Transitioning from selling residential HVAC maintenance agreements to “lightweight” commercial HVAC maintenance contracts doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your sales process or agreement structure.
For instance, when setting up a maintenance agreement for a small strip mall with mom-and-pop businesses, it's often simple to connect directly with business owners or decision-makers, much like you would with homeowners. The system maintenance is typically not extensive, and the associated contracts are relatively straightforward.
In contrast, the sales process is more complex when dealing with larger commercial or industrial-scale facilities. You need to understand how to identify decision-makers, navigate through gatekeepers, price contracts for profitability while avoiding sticker shock, and communicate in ways that resonate with prospects and ultimately allow you to close the deal.
If you can navigate this process effectively and close these larger service contract deals, you can lock in recurring revenue that bolsters the cash flow of your business.
For this article, we interviewed ServiceTitan industry advisor, Johnathan Day, to get his advice on selling these larger HVAC service contracts.
Below, we lay out the main steps and considerations for HVAC businesses with plenty of insights from his experience running and building large HVAC companies. We also walk through 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.
Table of Contents
Step 1: Creating Opportunities and Identifying Decision-Makers
Why a Good Sales Process Still Falls Apart Without the Right System
Step 1: Creating Opportunities and Identifying Decision-Makers
The Role of the HVAC Technician
A lot of times the best leads for selling larger service contracts are facilities that you’ve already visited for routine HVAC repairs and service calls. To maximize these opportunities, technicians should be trained to build trust or rapport with the lead maintenance personnel and, if possible, gather information about key stakeholders and decision-makers who would be involved in approving recurring service contracts.
Any information that can help with identifying decision-makers or setting up a site survey is a win. Additionally, technicians and office staff should focus on delivering a great customer experience. In future conversations, it helps a lot if the company has a positive initial impression of you.
Following Up on Service Calls
Even if a strong relationship isn't established during the initial visit, following up on service calls provides a natural opportunity to turn that job into a more substantial engagement.
Ideally, HVAC sales teams should be debriefed by the technician who took the service call to get any information they gathered. If you’re using HVAC software like ServiceTitan, technicians can record notes and upload photos and videos via our field service mobile app, and those assets can be easily accessed by staff in charge of following up.
On-Site Visits
Visiting a site in person will often give you a significantly higher chance to actually speak to someone. When showing up without an appointment, try to speak with the lead maintenance person to start. You shouldn’t walk in and try to shoot straight for speaking with the general manager or CEO, even if that’s who you’ll need to eventually speak to.
Just as when you’re following up on a service call, it’s helpful to gather whatever information you can about the business, facility, and staff beforehand, whether or not you’ve visited or serviced that facility previously. It helps to know some specifics about the equipment they have to provide you with some items to discuss.
For example, if you can see that the building has a chiller outside, you might say to the receptionist, “Hey, is your head of maintenance around? I just want to talk to them about the maintenance plan on your chiller.” By asking about something specific, you’re more likely to get them to give you some of their time versus coming in and trying to sell them on an extensive contract.
Cold Outreach
If you have the resources, cold emails and calls are also part of the playbook for creating opportunities to sell large maintenance and service contracts. There are B2B subscription services that provide pools of companies and contact information for their higher-ups including emails and phone numbers that you can use to reach out.
Again, don’t shoot for the top and try to email the CEO who gets dozens of sales emails every day. Instead, depending on the size or structure of the company, try reaching out to the equivalent of a director or VP-level employee. These people often aren’t being advertised to as much, and are commonly in decision-making roles for individual sectors. In addition, if you need to get to a CFO to get a contract approved, VPs and directors communicate with those individuals.
In contrast, a lead maintenance person or facility manager might be five or six levels beneath those executive roles, making it a more difficult and longer process to get up the chain to decision-makers. This is why it’s important to take time to research and understand the structure of a company before reaching out. Once you have a list of companies and contacts, LinkedIn is a great tool for this.
Further reading for commercial HVAC service providers: Why Commercial HVAC Lead Generation Works Best In-House (& How to Do It Successfully)
Throughout all of the steps above, it’s common to encounter gatekeepers with varying levels of openness to talking with you and helping you get in contact with decision-makers. Sometimes rapport will be established easily, but often navigating through gatekeepers requires finesse.
Lead maintenance personnel or facility managers, for example, sometimes have a bit of an ego. They feel like they’re supposed to have the know-how and ability to take care of the facility and shouldn’t need outside help. If you don’t approach them carefully, they can feel like you’re stepping on their toes and might block you from getting up the chain.
Understanding this mindset can help you in this scenario. If you can approach the gatekeeper as a partner, showing respect for their position, they’ll ultimately be more likely to help you get an introduction to someone with the authority to make purchasing decisions.
Step 2: Pricing Bids Strategically
Avoid Sticker Shock by Initially Targeting a Specific Need Within the Facility
When pricing a service contract for a small commercial facility like a strip mall with only two or three HVAC units and no full-time maintenance staff, it’s reasonable to pitch a contract for the entire building right from the start. However, when dealing with a large commercial facility with 100 units, for example, proposing a $15,000/month contract to service every component of their HVAC system can be a tough sell.
