In these challenging times of physical distancing, contractors need to safely make service calls at homes and businesses. HVAC and plumbing maintenance and repairs are an essential service. Reducing the risk for technicians and customers is critical.
Here are a few ways that businesses can use remote monitoring to keep techs and customers safe.
Continue reading “Remote A/C monitoring can keep your techs and customers safe”
Don’t miss out on this money-making opportunity. Contractors who bundle smart home products with Amana brand system purchases stand to make more per job.
The Amana brand has a rich history of creating hassle-free living environments for its customers. Whether it be creating appliances that changed the American household or creating modern, state-of-the-art HVAC systems that pair well with smart home products – the comfort of Amana customers always comes first.
That’s why Amana brand equipment makes a perfect match with Google Nest smart home products. Google Nest smart home products are designed to create a hands-free, helpful home for customers using voice-activated devices to control thermostats, appliances, security products, and lighting.
Contractors who bundle smart home products with Amana brand system purchases stand to make more per job. Demand for smart home options is growing, and customers are continually asking for smarter solutions to save on utility bills and make their busy lives a little easier to manage.
Continue reading “Amana & Google Nest: Create A Hands-Free, Hassle-Free Home For Your Customers”
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act allocated $350 billion to help small businesses keep workers employed amid the pandemic and economic downturn. Known as the Paycheck Protection Program, the initiative provides 100% federally guaranteed loans to small businesses. Importantly, these loans may be forgiven if borrowers maintain their payrolls during the crisis or restore their payrolls afterward.
A great option for:
Continue reading “How To Get Emergency Money for Your HVAC Business During COVID-19”
As we enter into the Spring, there is an increasing demand for air quality services, like UV lights, air purifiers, and advanced filtration. In this post, we discuss the benefits of using UV Lights & Air Cleaners, and why coil cleaning and drain treatment are important. These are great selling points when speaking with your customers about improving indoor air quality in their homes.
Continue reading “Maintenance Season Is Here: Let’s Talk About IAQ Solutions”
The COVID-19 outbreak continues to have an unprecedented impact on the world and the home service industry. We at Housecall Pro (partners with East Coast Metal Distributors) are committed to helping all home service professionals stay informed and help their communities, employees, and customers.
We will continue to provide data, guidance, helpful templates, online webinars and other resources that can be found at www.housecallpro.com/coronavirus.
Tune in every evening as Housecall Pro’s Senior VP of People, Melina Fairleigh, joins co-founder Roland Ligtenberg and Alexa Greenberg to share daily updates on the effect of the Coronavirus pandemic and its effect on home service businesses. They will discuss ways to keep your business running, give you the tools you need to keep your employees protected and answer all your questions live. Here’s how you can join:
How to register for the free webcast: click here to join now
Time: every evening at 5 pm PDT/8 pm EDT
We have also created a Facebook group for Discussion of the Coronavirus among all home service professionals. It’s a great place to ask questions, provide suggestions, share ideas and participate in the ongoing discussion around the impact of Coronavirus on home services. You can join for free here.
Finally, we’ve also put together a list of measures home service companies can take when sending a tech into someone’s home to communicate your commitment to safety, put homeowners at ease and establish the ground rules for conducting your work. We’ve provided this list in a template form below you can use to communicate them with your customers.
Feel free to use these templates and edit them in a way that makes the most sense for your business.
Continue reading “Tips for Home Service Companies in the Time of the Coronavirus [COVID-19]”
Coming up with creative promotional ideas to grow your local HVAC business is critical. Sure, even the big guys need a boost every now and then, but the heart of your small company depends on gaining (happy, loyal!) customers for consistent business—and unique HVAC business promotions are just the ticket.
If you think that all the best promotional ideas have already been done before, we’re happy to share a few tricks up our sleeve that you might not have tapped into yet. When it’s time to grow your HVAC business with a promotional push, think about these five strategies.
Continue reading “5 Promotional Ideas to Help Grow Your HVAC Business”
Marketing can be intimidating, especially in the midst of everything else today’s HVAC contractor must worry about. Finances, company morale, hiring skilled talent — to name a few. And if a business is doing well enough, the “marketing department” might consist only of a sparsely-populated social media page.
