TL;DR
Map the HVAC and plumbing companies in your target area, sort them by size and how they look online, and pitch the owner in the shoulder season when the phones are quieter. Show them a gap you found, not a generic offer.
Find contractors on a mapHome service contractors are some of the most valuable clients a marketing agency or software company can have. A single HVAC replacement or a burst-pipe job is worth a lot, so a steady stream of local calls justifies real spending. They're also easy to find: every contractor wants to show up on the map when someone searches "plumber near me".
The skill is in picking the right ones and reaching the owner at a moment they'll listen.
Where to find them
Source | What it gives you |
|---|---|
Map listings | Every contractor in an area, with website, phone and reviews |
State contractor licence lookups | Licensed HVAC, plumbing and mechanical contractors, with licence status |
Contractor websites | Services, service area, team size, the owner's name |
Manufacturer dealer locators | Contractors certified to install particular equipment brands |
Local job boards | Contractors hiring technicians, a sign of growth |
Map listings give you the full picture fastest. Licence lookups confirm a company is real and licensed, which matters if you're about to invest time in a pitch.
Sort the list by opportunity
Not every contractor is a good client. Look at how they show up online and how big they are:
What you see | What it suggests | Pitch |
|---|---|---|
No website, or a bare-bones one | Relies on word of mouth and referrals | A proper website with service pages and online booking |
Strong reviews, weak search visibility | Good business, poor marketing | Local SEO and Google Business Profile work |
Paid ads running, average reviews | Spending money, converting poorly | Landing pages, call tracking, review generation |
Hiring several technicians | Growing fast, needs more calls | Lead generation and capacity planning |
Multiple locations | Established, with a marketing budget | Bigger retainers, software, reporting |
Our guide to finding businesses without a website covers the first group in detail.
Who decides
At most HVAC and plumbing companies, the owner decides on marketing and software. Owners are often on job sites during the day, so the office manager is a useful second contact: they schedule the jobs, answer the phones and know where the leads actually come from. Larger companies may have a general manager or marketing manager.
Timing: the shoulder seasons
HVAC demand peaks when the weather is at its hottest and coldest. During those weeks, owners are buried in service calls and won't read a marketing pitch. The shoulder seasons, spring and autumn, are quieter, and that's when owners think about how to keep the phones ringing next time.
HVAC owners are buried in service calls at the hottest and coldest times of year. Spring and autumn are quieter.
Plumbing is less seasonal, though cold snaps bring their own rush of burst pipes. For plumbers, avoid the days after a freeze and pitch when things are calm.
What to say
Contractors are practical. Show them something concrete about their own business:
Hi [Name], I searched "[service] [town]" this morning. [Company] didn't show up in the top map results, even though your [number] reviews are better than [competitor]'s, who did. That's usually fixable with [one specific change]. We work with [HVAC or plumbing] companies on [what you do]. Want me to send over what I found?
Offering the findings for free earns a reply more often than asking for a meeting.
Doing it with ManyPI
Disclosure: ManyPI is our product.
Map Search lets you draw an area on a map and pull the plumbers and heating companies inside it from OpenStreetMap, with website, phone and email where the map lists them. Filter to the ones with no website if that's your offer, save them to a list, and use Save and enrich to look for the owner's email. For bigger lists, describe them in a sentence, like "HVAC companies in Phoenix with more than 50 Google reviews that are hiring technicians, with the owner's email", and the agent researches it on the live web. Every email is checked before sending. The Map Search page shows how it works.
An HVAC search typed into the ManyPI agent.
One limit worth knowing: many small contractors are sole traders. In the UK, the ICO treats sole traders as individuals for email marketing, so consent rules apply. Check the rules where you're prospecting, and use the phone where email isn't allowed.
Written by
Ole Mai
Founder / ManyPI