How to Build an Effective Commercial HVAC Sales Process

In a previous article, we discussed why commercial HVAC lead generation works best when the process is managed in-house, and laid out a step-by-step process for building this system in your business, including how to: 

1. Source leads

2. Define roles and team structure

3. Set realistic goals (revenue targets, activity goals like sales calls per week, and KPIs)

4. Build weekly workflows

5. Follow a consistent outreach cadence

6. Adopt a proven sales-meeting framework

This article picks up where that one left off, diving deeper into step 6: refining your commercial sales process with a set of structured meetings that help your team qualify prospects, present solutions confidently, and close more commercial HVAC service contracts.

And, because selling contracts is only half the battle, we’ll also show how ServiceTitan’s commercial CRM and service agreements tools can act as the operational backbone that supports your sales team from the first discovery call through long-term contract delivery.

Below, we cover:

• Using a Proven Sales-Meeting Framework

  • The Discovery Meeting

  • The Site Walk

  • The Proposal Meeting

  • Keeping Deals Moving

• Why a Good Sales Process Still Falls Apart Without the Right System 

• How ServiceTitan Ties Commercial Service Agreements Into Your Entire Sales Process

Refining Your Commercial Sales Process with a Proven Sales-Meeting Framework

It’s possible and even common to win some amount of commercial HVAC service agreements through referrals from existing customers, service call follow-ups that turn into more substantial engagements, or connections fostered by HVAC technicians with good sales skills. But these channels have their limits.

In our experience, HVAC companies that achieve sustainable growth have a consistent, repeatable process that their salespeople can rely on and leverage to build trust and manage the sales process no matter who the prospect is.

While every deal has its quirks, most successful sales professionals follow a three-stage arc:

1. Discovery

2. On-site assessment

3. Proposal delivery and review

When executed well, this sequence keeps deals moving, prevents prospects from stalling, and helps your reps gather exactly what they need to build a compelling maintenance agreement or service contract.

1. The Discovery Meeting: Getting the Full Picture

The discovery meeting is where you set the tone for everything that comes later. It’s not a pitch. It’s a fact-finding conversation — the kind of meeting where the prospect walks away feeling heard, and you walk away with clarity about the potential customer’s needs and how you can help.

A good discovery meeting helps you understand who they are, what they’re dealing with, and what prompted them to look at their service partnership options. Maybe they’ve been burned by slow response times. Maybe a key piece of HVAC equipment keeps failing. Maybe they’re shopping vendors because budget season is approaching. Whatever the case, your job is to uncover the story behind the meeting.

At this stage, credibility matters. Share relevant experience, explain how your process works, and help them understand what partnering with you looks like upfront — but keep it conversational. The goal is to give them confidence that they’re in good hands, not overwhelm them with a laundry list of capabilities.

It’s also essential to clarify the basics: 

• Who the decision-makers are

• How their budget cycle works

• What timeline they’re working with

These details later inform how you price, how you follow up, and even how you frame your proposal. (For example, if you learn they’re approaching the mid-year budget crunch, you might start by proposing a smaller contract focused on critical units rather than a large full-facility agreement.)

Before you wrap up, set expectations for the rest of the process — including scheduling the site walk. If you exit the discovery meeting without confirming the next step, your opportunity instantly becomes shakier.

2. The Site Walk: Where Trust and Technical Credibility Are Built

The site walk is often the moment when the prospect decides whether your team feels like “the one” or “like everyone else.” Bringing a technician or service manager along signals seriousness, speeds up your proposal process, and helps you ask smarter questions about what’s happening in the building.

During the walk, your team should document equipment age, condition, accessibility issues, and anything else that affects scope or pricing. But this isn’t just a data-collection trip — it’s a chance to engage the prospect in a more meaningful way. Ask about energy efficiency or air quality concerns. Ask about recurring issues. Ask how previous vendors approached maintenance. These conversations reveal specific needs and pain points that your proposal can directly address.

This is also when you can start planting seeds about strategic pricing. For larger facilities — think dozens or even hundreds of heating and air conditioning units — proposing a full-fleet maintenance contract out of the gate is often a recipe for sticker shock. Instead, identify the handful of units that are mission-critical and build your initial contract around those. Once you've proved your reliability and earned trust, expanding your scope becomes much easier.

