Allen Smith’s Background in Music and HVAC
Allen went to Western Carolina University, where he studied music (primarily the saxophone, though he learned a lot of concert band instruments). After he graduated, his dad worked out a job for him here at Morris-Jenkins. Shortly after, he started his full-time career! And back then, Morris-Jenkins only had a handful of employees.
It’s important to understand the details of what we do before working on our sales team, so Allen spent time with our HVAC installers and service technicians (and even worked in the warehouse!) to help put in coils, do duct modifications, and more. He learned a bunch of the ins and outs of HVAC installation, which helped him so much over the years! With his deep understanding and experience with it, he was able to better see what people needed help with, and he could offer them solutions that worked great for their homes. This was so helpful, in fact, that Allen now has all our new salespeople take the same approach early in their careers! They’re in the trenches, learning what installations actually look like and how things get installed.
In 2011, Allen worked hard to get his personal NC and SC HVAC contractors’ licenses. He’s one of many license holders here at Morris-Jenkins! While preparing to get his license, he dove deeper than ever before into HVAC systems and became especially passionate about airflow. “Many uncomfortable homes, equipment failures, and inefficiencies are a direct result of improper airflow!” says Allen. Nowadays, a lot of our salespeople are licensed contractors themselves, and have developed the same passion for airflow as Allen.
Helping Families Around Charlotte
Before moving into the role of Chief Sales Officer, Allen spent 17 years helping customers with their homes one at a time. Every day brought new challenges, and he loved getting to solve problems that kept people from being comfy. Often, he’d even get to solve problems
people didn’t even notice they had, but their home would run better, feel comfier, and be safer after! Seeing the before and after of a solution always felt rewarding to him.
A lot of our customers love and trust Morris-Jenkins, so whenever they need help with their HVAC, plumbing, or electrical, they come to us for help! And that meant Allen saw a lot of the same families over and over. He saw them grow through the years, and he’d get to witness them at different stages of their lives. He met so many people with really cool backgrounds and stories.
“I learned a lot of life lessons observing people,” he says. “I’ve been down so many of the streets around here and have met so many people.” When he would go to people’s houses, he wouldn’t wear a watch because he was never in a hurry. He loved taking his time getting to know people and how he could help them best. Between September 1999 and December 2017, Allen had the opportunity to help over 7000 families with their HVAC, plumbing, and electrical!
Allen Smith, Chief Sales Officer since 2017
Often, our salespeople are hired from within Morris-Jenkins. That way, we know they fit our culture, we know them as people, and we know they’ve been trained from the ground up to do things the RIGHT way and without taking shortcuts. In fact, 18 of our current salespeople were hired from within! Morris-Jenkins has an army of extremely talented and knowledgeable people who care about helping customers. Because of that, we have the luxury of having so many great options for people to join our sales team!
Now, Allen leads a team of 47 people who work together to solve problems for families around the greater Charlotte area. Morris-Jenkins installs anything from air conditioners to electrical panels, generators to sewers, small projects to large! “If you love what you do, it’s not that challenging,” he says, reflecting on the difficulties of the job. “A lot of people don’t realize the time commitment of this job though. We help families when they’re free, so we work evenings and weekends and always have our work phones on us.”
Since 2017, Allen has led our HVAC and plumbing sales teams. “I love building new sales people, watching them grow and win and thrive,” Allen says, “and celebrating their wins together!” While his background was in HVAC, by 2021, our plumbing department was growing so quickly that we needed a dedicated plumbing sales team. We knew we could count on Allen to create and develop it! Thanks to his expertise, encouragement, skills, and patience, our plumbing sales team is thriving. They’re doing so well, in fact, that Allen is also working on developing an electrical sales team for Morris-Jenkins too! Not only that, but he leads our Inside Sales team of five. These people are the ones reaching out to customers who expressed interest in having us out to install something, but they haven’t made up their mind just yet. Our Inside Sales team makes sure these people have someone here at Morris-Jenkins they can trust for answers and resources while they consider some kind of change to their home.
Fun Facts About Allen Smith
In his current role, Allen has even had the opportunity to work with Wrench Group’s sales leaders in bi-monthly collaborations. He’s also been a guest star on the Morris-Jenkins podcast, Easy Does It, and a three-part series on the Wisdom of Wrench podcast.
When he’s not helping other families with their homes, Allen loves spending time with his own family! He has a wife and two sons—one works at Morris-Jenkins, and the other is a firefighter. They even have three pet miniature donkeys! He’s still passionate about music, and his favorite instrument to play is the banjo. Allen and his wife enjoy camping and love taking their camper trailer out on adventures.
