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Shoulder season is the period of time between your peak busy seasons when customer demand naturally drops off. For HVAC, it's the spring and fall. For plumbing, it might be the non-holiday weeks in Q4.
The obvious problem is lower revenue. But the real damage can be deeper:
It impacts cashflow: You still have fixed costs like truck payments, insurance, rent, and, most of all, payroll.
It dampens morale: A-players want to work. When they're sitting, they get antsy. They feel their earning potential shrink.
It causes bad decisions: Panic leads to taking jobs at any price. You throw money at Google or Meta, offer massive discounts that gut your profit margins, and take on jobs you know you'll lose money on, just to keep the guys busy.
But here’s the truth I’ve learned from working with 300+ business owners in the last 18-months, shoulder season isn't a problem to be survived. It's an opportunity to be won.
The best operators use this time to lock in future revenue, strengthen customer relationships, and fine-tune the systems that will make their next peak season even more profitable.
Short-Term: How to Keep Your Techs Busy
For most owners, the challenge of shoulder season is keeping your techs busy every week. Here are three ways you can dig up business:
1. Focus on Reactivation
You can spend a lot of money driving cold leads on Google and Meta, when you already have a customer base that knows you, trusts you, and wants to work with you.
Follow up on old propspects that never closed and drop messages to customers you’ve not interacted with for a while — a simple “How’s everything going with your system? Just wanted to check in” can be enough to drive some business.
2. Create Seasonal Offers
Don’t resort to selling at any cost, your work still needs to be profitable during the slower season. But think about how you can create timely offers to solve future problems for your customers (e.g. "Get your A/C ready for summer").
3. Service Your Maintenance Plans
We talk a lot about the power of maintenance plans or “Membership Clubs” in this newsletter. They’re incredible revenue drivers and monthly recurring revenue makes your books so much more predictable.
Booking proactive winter tune-ups demonstrates value and keeps you top-of-mind. When you show you care through these smaller jobs, membership renewals become an easy decision.
The Long-Term Fix: Use This Time to Set Your 2026 Goals
The tactics above will get you through the week. But this is the work that will get you through the year and make it your best yet.
Shoulder season is the planning season. Here’s your 2026 playbook:
Conduct a "season autopsy": Pull your reports from the last peak season. What worked? What broke? Which marketing channels and jobs delivered profit, and which just delivered low-margin chaos?
Analyze job costing: Where did you actually make money? I've seen shops run themselves ragged on a popular service that after labor, callbacks, and parts, was a net loser. Find your profit centers and plan to double down on them.
Set specific goals for 2026: Don't just say "make more money." Get specific like “Increase average ticket price by 15% by focusing on system accessory sales.”
Fix Your Incentives
Shoulder season is when you should be building towards the next 12 months. And I truly believe that you can't have a proactive business built on a reactive pay structure.
If your techs don't know exactly how to win, they'll just do what’s needed to get by, rather than excelling. You need a clear incentive pay structure that aligns their goals with yours. You need to reward them for the right behaviors like efficiency, 5-star reviews, maintenance sales, and low callback rates, not just hours clocked.
This is exactly why we built ShareWillow. We help service businesses design and manage incentive plans that motivate employees and drive business results.
Want to See How Incentives Can Grow Your Business?
Test out of free calculator or book a call here. Let’s make 2026 your best year yet.