I used to sell maintenance agreements for $89 a year and wonder why nobody valued them. Then I realized I didn't value them either. That was the problem.
Maintenance agreements are the closest thing this industry has to recurring revenue. Done right, they smooth out your slow season, keep your schedule full, and create customers who call you before they call anyone else. Done wrong, they're just a discount program with extra steps.
What a Real Agreement Looks Like
A maintenance agreement should include two visits per year (heating and cooling season), priority scheduling, a discount on repairs, and a clear list of what gets inspected and cleaned on each visit. The customer gets peace of mind and savings. You get scheduled work and a relationship.
The agreement should be priced to cover your actual cost of those visits plus a margin. If a tune-up costs you $95 in labor and overhead to deliver, and you're selling two of them for $120 a year, you're losing money before the repair discount kicks in. Price it at $179-$249 depending on your market and your actual costs.
The Slow Season Problem It Solves
Spring and fall are when your agreement customers get their visits. That's exactly when residential emergency calls slow down. You're scheduling maintenance visits during the weeks your techs would otherwise be sitting around. That's not a coincidence. It's the whole point.
A base of 200 maintenance customers means 400 scheduled visits per year. That's a floor of revenue that doesn't depend on the weather, the economy, or whether anyone's system breaks this week.
How to Sell Them Without Being Pushy
The best time to sell a maintenance agreement is at the end of a service call when the customer is already happy with you. The tech says: "Everything looks good today. I want to make sure it stays that way. We have a maintenance plan that covers both your spring and fall tune-ups, priority scheduling if something goes wrong, and 15% off any repairs. Want me to get you set up before I leave?"
That's it. No high-pressure pitch. The customer just saw you work. They already trust you. The conversion rate on a well-timed in-person ask is dramatically higher than a mailer.
The Renewal Problem
Most agreements fall apart at renewal because nobody follows up. Set up an automatic renewal process. Charge the card on file 30 days before expiration. Send a reminder 45 days out. Make it opt-out rather than opt-in. Customers who are happy don't cancel. They just don't bother to renew if you make them take a step.
WerkOps helps you track agreement customers, schedule their visits automatically, and flag renewals so nothing falls through the cracks. The system does the remembering so you don't have to.
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Written by
Dina Good
Founder, WerkOps
Dina grew up in the trades. Her father was a contractor, then a building inspector, and the job site was her classroom long before any formal one was. She went on to own her own contracting company, which is where she first felt the pain of running a skilled trade business on bad software and worse spreadsheets. A love of data pulled her into programming, and the two worlds eventually collided into WerkOps - software built by someone who has actually been on the truck.