Shoulder season has a way of telling the truth. When the weather stops handing you leads, response-based digital channels cool off, and the real drivers of growth—outbound effort and tight operations—step into the spotlight. We walk through a practical playbook for HVAC, pest, and home service pros to build demand on purpose, not by accident, and to convert more of the calls they already get.
We break down the three-bucket framework—call-to-action, brand, and cultivation—and explain why that third bucket is the force multiplier most teams ignore. You’ll learn how to spin up rehash programs, text and voicemail campaigns, and membership-driven maintenance that keep trucks rolling in mild weather. We also dig into content discipline and local visibility, showing how simple, consistent publishing outperforms perfectionism and one-off promos. Tools like CHIRP and emerging platforms help, but process and cadence matter more than the logo on your software.
Then we zoom into operations: booking rate by source, revenue per lead, technician close rates, and membership conversion. If your CRM and call tracking can’t tell you where revenue starts and ends, you’re guessing. We talk budgets that match capacity, pricing that supports profit, and leadership habits that prevent slow-season panic. This is an honest roadmap to align marketing with operations so every lead is booked, every visit is maximized, and every campaign is measured.
If you’re ready to turn a slow month into a systems win—and to plan proactively for 2026 with brand clarity, vendor selection, and a real budget—this conversation is your cue. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a nudge, and drop a review telling us your best shoulder-season tactic. Your next busy season starts with what you put in place today.
If you enjoyed this chat From the Yellow Chair, consider joining our newsletter, "Let's Sip Some Lemonade," where you can receive exclusive interviews, our bank of helpful downloadables, and updates on upcoming content.
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From the Yellow Chair is powered by Lemon Seed, a marketing strategy and branding company for the trades. Lemon Seed specializes in rebrands, creating unique, comprehensive, organized marketing plans, social media, and graphic design. Learn more at www.LemonSeedMarketing.com
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We'll see you next time, Lemon Heads!
Episode Transcript
What's up, living heads?
Welcome to another episode ofFrom the Yellow Chair riding
solo today.
And I want to talk aboutsomething, guys, that I know is
so prevalent right now as we gointo the shoulder season,
specifically for my HVACcontractors, my pest control
contractors, people that arejust gonna feel the hurt of
being in the shoulder season,headed towards it.
(00:23):
Maybe you're in it, maybe you'reright on the cusp of it.
But either way, we are gonnatalk today.
Because let me tell you, I knowyou're probably trying to blame
marketing for this, and we'regonna talk through is it ops or
is it marketing?
And I have a little secret.
So let's diseliminate.
(00:53):
All right, guys, welcome to theshow for this week.
I need to tell you, um, it is acommon fear, problem, thought
going on for contractors uh thatit is definitely slow season or
getting really, really close.
And here's one of theconversations I had with a
contractor yesterday, um, largecontracting business, but in a
(01:14):
rural market.
And she tells me, she said, Man,our marketing spin last month
was 15%.
She said, I almost like lost it.
And she said, but I have noleads coming in.
So I'm like, oh my goodness.
So I was like, well, let's talkabout it.
This is not a client of LemonSeed, this was just a friend.
So I was like, well, what doy'all have going on?
She's like, we're just dumpingall this money into digital,
like we've got everything goingfor SEO, we're doing all the new
(01:35):
AI stuff.
We are actively doing paid adsand and Facebook retargeting.
And I was like, man, that'sthat's really good processes.
But I was like, but what aboutlike just straight up rehashing
open estimates and things likethat?
And she was like, Well, youknow, we never really could get
that off the ground and we don'thave anybody to pay attention to
(01:56):
it.
So I was like, mm-hmm.
So I said, Well, can I be thebearer of bad news?
And she's like, sure.
I said, It's because there's nodemand.
So when there is no demand thatcomes in, then there is nowhere
for you to send people, friends.
Like, so if there's no onelooking for you for your
(02:16):
business and what you offer, youhave to then go like grab
everything you can and put morecontent out there, get more
aggressive, right?