Seasonality plays a role here too. If the site walk takes place in Q4 and they’re finalizing next year’s budget, they may be more open to a larger contract. If it’s mid-summer and their budget is mostly spoken for, a smaller “foot in the door” agreement might be your best bet.

Before leaving the property, confirm when they want the proposal and get the proposal meeting on the calendar. Momentum dies when you rely on “I’ll send it to you next week.”

3. The Proposal Meeting: Delivering Value and Moving Toward a Decision

The proposal meeting is where you connect the dots between what you heard in the discovery meeting, what you saw on the site walk, and what the prospect truly needs. The best proposal meetings don’t feel like a sales pitch — they feel like a structured conversation about solving real operational problems.

Start by recapping what you learned: 

• The pain points they shared

• The areas of risk you observed during the walk

• Specific units within the HVAC system that should be prioritized

• What they told you about budget or internal decision processes 

This helps them feel understood and demonstrates that your proposal wasn’t copy-and-pasted.

When presenting pricing, tie everything back to what matters most to them. If you’re recommending a smaller contract focused on critical units, explain why that structure makes sense and how it aligns with their goals or the budget timing you discussed. If you try to upsell with add-ons — fixed service rates, discounted repairs, no after-hours rates, filter programs, remote monitoring — clearly outline the benefits and why they matter for their specific site. Prospects rarely object to cost when they understand the value and can clearly see what they’re getting for their money.

This is also where clean, professional documentation pays off. A detailed list of tasks included in the contract helps eliminate ambiguity and makes your proposal easier to compare against competitors — especially those who may appear cheaper because they’re offering a thinner scope.

Finally, don’t leave the meeting without establishing next steps. Even if the answer isn’t a yes, you should walk away with a clear timeline for their decision process or a scheduled follow-up. Commercial deals often require multiple touches — six is a common average — so consistent, non-invasive follow-up is essential. You want to remain top-of-mind without badgering them.

Keeping Deals Moving: Prep, Follow-Up, and Internal Handoffs

A strong meeting framework is only effective if reps prepare well and close the loop afterward. Before each meeting, they should review notes, outline goals, and coordinate with any internal team members attending. Afterward, they should send a same-day recap email, document everything clearly, and confirm the next action step on both sides.

And when the prospect becomes a new customer, a clean handoff to operations is critical. This means passing along notes, photos, equipment lists, and any commitments made during the sales process. A sloppy handoff can erode trust before the first maintenance visit even happens.

Pipeline reviews tie everything together. Sales managers should have weekly check-ins to help reps catch stalled deals early, identify next steps, and keep their funnel active. They also give managers a chance to coach — whether that's helping overcome an objection, suggesting a smaller starter contract due to timing, or pushing a rep to follow up more consistently. 

Why a Good Sales Process Still Falls Apart Without the Right System 

A good commercial HVAC sales process brings structure, clarity, and consistency. But once you zoom out from the meetings themselves, another reality appears:

Your team can execute the discovery call perfectly… They can deliver a sharp site walk… They can run a thoughtful proposal meeting…

And still struggle to convert deals or deliver on them smoothly.

Why? Because problems don’t only arise in the meetings themselves — they also happen in the gaps between them.

Common breakdowns include:

• Equipment details captured during the site walk never make it cleanly into the proposal.

• Reps rebuild agreements manually, leading to errors, delays, or inconsistent pricing.

• Notes, documents, and follow-up tasks live across emails, spreadsheets, and point solutions.

• Deals stall because the CRM doesn’t sync with your estimating tools or agreement builder.

• Operations gets a new customer… but not the details they need to execute confidently.

• Purchasing and accounting are left playing catch-up after the contract is sold.

The result? Lost momentum, slower closes, frustrated teams, and reduced customer satisfaction.

But it doesn’t have to work that way.

When your CRM, site-walk data, proposals, agreement templates, pricing logic, and operational workflows all live in one system, the entire process becomes smooth — for sales, for ops, and for accounting. Deals stay moving. Pricing stays consistent. Handoffs stop breaking. And customers feel the difference.

That’s exactly what ServiceTitan is built to support.

Below, we’ll walk through how ServiceTitan:

• Anchors your commercial sales process inside a purpose-built CRM

• Auto-drafts accurate, equipment-based service agreements

• Tracks quotes and proposals through each stage of the deal cycle

• Activates agreements cleanly and triggers downstream workflows in operations, purchasing, and accounting

Let’s look at how the right platform turns a good sales process into a repeatable, scalable revenue engine.

