HVAC mechanical service contractors are walking through buildings not serving their customers’ real needs and leaving money on the table, every single day. Sure its tough out there – few new construction projects, tougher to justify retrofits, preventive maintenance (PM) contracts getting cut.
This is our premise: Now is the time to solve real problems for your customer, take share, and grow (yes, you heard me right), GROW your business. It’s not about science experiments and voodoo engineering, its just about shining a light on what you already know:
- Your customers’ buildings are not operating efficiently
- It’s costing them a lot of money, and
- You can help them fix their problems
We can help you equate your PM service with reducing building operating costs, get you more service work, justify retrofits, and take share. How? As a provider of web-based software for providing energy services, we have visibility into the results of hundreds of buildings recently analyzed by our customers. Here is what we typically see:
- Most buildings are in the 50,000 to 150,000 square foot range
- They spend between $1.50 and $3.50 per square foot on energy
- Every building our customers have assessed can save at least 10% through simple low and no-cost fixes, such as fixing schedules and temperature control issues, reducing excess outside air, and fixing economizers
Our conclusion – EVERY building is an opportunity. Even buildings that perform well today. We’ve seen cases where our customers have found $25,000 in annual savings in ENERGY STAR-certified buildings. Wouldn’t delivering that message justify your service agreement?
What your sales team needs is some backbone to take on the bean counters. If they don’t find it somehow, you’re leaving a ton of money on the table and leaving your customer to find someone else to fix it for them. And believe me, they will. BOMA is all over this, telling their members there is significant savings to be had by reducing energy waste through no and low-cost fixes. It’s a target-rich environment. You need to get off your butt, go measure the buildings, and find the savings.
Or maybe this is too challenging for you and you want to leave it to the competition. Or maybe your financial guys are taking over your company and want to lay off half your staff and send up a white flag. No more capital spending, reduce expenses, retreat, retreat, retreat! If you are in the automotive business or a banker, or sold shoes at Macy’s, yeah you might want to consider finding a blanky, a warm room, and start sucking your thumb – but you’re not.
Forget that. Get in the game. You have the ability to position yourself in one of the hottest markets around right now – energy. There’s a reason why the only industries that VCs are investing in are clean tech, green tech, and energy-related. It’s the future.
So, quit analyzing it. Just get moving. We’re 6 weeks into a year that’s destined for a 35% drop, if you let it happen. Jeff Souza from EMCOR Facilities Services hit the nail right on the head when he said, “If you do the same thing in 2009 as you did in 2008 and think you can expect the same result, you’re crazy. You have to do something different.”
We think the thing you have to do is show your customer how you can reduce their operating costs, and deliver on that promise. It’s not hard, it’s just different.
