its appeal among younger people. Jon's response doesn't let the industry off the hook. The next generation isn't avoiding appliance sales because they lack ambition. They're avoiding it because nobody has given them a compelling reason to choose it. The pitch — boring product category, slow-building compensation, spec-sheet training, no clear career path — isn't a compelling one for someone with real options. The fix isn't finding better candidates. It's building a better case.
On practical sales strategies, Jon directs listeners to the Saturday deep dives for depth and then gives the short version of where most salespeople actually break down: the first two minutes. The customer says refrigerator and the salesperson starts walking. They skip the part that makes everything else easier — understanding what the specific person in front of them is actually trying to solve for. Real qualification asks about the life the appliance is going to live in, and when that foundation is right, the price conversation stops being a defense and becomes a connection between a number and an outcome the customer already asked for.
On Steel Cod, Jon makes the case that the podcast itself is a fluency builder — and fluency is worth more than any feature training because features inform while fluency convinces. Steel Cod University takes the same philosophy into 3-5 minute classes built specifically around positioning moments and real objections. He also teases an upcoming tool the entire team is more excited about than anything they've ever built — one that will change the selling conversation permanently.
The episode closes with Jon's case for the independent dealer — structured, direct, and one of the most compelling arguments for the channel you'll hear anywhere. The independent dealer is the only person in the entire appliance buying landscape with no structural reason to mislead. Big box has inventory targets. Manufacturers have one product to sell. Online retail has affiliate revenue and no context. The independent dealer has one job: the right answer for the right customer. That advantage compounds. It builds through referrals and repeat business in ways competitors can never replicate — and it gets more valuable every single year.
Oh, and the audience asked Jon what luxury brand he doesn't like. He almost answered.
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Dale Seiden, CEO and co-founder of Qoldfusion, joins Jon Beresford and Anthony Fors for a conversation that covers a lot of ground — how to sell to a luxury buyer who's already stopped caring about features, why this product has to enter the conversation before a single plan is drawn, and why the retailers who move on Qoldfusion now are not taking a risk but making a long-term positioning decision.
Jon opens with the luxury buyer framework: the moment a customer decides to spend at a luxury level, features stop mattering. What they're actually buying is what their life feels like after the purchase — day after day. The appliance that becomes invisible because it works perfectly and fits seamlessly into how they live. Qoldfusion's product and the ownership experience around it are built around exactly that idea.
But it requires a different approach than anything else on the floor. Jon identifies the most expensive education a retail partner can get with this product: the customer is completely sold, excited, ready — and then the kitchen plans come out. The cabinetry is already spec'd, the walls are already placed, and there's nowhere for a walk-in cold pantry to go. Qoldfusion has to be in the conversation before a single line is drawn. That makes the designer and architect relationship not a nice-to-have — it's the entire strategy.
He breaks down the technology conversation the right way: not through engineering, but through what every customer already knows — produce that dries out too fast, texture that's off, something that should last a week lasting two days. Connect the dots between how air moves inside a fridge and what the customer experiences every time they open it. That's the conversation. And once you get the customer inside one? Open the door, step back, and follow their lead. Jon says it must be the easiest product in the world to sell once you get to that moment.
The observation that reframes everything: for 100 years, a refrigerator has lived in the kitchen because nobody ever asked where the family actually lives. Qoldfusion asked that question. Now the salesperson isn't selling a refrigerator anymore — they're helping a customer decide how their entire home functions. And the retailers who build around that conversation now, the way Sub-Zero's early believers built around that brand before it was dominant, are building something their competitors will spend years trying to catch up on.
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Referenced this episode:→ Qoldfusion Episode (without Dale) — https://www.podbean.com/eas/pb-uhxzq-1aec6e4