How ServiceTitan Ties Commercial Service Agreements Into Your Entire Sales Process

Commercial maintenance contracts shouldn’t live in a separate spreadsheet, point solution, or someone’s head. In ServiceTitan, they plug directly into your CRM pipeline, your estimating workflow, your field operations, and even purchasing and accounting.

Here’s what that looks like, step by step.

1. Start Where Your Sales Team Lives: The CRM Opportunity

For commercial HVAC contractors, ideally the sales process starts in a CRM — not in a spreadsheet.

In ServiceTitan’s commercial CRM, your team manages a dedicated Service Agreement pipeline alongside your other work (quoted jobs, projects, etc.). Sales leaders can:

• See how many agreements are sitting in each stage (Qualify, Propose, Follow Up, Closed Won/Lost).

• Filter by account owner, business unit, or source.

• Quickly spot deals that need a proposal or follow-up.

For account executives, this means they’re living in one workspace: They prospect, qualify, and work agreement opportunities inside the CRM, instead of bouncing between tools.

When a prospect is ready for numbers, the AE opens the opportunity and creates a Service Agreement quote directly from that screen. That’s the bridge into the agreement builder.

2. Use Templates to Standardize What You Sell

Once an AE launches a new quote, they’re not staring at a blank form. They’re selecting from admin-defined templates that represent the packages your business wants to sell — for example:

• “Gold HVAC Planned Maintenance – 12 Months”

• “Multi-Site Commercial Maintenance”

• “Premium 24/7 Service Plan”

Behind each template, your admin has pre-set:

• Agreement duration (e.g., 12 months)

• Billing schedule (monthly, quarterly, annual, etc.)

• Payment terms (e.g., net 30)

• Preferred rate sheet for extra work tied to the agreement

• Default pricing mode (agreement-level price vs. price-per-visit)

• Target gross margin (e.g., 30%)

• Standard start date rule (e.g., “first of next month”)

• Auto-renew on/off with the right legal language included in the agreement document

The result:

• Admins get standardization and control over what is offered.

• AEs skip repetitive data entry and start from intelligent defaults that are right 80% of the time, only tweaking when a customer requires something special.

3. Build the Scope with Real Equipment, Not Guesswork

The next step is defining what you’re maintaining.

From the agreement quote, the AE selects the customer location(s) and then adds equipment to be covered. ServiceTitan pulls from the equipment already captured in the field (via techs or sales walking the site), so the AE can:

• Filter equipment by type, status, tags, or other criteria.

• Select individual assets or “select all” for the site.

This step is where ServiceTitan’s equipment-centric approach shines. If your team is using our mobile app to scan equipment (model/serial capture and OCR), that rich data flows straight into this list. No retyping. No manual spreadsheets.

Once the AE confirms which equipment should be covered, they hit Auto Draft.

4. Auto-Draft the Agreement: Visits, Labor, and Materials in One Click

Auto Draft uses your maintenance defaults to generate the entire scope of work for the agreement, based on:

• The types of equipment included.

• The maintenance schedules you’ve defined per equipment type.

• The materials (filters, belts, etc.) associated with each type of service.

In a single click, ServiceTitan:

• Creates the recurring visit structure

  • Example: 1 annual visit for deep inspection

  • Plus a visit every 2 months

  • Plus a quarterly filter change

• Applies the time estimates for each visit type (from your defaults).

• Calculates estimated labor cost using the labor rate set on the template.

• Pulls in estimated material costs ( filters, belts, etc.) for the equipment that requires them.

The AE lands on a fully drafted scope that would otherwise take 10-15 minutes (or more) to build manually. They still have full control: They can adjust frequencies, add or remove tasks, or customize specific visits as needed — down to blowing away defaults altogether for a one-off, complex deal.

5. Price with Margin Targets, Not Gut Feel

Once the scope is defined, ServiceTitan moves to pricing.

Because it already knows:

• Estimated labor hours, multiplied by your default labor cost.

• Estimated material costs tied to the visits.

…it can calculate a total estimated cost for the agreement.

From there, your default gross margin target (for example, 30%) is applied to suggest a price. The AE sees:

• Estimated cost

• Target margin %

• Suggested agreement price

They can then:

• Adjust the margin up or down (e.g., sharpen the pencil for a marquee account).

