With so many HVAC businesses to choose from in every market, customers need you to give them a reason to call your business. Ideas and innovation are the root of every successful business. Here are 6 HVAC business ideas to help give your business a boost.
1. Find your differentiator.
When you’re looking to give your business a boost it’s a great idea to go back to the basics and ask the difficult questions. What is it about your business that sets you apart in your market? To really know how to market your business and to get ahead, you need to ask yourself why a client should go to your company instead of a competitor. One of the ways to do this is to make a list of things that you excel at. Do you have systems in place to make a client’s experience better than your competitors? Have you trained your employees how to talk to clients so they feel like your company cares? How are you going above and beyond? Answer those questions so you can strengthen your services and marketing.
2. Be a proactive company instead of a reactive company.
HVAC businesses are seasonal which means there can be extremely busy times and then very slow times. A good way to keep revenue flowing is through preventive maintenance packages. Find ways to help clients year around to keep revenue flowing. When you provide year-around service packages, you’re not only helping your bottom line, you’re creating trust. When a customer needs something replaced, you are the company that they will likely turn to. Your company helps them by keeping their HVAC systems in pristine condition, and they trust you with future repairs. It’s a win-win.
3. Create a business culture of innovation.
A business culture of innovation might sound difficult in the HVAC space, but really it just means to have an open culture. Does your management team allow employees to share their ideas? Have you created an open, honest work culture that encourages expansion? Would your business be open to implementing the ideas employees bring to the table? These are all great questions to ask if you’re trying to stand out from competitors.
4. Make a plan.
Ideas are only ideas until executed. What I mean by that is you won’t gain anything unless you test ideas and implement plans. Whether you get ideas from team members, peers, or it’s something you come up with on your own, plan some time on a regular basis to focus on new ideas and efficiency.
Make sure you have a marketing plan and a growth plan in place. Revisit your HVAC business plan. Business plans are great living documents to make changes to and implement. Most people want to grow their companies or at least run them at their full potential, but we all know that doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Look for new ways to implement.
5. Focus on your clients’ needs
The secret to success is always asking yourself: “Will this create a better experience for my clients?” Now, if you are altering internal processes, some of those might impact team members more than clients, but the more efficiently your internal operations run, the more effectively you are able to serve your clients too.
If a new mobile-based process will make things easier for your clients, it’s worth exploring. If a new system for presenting options will help your clients better understand what they’re purchasing, it’s worth exploring. Sometimes you will experience resistance from team members who don’t like change, but ultimately, they should understand that providing the ultimate client experience is what’s important.
Staying on top of technology and cutting-edge processes could easily be the deciding factor for a client choosing to do business with you or not. Maybe your competition offers text notifications, but you don’t. Some clients will actually choose to do business with the competition because they have made it more convenient to do business with them. This is the world we live in now; our clients expect easy, quick communication. If you show respect for their time and also provide superior service, you are on a great path. The heart of innovation is improvement, so always be thinking about what you can do in your company to provide the best client experience possible.
6. Educate yourself constantly and train your employees.
The fact you are reading this right now means you care about bettering yourself and your company, so you are already on the right track. Attending conferences and trade shows, getting personal coaching, reading blogs, and joining industry groups does wonders for keeping your mind in a state of thinking about what’s possible. We share some HVAC management strategies in an article here.
Implement HVAC business training. When you have a training plan for your team members and make sure that your front of line team members have the skills they need to meet the client’s needs, to sale and to upsell, you have an effective business that will please customers, allow for referrals, and enable you to scale.
There are so many resources available to help you achieve your goals, and remember that innovation doesn’t always involve massive shifts. Innovations can be small improvements that help move your company forward, in whatever direction you choose. It’s not about re-inventing the wheel; it’s about doing things differently. This industry has changed a lot in the last few years alone, but it’s also been a series of small shifts. The “smart” bathroom countertop I got to interact with at ISH, for example, was a series of small innovations put together into one really amazing product. I want you to think about how to incorporate the innovation factor into your company. When you start looking at what’s possible and what’s available, you will discover the path to sustainable growth and goal achievement, one small innovation at a time.
The Blue Collar Success Group helps HVAC and other service-based businesses implement systems and processes to help them succeed. We take the tools and strategies we used to grow our own successful multi-seven figure service-based companies and help other businesses do the same. The Blue Collar Success Group can help you gain clarity on your HVAC business ideas so that you can implement and see results from your efforts.