So are people's heating and airconditioning units still
stopping working?
Yes.
Um, is there still issues withpest and rodents?
Yes.
Do people still have trees fallthrough their roofs?
Yes.
(02:36):
So it's isn't that there's zerodemand out there.
We just don't have that littlecocaine hit of weather, okay?
We don't have weather helpingus, right?
So I want to tell you guys thisis the importance of having a
robust marketing strategy andthe three bucket framework that
Lemon T talks about all thetime, because right now all of
(02:57):
your hopes are not are indigital marketing, and you're
pissed off.
Like my digital marketing isit's not doing anything for me.
And you're like, okay, thedigital marketing is responsive
marketing, right?
It's responsive to the searchvolume.
Yes, there are there are digitalthings that you can do just to
build your brand and just to getawareness out there and to put
(03:19):
other products out there forpeople to know that you have.
But honestly, guys, like youknow, you know what the shoulder
season takes?
Freaking grit, man.
I like re like refocusing themindset of your CSR team, of you
as the owner, of your marketingpeople.
Everything now becomes I gottago ask for it.
(03:40):
I've got to create urgency, I'vegot to create awareness, and
I've got to go literally ask forthe business.
So, right now, this is when youshould be rocking and rolling
through.
Um, and again, Lemon Seed lovesCHIRP.
We work with CHIRP a lot.
A lot of our clients work withCHIRP.
Um, I know that contractor incharge is launching a program
called One Path that's gonna doalso some of very, very similar
(04:02):
things.
I say very similar, there's alot of differences between it
and chirp, but still kind ofdifferent.
Um, but similar in the sense ofthey are for grabbing leads,
right?
And chirp is for outbig, likeliterally grabbing everything
that you can um with everyopportunity.
And so right now, I want y'allto think through this is
(04:24):
probably not a marketing problemin the sense of your digital
company, because a lot of youautomatically think marketing
digital, marketing digital.
We don't think full circle.
Um, so if I could encourage you,I want you to think more full
circle.
So, you know, you if every mealyou set down, I only gave you
meat and I never gave you anysides, you'd be like, okay, like
I'm not a carnivore.
I want more, I need more sides,right?
(04:44):
So that's how like a lot ofy'all sit down at your marketing
plate and there's meat on it andnothing else.
So you only have a digitalstrategy, and it's just not the
best way to go about long-termgrowth.
Like you live on the hamsterwheel.
But right now, marketing, youprobably could have really good
things in place, um, decentthings in place.
You probably need to diversify alittle bit, like add other
(05:06):
things other than digital intothe mix.
But right now, in my opinion,you need those things to be
still rocking and rolling, like,don't back off of those.
But you need to start anoutbound campaign between
texting, ringless voicemaildrops, texting and email
marketing, and all of thosethings.
(05:26):
And when you start all of thosethings, you then start seeing
like, okay, I am covering my,I'm I've got enough going on
that I can stay busy and I cancontinue to build and build and
build.
This is why we need maintenanceprograms.
This is why, if you've got thethermostat programs that are
going crazy right now, this iswhy.
Um, you need them to help yousurvive the shoulder season.
(05:50):
And you know what?
If you're listening to thispodcast and you don't own a home
service industry um stylebusiness, this still applies to
you, right?
What applies to you is the factthat we can't just be like,
well, I have a website.
I'm marketing.
Y'all, marketing is hard.
Um, I was telling my son lastnight, my son's starting to get
noticed on Instagram because hedoes all these golf, he's a pro
(06:13):
fitter um for golf clubs.
So he works at our local countryclub and he does a great job.
He's such a good kid, got a goodpersonality, but he's starting
to get noticed on his Instagramby these golf companies.
So they're like sending himstuff.
So the advice that I had to tellmy night, well, 18-year-old is
gonna be 19 in February.
I had to tell him, I said, Ray,what you have to do is you have
to stay diligent about thatcontent because it's going to
(06:36):
get boring.
