Your HVAC business can come across several peaks and drops in the long term. But, you have the feasibility to manage them when you initiate your operations with a proper HVAC business model or plan.
An HVAC business plan helps you follow a specified path with set goals and expectations. So, when you have your path clear, you are already ready to tackle the challenges on your way.
As an HVAC business owner. you must be focused on your business’s future, which should reflect it in a document that will serve as your business plan of action.
To help you in the pursuit of establishing a successful HVAC company, below are a few crucial points for you to consider for preparing a successful business model or plan.
Points to Consider for Successful HVAC Business Plan & Model
A business plan for your own HVAC business will guide you in outlining the fundamental business practices and your short-term and long-term business goals. It will help you win different marketing stages and implement a good management strategy for your operations.
You will specify your sales and marketing strategy in the business plan, which will be your roadmap to run, structure, and grow your HVAC business. Here are a few crucial points for you to consider for preparing a successful HVAC business model or plan:
1. Pick a template over creating the structure all by yourself
There are several business model templates available on the internet for beginners to not miss out on any of the important fields. It will help you minimize your effort in preparing the plan and get started with filling out vital information.
This article has a couple of free business plan sample templates to help you save time on searching the internet. But before that, it is crucial for you to go through all the other points to create a successful plan or model to navigate your business operations.
2. Check for the important sections
Whether you are using a free template or are preparing your business plan from scratch, make sure that it includes some of the most important sections on priority, which includes:
Cover page
This page comprises a cover letter introducing your HVAC business to investors or employees. Therefore, it is advisable for you to have a professional booklet for your HVAC business plan.
The financial professionals (investors) or employees will refer to your cover page to get a quick overview of your business’s entire structure and management aspects. The employees can be trained better when they have an insight into your HVAC company management prospects.
Some essentials that you must include on your cover page are the logo, business name, contact information, business address, and stakeholders of your HVAC company (if any).
Executive summary
The executive summary will highlight your mission statement, HVAC services offered, business structure, location, number of employees, and cash flow information.
Company description
The description section outlines the structure of HVAC businesses. It covers detailed information on employees and their job roles, HVAC services, the reasons for starting the HVAC business, and the target audience.
Competitive advantage
What do you think sets you apart from other companies in the HVAC industry? You must mention the same in this section by shedding light on any superior services/products that you offer or by specifying that no other company can beat your price.
If you believe you have a great team of HVAC technicians with more than ten years of industry experience, it can be a competitive advantage that is worth highlighting as well.
Market analysis
As the name suggests, market analysis is an industry outlook that will help you break down the important considerations of your target market. You need to specify the demographics of companies and/or people you are trying to reach. Apart from that, you must include the market trends that you discovered while carrying out your industry research.
In this analysis, you must look up what your competitors are doing well and how you can improve on that aspect. Following that, add a subsection determining the business needs of your target audience.
Financial projections
It is the most crucial section for investors to review while considering your pitch for funds. The financial plan must explain your earning forecast for the next five years.
If your HVAC business is at the initial stages, you can present your balance sheets, income statements, cash flow statements, and capital expenditure budgets to help you make an impression. You are free to add graphs or charts to prove your point.
Appendix
In the appendix section, you can attach all supporting documents such as product pictures, reference letters, resumes of employees, permits, patents, licenses, contracts, legal documents, and credit histories.
These sections sum up the entire functionalities of your HVAC company. When you pitch investors for funds, they will first focus on these important sections to predict your company’s growth.
3. Have a strong marketing strategy to reflect in your business plan
New HVAC businesses fail because of insufficient capital, poor management, and inefficient marketing strategies. You need to specify how your HVAC business will implement a different strategy than competitors to get better exposure in the target market.
You can explain how you will use a mix of traditional and digital marketing techniques to spread the word about your business to a larger audience. You need to specify every detail of how you plan on approaching your marketing techniques. Some of the evident marketing strategies that you must mention in your business plan are:
- Print marketing
- Direct mail
- Social media marketing
- Email marketing
- Google local services ads
- Google My Business profile
- Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing
While discussing your marketing efforts in the HVAC business plan, make sure you highlight the cost of running that campaign, your expectation of its reach, and your prediction on how it will contribute to your business’s growth.
