The quarterly owner review: an agenda you can run yourself

Why heating companies need a quarterly rhythm

Heating businesses run on a seasonal clock. The autumn ramp, the winter peak, the spring shoulder and the summer lull each create different problems. A quarterly review lands one meeting in each, early enough to catch a problem while it can still be fixed.

It also suits the size of most companies. In Statistics Canada's Canadian Business Counts, June 2026, 57.6% of the 16,754 employer locations in plumbing, heating and air-conditioning had one to four employees, by our calculation. In firms that size, the owner is also the dispatcher, the salesperson and the bookkeeper. A fixed, short meeting is often the only time the business gets looked at from above.

Preparation: one week before

Good reviews are decided before the meeting. A week ahead, the owner or office manager gathers:

1. The scorecard, updated through the last day of the quarter, with every KPI split by furnace, boiler and heat pump where it applies.
2. The same quarter last year, for comparison. Comparing a winter quarter to an autumn quarter tells you only that winter is busy.
3. The decision log from the last review.
4. A market check: any new public data release and any change to programs in your province.
5. One worry. Each attendee writes down the one thing they are most concerned about. It keeps the meeting honest.

For the market check, three sources cover most of it: Statistics Canada's heating-system table (every two years), the business counts (twice a year) and your province's program pages. Our provincial pages list the programs and administrators we track.

The agenda: ninety minutes

Keep to the clock. The most common failure is spending an hour on the scorecard and rushing the decisions.

Reading the scorecard by equipment line

Read each KPI in three columns, furnace, boiler and heat pump, and ask the same three questions of each:

1. Did it move against the same quarter last year? Small moves are noise; agree in advance what counts as a real move for each KPI.
2. Is there an obvious reason? Weather, a program opening or closing, a new hire, a price change.
3. Does it change anything we planned? If not, move on.

Some patterns are worth looking out for:

• Quotes rising, wins flat on one line suggests a pricing or follow-up problem, not a marketing one.
• Enquiries rising, installs flat in a winter quarter suggests a capacity limit; check missed calls.
• Spend per booked install rising on one line while others hold steady suggests the ads for that line need attention.
• Maintenance agreements falling at quarter end suggests renewals aren't being chased.

Don't compare yourself to an industry average. We haven't found a reliable public one for Canadian heating companies, and a made-up target leads to bad decisions.

The market check

Fifteen minutes is enough. Ask:

• Has a program in our province opened, closed or changed its rules since last quarter?
• Has Statistics Canada released new data that shifts our picture of the market?
• Has anything changed in our competitor field that we can see, such as a new firm advertising heavily or a known rival closing?

Remember the business counts' warning: Statistics Canada advises against treating them as a time series, so don't read a change between editions as market growth or decline.

Making three decisions

The final twenty minutes produce three decisions, one in each of three categories:

1. Grow: something to do more of.
2. Fix: something that isn't working.
3. Stop: something to drop, to free time or money.

Each decision is written as a single sentence with four parts: the action, the owner, the date, and the KPI that will show whether it worked. A template:

"[Action] by [date]. Owner: [name]. We'll know it worked if [KPI] moves from [current value] to [target value] by next review."

An example: "Move $1,000 a month of paid search from furnace emergency terms to heat pump terms from 1 April. Owner: office manager. We'll know it worked if heat pump quotes issued rise from [current] to [target] per month by the July review."

Why three? Because small companies can complete three meaningful changes in a quarter while still running the business. Seven decisions usually means four are forgotten.

Follow-up: the decision log

After the meeting, add the three decisions to a one-page log that lists every decision since you started. At the next review, the log is the first item on the agenda. Over a year, it becomes a record of how the company was actually managed, which helps with lenders, partners and, eventually, anyone valuing the business.

A healthy log after four quarters shows most decisions completed, a few dropped for sound reasons, and the KPIs attached to completed decisions mostly moving the right way. If most decisions are "in progress" for months, they were too big; split them.

A seasonal calendar of review topics

Each quarter has a natural emphasis:

• Winter review (January): missed calls, emergency capacity, and whether the autumn's planned installs were completed.
• Spring review (April): shoulder-season sales, maintenance renewals, hiring plans for autumn.
• Summer review (July): heat pump and cooling performance, training, pre-season campaigns.
• Autumn review (October): capacity for the coming peak, after-hours coverage, rebate status for the winter.

The gas season guide explains why the year breaks down this way.

Common mistakes

• Reviewing without last year's same quarter for comparison.
• Letting the meeting drift into operations, such as scheduling next week's jobs.
• Making decisions without a KPI attached.
• Skipping the winter review because everyone is busy.
• Running a separate marketing meeting, so spend never meets the line it serves.

Getting help

You can run every part of this yourself. If you want someone to prepare the scorecard and market check and hold the discipline, our Quarterly owner review service does that, and it is quoted in writing. We are a business and marketing service, not a contractor. Call, text or email to set up a first review.