Lead Generation for Commercial HVAC Contractors
We do lead gen for commercial HVAC contractors, and for the roofing, electrical, and plumbing trades on their own pages. Commercial only. If most of your work is residential, this isn't the page for you, and we'd tell you the same thing on a call.
What we do is watch your service area for permits filed, buildings changing hands, new facilities managers, storms, and lease announcements, and we email the property owner, manager, GC, or developer that week about that specific building. When they write back, it goes to your estimator. Starts as low as $2,999 a month, month to month. And we don't sell leads, so nothing we send you also went to the roofer down the street.
Who you're selling to, and why the usual approach doesn't work on them
Your buyer is a property manager with a portfolio, a facilities director at a company that owns its buildings, a GC putting together a sub list, or a developer with a project. They've got contractors. They add one when a building changes hands, when a project starts, when the roof or the rooftop units get old enough that the insurer starts asking questions, or when the person who managed the vendors leaves.
Almost all contractor lead gen is built for homeowners and sold to commercial firms anyway. The pay-per-lead sites send you a form fill that four other contractors also paid for. Paid search on "commercial roofing" puts you up against national firms at $40 a click. And the cold email version, when someone bothers, emails every property manager in the county with "we do commercial roofing," which is the email they get from every roofer in the county.
The property manager who's going to hire a new contractor this quarter just bought a building with a 25-year-old roof, or just got a permit approved for a tenant buildout, or just watched hail come through. All of that is in public records, and no other contractor is emailing them about their building.
What we watch for
There are five signals. They are all public and dated, and they are all attached to a specific property.
A permit gets filed or a project gets awarded. City and county permit portals, plan review calendars, public award notices. A permit for a TI, a roof replacement, a mechanical upgrade, or a new build names the owner, the address, the scope, and often the GC. We email the owner or the GC and offer a bid on the scope that matches your trade, before the sub list closes.
A commercial property changes hands. County recorder filings and commercial real estate press. A new owner walks the building in the first 90 days and finds whatever the seller didn't fix. We cross-reference the last permits on the property, so the email can say the roof was last permitted in 1999 or the rooftop units in 2008, and we offer an assessment before the first winter or the first cooling season.
A facilities manager or property manager gets hired. A new facilities manager reviews every service agreement in the first quarter and usually has a contractor or two from the last job. We land in the first 60 days and offer a walkthrough and a service agreement quote before the incumbents get renewed on autopilot.
A storm crosses the service area. National Weather Service storm reports and hail swath data, matched against the commercial buildings inside the path. This is the roofing signal, and it also drives HVAC and electrical work on rooftop equipment. We email owners of buildings inside the swath, offer an inspection, and say plainly that we don't know whether the building was hit.
A renovation, expansion, or tenant buildout gets announced. Business journals, lease announcements, the permit portals above. A company signing a lease on 40,000 square feet is about to spend on mechanical, electrical, and plumbing, and the GC hasn't always been picked. We offer design-assist or a budget number, which gets you into the project before the bid list exists.
What the email looks like
Subject: Rooftop units on 1400 Commerce Dr
Hi Steve,
Saw the sale of 1400 Commerce Dr closed last month. The last mechanical permit on the building was 2008, which puts the rooftop units at about 18 years going into this cooling season.
We do an assessment on units that age for new owners: a written estimate of remaining life on each one, and a number for replacement versus repair. It takes a morning and doesn't cost anything.
Want a slot before the first hot week?
Ray
Ray is your service manager or estimator. The address, the sale date, and the last permit all came from the signal. The email offers an assessment on one specific building. That's the only thing a new owner wants from a contractor he's never met.
Want to know how many commercial permits and sales came through your service area last month? Book a 15-minute call and we'll pull the number before you get on it.
What we mean by "lead"
An owner, manager, GC, or developer with a specific property that fits the line wrote back, and it's booked as a walkthrough, a site visit, or a bid invitation. We don't count form fills, and we don't count a property manager saying "add us to your list."
Before anything sends we write down the line with you: trades and scopes you take, minimum job size, service radius, building types, and whether service agreements count or only installs.
For HVAC, electrical, and plumbing, service agreements are usually the goal, because they recur and they put you first in line when the replacement comes. Roofing programs usually run on assessments and storm work. We set the line for whichever you want.
You see every reply, including the ones that say no.
How it runs
Week one we set up sending domains and mailboxes in your name, agree the line, and turn on permit, recorder, and storm monitoring for your service area.
Week two the first emails go out under your estimator's or service manager's name. Every one names a property and the thing on record.
Replies go to your estimator the same day with the property, the permit history, and the thread, so the first call is about the building and not about your company.
Every morning we look at yesterday's walkthroughs and bid invites against the target. If we hit it, we send more. If we missed it, it's one of four things: wrong properties, not enough of them, the email was off, or it didn't land. We find which, fix it, and that's what goes out today. You can follow it in the log.
When you leave, the domains and mailboxes are yours.
What it costs
Starts as low as $2,999 a month, month to month. No setup fee, no minimum term.
That covers domains, mailboxes, warmup, permit and recorder monitoring, storm tracking, the copy, sending, replies, estimator handoff, and the daily log.
It doesn't cover a caller. If you want phone and LinkedIn on top, that's the outbound program, linked below. A lot of contractors keep calling in-house and just take the email from us.
Results
Those are software, logistics, and restaurant clients. We'll put a contractor number here the first time a contractor client lets us use their name.
Book a 15-minute fit call
Tell us your trade, your service radius, and the job size you want. We'll tell you whether we'd take the account, how many permits and sales came through your area last month, and, if it shouldn't be us, who to call instead.
Other ways we work with Commercial HVAC Contractors
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if your estimators will make the follow-up calls and you want the email built on permits and property records.
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if you want email plus LinkedIn and calling with our team on the phones.
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if you want to retarget the same owner and manager list with paid social. Property managers are on Facebook every day, so this is one of the few industries where the ads work on their own.
Lead Generation for other industries
Questions people ask us
We do residential too. Does this cover it?
No. The signals are commercial permits, commercial property transfers, and commercial storm paths, and the buyer is a property manager or an owner. If most of your revenue is residential, a homeowner lead program is a better use of the money.
Most of our work comes through GC bids. How does this help?
In two ways. The permit often names the GC, so the email gets you on the sub list before it closes. And the acquisition and facilities-manager signals go straight to owners, which is work that never goes through a GC and never gets bid against five other subs.
Isn't the storm thing just storm chasing?
The email after a storm goes only to owners of buildings inside the recorded path, offers an inspection, and says plainly we don't know whether the building was hit. Emailing every building in the zip code with a hail scare is what storm chasers do. A property manager will call the first guy back and not the second.
How many permits and sales come through a typical service area?
Depends on the metro. A mid-sized county records dozens of commercial permits and a handful of commercial transfers a week. We'll pull the number for your area before you start so you can see what the list looks like.
Can our estimators send under their own names?
Yes, and they should. Emails go out under the estimator's or service manager's name on mailboxes you own, and replies come back to that person. A property manager wants to talk to whoever's going to show up at the building.
How fast do walkthroughs start?
Usually weeks three to five. Sales and permits go fastest because the buyer's got a building and a date. Service agreements usually follow inside two or three months.