Why a maintenance plan is worth the work
A plan turns one-off customers into scheduled visits. You get known work in the slow months, a reason to see the customer before something fails, and a customer who calls you first when it does. What the visit is depends on the trade: for HVAC, a tune-up before each heating and cooling season; for plumbing, a water heater flush and an inspection; for pool and landscape work, the recurring service itself.
Keep the structure simple
Two tiers at most. A basic tier covers the scheduled visits plus a member benefit such as priority booking or a discount on repairs. A higher tier adds visits or a bigger benefit. Each extra tier is one more thing to explain on the doorstep, and a plan the customer can’t explain back to you is hard to sell.
Price it from your costs
Add up what one plan customer costs you over a year: labor for the visits, materials, drive time and admin. Then add your markup.
Example (HVAC). Two visits at $75 of labor each come to $150. Add $30 of filters and materials and $20 of admin, and the yearly cost is $200. With a 50% markup the plan is $300 a year, or $25 a month. Use your own figures; the profit margin calculator helps you check the result.
- Labor
- $150
- Materials
- $30
- Admin
- $20
- Markup
- $100
Offer it right after a repair
The best time to offer a plan is right after you’ve fixed something. The customer has just had the problem and wants to avoid the next one. A short explanation works best: what the visits cover, what the member benefit is, what it costs a month.
Run the plan without a spreadsheet
Plans fall apart when visits depend on someone remembering them. Put each plan visit on the schedule when the customer signs up, so the visits are booked before the season fills the calendar. Keep the plan details on the customer’s record, so whoever answers the phone can see them. In Business Genie, visits go on the schedule and the customer record lives in the CRM. On the day, route optimization puts each crew’s visits in the order that drives least.