You're gonna run out of time,you're gonna be frustrated,
you're gonna not think thateverything looks perfect, so I'm
not gonna do it.
When I just need to tell him,put the content out.
unknown (06:45):
Right?
SPEAKER_00 (06:46):
So it's the same advice I would give contractors
like, listen, it gets old reallyfast.
So, how many of y'all right now,a new business opened up in your
town?
And at first they weregangbusters, they were killing
it with marketing, and then withevery passing week, guess what
happens?
We just get lazier and lazierand lazier, and then we're like,
what happened?
(07:06):
We just couldn't make it.
We had a local uh shop here thatwas like, man, we just couldn't
make it.
Nobody shopped here.
And I literally, who I'm social,guys, like I'm on social media,
I look around, I pay attentionto what people are doing.
Heck, I for sure noticedmarketing.
And I was like, I didn't evenknow you were open yet.
I had no idea that you had evenopened your business.
(07:30):
And they're like, Well, wejoined the chamber.
And I'm like, Yeah, so that's apiece of a puzzle, not the whole
puzzle.
And so people just have thismisconception that, oh, I have a
website or I posted one time onsocial media, or I did a ribbon
cutting with my chamber.
Guys, it is it is like buildinga cake.
You have to get more diligent.
So I'm telling you right now,you need to look at your
(07:51):
marketing and you need to say,okay, what am I doing that fills
the bucket of call to action?
You're probably all in thatboat, but it's that third bucket
that Lemon Seed talks about, thecultivation bucket.
That is the bucket where insideof your business you have a lot
of opportunity.
And what are you willing to doto reach out to them, to text
them, to send them pieces ofmail, to send them emails on a
(08:13):
consistent but not annoyingbasis.
And how do you get them?
And how do you keep them going?
How do you keep them engagedwith your business?
Now, the other side of that coinis let's talk a little bit about
operations right now, right?
So, operations, if you want totalk about any time to be on
your P's and Q's about averagetickets and what you need them
(08:34):
to be, how you need them to besuccessful, it is now, friends.
It is now.
And honestly, you should nevertake your eye off of this ball,
right?
You should never take your eyeoff of operations and key
performance indicators, KPIs.
So what I tell everybody rightnow is odds are I can go in and
say, okay, are you making themost of every single lead?
(08:56):
Half of you are, half of you aredoing a good job because you're
so desperate for leads thatyou're maximizing those.
But the other half of you haveyet to figure out that you
actually have expectationsalongside the marketing, right?
So if your marketing is bringingin leads, whether it's social
media, it's direct mail, it'sinbound marketing, it's outbound
marketing, it's um influencermarketing, whatever you're
(09:18):
using, if it brings in a lead,your job as a company is to book
the lead, if at all possible,right?
So once you book the lead, thenwhen your team goes out on that
lead, they are able to actuallyconvert it into something that
generates revenue for you.
So if you're sitting in thereand you're like, well, I mean,
but that's those were just tirekickers, man.
(09:39):
Like, you know, these guys werecalling in, they're just tire
kickers.
So freaking what?
Run the call.
Send your most talkativetechnician out there and sell
something to them.
Or go out there and at leastperform what they called about,
right?
Get out there and and make themost of those leads, right?
(09:59):
So it is there's all thesepeople on social media with all
of these fly-by night flash inthe pan ideas.
And let me tell you, I'm herefor them.
I love flash in the pan ideas.
And listen, I am a chef, baby.
Let me, I will roll somethinguntil it does not work anymore.
But what I made up in my mind in2014 when I went to work for
(10:20):
McWilliams was that I was goingto embrace all of the new
things.
I was gonna have foundationalmarketing, embrace the new
things, try them and pivot andwork.
And I was constantly changingit.
And you know what?
We were going 40, 50 percentyear over year, and not just
because of marketing, marketingdoesn't move the needle.
You know what moves the needle?
Freaking operations, operationsmoves the needle.