Walk into any appliance showroom today and you'll find the word "luxury" on products at $800, at $2,000, at $5,000, and at $15,000. Every one of them carrying the same language — premium, professional, elevated, sophisticated. Jon Beresford opens this Saturday deep dive by saying that confusion is costing the independent channel something significant — and that the independent dealer is the only person in the market positioned to actually fix it.
He traces exactly how luxury lost its meaning through what he calls price point creep: manufacturers with a successful premium line that starts building tiers below it, borrowing the aesthetic while compromising the engineering, calling it luxury because it looks luxury and sits on the same floor. Every manufacturer starts making the same calculation. The word ends up spanning such a vast range of products and price points that it stops functioning as a meaningful descriptor at all. At this point, Jon says, luxury basically means anything above entry level — which means almost nothing.
Steel Cod's definition of genuine luxury comes down to three components. The first is longevity — not warranty language, but actual field performance in year 12 the way it performed in year one. The second is ownership experience — not just how the product feels to use, but the entire relationship with the brand after the sale: how easy service is, how available parts are, how the brand treats a customer when something goes wrong. A product that costs $10,000 and delivers a $500 service experience when something breaks isn't a luxury product — it's just a price point. The third is performance ceiling — genuine luxury products have a ceiling a customer can grow and learn into for years. A product built to a lower standard hits that ceiling fast. The customer files the experience under "I paid a lot of money and I'm not sure it was worth it." That feeling is the opposite of what luxury is supposed to deliver.
Jon names both versions of the problem: the brand that earned luxury decades ago but whose standards didn't survive acquisitions and cost reduction cycles, and the brand that positioned itself in the luxury tier without ever earning it. He calls "affordable luxury" an oxymoron — affordable doesn't describe a price point, it describes where corners were cut.
He closes with the structural argument for why the independent dealer is the only person in the entire ecosystem capable of having this conversation honestly — and why the dealer who commits to it is building a reputation that compounds in referrals, repeat customers, and trust in ways that no competitor can replicate.
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The Steel Cod Retail Council is back with results from four questions that cut right to the core of how independent appliance retail actually works.
Anthony Fors and Jon Beresford break down whether true brand loyalty exists in luxury appliances, what manufacturer support really costs dealers when you run the full equation, how the floor is currently grading SKS, Miele, and Fisher & Paykel, and where buying groups still have real leverage versus where sophisticated dealers have outgrown them.
The brand loyalty conversation alone reframes how you should think about selling luxury. The council described two completely different customers and called it the same thing — one built on earned loyalty through actual ownership experience, one built on brand aspiration that fades when the budget gets real. Sub-Zero and Wolf are holding while everyone else loosens, and the reasons why should change how every salesperson on the floor approaches a luxury introduction.
The manufacturer support math section is the most direct the council has been on this topic. Margin is one number. The full equation includes service escalations, concealed damage claims, returns friction, and every hour a dealer's team spends managing a brand instead of selling it. The dealers who understand that equation make very different decisions about floor space.
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#SteelCodRetailCouncil #LuxuryAppliances #SubZeroWolf #MieleAppliances #ApplianceRetail #ApplianceSales #BuyingGroups #SteelCodCast #ApplianceIndustry

Panel-ready vs. stainless sounds like a finish preference conversation. Jon Beresford says that's exactly the problem.
When a salesperson treats this as a simple either-or — you like the integrated look or you don't, pick one — they're leaving their customer to discover the full picture on their own, usually mid-project, usually at the worst possible time.
This isn't a comparison between two appliances. It's a comparison between two completely different project scopes. The panel-ready appliance might sit at a lower price point than its stainless counterpart, and in the middle of a project where every single line item has been sticker shock, that feels like finally catching a break. But that price doesn't include the custom cabinet panels, the handles, or the installation labor. And it definitely doesn't account for the fact that when installation day comes, the cabinet shop, the general contractor, and the appliance installer all tend to have a version of "that's not our responsibility" when it comes to actually mounting those panels and attaching those handles.
Jon walks through the installation reality, the hidden costs that don't show up in the appliance price, and the replacement conversation that almost never gets had. Because if a customer plans to live in that home long-term, they need to understand what happens when the appliance eventually needs to be replaced — matching panels from years earlier isn't always possible, and what was a beautiful integrated kitchen can turn into a serious renovation decision.
He closes with how this conversation should actually be handled on the floor. Not as a lengthy detour through the showroom, but as a more complete version of a conversation most salespeople are currently cutting too short.
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The question comes up on every laundry floor: the washer has steam — so what? It already has water in it.
Jon Beresford says it's one of the fairest questions a customer can ask. And the problem isn't the feature — it's that almost nobody in the industry has ever given it a proper answer.
Steam in dryers is an easy sell. The outcomes are tangible and immediate: fewer wrinkles, fresher clothes, quicker refresh, less ironing. Customers can picture it. Steam in washers runs into a completely different wall, because the machine is already mentally associated with water and soaking and saturation. So when a salesperson says "this one has steam," the customer's brain asks what steam is doing that the water isn't already handling — and "it helps with cleaning" doesn't cut it.
Jon breaks down both sides of the failure. The first is the vague feature problem — if a customer can't quickly connect a feature to something real in their life, it sounds like marketing, and abstract features collapse during the buying decision, not after it. The second is the expectation gap problem — steam has such a strong reputation in dryers and steam ovens that customers fill in the blanks themselves, imagining deep sanitization and transformative results that steam in a washer doesn't actually deliver. Over-promise and under-deliver is just as damaging as not explaining it at all.
He's clear that steam in a washing machine is genuinely valuable — for the right household. Allergy-sensitive homes, heavy laundry lifestyles, gym clothes, kids' clothes, certain stain situations — for those customers it's a real quality-of-life improvement. But it's assistive, not revolutionary. Some households use it constantly. Others don't notice it exists after six months. The only path to selling it well is asking the right questions, qualifying a little deeper, and translating the feature into actual ownership relevance for the specific person you're talking to.
Jon closes with where he puts most of the blame: not on the salespeople, but on manufacturers who never went deep enough on who this feature is actually for.
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Referenced this episode:→ Steam Oven Hierarchy Episode — https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/8sd722yab3texsy7/Steam_Oven_Hierarchy7zggt.mp3

