Commercial services business owners seeking to maximize profit must identify key strategies to enhance company performance and boost their bottom line.
In today’s highly competitive market, successful commercial services contractors turn to platforms built specifically to empower businesses in the trades. Commercial services software streamlines processes to improve efficiency and provides crucial insight into identifying steady revenue streams and avenues for business growth.
Whether you own a new business or an established commercial services company, implementing proven business strategies and processes work to increase your profit margin and year-over-year growth. Below, we highlight key ways to maximize profit for your commercial services business.
Improve operational efficiency
Improving your commercial service business operations with automation enables your employees to do more in less time—an essential factor in any profitable business model.
Commercial service software streamlines your scheduling, dispatching, team and customer communications, estimates, purchase orders, inventory management, invoicing, payments, and much more.
The functionality of ServiceTitan’s commercial service software gives businesses a more efficient way to handle complex jobs. That’s what Alfredo Franza, Vice President of Operations at United Steel Products in New York City, discovered when the commercial services company switched to ServiceTitan software.
“We’re able to do a lot more work with our service guys and our installers, but keep the same amount of office staff to do all the paperwork,” Franza says.
He’s not the only one. Mike Fortin, owner of Putnam Mechanical, an HVAC and refrigeration company with offices in Mooresville, N.C., and Sarasota, Fla., says ServiceTitan software is indispensable to the business.
“We were having so much trouble (with the old software) that it was almost an excuse for guys not to do their job,” Fortin says. “We needed to make a change to something that was going to be more reliable and more user-friendly.”
What did the change bring to the business? More profit.
“What the technology brings is at least an extra service call a day,” Fortin says. “Everything being instantaneous, we actually get at least one more service call per day out of that service tech compared to before, and that’s huge. With an average ticket of about $700 or $800, times nine guys, it’s a lot more money every day.”
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Streamline commercial proposals
To maximize profit, commercial service companies must develop profitable pricing strategies and ensure that all proposals protect company profits. Proposal software helps commercial service contractors create and track commercial proposals more accurately and effectively.
Commercial proposal templates help businesses save time by removing the guesswork out of job bidding. It helps estimators provide commercial customers detailed pricing and enables them to quickly calculate costs for time, materials, and profit margins.
In the field, digital pricebooks give your salespeople more opportunities to increase revenue, enabling them to easily cross-sell or upsell new products or services.
A digital pricebook stores the services and materials used for jobs in the HVAC, plumbing, drain, sewer, and electrical trades. Instead of manually creating estimates from scratch each time, a commercial tech creates faster estimates with pre-populated services, materials and prices, even on the job site. This integrated, flat-rate solution saves time and ensures that each estimate includes overhead costs and protects your profit margins.
To better serve commercial service businesses, ServiceTitan also offers a feature allowing businesses to create customer-specific pricing. This means they can easily provide different prices to potential customers based on contracts, demographic, and relationships.
Optimize job costing
For commercial service companies, job costing provides critical insight into the profitability of jobs.
ServiceTitan Job Costing Software enables commercial project managers to effectively manage projects, increase cash flow with progress billing, and make faster decisions to increase profitability. The software integrates with your company’s financial data so you can view real-time budget versus actual cost, helping you stay on time and on budget.
“Accurate tracking will show holes in effectiveness, efficiency, higher-than-average material costs or overages in labor,” says Vanessa Gonzales, co-owner and founder of Albuquerque Plumbing, Heating & Cooling Inc. and Senior Manager of Product Utilization at ServiceTitan.
To grow profits, companies must track—and control—labor and material costs.
“You can track billable efficiency by comparing the hours worked on a job to what you charged,” says Shane Jaeger, President of Operations at the Texas-based Lawton Group, whose operating companies include Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, Lawton Mechanical, Lawton Commercial Services, and Buckaroo Pest Protection. “You want to be as close to 100% there as you can, which means billing for every hour you’re on the job.”
Commercial services software streamlines invoicing when it’s time to bill your commercial customers. Online payment features allow customers to pay online at their own convenience with a credit card or ACH bank transfer, allowing your company to get paid faster.
Leverage digital marketing
Use digital marketing strategies to increase sales and grow your customer base. Commercial services companies can increase profit through their marketing efforts by ensuring their company ranks at the top when potential customers search online.
Many commercial services businesses use a variety of marketing channels, depending on their message and customer demographic, to generate the best results. Some effective marketing strategies include:
Build an online presence to increase brand awareness and ensure potential new customers find your company online. This includes creating a mobile-friendly website, keeping online listings up-to-date, using social media platforms, and managing online reviews, which function as customer referrals to your company.
Improve your search marketing by utilizing pay-per-click ads and search engine optimization (SEO). This gives your company greater visibility when potential customers perform a Google search for your company’s services.
Optimize email marketing as a cost-effective way to send targeted messages to current customers, such as follow-ups on potential commercial contracts. ServiceTitan Marketing Pro helps commercial services companies automate and track marketing campaigns, so they know what works and what doesn’t.
Track business and employee performance
Tracking business metrics ensures your commercial service company remains on track to meet short-term and long-term business goals.
ServiceTitan Field Reporting Software captures the data commercial service companies need to analyze performance, company-wide all the way down to full-time techs.
Howard Blair, HR Director and Vice President of Lawton Commercial Services, says ServiceTitan allowed the company to set expectations for revenue generation and provide feedback with specific reports.
“We can sit down with (techs) on a weekly basis and give a scorecard of where they’re at and where we can improve,” Blair says.
A company benchmark report shows how you compare to other businesses, whether you’re a small business startup or a large commercial services company. Real-time reporting gives commercial services businesses data-driven insight to maximize profit and achieve business growth.
Want more ways to maximize profit for your commercial service business? Get started with our Commercial Contractor Software Buyer’s Guide.
