If you want to retain your commercial electrical clients, go after the work their buildings have to repeat on a schedule. Service calls cannot be planned and cannot be renewed. Scheduled work can be both.
Emergency lighting is the clearest place to start, and a commercial building usually carries more of it than anyone has counted.
What follows is what to look for, how to write it so a facility manager can approve it, how to price it, and how to open the conversation.
What this gets you
- Work with a date on it, set by somebody other than you.
- A document the building can renew, instead of a call you wait for.
- A written record they can produce when an inspector asks for it.
Start with what the building already has to repeat
Every battery-powered emergency light and exit sign in a commercial building needs regular testing, including a full ninety-minute run once a year, with written records kept of all of it. Confirm the intervals against the code your jurisdiction has adopted. The Life Safety Code and the International Fire Code differ on the annual duration, so the one that applies is whatever your authority having jurisdiction enforces.
A single building can carry dozens of units, down every corridor and in every stairwell. The short routine checks are building-staff work and are not worth a drive. The annual test and the records are the part worth selling.
While you are in the building, ask what else runs on a schedule somebody else set. Generators and transfer switches, infrared scans a property insurer may want to see, seasonal lighting changes, inspections their own corporate standards require. Ask rather than assume: what applies varies by building, by insurer and by jurisdiction, and the answer usually sits with the facility manager rather than in a code book.
What makes it an agreement rather than a favor
The difference between recurring work and being called back is a document the building can approve and renew.
An asset list. Every unit, with its location. Not emergency lighting throughout, but the count and where they are, so nobody argues later about what was covered.
A schedule with real dates. When you will be there, and what you will do on each visit.
What is excluded. Replacement units, batteries, repairs found during the test. Price those separately so one bad battery does not eat the agreement or turn into a surprise invoice.
A written report after each visit. What you tested, what passed, what failed, what you replaced. The report is what the building produces when somebody asks for it.
How to price it so it survives a budget conversation
Quote the recurring work as one figure for the year or one figure per visit, and quote repairs and replacements separately. A single number that mixes the two makes the agreement look variable, and a variable number is harder to put in a budget than a fixed one.
Give them the per-unit replacement price up front as well. A facility manager who already has your number for a replacement unit does not need a second quote when four of them fail the annual test.
How to open the conversation
Ask who keeps the emergency lighting records, and when the last annual test was run. It is a short question, it is not a pitch, and the answer tells you where you stand. If nobody can produce the log, you have found work that has to happen and currently has nobody attached to it.
That is a better opening than asking whether they need an electrician, because it points at something with a date on it rather than at your availability.
Recurring work does not replace new customers
An agreement on one building is worth having. Twenty of them is a business that can be planned. The limit is usually how many facility managers you can get in front of in a quarter, which is a different problem from the work itself.
That is the part we do. Abstrakt sets appointments for commercial electrical contractors with the facility managers and property managers who decide on service agreements, so your estimators spend their time in buildings rather than on the phone.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do commercial electricians get recurring work?
By taking on the work a building has to repeat on a schedule and putting it in a written agreement: an asset list, dated visits, clear exclusions, and a written report each time. Emergency lighting testing and records are a common starting point, because the schedule is set outside the building.
What should a commercial electrical service agreement include?
Every covered unit and its location, the visit schedule, what is specifically excluded, per-unit pricing for replacements, a written report after each visit, and a notice period for either side to end it.
Who is responsible for testing emergency lighting in a commercial building?
The obligation generally sits with the building owner or manager, and the work can be contracted to an electrical contractor. The records are usually what an inspector asks to see, so whoever does the testing should also be producing the log.
Is cold calling worth it for a commercial electrical company?
It works when the first question points at something with a date on it rather than at your services. That is also why outsourcing it can pay: a team doing nothing else can hold a consistent volume of those conversations, which is the first thing to slip when the service board is full.
Keep going
- Commercial electrical lead generation
- What a facility manager does with the panel photo you send
- How to bid commercial electrical jobs accurately
- What to say when you cold call a facility manager
- Outsourced SDR services
About this article
Jeff Winters is Chief Executive Officer at Abstrakt. Reviewed by Neil Erker, Chief Marketing Officer. Abstrakt sets appointments for commercial electrical contractors and the wider trades, and the patterns here come from that calling.
Jeff Winters is the CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a U.S.-based B2B lead generation and appointment-setting company that books qualified sales meetings for clients across the commercial trades, IT and managed services, manufacturing, and B2B services. He has spent his career building and running outbound sales programs at scale, and he breaks down what actually works in sales and lead generation on Abstrakt's podcast, The Grow Show.
