Out-Smart the Off-Season: How Commercial Services Software Drives Off-Season Growth

Introduction

The off-season is when winning businesses are built. Every company experiences ups and downs—those “busy seasons” where everything seems to be moving at full speed, and the “off-seasons,” when growth slows and the phone rings a little less.

When demand slows, so do leads, and the competition for a smaller pool of opportunities gets fierce.

Smart companies use the off-season to fine-tune their strategies, build key relationships, and keep the sales pipeline flowing. By tapping into the right tools, they streamline operations, make data-driven decisions, and sharpen their prospecting efforts. It’s not just about getting through the quiet periods—it’s about staying proactive and thriving, even when the market slows down.

In these moments, having a strong tech stack to manage your entire sales cycle becomes vital. From prospecting and lead generation to enhancing team productivity, businesses must stay laser-focused on closing deals that fuel growth. By leveraging the right commercial services software, you can remain busy and profitable even when your competitors are contracting.

What is Commercial Services Software?

Commercial services software covers a wide range of tools, each designed to drive business efficiency and profitability. Some tools help identify new prospects and generate leads, while others focus on managing teams and equipment. Certain platforms improve fleet and route efficiency, while others provide buying signals and key data to boost performance.

But the common goal of all these tools? To streamline operations and help your business grow.

Categories of Commercial Services Software

1. Prospecting and Lead Generation Software: Tools like sales intelligence and property intelligence software help you identify prospects in your market who are ready to buy.

2. Sales Pipeline and Customer Relationship Management (CRM): These tools manage customer interactions, enhance relationships, and boost retention.

3. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): Integrates essential business functions like procurement, accounting, and supply chain management into a single system for better data-driven decisions.

4. Route Mapping Solutions: Optimize field sales and service routes, manage fleets, track assets, and automate dispatching.

5. Marketing Automation: Streamlines marketing efforts by managing multiple channels, automating tasks, and providing analytics for campaign effectiveness.

6. Human Resource Management Systems (HRMS): Simplify workforce administration tasks such as payroll, recruitment, and performance monitoring.

7. Project Management Software: Helps plan, execute, and close projects efficiently, ensuring teams stay aligned with timelines and budgets.

How Commercial Services Software Drives Efficiency and Profitability

These platforms do more than just save time—they reduce costs by minimizing human error and inefficiency. For example, a good friend of mine, who sells thermodynamic process controls, shared that he spends 75% of his time in prospecting, lead generation, driving, and handling other non-sales tasks, leaving only 25% for closing deals.

This reflects a common issue many sales teams face—what’s often called “windshield time” or time spent on finding deals and customer management rather than direct selling. Industry stats, including those from recruiting platforms like ZipRecruiter and Indeed, show that the average outside salesperson earns between $78,000 and $81,000 annually. If 50% of their time is spent on non-selling activities, that’s $36,000 to $41,500 in lost productivity.

Now, we all know that a great salesperson is worth their weight in gold, but imagine the return if they could spend more time selling rather than handling logistical tasks. This is exactly where commercial services platforms come into play, offering tools that streamline these tasks and free up time for more critical activities.

This is a great segue into the benefits of our first category of software—prospecting and lead generation tools—to explore how platforms like Convex can save you time and boost your team’s sales while also increasing efficiency.

Streamlining Prospecting, Lead Generation, and Growth with the Right Tools

If you ask any successful business owner or sales manager (or even sales rep, for that matter), they’ll tell you that sustainable growth begins with prospecting. You can’t rely on leads to magically appear in your inbox – you have to go out and find them. And when you’re competing in an industry as competitive as commercial services, inbound marketing alone won’t cut it. You need an outbound lead generation strategy that actively seeks out prospects.

Think of outbound lead generation as the engine that drives your sales team. While inbound marketing pulls customers toward your business, outbound prospecting and lead generation allows you to go out and find the right customers when you need them most.

But here’s the challenge: outbound prospecting can be time-consuming. According to Salesforce, salespeople spend 21% of their time “hunting” for deals. This includes prospecting, lead research, creating outreach messaging, and other related tasks. 21% of a traditional 40-hour work week equals around 2 hours per day, 4- 5 days each week.

Sales reps often spend hours researching potential leads, cold-calling prospects, and sifting through endless data to find qualified customers. Without the right tools, this can feel like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

How Outbound Lead Generation Platforms Solve These Challenges

This is where outbound lead generation platforms like Convex step in. Convex streamlines the entire prospecting process by automatically identifying target customers who are in your market and looking to make a purchase. This eliminates repetitive tasks, reducing the time spent on lead research, and giving your sales team the insights they need to reach the right prospects in a personalized way, quickly.

Here’s an example of how it works:

1. Speeding Up Lead Research: Start by logging into Convex and reviewing the “Signals” feature—our proprietary buyer intent data—to immediately see which prospects are “in-market” and ready to buy. Signals offer a snapshot of prospect behavior by tracking key industry topics like window washing, HVAC systems, or commercial cleaning inquiries. With this data, you can prioritize leads that show the strongest buying intent, saving your sales team valuable time and effort.

2. Tracking and Managing Prospects: Search for properties, accounts, and contacts using Convex’s property intelligence and sales intelligence data. Whether you’re targeting hospitals, airports, industrial buildings or any other property type, Convex gives you access to a treasure trove of data like permit histories, building size, equipment data, and transaction details. This helps you find not just any lead but the right lead—one that matches your product or service. You can also zero in on key decision-makers by searching for specific job titles or tenant information for each property.

