Win the work HVAC buyers pay more for, before you sell.

Buyers do not value every pound of turnover the same way. A maintenance contract book that renews each year tells a buyer the income carries on after you leave; a year of one-off installs tells them very little about next year.

That is why the programme's growth stage aims at the work buyers value most, such as PPM contracts, commercial clients and accredited F-Gas, MCS or OFTEC work.

The mix matters too. Commercial PPM spread across many clients, F-Gas and REFCOM refrigeration work and MCS heat pump capability are all harder for a buyer to build from scratch than domestic reactive callouts, which is why they draw more interest.

Spread matters as much as volume. New work that adds to one main contractor's share can make the business riskier in a buyer's eyes, so growth is planned with the whole customer list in view.

Start from what the business already does well and what buyers ask for, then agree which contracts, clients and services are worth going after.

Timing matters. Growth work comes early, three to four years out, so the extra contract income has time to show in the accounts a buyer will read. A contract won in the final months before a sale shows a buyer very little history.

Research and careful targeting find the commercial clients, landlords and facilities managers who buy planned maintenance, rather than waiting for the phone to ring.

The approaches themselves are patient and direct, made quietly and without pressure, to open conversations that can turn into service agreements. Martin's work is finding owners who are weighing up a sale before they list, and growth marketing applies the same groundwork to winning the work HVAC buyers pay more for.

Customers who already call you out for breakdowns know your engineers. Offering them a service agreement is one of the plainest ways to build recurring income.

The same goes for installations. A buyer will ask which customers could take maintenance after an installation, or additional services, and whether the engineers and the capacity are there to deliver them. Building that follow-on into how you quote and hand over a job turns one-off work into income that repeats.

More work only helps a sale if it adds profit. At the same time we look at pricing, job mix and costs, so that growth adds profit as well as work.

The two together give a buyer what they are looking for: income that repeats, from a spread of customers, at a margin that holds up.