Trades Company Maintenance Plans

**Adding a maintenance plan for your clients allows you to continue to provide work in your slower periods.**

Consider maintenance plans

Trade and services companies are well positioned to be able to start offering maintenance memberships and payment plans to their clients. We can take the example of a HVAC business offering a maintenance plan to their clients to keep their furnaces, air conditioners or heat pumps well maintained. Often annual maintenance is essential for maintaining warranties, so this is a great opportunity to start offering a way for your clients to access this in a regular, affordable way.

To introduce a maintenance plan, you need to first start offering one to your clients. This could be offered to clients by Service Techs, Sales Reps, or Installers. What can be most effective is to get Service Techs to offer them.

Dispatchers could recommend it to clients calling the company, but this may end up annoying your clients as over-the-phone sales are often seen as an aggressive sales tactic. Furthermore, making your dispatch staff making sales places more stress on an already stressful role.

Instead, get the service department to offer maintenance plan memberships. Whenever a service call, maintenance, or repair is done by the service department, A Trades Company has taught these staff members on how to offer a maintenance plan to a client at the point of payment.

We consider this to be a low-pressure sales tactic because clients already need to have maintenance done on their furnace every year in order to keep their warranty. We have found clients will be motivated to get additional protection and peace of mind regarding their warranty.

On average expect 3% of clients to sign up at an average of $20 each over the course of a year if your team is consistently offering it.

To bring soft sales into your service department, hold a meeting and role-play a few scenarios where a maintenance plan was sold. Prepare your service team so they are more comfortable speaking with clients and offering these membership plans. By providing a safe environment to train in, and even getting your sales manager to speak about soft selling, will set this program up for success.

The next set is to set up a SPIFF (Sales Performance Incentive Fund) or incentive program for Service Techs able to sell a subscription. See our SPIFF documentation for more guidance on this subject.

There is no contract signed for the maintenance plans and the client can cancel at any time. The credit card information is collected and processed each month, but no maintenance is done until the 3rd month has passed (3rd payment collected).

A maintenance plan allows you into the home more often and guarantees a certain level of comfort with the installation you are setting them up with. A Trades Company allows clients to cancel at any time.

Maintenance visits happen only in the off-season when we are available. We will reach out each season to book. (i.e., we do not do maintenance on demand when they call in June).

Furnace, Fireplace, and Humidifier are performed in Fall/Winter (ideally starting around Sept/Oct and going into Jan/Feb)

AC, Ductless, Water Heater, Tankless, and HRV are performed in Spring/Sumer (ideally starting around March/April and going into Aug/Sept)

The first maintenance visit must be a minimum of 3 months from the start of the plan and goes to the next seasonal service (i.e., we will not be backdating the furnace maintenance and doing it in April to catch up). If a piece of equipment needs maintenance now, they pay full price for that now and then sign up for their next one.

Consumable goods are not included as free (i.e., filters, hum pads, batteries). If the client has filters available, we can change them, or if we have filters available, we can offer them for purchase.

If a client would like to add random assortments of other equipment, then they sign up for the whole home plan. (i.e., tankless and fireplace).

How To Present to Clients

If you haven’t previously worked a maintenance plan or monthly membership line of service, it’s a good idea to follow these principles:

Make the benefits and included services clear to the client.
Offer different pricing levels.
Make the cost attractive.

Here is an example of how a HVAC company may present 3 membership options to their clients:

Maintenance Plan #1

Choose Furnace or AC

One Free Maintenance on choice
Waived Diagnostic Fee (Service Call)
15% repair discount
Priority Booking

Cost: $10/Month

Maintenance Plan #2

Furnace & Air Conditioner

One Free Maintenance on AC
One Free Maintenance on the Furnace
Waived Diagnostic Fee (Service Call)
15% repair discount
Priority Booking

Cost: $20/Month

Maintenance Plan #3

Full Home System Care

One free maintenance on: Furnace, AC, Humidifier, HRV, Water heater & Fireplace
Waived Diagnostic Fee (Service Call)
15% repair discount
Priority Booking

Cost: $30/month