The investors will reject any casual marketing plan that has no vision for growth. Moreover, an inefficient marketing plan will only lead you to implement insufficient measures in the future that will hold you back in the HVAC industry.
4. Emphasize on the operations plan
You must include a section in your business plan to describe your operations plan. The earlier sections explained the goals, while this section will explain how you will meet those goals.
You should explain it in two distinct sections where you will explain the short-term and long-term processes.
Explain all of the short-term tasks that you are about to implement for running your HVAC company. These tasks include dispatching technicians to assigned jobs, vehicle refueling, job scheduling, and updating clients on the status of their requests.
Under the long-term goals segmentation, you will highlight the milestones you want to achieve. State the predicted years or dates when you are sure of getting your speculated number of clients. You can state the year when you expect to earn a predicted revenue.
If you have plans on expanding your HVAC business to some new location, then you must mention the tentative time period for it in the segmentation of long-term goals.
5. Explain your start-up costs
Start-up costs are the capital investment that you make for buying materials and equipment to set up your HVAC business. By adding a summary to these costs, you can strengthen your pitch to investors or banks for funds.
Determining the start-up expenses will help you set your HVAC pricing to maximize profitability. Proper cost analysis is important for all materials and equipment that you are willing to buy for carrying out your HVAC business.
If you have already bought some materials or equipment, do not consider including them in this section of your HVAC business plan. As HVAC business owners, you need your plan to pitch for funds to buy new equipment rather than showing that you have already exhausted your capital on buying some.
The start-up costs for an HVAC business mostly include:
- Inventory costs
- Trucks
- Office supplies
- HVAC equipment
- HVAC uniforms
- HVAC Business software
- Warehouse or operating facility
- Employee payment
- Marketing expenses
6. Don’t forget to add a summary at the end
In the end, do not forget to add a summary to sum up your entire business plan. With detailed research on all of the mentioned aspects, you will understand the industry operations, competition, and potential customers, which will make your business succeed.
Sum up all that you have covered in the plan in your summary. Let the readers recall everything they have gone through in your business plan. If investors or bank loan managers are reading it, they will be able to take a decision at the end of this summary.
7. Review the business plan you created
Once your business plan is created and you have started with your operational practices, make sure to review your actual implementations with your prepared plan. Make a comparison to decide how your business has performed over time.
You are the best reviewer of your plan of action. Take note if you have adhered to the mission and vision that you originally planned. You have the liberty to change your mission if you find any unforeseen opportunities or industry developments.
You must also analyze your sales patterns, customer reviews, and competition. Based on what’s working and what’s not, amend your operational processes to get your business on track. And also, amend the same in your business plan. Run a periodic financial analysis to see if your forecast figures in the business plan match your current earning position.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the simplest way for HVAC contractors to create their business plans?
The best way to easily create a business plan is by using a template. With a business plan template, you will have all the important sections highlighted that are necessary for your HVAC business to fill.
You don’t have to worry about designing, structuring, or adding colors to your business plan because the template already has a good structure for you to follow. It will help you save a lot of time and effort.
If you feel like you need to add any specific section or subsection to the template, you always have the feasibility to customize it. Business planning becomes easier as you don’t have to design the template right from scratch. Find the two free templates listed above to get started with framing your business plan.
What is the right order for adding sections to a business plan?
The right order of adding sections to the business plan for HVAC companies is:
- Cover page
- Executive summary
- Company description or business overview
- Market analysis
- Customer analysis
- Organization and management
- Operations plan
- Marketing and sales strategy
- Financial plan
- Funding request
- Appendix
- Summary
These sections are subject to change, depending on the individual preferences of HVAC companies for adding other vital sections to explain their business operations on a better note.
Summing Up
HVAC contractors or businesses can expect a good growth time at the start of their business. You will have a strong determination to grow your business with more potential customers and high revenue. And this approach should be continued with more power for the long term.
And for that, you must know what goals you plan to achieve and what actions you are ready to take to meet them. Preparing a business plan is not just to acquire funds from banks or investors but also to help you overcome your business challenges.
You can allow your employees to read your business plan as well to give them an idea about your vision and mission for the success of your company. In the pursuit of standing out of the crowd in competition with other HVAC companies, you must have a stronger business plan, not just on paper but in your real-time executions.