GE. LG. Frigidaire. Whirlpool. Café. Electric ranges keep showing up at the top of the Power Index — and despite everything the industry knows about gas and induction, the trend won't stop.
In this episode, Shannon and Jon dig into what the data is actually saying and what the industry keeps getting wrong when positioning ranges against electric. The short answer: familiarity is a more powerful force than anyone is giving it credit for — and the "boringness" of electric cooking, the fact that it's predictable and low-risk and exactly what most people grew up with, may be its biggest competitive advantage.
Jon also addresses what the Power Index is signaling to manufacturers right now beyond just ranges, whether this is a generational cycle similar to top load laundry loyalty, and why the spec-led conversation that the industry keeps defaulting to will never fully win this one. The fix requires addressing the emotional and familiarity components first — before a single BTU or wattage number ever comes up.
🎙️ Hosted by Shannon O'Hara and Jon Beresford | The Steel CodCast🔔 New episode every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

Most salespeople feature stack. Jon knows it. You probably know it about yourself. And this episode isn't here to shame anyone for it — it's an olive branch.
If you're going to keep listing features no matter what, here's a framework to do it in a way that actually lands. Because the features were never the problem. The robotic, brochure-swallowing delivery that sends customers mentally checking out halfway through the presentation — that's the problem.
Jon walks through why customers emotionally react before they logically justify — and why that changes everything about the sequence of how you present. The biggest mistake on the floor: explaining a feature before the customer has had a chance to experience it. Don't announce the soft-close hinges. Let them close the door. Feel it. Then the explanation has something emotional to attach to.
He also covers which features are worth slowing down for and which ones are just informational — because when everything becomes dramatic, nothing feels important. And the single most powerful move in a showroom presentation: asking the customer what they feel and letting them verbalize their own emotional reaction out loud. Once they say it, they own it.
The customer will never remember the spec you gave them. They will remember how the appliance made them picture themselves living with it. That's where the sale actually happens.
🎙️ Hosted by Shannon O'Hara and Jon Beresford | The Steel Codcast🔔 New episode every day of the week. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.

Jon Beresford says the biggest threat to independent appliance retail isn't Amazon, big box, online retail, or AI. It's the experienced salesperson sitting on the floor right now who decided at some point that they already know everything they need to know.
And the most dangerous part? To that salesperson, it doesn't feel like stagnation. It feels like mastery.
Jon walks through what this actually looks like — not as a character flaw or laziness, but as a specific and very human pattern. The salesperson who built real knowledge over years, earned real credibility, and then at some point stopped questioning beliefs that had already felt settled. They're not lying to customers. Everything they're saying was accurate at one point. It just isn't current anymore. And the outdated narratives they're carrying are now actively steering customers away from products that deserve to be in the conversation today.
He breaks it down as a three-stage arc. Stage one is the narrative stage — knowledge calcifies into belief, and new information gets filtered through old assumptions. Stage two is the challenge stage — when customers push back, the response is defensiveness instead of curiosity, because the challenge feels like a threat to a professional identity built over an entire career. Stage three is jadedness — visible to everyone on the floor except the person living it. From inside, it feels like hard-won wisdom. From outside, it looks like someone who stopped believing in what they're selling.
Jon also addresses the management side, which is the conversation most dealers are avoiding. Most retail "training" is really just information delivery — rep visits, trade show emails sitting unread in inboxes. That's not training. Real training changes what a salesperson does when they're standing in front of a customer. And the dealer who has a stagnant senior salesperson and routes customers around them instead of having an honest conversation isn't protecting the relationship — they're accommodating a problem that's costing more than any confrontation ever would.
He closes with what that honest conversation actually looks like — and why most salespeople, when someone they trust finally names what's happening, respond better than you'd expect.
New episodes every day. Rate and subscribe wherever you listen.