Get Your Business Ready for the New Year: Work Smarter, Not Harder

2025 is coming to an end, and most of us are wondering how that happened so quickly. Right now, you are probably finishing jobs, making holiday plans, and trying to anticipate what next year will bring. The home improvement industry can be a tough one. Cautious homeowners, tariffs, a competitive market, and an uncertain economy certainly keep you on your toes. The upside is that you have time now to regroup, refocus, and set your business up to increase profitability.

Here are some steps to help you work smarter, not harder, in the year ahead:

Review Your Financials

It might not be the most exciting part of running your business, but it’s important to take stock of your financials.

• Take a close look at your financial reports: income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements. Understanding your numbers now helps you make smarter decisions for the coming year.
• Take advantage of any year-end tax strategies.
• Review pricing. With material and labor costs rising, make sure your pricing structure accurately reflects the actual costs.
• Create a budget for next year. If you need a jump start, FTL executives Todd Grzybinski and Eric Fuchs share tips for proactively managing a seasonal business budget.

This isn’t about turning you into a bookkeeper. It’s about helping you make confident decisions backed by real data. Now that you know where your money’s going, it’s equally important to understand how your team is operating day to day.

Assess Your Team and Processes

Team assessment goes beyond performance reviews. It’s about making sure that your people, processes, and priorities are aligned to save time and increase profitability.

Begin with workload and efficiency. Review the number of calls, installs, or maintenance visits each tech completed, and note any delays, callbacks, or periods of downtime. From there, you can determine whether your staffing levels and processes are supporting demand.

Next, review your scheduling and routing. Are techs spending too much time driving between jobs? If so, consider investing in GPS routing tools to streamline travel time.

Finally, check in on your team culture. Research shows that employees in collaborative environments are 50% more effective and more engaged in their work. Encourage open dialogue and ask your team what would make their jobs easier or more efficient.

As everyone starts talking about New Year’s resolutions, encourage your team to set some professional ones of their own; after all, resolutions can go beyond cutting down on fast food trips or squeezing in more family time. Resolutions or not, the end of the year is the perfect chance to reflect on accomplishments and set new goals.

Review Marketing and Sales Efforts

If you set marketing or sales goals this year, check to see how close you came to hitting them. Look at the strategies you used: what brought in leads and what fell flat? This review helps you identify which efforts delivered the best return so you can double down on what works and adjust or retire what doesn’t as you plan for next year.

Marketing Goal Examples

• Increase website traffic by X%
• Increase the number of Google five-star ratings
• Boost engagement on social media platforms
• Run a successful seasonal promotion campaign

Sales Goal Examples

• Increase total revenue by X%
• Boost average ticket size by promoting financing
• Grow service agreement or maintenance plan memberships by X%
• Increase replacement system sales versus repair-only jobs

Sales and marketing goals can also include increasing repeat customer bookings and improving customer satisfaction. Use what you’ve learned this year to fine-tune your marketing and sales strategy so you can start the new year with a clear plan and stronger results. Once your sales and marketing goals are set, there’s one more strategy that can make an even bigger impact on next year’s bottom line.

Offer Financing to Increase Profitability

As you prepare for 2026, it's also a good time to review your current financing setup. First of all, are you offering financing? If not, we need to talk because financing can be the difference between winning a job and losing it to a competitor.

If you already offer financing, it’s worth doing a little analysis. Are your offers still competitive? Do your loan options match what today’s homeowners actually need? If not, FTL can help you update your offerings.

Another critical question to consider: are you losing customers who don’t qualify under your primary program? If so, it might be time to partner with a second-look lender - someone who can help you approve more homeowners without taking on more risk.

Evaluating the Financial Health of Your HVAC Business

We know you want to feel more in control of your business and better prepared for whatever next year throws at you. While you can’t prepare for everything, our guide, “Evaluating the Financial Health of Your HVAC Business,” can help you take control of areas of your business that can be improved.

It’s a free download designed to help you take a closer look at your numbers, streamline your day-to-day operations, and set goals to increase profitability.