Intro
You may be going through the same cycle every year in your HVAC business.
- Summer hits, and you’re struggling to keep up.
- Fall comes around, and it’s hard to keep your guys busy.
- Good techs leave because you can’t give them work, so you scramble to find new ones before the next busy season!
It’s a vicious process to repeat over and over.
Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Although the seasonality of this industry will always be a challenge, there are steps you can take to not only keep up during the busy season, but set yourself up for a very successful shoulder season!
Here are ten of those ways. Take some to implement, and you might be surprised at how well you do this summer.
10 Ways Your HVAC Business Can Capitalize on the Summer Rush
1. Train Your CSRs
Proper training for your office staff means better communication with customers, more efficient handling of calls, and more booked appointments! All of those things together make for a more profitable summer.
According to this article by Power Selling Pros, an HVAC industry-renowned CSR training company, boosting your schedule rate from 60% to 75% is very achievable with regular training sessions.
A 15% increase in schedule rate means that out of 1000 calls per month, you’d get 150 additional service appointments on the schedule. Assuming an average service ticket of $500, that’s $75,000 in additional revenue!
Plus, a call center that can handle customers with empathy and care means you’re less likely to run into miscommunication issues with customers, making things run more smoothly for everyone.
2. Prepare Your Technicians
How service calls are handled in your busy season may absolutely make or break your shoulder season.
Every repair is an opportunity to sell a maintenance agreement, and those maintenance visits can fill up your schedule during spring and fall! And if the customer doesn’t want to purchase a maintenance agreement, you could offer them a free tune-up to get an invite-back.
This gets you back in the door for maintenance, repair, and eventually system replacements.
If you sell 300 repair jobs, that’s 300 HVAC systems that are now in your pipeline. Eventually they will break down. By selling maintenance agreements and getting invite-backs, you’re more likely to get the replacement job when the system gets too old.
Your technicians should also be asking for reviews and referrals, and have some type of system to promote your business in the local neighborhood (yard signs, door hangers, etc.) This gets leads, grows your brand, and helps you make any season more profitable!
3. Start a Regular Company Pulse
During summer everyone is scrambling, mistakes get made, and teams get frustrated.
Weekly meetings and 5-10 minute daily huddles for each team can improve several things:
First, it helps you ensure that what needs to get done is getting done: processes being carried out correctly, data being tracked, etc.
Second, it helps each team member feel less isolated from the rest of the group. They’re not going through it alone - they’re part of a team! Being seen, heard, and encouraged can make all the difference in the world.
Third, regular structured meetings provide a company “heartbeat.” This regular opportunity to review numbers, problem solve, and make rapid adjustments when needed can help your whole organization run more smoothly.
4. Get Ready to Track Activity
It’s important for you to be able to see what’s happening in different departments at a glance, so you can course-correct, or provide training where necessary.
Set up a system so that your technicians can track system sales, follow-up maintenance visits set, etc., and your call center can track schedules vs. inbound calls.
Most CRM systems will allow you to track these items with relative ease. If you don’t have access to a good CRM system, or aren’t sure how to fully utilize your current CRM yet, reporting with Google Docs or Google Sheets is better than nothing.
Not only will you know your numbers in general, but you and your team will easily be able to measure growth.
5. Do Whatever You Can to Keep Your Best Techs & Hire New Ones
If your good techs leave during your slow season, you won’t be able to fully capitalize on your busy season.
Do whatever you can to keep techs busy. If they’re willing, you could even have them get on the phones and help generate business.
Even if you need to run marketing campaigns and offer steep discounts that cause you to break even on new system sales - if it means the difference between keeping your techs or not, it’s probably worth it!
6. Stock Your Inventory
Downtime is the best time to order common supplies like filters, refrigerant, basic tools, etc. If you have a warehouse, and the cashflow, you can get stocked up on new systems that you commonly sell.
This will help you be able to serve new customers quickly and efficiently. Plus, if you have a new unit available right away, and the customer would have to wait several days for someone else, that might be enough to land you the job.
Buying in bulk during the off-season could also get you some nice discounts.
Consider your cashflow and storage, and plan accordingly. But make sure you're prepared with as much stock as you can be!
7. Prep for Inventory Management
It’s important to make sure your techs are fully equipped with the inventory they need. This cuts down on trips back and forth to the warehouse, and allows them to complete most repairs for the customer right then and there.
You can standardize your service truck stock by creating a list of the most commonly needed items like core parts & supplies, motors, capacitors, etc., with quantities for each. And make it a daily process for techs to stock up.
This takes the guesswork out of stocking up and allows your technicians to rapidly, efficiently prepare for their day, while ensuring they are most likely to have everything they need!
8. Prepare Your Marketing
Summer may be your expected busy season, but there are no guarantees you’ll organically get as busy as you did last year. It’s possible that competitors have established a foothold in your territory with SEO and branding, and may get higher market share of the demand.
It’s wise to have a strategy prepared if that ends up being the case.
Do you have selected lead generation sources, Meta ad campaigns, or Google ad campaigns that can be fired up in a moment's notice? This can help you be prepared to capitalize on the demand summer creates if it doesn’t fill up your schedule organically!
If you’d like to get your Meta ads running and ready to scale in summer, consider using Service Allies’ HVAC leads program. We build out custom ad campaigns, record professional videos, and tailor your ads to your ideal customers.
9. Keep Things Fun For Your Team
Busy seasons can create stress and friction for your team. It’s important to do whatever you can for them to make their job as enjoyable as possible. Team members getting burnt out and leaving during these seasons can cause a lot of hardship.
You can keep things light and fun with friendly competition, games, and things like that. You can even give special gifts and "Thank You" notes to your technicians’ spouses.
Another thing that’s important for keeping morale up is understanding how many hours your techs actually want to work. Some may be looking to scoop up as many extra hours as they can get, while others are trying to spend more time with family or navigate other things in life. Even if you can’t accommodate them, communication and building a relationship can go a long way!
10. Create a Game Plan to Manage Finances
If you have a good summer, you might end up flush with cash around July or August. It’s important to have a plan for your money; otherwise it can quickly dwindle.
When you have a solid amount of extra cash in the bank, you just feel better off. And it’s exciting to invest that money in new trucks, new marketing strategies, new warehouses, etc. It’s a natural human tendency.
But it can be wise to have a percentage of your profits flow into a separate account as a buffer for your next slow season. Having this money set aside can give you a more accurate understanding of the money that you can actually afford to spend, resulting in wiser purchasing decisions.
Conclusion
Is it time to break the on-again off-again nature of your HVAC business? See what you can apply from this list to be as prepared as possible for summer!
Thanks for reading.
