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It’s the behind-the-scenes people, your defensive line, that are the linchpin of your organization. These are your owners, service managers, and warehouse managers.

Increasing the profitability of HVAC companies is not something that is achieved overnight. Instead, it is a result of creating a detailed plan, collaborating with the team, marketing execution and adjustments, and tracking analytics and results, among others. If you want to succeed and improve your bottom line, implement these strategies.

In the 1990s, consolidation swept across the HVAC industry. Contractors were rolled up into large publicly traded companies like American Residential Services, Group Maintenance America Corp., Service Experts, and the utility-owned Blue Dot.

Is it possible that buildings of the future will be a strategic asset — that they will operate in an intelligent way to be productive facility managers and monetizable for real estate owners? Is it possible that the traditionally conservative and risk-averse building and construction industry would leverage the latest technologies, such as the IoT, big data, cloud computing, data analytics, deep learning, and artificial intelligence, for the benefits of saving energy, reducing operational expenditures, increasing occupancy comfort, and — most importantly — meeting increasingly stringent global regulations and sustainability standards?

The HVAC industry, and in particular the replacement sector, is attractive to private equity investors because of its exposure to a large base of installed equipment that requires regular service and, ultimately, replacement. The critical nature of HVAC equipment for ensuring comfort means that customers tend to place the most emphasis on service responsiveness and equipment quality, in addition to price and other considerations.

Vision, commitment, consistency, integrity, contribution — these are some of the many values that great leaders hold in the highest regard. Leadership is the “it factor” in any business, especially within an industry that contains a multitude of sources of proven business processes.

If you are planning to build out your talent pipeline in 2019, here are a few key characteristics to evaluate when considering your next new hire.

Like other professions, there are certain truths that apply to the field of contracting. Here are 24 of them.

At Welsch Heating & Cooling Inc., we are far from perfect at accumulating this information. We have very little success getting our salesforce to find out why a particular customer called us. However, our sales coordinator does a good job of obtaining that information as the calls come in.

What happens when you have hired all the people you know and are still in need of more? Too many times in business, we are extremely busy and in need of people because the demand is bigger than the supply of good people.