(10:43):
Um, marketing is a greataccompaniment to a great
operations team.
We are an additive to yourbusiness.
We are not marketing adds towhat you've already built
foundationally.
If your culture sucks, if yourleadership sucks, if your
operational expectations suck,if honestly, if your team sucks,
like then you need to look atthat because marketing and
(11:04):
really dialing up marketing isonly going to make it worse.
It's only going to like flare itup, right?
So, what I want to tell youtoday is now is the time to
train, to refocus your culture,get people on board, get your
marketing dollars in place, seeif you need to refresh your
brand.
(11:24):
Do you need a local marketer onyour team to help you do social
media?
Let's make plans right now for2026.
Don't sit back and wait tillJanuary.
Some of you look up everyJanuary, surprised that it's a
new year, right?
Let's start right now.
It's still October.
We have two months to build outa fantastic plan.
Refresh what your company iswith its logo.
(11:45):
Let's take a look at yourculture.
Let's see who we need to hire.
Let's see what vendors we needto stack for you.
And let's just see what we canaccomplish in 2026 when we
actually invest in the overallcomprehensive and holistic
approach to marketing andbranding.
Let's get some advertisingtactics that work.
And let's give you a plan,right?
(12:07):
So I don't know if you needLemon Seed to help you do that
or not.
That's what Lemon Seed does.
We build out plans and we helpyou get the right vendors.
We're not a digital company,we're not a billboard company.
We are strategic planners formarketing.
And we strategically plan outwhat vendors you need for your
market and your budget size,what budget you need.
But let me tell you, there's acouple of things that keep
(12:28):
contractors from beingsuccessful.
Number one, you have no CRM thatis actually tracking, helping
you track anything.
If you can't look inside yourCRM right now, your FSM, CRM,
whatever you call it, ServiceTitan Field Edge, Service
Fusion, Sierra, any of those, ifyou can't look into those and
tell me what is driving revenuefor your company, who's on your
(12:50):
membership club and who's not onyour membership club, you've
lost 50% of any momentum movingforward.
We can't read anything.
We don't know what's working.
We can't hold anybodyaccountable to something that we
have no data on.
That we have no data on.
So I just want to encourage youlike get a CRM in place at the
bare minimum, call rail,converse that, get some call
(13:10):
tracking in place, right?
Um, that's number one.
Number two, you've got to have agood budget.
When you have a good budget inplace, you can really start
looking at it.
But let me tell you what some ofyou are gonna do.
Well, we I think we can do aboutthree million next year.
Okay, well, sir, you barely dida million.
So we there's three things thatare gonna help us build our
(13:30):
business this year.
It's gonna be pricing.
So are we priced correctly?
It's gonna be operations.
So do we have good expectationsof average tickets and how we're
gonna roll this thing?
And the third thing ismarketing, and it takes all
three to really grow next year.
So to go from one million tothree million is pretty ballsy.
So let's talk about how we areactually going to do that.
Do we have the capacity to dothat?
(13:51):
So y'all need to spend some timewith budgeting.
Go time.
Success Group has a greatbudgeting platform, a budgeting
class.
Go figure those out.
You need help with that,limiting marketing can help you
with that.
We can help you, but you I justwant y'all to do it overall.
And if you're not doingplanning, it's just lazy
leadership.
And then all that crap rollsdownhill, right?
(14:14):
So, my encouragement to you ifyou're listening to this short
little episode today is it is aslow month.
And now is the time you need todial up all of your marketing,
especially your existingcustomer cultivation,
outbounding, rehashing, texting,all of those things.
You need a strategy, you need amessage plan, you need all of
those things to move forward.
But also work on training, workon culture, work on your
(14:37):
leadership, work on budgetingand work on 2026.
Guys, you still have plenty oftime.
You can do it.
Go run and go own 2026.
Thanks for listening to anotherepisode of From The Yellow
Chair.
I'm Crystal.
If you loved what you hear,share us, give us a review, like
us on social media.
We will catch you next week.
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