Your customers have evolved. Your positioning hasn’t.

What HARDI’s Voice of Contractor data reveals about the gaps costing you share of wallet.

I spent the last few hours analyzing HARDI‘s 2025 breakout session from Vegas. The data is clean. Six years of longitudinal research across 118,000 contractor businesses. And it tells a specific story that most of your leadership team is still missing.

Your customers aren’t dissatisfied. They’re diversifying. They’re rating you well while spending less with you. And the gaps between what matters most to them and what you’re actually delivering are wide enough that your competitors are already stepping in.

Here’s what the data shows.

Know Your Market

118,000 contractor businesses nationally. Six years of HARDI data. One clear pattern.

76% of contractors are residential-focused. Yet 42% of total HVAC purchase volume comes from non-residential. Your growth narrative is misaligned with where money flows.

But that’s not the issue worth fixing right now.

The Generational Gap Is Already Here

45% of primary purchase decision-makers at contractor businesses are over age 55. That’s not the story.

The story is this: The contractor field itself is getting younger. Over the past decade (2014-2024), the share of technicians and installers under 35 has grown by 10 percentage points.

You’ve got a decision-making layer that values relationships, systematic approaches, and proven methods. And you’ve got a generation of field operators entering the system who think digitally, expect transparency, and compare suppliers effortlessly.

Your go-to-market strategy is built for the exiting generation. The people running operations in three years are already in the field. You’re positioning for yesterday’s buyer.

Product Availability Wins. Everything Else Is Secondary.

Product availability ranks as the #1 attribute contractors evaluate when choosing a supplier. Consistent. Every single year. For six years. It outranks pricing, delivery, and brand.

70% of contractors say equipment is the single most critical product to have in stock. Parts follow at roughly 50%, along with ductwork and sheet metal.

When equipment isn’t in stock, contractors want same-day or next-day delivery. There’s no negotiation here.

The shift that matters: Brand importance has dropped from #4 to #7 on the contractor priority list. Technical support, supplier relationships, and post-sales support now rank ahead of brand.

You can’t brand your way out of operational friction. Contractors have moved past brand loyalty. They’re buying on transaction efficiency and execution.

Territory Manager. Counter Salesperson. Know the Difference.

Territory managers have the highest influence over equipment purchases. Counter salespeople drive parts and supplies decisions.

Here’s what matters: Contractors who cited counter salesperson as their primary influence were more likely to stay loyal despite lower overall distributor ratings. Counter relationships create switching costs that performance metrics don’t.

Your commission structures and compensation models aren’t built around this reality. They should be.

The deeper insight: Relationship depth at the counter level is a stickiness factor. If you want to protect wallet share when operational performance slips, your counter staff is where that protection lives.

Your Share of Wallet Is Bleeding. Here’s Where.

88% of residential HVAC contractors offer multiple brands. But this is the real issue: Contractors offering multiple residential HVAC brands are placing fewer total orders with their primary distributor compared to five years ago.

This isn’t diversification for competition. It’s calculated portfolio spreading away from you.

When contractors buy elsewhere, they’re buying heating and AC parts, motors, compressors, related components. Controls and control parts come second. These aren’t edge cases. This is core wallet share leaving your business.

Multi-trade contractors make this worse. 21% of contractors doing both HVAC and plumbing source plumbing products from a different distributor because you don’t carry them. For commercial HVAC, it’s 8%. For refrigeration, 6%.

The opportunity sits inside a problem: Plumbing contractors consolidate spend with a single distributor more than other segments. Enter their plumbing category, and you capture higher percentage of their total spend, not just HVAC spend.

You’re not losing share to a direct competitor. You’re losing it to your own strategic gaps. Money walks out the door because you chose not to follow where your customer evolved.

Financing: The Revenue Lever You’re Not Pulling

Average HVAC quotes have increased 79% since 2019, from $5,000+ to $10,000+. This is a financing problem.

Only 75% of residential contractors are offering financing. And of those, only 1 in 3 jobs get financed. You’ve got an adoption problem and a utilization problem.

The leverage point: When financing is offered by sales early in the presentation, contractors finance a higher percentage of jobs. Larger contractors finance more. Older contractors finance more. The ones with systems win.

If financing isn’t a core revenue lever in your go-to-market strategy, if it’s an afterthought when customers ask, you’re leaving 10%+ of potential project value on the table. In a $106 billion industry, that’s material.

And here’s the connection nobody’s making: Contractors financing more jobs are installing higher-value equipment (variable-speed systems, dual-fuel). Financing doesn’t just move volume. It moves margin.

Succession Planning: Know Who’s Consolidating

Only 36% of contractor businesses have a formal succession plan. 32% say no. 31% aren’t sure. Smaller operations are planning poorly.

And 11% of contractors with succession plans intend to sell to private equity or corporate buyers.

That’s a consolidation signal you need to map. Some of your “contractor customers” will become corporate-backed operations inside 18-24 months. Different procurement standards. Different decision-makers. Different product demands.

If you haven’t identified which of your top 100 customers are consolidation targets, you’re missing a critical business planning variable. This should already be in your account strategy.

The 454B Shortage Revealed a Pattern

65% of contractors said the shortage had no revenue impact. But 30% experienced negative impact.

Weighted analysis puts total industry loss between 1.5%-2% of revenue potential. In a $106 billion market, that’s $1.6-$2.1 billion.

The contractors who didn’t suffer? They were providing demand forecasts to their distributors. The ones who weathered it best communicated anticipated volume in advance.

