A small HVAC company gets commercial contracts by selling one thing: a maintenance agreement, to the person who gets blamed when the air stops working. That person is a facility manager, a property manager or an owner-operator, and you find them by name, write to them before a unit fails, and offer two scheduled visits a year at a flat price. Ten of those accounts change what your slow months look like.

Here is how a three-truck shop goes from zero commercial accounts to ten, using Ridgeline Heating & Air as the example. Ridgeline is made up, but the numbers are built to add up.

Why the maintenance agreement is the product

Nobody shops for a commercial HVAC company on a calm Tuesday. They shop when a rooftop unit dies in July and the tenants are calling. At that moment the manager calls whoever is in their phone, and a company they've never heard of is not in their phone.

A maintenance agreement puts you in the phone before the breakdown. Two visits a year (cooling check in spring, heating check in fall), filters changed, belts and coils inspected, a written note on what's near the end of its life. You get the first call when something fails, and you've already walked the roof, so your quote for the replacement isn't a guess.

Say Ridgeline prices the agreement at $380 per rooftop unit per year. A strip center with four units is $1,520 a year before any repair work. Twelve accounts averaging four units is $18,240 a year of scheduled revenue that arrives in the two seasons when emergency calls are slow. The repairs and replacements that follow are the bigger number, but the agreement is what opens the door.

Who to go after first

Start with buildings that have equipment old enough to worry about. Many rooftop units get replaced somewhere in the 15 to 20 year range, so a strip center, small office building or light industrial building from the 2000s is likely sitting on units near the end. Those owners are about to spend money, and they have no relationship with anyone.

The people to write to, in rough order of how fast they decide:

  • Owner-operators of small commercial buildings, who can say yes on the phone.
  • Property managers with a handful of mid-size buildings and a tight maintenance budget.
  • Facility managers at medical offices, schools, churches and light manufacturers.

Larger institutions with national service contracts come last. They take months and a vendor application, and the person you reach often can't change anything.

Build a list of facility managers in an afternoon

You want 60 names with a role, a company and a way to reach them. Work in this order: search the county assessor or a commercial listing site for commercial buildings built before 2008 in your service area, open the owner or manager's website, and look for a maintenance, operations or facilities contact. For medical and school buildings the facility director is usually listed. Write each one in a spreadsheet with the building address and the approximate age.

That's a half-day by hand. Rocketship can do the same search from a plain description (facility managers and property managers at commercial properties within 40 miles) and shows you how many exist and the first 25 by name before you use a credit. Either way, the thing that matters is that each row is a real person at a real building you could drive to.

Three short emails to a facility manager

One email isn't enough, but three short ones, a few days apart, usually are. Each one carries one idea.

Subject: Rooftop units at 400 Commerce Drive

Hi Marcus, I drove by Commerce Drive and noticed the rooftop units look original to the building. We're Ridgeline Heating & Air, three trucks, licensed and insured, based about ten minutes from you. We do spring and fall maintenance visits for a flat price per unit so nothing surprises you in July. Would a free roof walk next week be useful? Ridgeline, 100 Example Street, Your City, ST 00000. Reply "stop" and I won't write again.

The second email, four days later, is shorter and adds a number: "A typical visit is two hours per unit, and you get a one-page report listing anything near the end of its life, so you can budget for it." The third, a week after that, is the soft close: "I'll assume the timing isn't right. If a unit goes down before I hear from you, my cell is on the signature and I answer it." Real, specific, easy to say yes to.

These need to follow CAN-SPAM: honest subject, your physical address, and an opt-out that works. Send from your own Gmail and keep the volume low at the start, around 20 to 50 a day per inbox.

Bidding against national service companies

You will sometimes be compared with a national outfit that has a 24-hour dispatch center and a logo on forty trucks. Don't try to out-price them on a per-unit number. They can absorb a low first-year price and recover it on parts. Compete on three things they can't match on a small account: you send the same technician every visit, the owner has your cell number, and you can be on site the same day because your territory is a few miles wide, not a region.

Put those three in writing in the agreement. "Same technician where possible. Same-day response for agreement customers during business hours. Written report within 48 hours." Managers read specifics. They can't hold a company to "world-class service," but they can hold you to a 48-hour report. If you want a deeper look at how HVAC shops grow in general, see getting customers for an HVAC company.

Answer the call about a unit that is making noise

The first call from a commercial prospect is often not about the agreement at all. It's "can you come look at a unit that's making noise." If it goes to voicemail, they call the next vendor. If it's answered by someone who takes details and offers a time, you've started the relationship with the best possible first impression: a job done fast.

Your techs are on roofs all day, so nobody is at the phone. Rocketship answers the number you already have through call forwarding, takes the building, the unit and the problem, and texts you the summary. The overnight version of the same problem is covered in the 2am no-heat call.

A 10-week schedule for commercial HVAC accounts

Commercial HVAC accounts take consistent small effort, not one big push. Try this schedule for the first 10 weeks:

  • Monday: add 15 new names to the list and send first emails to them.
  • Wednesday: send the second email to last week's names. Reply to anyone who answered.
  • Friday: call anyone who's opened twice or replied, and book roof walks for next week.
  • One roof walk a week, always with a one-page report left behind.

At that pace you're writing to roughly 150 people in ten weeks. If you convert one in ten to a roof walk and one in three walks to an agreement, you'll land about five agreements. That's half your goal, from a very modest effort. Repeat the cycle once more and ten accounts is realistic by month five. The numbers are an estimate and yours will differ, but tracking them tells you where it leaks. If it's replies, change the email. If it's walks to agreements, change the offer. The same people also hire other trades: see how to get commercial clients for an electrical business and how to get commercial roofing clients, since they're often sold to the same property manager.

Buyers like these are on the property management side, and they're mostly businesses, not homeowners, which is why this works as a list-and-email job and not an advertising one. Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and every monthly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required. Answering your existing number is included; a dedicated line is $5 a month. The AI workers page shows what each worker does.