To address this, it’s often more effective to start with small but critical needs within the facility, such as preventative maintenance for essential HVAC equipment. Design your initial contract to focus solely on these key pieces of equipment. As you establish the working relationship, you can gradually expand the scope to include servicing more of the facility.
Consider Seasonality
Timing is crucial when pricing bids. The best time to approach companies is from October to December when they are finalizing budgets for the next year. This period provides an opportunity to align your services with their budget planning.
Mid-year (May-July) is the most challenging time to sell, as companies have often spent a significant portion of their budget. During this time, consider offering smaller contracts to get a foot in the door and set the stage for larger deals later in the year.
Step 3: Closing Service Agreement Sales
Consistent, Non-Invasive Follow-Up
The key to closing big-ticket contracts is consistent, non-invasive follow-up. In Johnathan’s experience, on average, it takes six contacts to close a deal in this industry. The approach is to maintain communication without being pushy, ensuring the potential client knows you are serious and reliable.
Provide Added Value
Lastly, one of the most difficult and important aspects of closing the sale is providing added value and communicating about it explicitly to the prospect.
Any additional benefits you offer can help compel prospects to opt in. Examples of these benefits include:
Priority service
Percent off services
Fixed rates on services
No after-hours rates
In addition, include in your proposal a full list of the tasks you’re going to do for the client. By being specific and detailed in your proposal, it’s easier for prospects to understand the value they’ll get for their money.
Other Considerations
Create a Dedicated Role or Department to Sell and Manage Commercial Contracts
Particularly if you’re just starting out pursuing larger commercial service contracts, it can seem sufficient to have your technicians lead this effort when they’re out on service calls. However, you don’t want your technicians (who you’re paying, for example, $50/hr) out on service calls trying to turn them into full site surveys and in-depth sales visits. It’s a risky way to have them spend their time when they could be out doing billable work.
Furthermore, understanding how to talk to customers about these larger-scale heating and air conditioning service contracts and create them is a specialized skill set that not every technician has. As such, it helps to have a dedicated role or department focused solely on selling and managing these contracts.
Invest in Sales Training
If you don’t have an experienced salesperson to lead this effort, investing in an HVAC sales training program can help your appointed team members learn how to identify decision-makers, navigate gatekeepers, and tailor pitches to different levels within an organization. In addition, it can help your team learn to identify different types of businesses and structures, ensuring that they can effectively manage the entire process from initial contact to closing the sale.
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Why a Good Sales Process Still Falls Apart Without the Right System
Even if you follow every best practice in this guide — identify decision-makers, run structured site walks, price contracts strategically, and follow up consistently — selling and delivering commercial maintenance agreements can still break down.
That’s because the hardest part isn’t just winning the contract. It’s making sure everything gathered during the sales process flows cleanly into the actual maintenance program once the contract is signed.
And this is where most HVAC companies struggle:
Equipment details captured during the site walk never make it into the final agreement, forcing reps to rebuild scope from memory or from incomplete notes.
Proposals are built manually, which leads to inconsistent scopes, inaccurate labor estimates, or pricing that doesn’t hit margin targets.
Technician notes, photos, and findings live in disconnected tools, so pull-through opportunities are missed or forgotten entirely.
There’s no clean handoff between sales and operations, leaving the service team unclear on which equipment is covered, what visits are required, or what materials to bring.
Recurring visits aren’t scheduled automatically, causing missed maintenance, unhappy customers, and a chaotic scramble to catch up.
Purchasing and accounting get incomplete information, leading to delays, incorrect billing, and materials that aren’t ordered in time for the first visit.
Ultimately, deals stall, margins shrink, field execution becomes inconsistent, and customers lose confidence before the first PM visit is even completed.
But the root problem isn’t the sales process — it’s the system supporting it.
To sell to new customers and deliver commercial maintenance agreements successfully, you need a platform where:
Equipment data captured on the site walk flows directly into the agreement
Pricing is generated automatically from your labor/margin settings
Technician findings translate into real, trackable opportunities
Agreements activate predictable scheduling, purchasing, and billing workflows
Sales, service, and accounting work from the same source of truth
When everything lives in one connected system, the sales process doesn’t just run smoothly — the delivery of the maintenance agreement becomes predictable, consistent, and profitable.
And that’s exactly what ServiceTitan is designed to do.
How ServiceTitan Ties Commercial HVAC 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, estimating workflow, 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 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 — e.g.:
“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 gets 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 regular maintenance schedules you’ve defined per equipment type.
The materials (air filters, belts, refrigerant, 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 routine maintenance visit every 2 months
Plus a quarterly filter change
Defines adjustments for emergency service
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 (e.g., filters, belts) 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 (e.g., 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 got accepted.
7. Send, E-Sign, and Activate the Agreement
Once the customer is happy with a proposal:
The AE sends the agreement for e-signature.
When the customer signs, the agreement status moves to Accepted.
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:
Equipment is captured accurately in the field (often via mobile scanning).
That data powers fast, accurate service agreement estimates.
Agreements create recurring revenue and steady, proactive site visits.
Techs uncover new opportunities during inspections and service.
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 and peace of mind.
To see how ServiceTitan can streamline your commercial HVAC sales and service workflows end-to-end, schedule a free product tour.
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