Predictability is worth more than inventory. If your customers aren’t giving you forecasts, you have a relationship depth problem and a systems problem. You haven’t created the mechanism for contractors to share future demand signals.

Equipment Is Getting More Efficient. But Not Yet Market Standard.

The directional trends are clear:

34 points net effect for variable-speed compressor systems. 21 points net effect for dual-fuel systems. 4 points net effect for single-stage systems.

Equipment is advancing. Higher efficiency, higher value products are being installed.

But reality: 31% of contractors report variable-speed installations represent less than 30% of their total work. Most are under 50%.

The connection worth noting: Contractors financing a higher percentage of jobs are more likely to see gains in variable-speed installations. Financing access directly impacts product mix and margin. It’s not a volume lever. It’s a mix lever.

Distributor Performance: The Paradox

51% of contractors rate their primary distributor as “good.” That reads as healthy.

But 71% of contractors rating their distributor as “fair” or “poor” are purchasing more from competitors. And even the “good” rated distributors are losing wallet share.

Comparing importance versus actual performance reveals the gaps:

Product Availability = #1 in importance. Moderate performance gap. Competitive Pricing = Most negative gap. Biggest opportunity to improve. Technical Support = Significant underperformance. Fulfillment and Delivery = Significant underperformance. Training and Education = Meaningful gap with clear upside.

You’re not losing because ratings are low. You’re losing because performance on what matters most has fallen short of what contractors expect.

Multi-Trade Business: The Clear Opportunity

Among contractors doing both HVAC and plumbing (roughly 40,000 businesses nationally), about 50% of purchases go to a single distributor. That’s sticky. The gap reveals the opportunity:

Contractors are sourcing plumbing fixtures (kitchen, bath, toilets) and water heaters from competitors.

Water heaters matter because:

1. Natural extension of HVAC relationships. Same customer. Similar decision-making.
2. High-margin category.
3. Lower barrier to entry than full plumbing product breadth.
4. Contractors buying plumbing products elsewhere are placing less volume with their primary HVAC supplier than five years ago.

1. Natural extension of HVAC relationships. Same customer. Similar decision-making.
2. High-margin category.
3. Lower barrier to entry than full plumbing product breadth.
4. Contractors buying plumbing products elsewhere are placing less volume with their primary HVAC supplier than five years ago.

This is erosion disguised as diversification. But it’s actionable. Enter the water heater category, and you change the consolidation dynamic. Higher percentage of total spend captures with a single product line shift.

What This Means. What You Need to Do About It.

Your customers have already evolved. You’re the variable.

The contractors in this data are:

Diversifying sourcing because you haven’t solved for their total category needs. Rating you well while spending less because relationship doesn’t protect from operational gaps. Getting younger in the field while older decision-makers still control today’s purchases. That’s a messaging problem. Using financing as a competitive lever while you’re still selling it as an afterthought. Planning consolidation while you haven’t adapted account strategy to protect or capture it. Withholding forecasts from average suppliers and sharing them with winners. That’s a relationship quality metric.

The gap isn’t you versus a direct competitor. It’s what contractors need versus what you’ve optimized to deliver.

This isn’t complicated. It’s just work.

Before Next Week’s Leadership Meeting

• Map your top 100 customers by multi-trade status and what they’re buying elsewhere. If you can’t, you don’t understand your business.
• Align your commission structures around what actually drives behavior: product availability, technical support, order fulfillment. Not brand. Not relationship depth alone.
• Identify exactly where you’re losing wallet share. Create specific recovery initiatives, not quarterly hopes.
• Assess whether your field teams and counter staff need different positioning strategies. The data suggests they do.
• Quantify how much revenue you’re leaving on the table by not positioning financing as a core lever. Then make the structural changes to move that number.
• Map which of your top customers are consolidation targets. Know who’s likely to sell to PE or corporate in the next 18 months. Adjust account strategy accordingly.

• Map your top 100 customers by multi-trade status and what they’re buying elsewhere. If you can’t, you don’t understand your business.
• Align your commission structures around what actually drives behavior: product availability, technical support, order fulfillment. Not brand. Not relationship depth alone.
• Identify exactly where you’re losing wallet share. Create specific recovery initiatives, not quarterly hopes.
• Assess whether your field teams and counter staff need different positioning strategies. The data suggests they do.
• Quantify how much revenue you’re leaving on the table by not positioning financing as a core lever. Then make the structural changes to move that number.
• Map which of your top customers are consolidation targets. Know who’s likely to sell to PE or corporate in the next 18 months. Adjust account strategy accordingly.

This data isn’t predicting the future. It’s showing you what’s already happening. The contractors have already decided. You’re just deciding whether to respond.

This analysis is based on HARDI’s 2025 Voice of Contractor research presented at their Vegas conference in December 2025.

Originally published in Ashlei Rolloff’s HVAC Leaders newsletter on LinkedIn.

Quick answers

What does HARDI’s Voice of Contractor research show?

Six years of data across 118,000 contractor businesses show contractors rating suppliers well while spending less with them. They are diversifying suppliers, and the gaps between what matters most to them and what suppliers deliver leave room for competitors.

Where does HVAC purchase volume come from?

76% of contractors are residential-focused, yet 42% of total HVAC purchase volume comes from non-residential work. Growth plans built only around the residential contractor count miss where much of the money flows.

What matters most to HVAC contractors when choosing a supplier?

Product availability ranks first. The 454B refrigerant shortage showed how quickly contractors shift spend when a supplier cannot deliver, so inventory and lead times drive loyalty.

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