Prospect For New HVAC Clients With This 6-Step Process

There are many business owners in the HVAC industry who find that prospecting and selling don’t come naturally. If you run a home heating and cooling company offering expert home comfort and related services, you may instead excel at managing people or you may have more of an engineering mindset. No matter where your true interests and experience lie, you’ll need to do some prospecting and sales in order to grow your business to its full potential. With a little guidance and a systematic approach, you’ll find the task much simpler.

Follow these steps for successful new customer prospecting:

Identify Hot Prospects and Make a List
This part of the job is easiest if you take advantage of resources like:

• Existing customer referrals – Make sure you use all appropriate customer touch points to ask for referrals. Referrals are the very best prospects because the way has been prepared for you—you’ve been vetted by the prospect’s trusted friend, co-worker or neighbor.

• Social networks and industry contacts – Whenever possible, work out cross-referral agreements with similar businesses that aren’t competitive with you. Landscapers, house painters and plumbers (if you don’t offer these services yourself) are all good choices. You may meet these people at business conferences, chamber of commerce meetings and other professional gatherings. Use your Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites as well. For best results, don’t focus solely on sales and prospecting in your social media communications.

• Your contact form – Those who’ve filled out your website contact form are showing their interest in your services.

• Consider purchasing a list(s) – Lists of people newly moved into your service area may work well. If you do commercial HVAC work, consider lists of individuals with job titles that often contract your services at local companies. Target small businesses or shopping malls—according to the type of client you’re equipped to service.

Make a Script and Conduct HVAC Direct Mail Outreach
Think about approaching the various prospects outlined above. Imagine the goal-oriented yet personable conversation you would ideally have with each. Work in qualifying questions to determine whether the prospect needs your service and is ready and able to buy now. If you’re talking to a commercial contact, ensure that they’re the point person and that they have the budget and authority to contract with you.

Set a Goal
Determine how many sales you need and multiply by your average success rate, once you’ve been doing this a while. This will tell you the number of calls you need to make weekly to achieve your goal. Taking too long to reach your goal? Make sure you’re concentrating on your target market.

Create a Positive Mindset and Work From a Quiet Area
Choose a time for your calls when you won’t be interrupted and when your prospects will likely be at home or at their desks for commercial HVAC prospecting. Take a glass half full approach—remember, everyone fails now and then—but successful people are those who keep trying. Picture how great you’ll feel when you reach your goal.

Start Calling
Ask open-ended questions and listen for problems that your service can solve. You’re selling solutions, no matter what business you’re in, and especially HVAC. Don’t oversell. Signs of extreme interest mean skip the convincing and close your sale. When a prospect says, “I’ve been planning to look into a new A/C.” – you go into scheduling mode.

Hire an Expert
An HVAC marketing consulting firm can handle all or part of the process for you, allowing you to concentrate on what you do best.

Have more questions about HVAC prospecting and sales? Contact Halo Programs for tailored marketing solutions, lead generation and prospecting tools