Revenue Per Technician: The Most Important Number You Are Not Tracking

You can have 20 trucks on the road and still be losing money. You can add three technicians and see revenue go up while profit goes down. Total revenue is a vanity metric—it tells you how big the operation is, not whether it is working. Revenue per technician is the number that reveals whether your team is generating real profit or just generating activity.

The Benchmarks

For trade contractors in the $3M–$8M revenue range, here is how to interpret your revenue-per-tech number:

• Below $150K per tech: Significant problem. Either severe underpricing, major scheduling inefficiency, or both. This level rarely covers the fully loaded cost of the technician plus their share of overhead. Investigate immediately.
• $150K–$200K per tech: Below average. The truck is probably covering its direct costs but contributing little to overhead recovery or profit. There is substantial room for improvement.
• $200K–$250K per tech: Average for the industry. Functional and sustainable, but not building significant wealth. This is where most contractors land without deliberate optimization.
• $250K–$350K per tech: Strong. Your pricing supports good margins, your scheduling is efficient, and your technicians are productive. This is the range where real profit accumulates.
• Above $350K per tech: Excellent. Typically seen in operations running high-value replacement work, premium service rates, and efficient routing with minimal dead time.

Why This Metric Matters More Than Total Revenue

Revenue per technician is a composite indicator—a single number that reflects the health of multiple systems simultaneously. When it is low, at least one of the following is broken:

Underpricing. Your hourly rates do not reflect your true cost of delivery. A technician generating $150K in revenue at a fully loaded cost of $75K per year (wages, taxes, benefits, truck, tools, phone) leaves only $75K to cover their share of overhead, sales cost, and profit. In a 15-person company with $400K in annual overhead, each tech's share is roughly $27K—leaving $48K in gross contribution. That is thin.

Poor scheduling and dispatch. Excessive drive time between jobs, gaps in the daily schedule, too many callbacks eating billable hours, or inefficient routing that puts a technician on opposite sides of town in the same day. Every unbillable hour is revenue that does not exist.

Low average ticket. If technicians are primarily running small diagnostic calls and minor repairs, the revenue per visit is low regardless of how many calls they complete. Shifting the mix toward replacements, upgrades, and comprehensive service plans increases revenue per visit without adding labor hours.

Training gaps. Technicians who do not know how to present options—good, better, best—default to the minimum repair. That is not upselling. It is giving customers the information they need to make informed decisions. The tech who presents a $300 repair alongside a $1,200 replacement option and a $4,500 full-system upgrade gives the customer agency. The one who only mentions the $300 fix is making the decision for them.

How to Improve Revenue Per Tech

Review your rate card

If you have not raised rates in two or more years, you are almost certainly below market. A 10% rate increase across the board on a $5M business produces $500K in additional revenue without adding a single job, a single technician, or a single truck. Most contractors fear losing customers over price increases. The data consistently shows that 3–5% of customers leave after a rate increase—while the remaining 95–97% generate significantly more revenue.

Optimize scheduling and routing

Reduce drive time by clustering jobs geographically. Fill schedule gaps with maintenance agreement visits (which are flexible on timing). Track unbillable hours as a percentage of total hours—the target is below 20%. Modern dispatch software can optimize routes automatically, but even a manual review of daily schedules can reveal patterns of wasted windshield time.

Train technicians to present options

Role-play the good-better-best conversation until it is natural. Provide printed or tablet-based option sheets that make the presentation professional and consistent. This is not about pressure—it is about giving customers complete information so they can choose what is right for them. The technician who presents three options converts at a higher average ticket than the one who presents one.

Incentivize production

Compensation structures that reward revenue generation align the technician's interests with the company's interests. Common approaches include revenue-based bonuses above a monthly threshold, spiffs on service agreement sales ($25–$50 per agreement), and recognition programs for top performers. When technicians earn more by producing more, turnover drops and revenue rises.

Track it by individual technician

The company average hides the spread. In most shops, the top technician generates 2–3x the revenue of the bottom technician. That spread tells you where coaching, training, or personnel changes will have the biggest impact. Review revenue per tech monthly, by person, and look at the trend lines as much as the absolute numbers.

The Capacity Question

Revenue per technician also answers the most important growth question: should you add another truck? If your current technicians are at $180K each, adding another tech at $180K just adds cost without improving margins. Get your existing team to $250K+ first—through better pricing, scheduling, and training—and then add capacity into a model that you know is profitable per unit.

The Bottom Line

Track this number monthly. Break it down by individual technician. Compare it to the benchmarks above. The patterns will show you exactly who is performing, where scheduling is broken, whether your pricing supports the margins you need, and whether adding trucks will make you money or just make you busier. It is the most actionable single metric in the trades—and the one most contractors have never calculated.