Part 5 of an 8-part series. Start with Part 1 (the two functions), Part 2 (mechanical hours), Part 3 (margin math), and Part 4 (value stacking) if you missed them — this post builds the bundles right on top of all four.
"Your price book can do the work for you."
That's how Chris Fresh opens the fifth video in the price-book series, and it's a bigger claim than it sounds. Most plumbing owners think selling more depends on having better techs, sharper scripts, or a louder closer. Chris's argument: the price book itself can carry a huge amount of that weight — if you build it the way retail builds a shelf.
The Gas Station Test
Chris starts with a question you already know the answer to. Have you ever gone into a convenience store, grabbed one Red Bull, and the person behind the counter — who doesn't love their job, isn't on commission, has no production bonus — still talked you into a second one? Or a second candy bar because there's a deal? Or the bigger pack because it's on special?
It's happened to all of us. You've probably even stood in line longer because the customer in front of you got sold and had to run grab the second item.
Here's the part that matters for your shop: that clerk has zero financial incentive to upsell you. No commission. No bonus. They did it anyway, because the store built the selling into the system. Chris calls it what it is — merchandising and bundling — and retail does it better than anyone, because they get non-commissioned employees pushing product all day long.
How Retail Actually Pulls It Off
The mechanic underneath it is simple. The store establishes a solidified retail value first. The item has sold at that price for six months, a year — the employees have watched it transact at that number again and again. It's real. It's believed.
Then it goes on sale. And here's the magic Chris points to: when that happens, the employees become naturally suggestive, because they genuinely believe in the deal. Nobody had to script them. They know the regular price, they see the discount, and they can't help mentioning it. The belief does the selling.
That's the whole game — and most plumbing companies never set it up, because they never solidified the retail value in the first place.
What a Bundle Looks Like in a Plumbing Truck
Chris gets concrete fast. Say your water heaters are a set price and your softeners are a set price, and in your market a softener genuinely protects the health of the home's plumbing. How could you bundle those together? You already have a solidified retail value on the softener — the price a customer pays when that's all they get. Now build a bundle around it.
His second example is the one most shops can run with tomorrow. High water pressure: anytime your tech measures pressure over 80 pounds, the home needs a PRV. So make a rule — anytime someone buys a PRV, they get a percentage off the initial repair. The bundle creates an incentive, built on real margin, for the customer to spend more with you instead of less.
The Toilet-and-Angle-Stop Math
This is the example that makes the whole concept click. Chris walks the time and the money side by side.
If a tech goes into a home and replaces a fill valve, that's about 30 minutes. Replacing the whole toilet is about an hour. Now — if they do the toilet and the angle stop at the same time, they're still only looking at about an hour, as long as the main works. (And if the main doesn't work, that was going to be a problem anyway.) So adding the angle stop doesn't really add more work — but it adds real value for the customer.
So you build the bundle: the angle stop can be repaired at full price on its own, but anytime someone buys a toilet, it comes with an angle stop.
Watch what that does to the customer's decision. Without the bundle, they're staring at $300 for the toilet repair and another $300 for the angle stop — a $600 yes-or-no. With the bundle, they're looking at a roughly $800-$900 toilet that comes with a $250-$350 angle stop included for free. Their decision flips from "do I spend $300 or $600?" to "I'm saving $300."
And on your side? Chris runs the clock: dispatch at 8:00, arrive 8:30, start at 9:00, finish around 9:30, cleaned up by 9:45, collecting payment and on to the next job by 10:00. Add the angle stop and maybe you're there another half hour. "An extra half hour of a two-hour investment, and I'm tripling my ticket. Tripling my ticket — and all I had to do was buy another $20 in parts."
That's not a discount. That's merchandising. The customer feels like they won, you barely added time, and your ticket average moves in a way no closing script ever delivered.
This is exactly the kind of system thinking the whole price-book series is built on — and it's one piece of a much bigger picture. If you want to see where pricing, systems, team, and marketing all fit together, start with our complete guide on how to grow a plumbing business.
Chris walks through the full retail-to-plumbing translation — the bundles, the margin logic, and how the team carries it — in the video:
A Generic Discount Is Not a Bundle
Here's where Chris draws a hard line that most shops get wrong. Merchandising, he reminds you, is the placement of a product near something that encourages you to buy more of it — or buy similar items alongside it. ServiceTitan already does a version of this with its suggestive add-ons.
But a flat rule like "10% off all add-ons" is NOT what he's after. In Chris's words, that's not a considerate stack — it's just a generic bundle. It's lazy. It doesn't establish value, it doesn't create urgency, and it quietly trains customers to expect a discount on everything.
What you want is an intelligent price book. One where the bundles are built on purpose, on real margin, around the specific items that actually pair on a real call.
The Four Steps to a Price Book That Sells
Pulling Chris's points together, here's the build order he lays out in the video:
- Establish value. Solidify a real retail price on the individual items first — the water heater, the softener, the angle stop, the PRV. The number has to be believed before a deal off of it means anything.
- Show the team it transacts. Let the technicians see those items get sold, served, and communicated at those prices over time. Belief in the field is what makes the team naturally suggestive — exactly like the gas station clerk.
- Build prepackaged bundles for limited periods. Create the toilet-plus-angle-stop, the PRV-plus-repair, the water-heater-plus-softener as real SKUs in the book — and run them as deals for a window of time, so there's a reason to act now.
- Incentivize the team emotionally, not financially. This is the part Chris emphasizes hardest. You don't have to pay spiffs to get the team sharing the deal. When they believe in it, they share it naturally — just like they do at the convenience store.
Key Takeaways
Merchandising beats commission. A non-commissioned clerk outsells most plumbing techs because the store built selling into the system. Build it into your price book.
Solidify the retail value first. A deal only works when the original price was real and believed. No solid retail value, no real bundle.
The toilet + angle stop is your starting bundle. Half an hour more, $20 more in parts, and you can triple the ticket — while the customer feels like they saved money.
A flat "10% off add-ons" is not a bundle. Generic discounts train customers to expect discounts. Build considered, margin-based stacks instead.
Let belief do the selling. Show the team it transacts, build intelligent bundles, and they'll share the deal naturally — no spiff required.
Coming next in the series: we go deeper on building the price book itself — the step-by-step of turning these bundles into a book your whole team can run. Subscribe to the YouTube channel to catch each video as it drops.
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