But that’s a mistake. A well-formed marketing strategy is a must to ensuring your company makes profits for years to come. It will identify where you are spending your money to acquire customers, whether that method is working, and how your strategy’s return-on-investment and efficiency could be improved.
And while marketing’s focus is on the company’s relationship to its customers, marketing done right will also improve the company’s relationship with its employees. Correctly executed, a company’s marketing strategy will show that the business takes itself seriously and acts professionally, a quality that will attract serious, professional candidates to your job applicant pool. Plus, marketing done right will give your company and brand a personality, generating an identity that employees can connect with, and ultimately, be loyal toward.
Marketing generates a personality, because, at the end of the day, marketing is a story.
Marketing is the intentional process by which a company moves a customer from awareness to purchase to loyalty. In other words, your marketing is how your company answers this question: How do we get people to know we exist, then to buy a product/service from us, and then to recommend us to friends?
A marketing strategy, fully-fleshed, will be complex. It will tie together your finances, your social media, your employees, your customer service, your office space, and much more. But, at its simplest, marketing is telling a story. It’s casting a vision and telling people, implicitly and explicitly, what sort of experience they will have when they interact with your company.
Your company is a main character. Your company and brand will always have an identity and personality. This is the connotation people have with your company — the “taste” in their mouths when they hear a contractor’s name. The thoughts, emotions, and memories that spring to mind when they read your company’s name in the newspaper.
Your customer will associate a personality with your company. Even if it’s the first time they see your website or a company truck, they will immediately judge whether your company looks professional, profitable, and personable. In real-life conversations, we set first impressions of strangers in the first second. Your interactions with a customer are the exact same.
Your customer will judge your company. Marketing is your company controlling that image the customer has of you. And the more conscious you are of marketing, the more you can guide that brand image to where you want it to be.
And that image is critical. Primarily, people do not make decisions from the brain. They make them from the heart. An emotional connection with your business, built through experiences with employees and advertising, and then supplemented with low-cost financial incentives, will decide whether a potential customer goes to you or a competitor.
This series of blog posts, found on The ACHR NEWS’ Business Management Blog, will discuss how a person with limited (or no) professional marketing experience can still build an effective and profitable marketing strategy for their HVAC company.
For now, begin with this: A marketing strategy is just that. A strategy. It is an intentional plan to guide customers from awareness to purchase to loyalty, and every marketing decision should be made with this in mind. Instead of haphazardly posting on social media, ask, “What message do I want to convey about my company, and how I can write a post to convey that message?” Instead of spending money on an advertising campaign in the newspaper because you’ve done it for the past ten years, ask, “How many leads have I generated from this campaign in the past? Is the campaign worth continuing, or would those dollars be better spent elsewhere?”
Be strategic and realize that you have control of your company’s reputation through your marketing. And that reputation has a very significant, quantifiable role in how much profit your business generates.
That’s the first page in your company’s marketing story.
Continue reading “Marketing for the HVAC Contractor: The Case for Marketing”
Let’s start with the basics.
Water freezes at 32° F at sea level and atmospheric pressure. When any surface is below that temperature, and the air around it contains moisture, ice/frost will begin to form. In some situations, ice is to be expected, such as in refrigeration evaporators and exposed portions of the refrigeration suction line and the metering device outlet in refrigeration applications. Frost and freezing are also likely in heat pumps operating in heat mode. The outdoor coil on a heat pump becomes the evaporator coil, and during low outdoor ambient conditions, it is expected that the outdoor coil will eventually freeze and require defrost.
Continue reading “Why Air Conditioning Systems Freeze and How to Fix Them”
Everyone has a story to tell, even heating and air conditioning companies. Many are a story of passion, sacrifice, and the will to succeed where others have failed. People can identify with that and relate to it in their own lives. They want to hear about success and what you stand for. If you humanize your company, consumers will identify with it. They will want to do business with you over your competition. So, how do you brand your HVAC business in 2020?
The flame sensor is a vital part of the modern-day gas furnace. It ensures that we do not allow gas through the furnace unless a flame has been established. Flame sensors operate via a process called flame rectification. This is the replacement to the previous era thermocouple and its accompanying standing pilot.
