1 – PLANNED MAINTENANCE AGREEMENTS
It has been said over the years that the true VALUE of an HVAC business is tied up in their ability to acquire and retain maintenance customers. When we visit HVAC companies, one thing we ask them is “How many customers do you have?” Many answer the question with how many they can count in their database.
The truth is the number of customers a company has is determined by the number that are paying that company to come to their home on a consistent annual or bi-annual basis to perform some type of service to the equipment.
The KPI in this area is 1,000 maintenance agreement for every million in sales for the company. So if a company has 5 million in sales, they should have 5,000 maintenance agreements.
How do we get to 1,000 per million?
First things first. Every technician has to believe in maintenance. The first problem is most of them don’t like performing those tasks. For that reason they will avoid the very discussion for fear the dispatcher will ask them to go ahead and perform the cleaning while they are there.
The first time I visit a company and talk to the owner, I ask the owner if they themselves believe in maintenance. Of course, their answer is always “YES”. Then when I ask if they, themselves own a maintenance agreement on their own equipment, their answer changes to “NO”. Well if you want your people to believe in maintenance, Shouldn’t you be an example and write a check for the plan?
Set Goals, Meet, Discuss, and Execute
Take a 3×3 white board and line it with black tape. Write on it at the top “ADD 5 A DAY”. On that board you will keep the daily record of all agreements sold for the day. When you meet the goal, make sure everyone celebrates.
Have a meeting with your people that you want to add 5 customers a day to your maintenance department. Explain to them the benefits of your customers owning one.
1. Customer gets a system cleaning that helps extend the life of their equipment.
2. Customer gets a unit that is fresh, clean and healthy for their family.
3. Employees get an opportunity to offset short hours in the shoulder seasons.
4. Company gets to retain customers beyond the last repair you did for them.
5. The employee and company get to grow together with increased topline revenue.
6. Spiff the employee something that will reward them for selling the PMA.
Measure
Daily, you need to look at the number of opportunities each technician has at converting a customer to a planned maintenance customer. Measure their performance and post it on a wall for everyone to see. Basically it looks like this…
The number of conversions divided by the number of opportunities is the score.
