The home services industry is booming. Analysts project it will reach $650 billion by 2027. Despite that growth, however, failure rates remain stubbornly high. Frankly, that doesn’t surprise me. After working with contractors across the country, and running my own company before joining Redwood Services, I’ve seen the same mistakes play out over and over again. I can say this with confidence: The businesses that thrive are not lucky. Usually, the root cause of failure isn’t market conditions, but simple discipline.

Discipline gap

Home services can be a dull business. Every day, we wake up and answer the phone, run service calls and review how things are going. Then repeat.

To do that well, over the long term, requires a lot of discipline. You have to commit to knowing your numbers, and you have to define what a successful day looks like. You have to be fanatical about process both on the phone and in the field.

Too many contractors focus only on results (usually after something goes wrong) instead of the behaviors that drive results. You can stare at lagging metrics like revenue or EBITDA all day, but changing them in positive ways will require understanding the factors upstream.

The real questions are, are you or your CSRs showing empathy on the phone? Are you building relationships in the field? If you have managers, are they coaching behaviors effectively?

When I hear, “It wasn’t hot enough,” or “The weather killed us,” what it usually means is, “We don’t have control because we don’t know what is going wrong.” And that’s perfectly understandable, but thriving contractors take responsibility for the levers they can pull.

Four non-negotiables

Successful contractors are almost always focused, day in, day out, on four non-negotiables:

Great people.

Call count.

Conversion rate.

Average sale.

I realize this may not be earth-shattering news, but it works. When you master those four elements, your business outlook tends to improve.

Great people: Everything starts here. You can have the most knowledgeable technician in the world, but if they have a massive ego, they will eventually damage your culture. Great companies build cultures where discipline, humility, and growth are expected.

In those environments, in my experience, the wrong people weed themselves out. Hiring right makes development easier. If you have the right people, they want to grow. They want coaching. If you hire wrong, no training program in the world will fix it.

Call count: Revenue begins with opportunity. If you don’t have enough calls, you don’t have enough chances to win. But often, we don’t even think about what “enough” means to us.

When I was running my own company, a coach once asked us, “How do you know if you had a successful day?” We couldn’t answer. A successful day should be defined in numbers: X calls, Y conversion rate, Z average ticket to get to whatever your target annual or quarterly revenue is.

When we put that structure in place, we had the best month for calls in company history. The next month, we beat it. And the next. As you might expect, they were the most profitable months we had ever had.

Conversion rate: Most contractors look at conversion after the fact.

Instead, look at the behaviors driving conversion. Do you or your technicians set expectations before starting work? Are they building rapport? Are they presenting options confidently? Something as simple as a CSR showing empathy instead of quoting a dispatch fee immediately can make a huge difference. 

I liken this business to airplane travel. When you get on a plane, you assume the pilot is technically competent. That goes without saying (one would hope). But if they get on the intercom mid-turbulence and reassure everyone, and maybe crack a joke, you remember that flight as a better experience. Same thing with home services.

It might seem unfair, given the work it takes to be technically proficient, but technical skills are assumed.

Communication earns you the right to show those skills. That’s why putting processes in place to ensure exceptional service leads to higher conversion rates.

Average sale: Think of this as less about upselling and more about thoroughness and professionalism.

When installing a system, don’t walk in and start working. Make sure you’re accounting for all contingencies. Recommend the solutions you genuinely think might help. Walk the customer through what will happen. Reinforce value.

Cultivating discipline

How do we cultivate discipline? Training. Treat training not as a one-time event, but as an ongoing process. Sending someone to a three-day seminar doesn’t create the world’s best tech. It might make an initial improvement, but human nature pulls people back toward routine and familiarity.

Improvement requires repetition over time. Think of a stone cutter striking a rock 100 times before it cracks. It wasn’t the final hit that made the difference. It was the cumulative effect. The same is true in technician development. Small, consistent behavioral improvements compound over time.

If one of the four fundamentals declines, answer some key questions and respond accordingly: Are we short on calls? Then focus on booking behavior and retention before buying more leads. Is conversion down? Audit field behaviors and phone scripts. Is the average sale amount slipping? Reinforce process and communication training. Are people underperforming? Reevaluate hiring and culture. Each metric influences the others, and discipline keeps them aligned.

This industry rewards discipline. It’s not glamorous. But I know it works. If you want to separate yourself from the 70% who fail, don’t chase marketing hacks, don’t blame the weather, and don’t hope for a miracle. Instead, focus on defining success, knowing your numbers, coaching behaviors, and building the right team.

Then do it again tomorrow. 

Dave Boduch is vice president of training at Redwood Services, a residential HVAC and plumbing platform operating 15 partner companies across the U.S.