How do you set your HVAC business up for success during the Shoulder Season?

To guarantee success during the shoulder seasons, an HVAC contractor should have a sales & marketing plan in place that includes relevant website articles, videos, social media messages, paid campaigns and smart email marketing lined up and ready to go.

How were your numbers last heating season?

Do you have a plan in place that will guarantee you that you won't have another winter like that?

In the HVAC industry, the shift from the heat of the summer to the cool of fall weather usually means a drop-off in service calls and installation requests. It’s part of the HVAC life. You are going to be busier when it’s VERY cold or VERY hot. In between, not so much.

This is not ideal, but you can use this time in a productive way that will set you up for success later on, when the weather does become too cool. Many contractors use this time to sneak in a vacation, but when that's over, here are a few things you can do to set yourself up for success! 

Residential and Commercial Indoor Air Quality is a Hot Topic

Every business in America is faced with convincing their customers that they provide a safe environment. Social distancing and higher standards of cleanliness are a given, but what else can be done to provide a cleaner environment?

Most homeowners in America are unaware of the truly effective equipment and methods that are available for ensuring the air in their homes is cleaner than the air outdoors.

If you can get delivery from your supply house, indoor air quality products such as UV air scrubbers, air purifiers, energy recovery ventilation systems, media filters, and humidity control are an easy win these days. You and I know these products are important all year long.  Homes and businesses that employ these indoor air quality systems experience lower rates of absenteeism, fewer trips to the doctor and fewer illnesses. This is a fact that you need to share far and wide through all your marketing channels.

Smart thermostats and home controls are also something you can sell during the shoulder season when you have more time to spend with customers. With the increasing capabilities of smart thermostats, they can be used all year long and add an extra layer of convenience to homes and businesses. 

Prepare Your Marketing Plans and Content

While you aren’t running around town doing estimates and repairing systems, this is a great time to do some of the tasks that may get put on the back burner during the busy season. One of the main aspects of your business you can take care of that will set you up for success is your marketing. 

Take this time to not only plan your marketing strategy, but to organize your content and ideas you’ve had during the busy season. 

• Gather pictures and videos you may have taken while working that you can use in your marketing. This content showing the work you’ve been doing is better than any stock photo you can use, and will be great for your website, emails, and social media.
• Brainstorm content ideas for the next season. This is addressed in our Fall Marketing Planning article, but this is the time to get your ideas together. What questions have you been answering? What kind of content do you want to produce? You may not be the one producing it, but getting your ideas out there now and getting content produced is much easier during the slower season.
• Plan promotions and specials. Now is the time to find out what kind of rebates will be available from manufacturers, plan your own company’s promotions and specials, and make sure you have a few plans in place to stoke up leads in the coming season. If you get into the busy season without plans for these things, it could hurt your sales when your competitors are running specials, while also making it very hard to put them together quickly. 
• Create marketing videos. We mentioned gathering pics and videos you have taken throughout the busy season already, but now is also an ideal time to create marketing videos. You have the time now to bring in a video crew and film short videos that can be used on your website, Youtube, and even TV if you want to do a little more traditional advertising.

Improve Your Website

During the busy seasons you always want to continue adding content to your site, but making major changes, such as a remodel, should be done in the off-season. Major projects like this can take time and money, and you don’t want to be bogged down when you are trying to maximize your busy season. 

When you are making large changes to your website, it can cause errors, site crashes, and you don’t want something like this to cost you customers. 

When you make these changes in the off-season, you can pay more attention to it, and you can afford to run into a few snags without it costing you and new business. 

Refine Your Process 

Now that you have some time to step back from day to day work, you can look at how things operate in your business. If you want to change something about your business, now is the time. You can make adjustments and try new things, and ease yourself into refining the process. 

A few things we suggest that can help you improve your marketing in particular: 

1. Gather email addresses: We find a lot of contractors never did this in the past, but it’s one of the best ways to communicate with your customers, market to them, and make sure they stay your customers!
2. Implement a review gathering process: Building reviews on social media, google yelp, and other places around the internet will go a long way to helping your business. Make sure you have a process to make writing a review easy for a happy customer. 
3. Track your marketing efforts: Implementing marketing tools that allow you to track what you are doing, how you are spending your money, and what is working will allow you to refine your marketing efforts and focus on the best ones. 

Start Using A CRM

A CRM, Customer Relationship Management, is a tool you use that stores the information of interactions between you and your customers.

Salespeople love a CRM with a simple dashboard. They don't like entering data, but a smart CRM takes that into account, and can be set up to provide your team and management with the key information they need to make smart decisions quickly, based on data.

If you don’t already have a CRM, the shoulder season is a great time to start the process of introducing this helpful tool to your staff.

There are free CRMs to start, like HubSpot's CRM, but getting your feet wet and implementing this for your business can change how you perform certain practices and view your customers. A properly implemented CRM will provide your business with a level of clarity you may have never had. There is a lot we could dive into here, but if you know nothing else, getting a CRM for your business is a big step in the right direction. 

We hope these tips can help keep you busy in the slower season, and if you do everything on this list, you will be setting yourself up for growth and success in the seasons to come.