Ladies and Gentlemen, the time has arrived. We are finally approaching summer and warmer temperatures are in full swing. There are calls coming into the business, work to be done, and money to be made. The next four months will equal 50% or more of what an HVAC business in our region of the country does in revenue annually. So…are you truly ready? Is your team truly ready? Are you going to run a lot of calls or is your focus on making a lot of money?
The phrase “you can run a lot of calls or you can make a lot of money” is one that I probably overused as a service manager. However, it was a very true ideology in my experience. As a technician I worked for very high-performance companies … we worked a lot. In fact, one summer we worked so much that the owner sent flowers to the wives and girlfriends of the technicians since we were never home; my wife was not particularly amused by this. As a technician’s we became focused on getting the calls ran in the hopes that we would somehow outrun the influx of work from the summer heat. We never caught up. There was always another call that could be ran. I learned several important lessons through this:
- The “next” call is always ready.
- When you focus on running calls faster you end up focusing less on running the call correctly.
- The only thing worse than having to do a tough job is having to do it twice.
There is no shortage of work that needs to be done in the average homes HVAC system. I’m a reasonably sound HVAC professional and I can rattle off a dozen things on my own systems that could use improving. This is the season of the year when the calls come running in and easy money can be earned changing capacitors, adding refrigerant, and replacing motors. Don’t let that cause you to lose sight of the entire system. You’re there and you have the homeowner’s attention. Take the time to fully go over the HVAC system, you may uncover more opportunities and at the same time be able to offer more solutions to your customer.
Running calls fully takes more time. You will run less calls. You may not always get the work. These are the negatives that can be associated, and they are a risk. The positives are that you will eventually spend more time making repairs or selling new units. You will have happier customers with less callbacks. You will make more money. After all, isn’t that why we are all here to begin with?
Slowing down during the busy season is not easy. It takes discipline, especially if you run a few calls where things don’t pan out as you hoped. It’s important to remember that this is a marathon and not a sprint. It takes time to do anything well. There is no money in driving from call to call all day.
