How do I keep my HVAC techs busy in the slow season?
By the Margin Media team · Updated
To keep HVAC techs busy in the slow season, stop waiting for breakdowns and go to the work you already know about: past customers due a tune-up, replacement estimates that were never decided, and ageing systems your techs flagged in summer. Start contacting them before the quiet weeks arrive, not once the board is empty.
Why does an HVAC calendar empty out in spring and fall?
It empties because demand in this trade follows the weather. When it is mild, nothing fails, so nobody calls. A company that only answers the phone has nothing to answer. The work that exists in those weeks is planned work, and planned work has to be asked for. That takes a list and someone to work through it.
What are the steps to fill the shoulder season?
Start a few weeks before your usual quiet stretch, while the busy season's customers still remember you and the office still has the list of estimates fresh in mind.
- Pull a list of every customer you served in the last few years, with the date of the last visit.
- Text or call the ones due a tune-up, and offer two specific times.
- Reopen every replacement estimate from the busy season that never got a yes or a no.
- Call back the customers whose systems your techs flagged as near the end.
- Move ad spend toward replacement and maintenance searches while repair searches are quiet.
- Book the work in blocks, so techs have full days instead of scattered single calls.
What stops this from happening?
What stops it is that the list is a job nobody owns. In the busy months the office cannot spare an hour, and by the time things slow down the outreach is weeks late. The customers were willing. Nobody asked them. Give the task to one named person with a start date, or hand it to something that does not get pulled onto the phones.
How would Margin fill slow weeks for an HVAC company?
Margin can run a win-back campaign to your past customers: a text from your company with a reason to book, answered by Mia when they reply. She finds an open time and books the visit, and keeps following up the estimates that went quiet until each is a yes or a no.
Texting starts once phone carriers approve your number, so begin before the slow stretch, not during it. Bookings land on your portal calendar and your office is told. Ads can be pointed at the jobs you want more of.
What Margin sets up for this.
- A win-back campaign to past customers
- Follow-up until they book or say no
- Booking onto your calendar
- Ads on Facebook and Instagram, in an account you own
What a business needs is decided on its audit. It is a one-time setup fee and a monthly fee, with exact numbers on the audit.
How Margin works for HVAC companiesSee the portal with a sample business
Related questions
When should an HVAC company start its slow season outreach?
Before the slow season, while the phones are still busy. An HVAC company that waits for the board to empty has already lost the first weeks. Starting early also leaves time to work through the list twice.
Do maintenance agreements fix the HVAC slow season?
They help, because agreement visits can be scheduled into mild weeks on purpose. They do not fill the calendar by themselves. An HVAC company still has to book each visit and remind the customer, or the agreement becomes work that is owed but not done.
Should an HVAC company cut ads in the slow season?
Not automatically. Repair searches fall in mild weather, so spending the same on them makes little sense. Replacement and maintenance searches continue, and an HVAC company with techs free to run estimates may want more of those, not fewer.