407 appointments, 44 agreements, and a book of recurring service work worth $1,187,878

A commercial HVAC contractor serving greater Cincinnati has run an outbound program with us for more than eight years. The headline number is $1,187,878 closed, but the number that explains the business is the median agreement at $6,194, because roughly half of that closed record is recurring maintenance rather than one-time work.

What the program delivered

• $1,187,878 in closed work
• 407 appointments booked over eight-plus years
• 44 closed agreements, median value $6,194
• Roughly half the closed record is recurring rather than one-time
• Largest single agreement: $350,370

Why a service agreement is worth more than a project

A replacement job pays once. A preventive maintenance agreement renews every year, generates emergency calls in between, and puts the contractor on site often enough that they are the obvious choice when a unit finally fails and somebody has to quote the replacement.

That is why the median matters more than the total here. At $6,194, most of these 44 agreements are not projects at all. They are recurring relationships across manufacturers, universities and nonprofits, and the two large anchor agreements on the program sit on top of a base of smaller renewals rather than standing alone.

Prospecting for that work is a different exercise from chasing installations. We are not looking for a building with a broken unit. We are looking for a building whose maintenance contract is coming up for renewal, and for the person who will run that evaluation.

What this contractor needed from an outbound program

• Renewal timing across a whole market. Maintenance contracts only become available when they expire, so the value is in knowing which buildings are approaching that date.
• The building engineer, not the switchboard. The person who knows the condition of the equipment and the response time of the incumbent is rarely the person who answers the main line.
• A reason to switch, captured early. A frustrated engineer with a contract expiring in four months is a meeting worth taking. A satisfied one is not.
• Years of follow-up on a single building. A contract that renews in March is unavailable for the other eleven months of every year.

Two agreements and how they opened

$350,370, from a conversation months before the bid existed

A maintenance manager eventually replied to us by email and was refreshingly direct: he was looking for new HVAC companies. The complication was that his company was not allowing visitors on site during the epidemic, so he offered either to meet off site or to postpone.

Months later he did something considerably more valuable than take a meeting. He named the person who actually decides.

That contact confirmed he had final say on vendors and contracts, that an incumbent currently handled their preventive maintenance, and that bids and reevaluations were scheduled for the autumn. He wanted to understand the contractor’s capabilities before that process started, and we set the appointment as a phone meeting because he was working from home. $350,370, the largest agreement on the program, from a conversation that happened before the bid existed.

$15,197, from a phone number printed on the side of a building

Two of our representatives hit an automated message about high call volume. A gatekeeper hung up. Another had no idea what the caller was asking about. A third did not know who the building was rented through. Nobody on site could say who managed the property.

A rep solved it by reading the sign on the building, which had a phone number on it. That number reached a brokerage office, which could not identify the property manager either but did have a mobile number for the chief operating engineer.

He answered, and the qualification that followed was unusually complete: most maintenance handled in house, two buildings on water source heat pumps, other mechanical work split between two contractors, three rooftop units with one belonging to a tenant, and dry coolers being phased out. Then the actual opening. A data centre tenant on the eighteenth floor, a preventive maintenance contract expiring at year end, and a relationship with the incumbent deteriorating over communication and response time.

$15,197 on the first agreement, and that property appears in the closed record more than once.

How we run the program

Four channels work one target list: phone, email, LinkedIn and direct mail, with our representative calling as the contractor rather than as an agency. Targets come out of our real-time intelligence platform, more than 125 million continuously updated records, narrowed to the Cincinnati market and to buildings with mechanical systems worth maintaining.

What we confirm before booking is specific to service work: who holds the current contract, when it expires, what is handled in house, how many units sit on the roof, and whether the relationship with the incumbent is working. An expiring contract with a frustrated building engineer is a far better appointment than a cold building with no timeline.

Accounts stay in a quarterly cadence for years where necessary, because a maintenance contract only becomes available when it becomes available. Across Abstrakt programs, 46% of appointments come out of that follow-up rather than the first conversation.

What eight years builds

$1,187,878 in closed work across 407 appointments and 44 agreements, with roughly half of that record recurring rather than one-time. A contractor who had spent eight years chasing installations would have a larger average deal size and nothing underneath it.

Their technicians do the work. We make sure the contractor is in front of the building engineer before the contract comes up for renewal.

Frequently Asked Questions

What has the program produced?

407 appointments over more than eight years and $1,187,878 in closed work across 44 agreements.

Why is the median agreement value the number that matters?

At $6,194, most of these agreements are recurring maintenance rather than one-time projects. Roughly half the closed record is marked recurring, which is a different and more durable kind of revenue than a replacement job.

Who do you reach in commercial HVAC?

Maintenance managers, chief operating engineers, facilities managers and the person who holds final say on vendors and contracts. Those are often four different people.

What makes a good HVAC service appointment?

An expiring preventive maintenance contract and a building engineer who is unhappy with the incumbent’s response time. A cold building with no renewal date is a much weaker meeting.

What was the largest agreement?

$350,370, which came from a conversation that happened months before the bid process existed.