Over half of all businesses fail within the first five years. Throughout my career in the HVAC industry, I’ve gained a plethora of invaluable insight into what is essential for driving long-term growth in any HVAC business. Part of that insight has provided me with five pillars that any business should implement to continue growing and avoid becoming part of that statistic. 

Here are the five pillars of sustainable business growth strategy.

Strategic Planning

Without strategic planning, any HVAC business will experience difficulty in meeting long-term commitments and objectives. Instead of you running the business, it will feel as if it runs you.  With a cohesive strategic planning and accountability process, your organization can create a vision for the future as well as a structured game plan of exactly how you want to get there. This helps any business to prioritize which goals or commitments to focus on, when they should happen, who is responsible for them, and how they should be achieved. This could be achieved by holding a yearly planning meeting with key players in the organization where everybody works together to set achievable, measurable goals.  Then you need to break them down into quarterly commitments and all the way down to monthly and weekly actions. 

Operational Efficiency

By driving the most productive results with the least effort, resources, or waste, HVAC companies can deliver high-quality customer service and products without sacrificing quality, increasing overall customer satisfaction and growth. It is imperative that you get the correct data from the customers to be able to not only maximize dispatch efficiency but to increase the results of your future marketing efforts.  Importantly, operational efficiency also plays a pivotal role in a business's profit margins, which attract potential investors and retain current employees. For instance, exploring automation opportunities for things capturing HVAC equipment types and age or automatically scheduling and sending the correct technician can help your business reduce its time doing administrative tasks to focus on what really matters: providing clients with an excellent HVAC experience. 

Master Cross-marketing

Cross-marketing your other trades is essential to flatten out the lack of demand calls or lulls in an off-season. It has taken me years of trial and error to master this process but now has become a predictable lead flow into the business. You also need to learn to cross-market with other businesses. It allows each to market their products and services to a broader audience and gain better insights into their target audience. This marketing tactic can help any HVAC business tap into a larger base of potential customers and pinpoint areas where their services could be expanded to better meet consumer needs. To discover cross-marketing opportunities, evaluate complementary services, and make deliberate connections with other companies that could lead to more valuable partnerships.

Talent Development

Modern-day employees no longer view training as a perk but as an expectation, with 94% of employees admitting they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their careers. The products and services provided by the HVAC industry specifically require highly skilled professionals, meaning that talent development is essential to ensuring demand is met and for providing consumers with top-tier products and services. One way to ensure your talent development is up to date is to evaluate existing training processes and identify any opportunities that could help your employees as they expand their careers. Simply put, continuous learning enhances your self-worth, leading you to appreciate the environment that fosters such positive feelings about yourself.  

Financial Management

An industry analysis market report shows that HVAC companies with sound financial practices are 30% more likely to outlast those who don’t have them. Ultimately, a lack of financial planning will cause businesses to struggle when difficult times and unplanned challenges arise. Building a comprehensive budget and a financial plan is a good way to ensure your business strikes the right balance between resilience and setup for growth. Planning at least, a year out keeps you from making emotional decisions that could have a negative impact on your business.  You need to stick to the next-day, one-day business model if you are in the in-home service business and stay away from shiny objects that distract you from the plan.  Learn to live and love your numbers in real time.

Sustainable business growth can be difficult to achieve but with these five pillars, any business can reach new heights and drive impressive outcomes. As your HVAC business continues to grow, consider these pillars along the way to ensure you’re positioned for long-term success.