
Case Study: How This Austin Contractor Increased Close Rate by 27%
January 16, 2024
By Willa Frej
Summary
In August 2024, Pika partnered with Radiant Plumbing & Air Conditioning, a Texas-based HVAC/plumbing contractor owned by T3 Services Group, to provide support with continued top-line growth.
They engaged in a two-month pilot of ServicePitch, Pika's next-generation sales tool. Scope involved three comfort advisors and delivered significant impact, including:
- 27% increase in close rate for Pika-created estimates compared to non-Pika user estimates
- 7% increase in average ticket size for Pika-created estimates compared to non-Pika user estimates
- 17% increase in average ticket size for pilot users' Pika-created estimates vs. off-the-shelf created estimates during pilot period
Customer Context and Sales Process
As HVAC rollups scale their platforms, organic growth has become a critical complement to acquisitions. With replacement sales driving revenues, increasing close rates and average ticket sizes are essential, though notoriously challenging, levers for growth. Meanwhile, rising competition in local markets underscores the need for platforms to differentiate themselves through their customer experience.
Radiant's previous sales process relied on off-the-shelf sales tools for presenting proposals to homeowners. However, this process presented several challenges:
- Comfort advisors felt the presentations were not visually compelling, especially given the high price point
- Advisors struggled to effectively communicate the benefits of higher-priced systems
- Calculating rebates on the fly was difficult, leading to inconsistent promises to homeowners
- Sales productivity was constrained by the limitations of their existing tools
Pilot Setup and Engagement Model
The first step was defining who the 3 pilot users would be. Through discussions with T3, it was agreed that these should be comfort advisors who were open to embracing new tools and high performers who already had above average close rates.
The two-month pilot included:
- White-glove onboarding support for smooth implementation and integration
- Weekly office hours with comfort advisors for hands-on training and feedback
- Weekly leadership check-ins to track progress and resolve issues
- Metrics deep-dive sessions at the end of the pilot to measure ROI
ServicePitch Value and Impact
The pilot delivered a meaningful lift across critical sales metrics while controlling for seasonality, temperature changes, and historical performance. Key results included:
Close Rate:
- Pika pilot users: 27 percentage points higher than non-users during the pilot period
- Pre-pilot YTD: Only a 4 percentage point difference between pilot and non-pilot users
Average Ticket Size:
Pika users: ~7% higher vs. non-users during the pilot period
Customer Feedback
Pilot users praised the tool for its professionalism, data visualization, and ease of use:
&lquo;I've had multiple customers praise the professionalism and detail of the Pika presentation. The data reflecting potential utility savings and rebates/tax credits has pushed customers to choose higher-efficiency systems.&rquo; — Comfort Advisor #1
&lquo;Being able to show a homeowner what their historical energy savings would have been with a new, more efficient unit is a really powerful feature.&rquo; — Comfort Advisor #2
Scale-Out and Continued Expansion
Encouraged by the impact driven by the pilot, T3 made the decision to roll out ServicePitch across its brand portfolio, beginning with the remainder of the Radiant Austin team, as well as another of T3's brands in the Mountain West.
Within only a few weeks of onboarding the rest of the Radiant team, nearly every one of the comfort advisors was using Pika for a majority of their jobs. By the third week of onboarding the new branch, ~100% of all jobs had been sold through Pika.
Pika and T3 are continuing to work together to continue the roll-out across T3's portfolio and provide support across other critical workflows (permitting, rebate filing, etc.)