• Lock in a specific price and see the resulting margin.

• Change the billing schedule (upfront vs. monthly/quarterly).

• Modify payment terms if the customer has specific requirements.

Under the hood, admins can also choose how revenue recognition works for that agreement (immediate, deferred percent-complete, or straight-line deferred), but the AE doesn’t have to wrestle with accounting logic. They just see a clean, consistent pricing and billing experience.

6. Manage Versions and Negotiations Without Losing the Thread

In commercial service deals, customers negotiate. They ask for options.

From any agreement quote, AEs can:

• Duplicate an existing agreement version.

• Make changes (scope, frequency, pricing, terms).

• Keep multiple options tied to the same opportunity in CRM.

That makes it easy to present:

• “Good / Better / Best” maintenance packages.

• Different term lengths or billing choices.

• Alternate scopes (e.g., “all rooftop units” vs. “critical equipment only”).

Every change — system-generated or user-made — is tracked in the agreement audit trail, including:

• Who changed pricing or billing.

• When scope was altered.

• Which version ultimately was accepted.

7. Send, E-Sign, and Activate the Agreement

Once the customer is happy with a proposal:

1. The AE sends the agreement for e-signature.

2. When the customer signs, the agreement status moves to Accepted.

3. The AE (or an authorized user) hits Activate to start the agreement.

At that moment:

• The related CRM opportunity is automatically updated to Closed Won.

• No one has to manually sync status or enter won-value — it’s handled behind the scenes.

• Billing schedules, visits, and other downstream pieces are now live in the system.

The same audit trail continues from draft into active status — there’s no separate “live” record. It’s the same agreement entity, now in a different lifecycle stage.

8. From Agreement to Field Work: Visits and Job Execution

Once active, the agreement drives your field operations:

• ServiceTitan generates the scheduled visits based on the scope.

• Dispatchers and ops managers see those visits on their scheduling and dispatch boards like any other job.

• Techs in the field:

  • See the equipment tied to the agreement.

  • Capture additional details, photos, and notes.

  • Identify additional opportunities (repairs, upgrades, additional sites) that can flow back into CRM as new opportunities.

The agreement isn’t just a contract in the system; it’s the engine that keeps techs on-site and revenue recurring.

9. Automatic Material Planning for Purchasing

Because materials were defined at the equipment and visit level, activating the agreement also pushes that information into inventory and purchasing.

Purchasing and inventory managers can:

• View material needs by upcoming agreement visits.

• See lists of filters, belts, and other consumables required.

• Generate:

  • Requisitions

  • Purchase orders

  • Warehouse transfers

  • Warranty orders and returns

At scale, when your team sells dozens or hundreds of agreements, ServiceTitan automatically builds the material demand picture for those contracts — without manual spreadsheet wrangling between sales and purchasing.

10. Close the Loop: Accounting and the Growth Flywheel

From an accounting perspective:

• Invoices are generated according to the billing schedule set on the agreement.

• Payment terms and revenue recognition rules are respected.

• All actions (invoices created, visits completed, changes made) are visible in the audit trail for that agreement.

From a growth perspective, each agreement feeds a flywheel:

1. Equipment is captured accurately in the field (often via mobile scanning).

2. That data powers fast, accurate service agreement estimates.

3. Agreements create recurring revenue and steady, proactive site visits.

4. Techs uncover new opportunities during inspections and service.

5. Those opportunities enter the CRM pipeline and lead to more projects and agreements.

Because all of this happens inside one platform — CRM, estimating, agreements, field operations, purchasing, and accounting — the system can do more work for you:

• Less double-entry.

• Fewer integration headaches.

• More visibility into the true value and performance of your maintenance customer base.

Build a Sales Process That Scales with Confidence

A strong commercial HVAC sales engine isn’t built on one-off wins or star reps — it’s built on process. By pairing a clear sales framework with thoughtful contract structuring, disciplined follow-up, and the operational efficiency of ServiceTitan’s commercial CRM and service agreements tools, your HVAC business can grow predictably and profitably.

Whether you’re just starting to formalize your commercial sales process or looking to scale an established team, the combination of defined structure and purpose-built software gives you everything you need to win more service agreements — and deliver on them with confidence.