The first real hot day lands in June, and your phone knows it before you do. By nine the calls start, everybody wants their AC looked at today, and a good chunk of them are houses you already serviced last spring.
Here's the part that stings. You could have booked most of that work back in April, on a slow week, at a time that suited your schedule instead of theirs. The customers would have said yes. They just forgot they needed you until the heat reminded them, and by then they're calling three people, not one.
Last year's customer list is the warmest lead you'll ever have. These folks already let you into their house, already paid you, already know your truck. In a state this size, half of them probably know somebody else you've worked for. And most home-service pros are sitting on that list doing nothing with it, season after season.
The catch worth naming first
This whole plan has one requirement, and it's fair to say it out loud before you get excited. It only works if you know who you served last year: a name, an address, the job you did, and a phone number.
If that lives in your head, in a glovebox stuffed with carbon-copy invoices, or scattered across a texting app, a paper notebook, and your email, you don't have a list yet. You've got raw material. The clever text message is not step one. Getting those names somewhere you can actually search is.
Step one: get the list somewhere you can search
It doesn't have to be fancy, and you don't need new software to start. A plain spreadsheet beats a shoebox every time.
Make yourself five columns: name, phone, address, what you did, and the month you did it. That last one matters more than it looks, because seasonal work repeats on a calendar and you'll want to sort by it later.
- Already use invoicing software? Jobber, Housecall Pro, QuickBooks, and most of the others can export your customers to a spreadsheet file (look for an "export" or "download CSV" button, where a CSV is just a spreadsheet the computer can read). You may already have your list and not know it.
- Still on paper? Spend one evening typing last season's invoices into a free Google Sheet. Boring work, one time, and then you own the list for good.
- Living in your texts? Scroll back through last spring and summer and write down every job. You'll miss a few. That's fine, you're building the habit as much as the list.
Pull the names worth texting
You don't text everyone the same week. You text the right people right before their service comes due, so the message lands as a favor instead of a sales pitch.
- Sort your list by the type of work. AC tune-ups in one group, pool openings in another, chimney sweeps and sprinkler start-ups in their own.
- Inside each group, look at who you served this time last year. Someone whose AC you tuned up last May is due again. That's your list.
- Skip anyone you parted with on bad terms, and skip the one-off emergency calls who were never really recurring customers. Quality over volume.
In a state where a lot of your route is a ten-minute drive, grouping by neighborhood helps too. If you're already headed to Cranston on Tuesday, book three Cranston tune-ups that day and save yourself the backtracking.
Write one text they'll actually answer
Short beats polished. These people know you, so you don't need a paragraph. One or two sentences, a reason, and an easy way to say yes.
Something like this:
"Hi Dave, it's Mike from Narragansett Heating. We tuned up your AC last May, want me to get you on the schedule before the first heat wave? Booking link here: [link]. Reply STOP to opt out."
A few things make that work:
- Use their name and yours. It proves this isn't a blast from a stranger, even though you're sending the same note to thirty people.
- Give them a booking link. That's a web page where they pick a time themselves, from a tool like Calendly or whatever your invoicing software offers. No phone tag, and they can book it at 10 PM from the couch.
- Include an opt-out. "Reply STOP" isn't just polite, it keeps you on the right side of texting rules. If you ever move up to a mass-texting service, it'll ask you to register your business first (a process called 10DLC, which is the phone carriers' way of separating real local businesses from spammers). For a small list sent from your own phone, keep it personal and keep the opt-out.
Send it right before the weather turns
Timing is the whole trick. The same text that feels pushy in March feels helpful the week before it gets hot.
Watch the ten-day forecast. When you see the first real warm stretch coming for the AC crowd, or the first hard frost for the sprinkler blow-outs, that's your window. Fire off the batch two or three days ahead, while people still have a free evening to book.
Be honest about what this won't do. It won't fix a list you never kept, and it won't win back a customer who was unhappy last year. It also won't replace picking up the phone for the big jobs. What it does is simple and worth a lot: it gets the easy, recurring work onto your calendar before the customer forgets, or before they call the guy whose magnet is on the fridge right next to yours.
Worth doing this week
You don't need the whole system by Friday. You need a start.
- Open a blank Google Sheet and make the five columns: name, phone, address, job, month.
- Export last year's customers from your invoicing software, or type in one month of paper invoices to get rolling.
- Sort by service type and flag everyone who's due in the next six weeks.
- Write your one text, save it somewhere you can copy it fast, and send it to the first ten names the next time the forecast turns.
If wiring up the booking link or the export feels like one more thing you don't have time for, that's the kind of setup we help Rhode Island shops get running in an afternoon. Either way, the list is yours, and it's the best lead you've got.