How to sell preventative maintenance contracts to commercial buildings

Preventative maintenance (PM) agreements are the backbone of many commercial HVAC, plumbing, electrical and fire protection businesses. They are also some of the hardest contracts to sell cold, because the buyer is paying now to avoid a problem later.

This guide covers why PM agreements matter, which buildings buy them, who makes the decision, how to earn the first visit, how to run the proposal conversation and how to turn finished projects into recurring work.

Why PM agreements matter for a service business

A PM agreement is a promise to visit on a schedule, inspect and maintain the equipment, and report what you find. For a service company it does several jobs at once:

• Recurring revenue. Visits that repeat every year are easier to plan a business around than whatever breaks this week.
• Steadier schedules. Maintenance can fill slow weeks and keep technicians busy between seasonal rushes.
• First call. When something breaks at a building you maintain, you are usually the first one they call.
• Early sight of projects. Your techs see the equipment and its condition, so you know about replacement work before anyone else does.
• Relationships. Regular visits keep you in front of the manager and the maintenance staff.

For the building, the case is fewer emergencies, a predictable budget line and a written maintenance record, which owners may need for warranties, insurers or inspections.

Which buildings buy PM agreements

Almost every building has equipment that needs care. The ones most likely to pay for a plan share a few traits:

• Downtime hurts people right away. Senior living, healthcare, hotels and apartments cannot let the heat, air or hot water go out for a day.
• Thin or no maintenance staff. A building with one maintenance tech, or none, needs outside help for anything technical.
• Plenty of equipment. Large buildings, campuses and portfolios have many units to keep track of.
• Budgets planned a year ahead. Operators with annual budgets prefer a known yearly cost to surprise repairs.
• Managers who answer to someone. Management companies report to owners, and administrators report to boards. A maintenance log helps them show the building is cared for.

Good targets include senior living and nursing homes, medical offices and surgery centers, hotels, apartment communities, schools and private campuses, churches with large buildings, restaurants with rooftop units and busy kitchens, and data centers. The senior living page goes deeper on one of the strongest.

Know who decides

PM agreements often need two people: the one who feels the problem and the one who signs. Learn both before you write a proposal.

• On-site managers (community manager, executive director, general manager, practice manager) hear the complaints and can champion you.
• Maintenance staff (maintenance supervisor, chief engineer, building engineer) know the equipment and whether the current vendor shows up. Win them over and they will tell the manager.
• Signers (owner, asset manager, regional manager, business administrator, board) approve contracts above a set amount.
• Facilities directors at schools, hospitals and larger campuses often do both.

Ask early: "If this made sense, who else would need to see it, and when do you set next year's budget?" A proposal that arrives after the budget is locked often waits a year.

Find a reason to visit

A PM pitch with no reason behind it sounds like every other contractor. Find something specific to the building first.

• Complaints in reviews. Residents or guests writing about heat, air, hot water or leaks. Mention what you read, not what you guess it means.
• Building age. County assessor or property appraiser records show the year built. Older systems usually need more attention.
• Renovation or expansion. New equipment is the best time to start a maintenance plan.
• A maintenance job posting. A building hiring a maintenance tech is short on hands. A PM agreement can take the technical work off their plate while they hire.
• New ownership or management. New owners and new management companies often review their vendors. County sale records and new names on signs will tell you.
• The season. Before cooling or heating season, a pre-season inspection is an easy first step.

The guide to finding commercial buildings covers where each of these signals is published.

Make the first visit about the building

Do not open with the contract. Open with questions, and listen for the problems a plan would solve.

• Who maintains your equipment today, and how is that going?
• What broke last year, and how long did it take to fix?
• How old are the main systems, and is anything due for replacement?
• What happens when something fails after hours or on a weekend?
• Do you have a maintenance agreement now, and when does it renew?

If there is interest, offer a site survey: walk the building, list the equipment with its age and condition, take photos and note what needs attention. The survey gives you what you need to price the plan, and it gives the manager a document to show their boss. Many contractors treat the survey as the natural first step.

Run the proposal conversation

Build the proposal from the survey, and present it in person if you can. A PDF in an inbox tends to get compared on price alone.

• Start with their equipment list. Every unit, its age and its condition. It shows you did the work and makes the scope clear.
• Spell out the visits. How many a year, when, and what gets done on each one for your trade.
• Explain what happens between visits. Service call priority, after-hours response and any discount on repair labor for agreement customers.
• Offer two or three levels. A basic, a standard and a full plan let the buyer choose between options instead of deciding yes or no.
• Tie it to what you heard. If residents complained about the hot water, show where the plan covers the water heaters.
• Show the report. Bring a sample of the visit report they will get. Managers like something they can forward.

Talk about price as a yearly number and a per-visit number, and be clear about what is not included. Surprises on the first invoice are how agreements get cancelled.

Follow up until there is an answer

Most PM agreements are not signed at the first proposal meeting. The deal is won or lost in the follow-up.

• Set the next date before you leave the meeting, and put it on your follow-up list right away.
• Send a short recap with the survey photos the same day.
• Check in around their budget dates, and after any big weather event.
• If a proposal goes three weeks with no update, call. Quiet deals rarely close by themselves.
• If the answer is "not this year", ask when to come back and put that date on your list.

Turn one-time projects into PM contracts

Your easiest PM sales are to customers who already trust you. Every finished project, whether a replacement, a repair or an install, is a chance to offer a plan.

• Bring it up at closeout, while the new equipment and your crew's work are fresh in their mind.
• Frame it as protecting what they just bought.
• Offer to schedule the first maintenance visit as part of the handoff.
• Keep a list of finished projects with no agreement, and work it every month.

Where LASSO fits

LASSO's building scoring was built alongside a commercial mechanical, electrical and plumbing contractor that sells preventative maintenance contracts, so PM is part of how the app works.

Today Pitch a PM contract

1

Northgate Medical PlazaRooftop unit replacement finished. No active PM.

Pitch PM

2

Oakmont SuitesWater heater install finished. No active PM.

Pitch PM

Sample data

• Pitch a PM contract, on Today. The Today screen lists customers with a finished project and no active PM agreement, so the easiest PM sales do not slip.
• Project and PM deals. Each deal is marked as a project or PM, with contract start and end dates and a service schedule, and won work is shown split between the two.
• A reason to visit. The lead finder reads reviews for complaints about heat, air, hot water, plumbing and power, looks for maintenance job postings and renovation, and suggests a project or a PM pitch for each building.
• Meeting prep. Before a visit, LASSO writes a short brief from your own records: what happened since last time, open items, talking points and a PM angle.
• Follow-ups that stick. Follow-ups due and deals with no update in three weeks land on your call list, so quiet proposals get a call.

The commercial HVAC page shows how this looks for one trade.

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