Getting Unstuck: How to Break Through the $5 Million Ceiling

Scaling a successful service business to $5 million in revenue requires an intense focus on process, establishing clear goals and objectives, and holding employees accountable.

Michael Katz, owner of Trio Heating & Air, joins the Mastering ServiceTitan podcast for the second part of a three-part miniseries to share how he scaled his business to $5 million and beyond by implementing smart KPIs, creating role-specific incentives, and fostering a culture built on transparency and quality. 

In this podcast recap, you’ll learn tips to measure and track:

• Call center KPIs

• Service technician KPIs

• Sales installer KPIs

Katz breaks down how he aligns teams–from CSRs to installers–with expectations, daily accountability, and thoughtful rewards that prioritize both speed and quality.

Making the Switch to ServiceTitan

Podcast host Josh Lu kicks off the discussion by asking Katz to share how Trio Heating & Air adopted ServiceTitan to run their quickly growing business. 

“We were on Housecall Pro at the time, and we were dying to get on ServiceTitan because my brother was just raving about how good the software was,” Katz says. “The business was in absolute chaos, and we were trying to figure out what to do. But we really didn't have processes that made sense.” 

In 2022, Katz scored free tickets to Pantheon, ServiceTitan’s annual user conference for the trades, where he says he literally had an epiphany. 

“I went to one session and my mind was blown,” Katz says. “I finally got the right answer that made sense to me. Everything started to click. Every two seconds, David (Katz’s brother) and I are looking at each other like, ‘Oh my God, this is incredible.’”

Katz says Pantheon completely changed his mindset on running the business. 

“We started to understand the right pay plans we need to have, and what needs to happen every single day, what needs to happen every week, every single month. Everything just started forming.

“So, the idea was, and this is the transition from $1 to $5 to even $10 million, you have to understand your customer journey from the moment they see you online, to the moment they become a repeat customer,” he adds.

KPIs for Revenue-Facing Employees

When setting KPIs, Katz emphasizes that revenue-facing employees—call center agents, service technicians, and sales installers—play a critical role in determining the success or failure of the business. These team members directly engage with customers, making their performance essential to driving results and building lasting relationships.

“Those are the people that are controlling your main KPIs,” Katz says. “You need to make sure you actually have KPIs for each department and have processes for each department. You're not going to be able to get to $5 million, and you're not going to be able to cross $5 million if you don't have these things in place.”

Call center KPIs

Most importantly, Katz says you need to make sure your call center team answers calls within 15 seconds.

“Customers have a very short attention span. If you're not picking up the call, they're calling the next person,” he says. “If I'm calling and no one is answering and I have a leak and I'm looking at the water, I'm hanging up and going to the next bite. Do you think I'm going to leave you a voicemail?”

Katz recommends making the call process as seamless as possible for the customer. Don’t make them have to press one to speak to someone, and keep your messaging short and sweet. 

For instance, “Thank you for calling Trio Heating & Air. My name is this. How can I help you today?” Katz says.

Answering the phone quickly is a good start, but to operate at their best, Katz says call center teams need the answers to all the questions customers ask during a service call. 

“Anything that repeats more than twice a month has to be a process. If it's happened multiple times, that's a pain point. Your CSRs are struggling, so you’ve got to help them,” he says.

Katz also uses the length of each call as a KPI.  

“I don't want my CSRs to be on the phone for more than five or six minutes at a time because it's just a little bit too long. We don't need to know everything about their grandkids,” he says. “At four minutes, you're giving amazing customer service. But at two minutes, you might be rushing through calls. Just be careful, because you might not collect all the information your technicians and salespeople need.”

At Trio, call center reps have to achieve a 90% conversion rate on service calls before SPIFFS kick in.

“Once you get to 95%, the bonus almost doubles because you want people to reach. You want people to really aim for that really high conversion,” he says.

Trio call center reps also earn a bonus for every membership sold. The rep gets the cost of the first month of the membership. 

“Every time you sell a membership, you get $20,” Katz says.

Finally, Katz tracks the number of calls booked per day. He uses a bracket system, where reps begin to earn the bonus after booking between 10 and 15 calls. The bonus increases if they move to the 16 to 20 bracket, and again for anything beyond.

Service Technician KPIs

Katz says he also tracks how many memberships his service technicians sell, as they provide a valuable resource to keep the business afloat during the slow season.  

“If summertime comes in and you weren't able to give them work and you lose them, you lost your summer. That's your only time for revenue.

“They have the same bonus as the call center,” he adds. “As soon as they sell a membership, they get the first month. In addition, we make sure they get assigned to the same technician every time. They already worked on the rapport. They might be warming them up toward a system replacement.”

Offering multiple options for every job is another KPI Katz tracks for service technicians.

“This is really important. If you’re not giving options, you're giving ultimatums,” he says. “We make sure our technicians are giving options from the small Band-Aid solution to the top-of-the-line repair option in addition to a replacement option.”

Additional KPIs for service technicians include close rate for repairs, being on time, making additional sales, and time spent with the client. Service techs also earn bonuses for each review they bring in, with the chance to earn up to $50 if the review includes a photo and smiling customer.

Sales Installer KPIs

Katz sales installer KPIs are similar to service techs, with the main focus on conversion.

“You want to make sure your conversion is where it needs to be. The standard for the HVAC industry would be around 20% to 30%,” he says. “If your company has a really strong brand, you're dominating the industry, and you've been around for a very long time, so it should be even higher because there's a proof of concept there.” 

Katz says the company ties installer incentives directly to how much revenue the job brings in and first-time installation quality. 

Unlike many competitors who prioritize speed at the expense of workmanship, often leading to costly call-backs, Katz rewards installers who get it right the first time. 

Installers start earning a bonus after generating $75,000 in monthly installs, but the bonus decreases with every return visit needed to fix an issue from the original job.

Putting Process Into Place

Returning to the topic of implementing processes at a service business, Katz says you should focus on reporting, monitoring, and tracking. 

“Without that, you don't have anything,” he says “Focus on one thing at a time. Fix your call center. Fix your service. Fix your installs. But don’t put a half process in place. If you don't care enough to implement something, you don't care enough about anything, right? What message does that send to your employees?”

To ensure accountability to process, Katz holds daily huddles, weekly leadership meetings, and monthly meetings with business owners. 

“In the daily huddle, we're trying to understand how we win the day,” Katz says. “So, if the call center is consistently converting at 85% or 90%, how many calls do we need per technician, per day? We go through department by department based on the KPIs, and we follow up on it every day.”

For the weekly management meetings, Katz goes over reporting with each department head. 

“We have reports for everything in ServiceTitan,” he says. “Obviously, we go over trailing seven days and trailing 30 days. We look at our close rate conversion, callback rate collections, all these different things.

“We also go over job costing in ServiceTitan,” he adds. “For people who don't know, you go into job costing and it shows you your labor spend, your materials and equipment, and your vendor costs. It really breaks all these different things apart.”

Katz says his monthly meetings are primarily with finance teams and focus on the profitability of the business.

Growing from $1 to $5 Million

While getting to the first $1 million in revenue focused on building your identity, understanding the competition, and establishing processes, Katz says the road to $5 million ultimately involves digging into the metrics, designing a clear organizational structure, and leveraging technology like ServiceTitan to the full potential.

“The biggest difference here, getting to $5 million versus $1 million: You have to obsess about your numbers,” he says.

You can find this interview and many more by subscribing to Mastering ServiceTitan on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or here. 

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