3. Leverage Generative AI for Personalized Outreach: Once you’ve identified a potential lead, Convex’s Generative AI steps in to create customized outreach. With just a couple of clicks, you can send a personalized email or draft a phone script tailored to the prospect’s needs. The AI uses Convex’s intent data, firmographic details, and your company’s contact database to craft messages that resonate with your audience—boosting your chances of getting responses.

4. Integrating with Your CRM: While Convex offers CRM functionality, you may already have a tool in place that works well for you. After the initial outreach, Convex lets you set reminders for follow-ups and manage your leads effectively. You can also export lead lists, assign sales stages, tag coworkers for collaboration, and assign dollar values to each opportunity before moving them to your CRM.

Convex’s CRM functionality ensures you’re not missing any key steps in the sales process. And for more advanced tracking, you can easily integrate with leading CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot to keep everything flowing seamlessly through your sales pipeline.

The Impact on Your Bottom Line

It’s easy to see how outbound lead generation tools can save time, but the real value lies in their ability to directly boost your revenue. Think about this: if your sales reps are spending 75% of their time on tasks like driving or researching prospects, it’s costing your business thousands in lost productivity every year.

By using an outbound lead generation platform like Convex, you’re empowering your team to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time focusing on what matters—closing deals. The result? Increased efficiency and, ultimately, greater profitability. In a competitive market like commercial services, having that edge can be the difference between growth and stagnation.

Case Study: How Convex Helped Comfort Systems USA Double Their Business

Four years ago, Comfort Systems USA Southwest was already a multimillion-dollar company providing HVAC services across Arizona and New Mexico. Despite their success, they recognized a massive opportunity in the market—worth over $100 billion—but needed a more efficient way to capture it.

Before adopting Convex, their sales team was relying on time-consuming methods like driving from building to building and manually searching LinkedIn to find prospects. It would sometimes take days just to book enough meetings to fill their sales pipeline. That inefficiency led them to Convex’s Atlas platform.

With Convex, Comfort Systems USA transformed how their sales reps approached prospecting. The platform allowed them to:

• Target properties based on key factors like building size and whether they were owner-occupied—ideal indicators of a good fit for their services.
• Access historical data about work done on each property, such as previous installations or repairs, giving the sales team more context before contacting potential clients.

As a result, Comfort Systems doubled in size over the next four years. Sales reps now only need to spend a few hours each week on prospecting, knowing exactly which prospects to target, thanks to Convex’s property intelligence. They even reduced the onboarding time for new sales reps from six to nine months to just two to three months, making the entire team more efficient and effective.

But we realize that you may be considering many tools before making a final decision; here are some factors to consider that will help you choose the right lead generation platform for your team.

Choosing the Right Outbound Lead Generation Platform

Not all outbound lead generation platforms are created equal. The tools that work best for your business need to align with your unique goals and challenges. Here are the key factors you should consider when selecting the right platform:

1. Target Audience:

The first thing you want is a platform that allows you to filter and segment leads based on the industries, geographies, and profiles that matter most to your business. For instance, if your focus is commercial HVAC or janitorial services, the platform should provide deep insights into these sectors. Look for features like property intelligence or buyer intent data to make sure you’re targeting the right people and companies.

2. Integration Capabilities:

Your lead generation tool needs to integrate seamlessly with your CRM and other sales tools to ensure everything works in harmony. Integration isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s crucial for creating a unified workflow. Platforms that sync with popular CRMs like Salesforce or HubSpot allow your team to keep track of data, manage the sales pipeline, and reduce manual data entry, saving you time and energy.

3. Scalability:

Your platform should be flexible enough to scale with your business. Whether you’re in rapid growth mode or navigating seasonal shifts, your lead generation tool needs to adapt. Scalability ensures consistent performance as your lead volume grows or contracts so your team can maintain focus without worrying about the platform’s capacity to handle the load.

4. Automation Features:

The right platform should take repetitive, time-consuming tasks off your team’s plate. Look for tools that allow you to automate follow-up emails, lead scoring, scheduling, and reporting. Automation lets your team focus on what matters most: building relationships and closing deals rather than spending hours on administrative work.

5. Ease of Use:

Even the most powerful tool won’t help if your team can’t figure out how to use it. Make sure the platform you choose is intuitive and user-friendly. Your team should be able to navigate the system easily without requiring a long learning curve. A simple, clear interface can drastically improve how quickly your team adopts the platform and integrates it into their daily operations.

Conclusion

Outbound lead generation platforms are more than just tools—they are game-changers for companies aiming to streamline prospecting and fuel sustainable growth.

With the right platform in place, your sales team can shift its focus from hunting for leads to what they do best—building relationships, closing deals, and scaling your business.

A proactive outbound lead generation strategy doesn’t just provide immediate sales boosts; it creates predictable and sustainable growth.

By equipping your team with the right tools, you’ll unlock greater efficiency, productivity, and, ultimately, an enhanced bottom line. Whether your goal is to increase lead volume, improve lead quality, or drive higher conversions, the right outbound platform can help you achieve all of these goals—and more.

Ready to see how Convex can help your business grow like Comfort Systems or the dozens of other commercial services sales teams using our platform? Schedule a demo today!