Smoothing the furnace revenue curve: a twelve-month marketing plan

Step 1: Draw your curve in jobs

Start with a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet and twelve columns, one per month. For last year, fill in four rows:

1. Furnace installs and replacements
2. Repair and service calls
3. Other installs (cooling, heat pumps, water heaters, anything else)
4. Maintenance visits

Use your scheduling system, invoices or even the dispatcher's memory. Rough numbers are fine. The point is the shape.

Now add a fifth row: crew capacity. How many installs could your team physically complete each month, given staff, trucks and holidays? Write the same number in each column unless you know staffing changes.

The gap between capacity and actual installs, month by month, is your opportunity. Most furnace companies see something like this: full or overloaded from November to February, comfortable in October and March, and well below capacity from April to August.

A worked example

Take a company with two install crews that can each complete about 20 installs a month: a capacity of 40. Last year's installs looked roughly like this:

From April to August, that company had about 120 crew-install slots unused. Filling even a third of them, 40 jobs over five months, changes the year without asking anyone to work harder in January.

Step 2: Decide what each month can sell

Next, match each month with what homeowners in your region are actually willing to buy. Weather drives it, but your customer base matters too.

• Late winter (February to March): maintenance plan renewals, early heat-pump education, replacement of furnaces that limped through winter.
• Spring (April to May): central air and heat pumps, especially for homes with existing ductwork; spring tune-ups for plan members.
• Summer (June to August): cooling installs and repairs, ductless systems for rooms the furnace never reached well, and heat pumps for owners thinking ahead.
• Late summer to fall (August to October): furnace replacement for owners who've been warned, fall tune-ups, financing promotion before the rush.
• Winter (November to January): furnace demand largely takes care of itself; focus on answering every call.

Climate shifts the calendar. According to Statistics Canada, natural gas was the main heating energy for most households in Alberta and Saskatchewan in 2023, while heat pumps were already the primary system for a large share of homes in the Maritimes. A gas-furnace company in Saskatoon and one in Moncton will have very different spring conversations. Our region pages set out the differences.

Step 3: Size the marketing to the gap

Now turn the gap into targets. Work backwards from jobs:

1. Jobs wanted in the month: say 8 extra installs in June.
2. Your close rate on that job type: say 40% for cooling quotes.
3. Quotes needed: 8 ÷ 0.40 = 20 quotes.
4. Share of enquiries that become quotes: say 60%.
5. Enquiries needed: 20 ÷ 0.60 ≈ 34 enquiries in June.

Thirty-four enquiries is a concrete marketing target. Some will come from your own customers, some from search, some from maps. Each source has its own lead time, which leads to the most important step.

Step 4: Plan backwards from lead times

Every channel takes time to produce results. Plan each month's marketing at least one lead time ahead.

The common failure is starting everything in June because June is when the phones went quiet. By then, the slow pieces, pages, rankings and reviews, are months behind. That's why a twelve-month calendar matters: it puts the slow work into the busy season, when you're too occupied to think about summer but your marketing partner isn't.

Step 5: Use your customer list properly

Your past furnace customers are the cheapest audience you will ever market to. They trust you, you know their homes, and many of them have no central air or a cooling system near the end of its life.

Two cautions. First, under Canada's anti-spam legislation, commercial emails and texts need consent, clear identification of the sender and a working unsubscribe, and you must be able to prove consent. Check how and when each contact agreed to hear from you before sending. Second, keep messages useful: an offer of a spring assessment or a plan renewal reminder is welcome; a weekly blast isn't.

A simple sequence for a consenting customer list:

1. February: maintenance plan renewal reminder, with spring tune-up booking.
2. March: "thinking about air conditioning or a heat pump?" with a link to your product page.
3. May: a reminder for anyone who opened but didn't reply, then stop.

Step 6: Rebalance spend across the year

Look at last year's marketing spend by month next to your capacity row. If most spend landed when you had no spare capacity, part of it was probably buying jobs you'd have won anyway, at peak advertising prices.

Consider moving a portion, say 15–25%, from the two busiest months into the three months before your slowest stretch. Then measure cost per booked job in both periods. If the shift works, continue. If winter suffers more than spring gains, move some back. This is a test, not a rule. Our seasonal growth planning service builds and runs exactly this kind of plan.

Step 7: Keep score monthly

A one-page monthly scorecard keeps the plan honest:

• enquiries and booked jobs by type (furnace, cooling, heat pump, maintenance)
• cost per booked job for paid channels
• spare crew capacity this month versus the same month last year
• plan sign-ups and renewals

After one full year, you'll have a second curve to compare with the first. The goal isn't a flat line; furnace companies will always be busiest in winter. The goal is a shallower valley.

Common mistakes

• Planning in June for June. Start slow-moving work at least four months ahead.
• Ignoring capacity. Generating leads you can't serve damages your reputation.
• Treating every month the same. Each needs its own primary message.
• Skipping the accountant. A marketing plan informs a financial plan; it doesn't replace one.

To see how the other levers support this plan, read selling cooling to heating customers and promoting lender financing, or browse all guides. When you're ready, call, text or email for the free 7-day review.