Phil Risher shows how an HVAC contractor went from a 47% to 52% estimate close rate by building automated follow-up sequences during slow season. That 5% jump added $118,000 in annual revenue. Shoulder season isn't downtime—it's when you fix what busy season will expose.
A busy season doesn't create problems. It exposes the ones that you ignored all winter. If you view shoulder season as it's always gonna be shoulder season, it's always just gonna be slow, you're never gonna look at the actual cracks inside of your business. And then when spring hits and you start going gangbusters and summer comes, you're not gonna have those leak points fixed in your business. We had a $1.7 million HVAC contractor and he hired us in January because he wanted to fix the cracks in his business going into the new year. So what did we build? So what we built for him was a lead nurture sequence and an estimate nurture sequence. So that way he wasn't the only fallback for all the estimates and he and his team wasn't the only fallback on the phones for the lead nurture. What he said to us after 6 months was, "If I knew that this would work so well, I would've hired people sooner." Because his estimate close rate jumped from 47% to 52%. So 5% increase, $118,000 annually just by plugging that hole inside of his business. The lesson here is do not take shoulder season and just say, okay, well, it's just always going to be slow and that is what it is.
