Most pest control companies are bleeding money trying to grow. They’re dumping cash into Google Ads, Facebook campaigns, and door-to-door sales teams, watching their customer acquisition costs climb higher every quarter. Meanwhile, they’re ignoring the goldmine sitting right in front of them: their existing customers.
I’ve built Pest Badger from the ground up to over $10 million a year, and here’s what nobody wants to hear. You don’t need a bigger marketing budget to grow. You need to stop letting customers slip through your fingers. You need to actually use the customers you already paid to acquire.
The truth is, you could build a $300,000 pest control company just through referrals alone. No ads. No door knocking. Just leveraging the people who already trust you. And that’s just one piece of the puzzle.
In this guide, I’m going to walk you through the exact systems we use at Pest Badger to grow fast without constantly dumping money into paid advertising. We’re talking about service upgrades, first impressions that actually reduce churn, referral programs that turn customers into affiliates, keeping people paying year after year, and winning back the ones who left.
The Service Upgrade Strategy: Keep Selling Until They Say No
Here’s something most technicians get wrong. They close the sale, get super excited, and immediately move on to the next job. Big mistake. The customer didn’t say no. You stopped the sales process. They’re still in buying mode.
I train my team on one simple principle: go for no. Always sell the next thing until the customer actually tells you no. Not until you get uncomfortable. Not until you think they might say no. Until they actually say it.
Why the Second Sale Is Easier Than the First
The hardest sale you’ll ever make with a customer is the first one. After that? Every yes gets easier. You’ve already conditioned them to say yes. They’re excited about the product. They trust you. They like you. You’ve solved a problem for them.
Think about it. You’ve already gotten them to believe you, trust you, and buy from you. The next sale is just asking for permission to solve another problem they have.
What This Actually Looks Like in the Field
Let’s say you’re a sales guy who just sold a customer at the door. You’re walking around to the backyard to show them the property, getting them to sign the agreement. Mosquitoes are eating you alive. You look at them and say, “Man, who takes care of mosquitoes around here?”
They tell you nobody does. You say, “Oh great, well we do that service too. It’s just XYZ price. We add it to your monthly package and you get both pest control and mosquitoes handled.”
Nine times out of ten, they say yes. It’s that simple.
The Technician Upsell Is Even Easier
Now let’s say you’re the technician who showed up to do a service. The customer didn’t answer the phone when you called, but you’re there to do the job anyway. As you’re servicing the property, you notice some rodent activity. Maybe you see gnawing marks. Maybe you spot droppings.
You’re the expert. You’re already there. The customer already trusts you. You take pictures of everything you find, ten to twenty pictures of each job.
When you’re done, you walk up to the customer and show them the photos. “Hey, I handled everything you called us out for, but I also noticed this while I was here.” You show them the rodent activity. “We can set up bait boxes to take care of this before it becomes a bigger problem.”
You’re not being pushy. You’re solving a problem they didn’t even know they had yet.
The Phone Upsell: Timing Is Everything
If you’re answering phones, whether you’re the owner or a CSR, you can upsell right there on the call. You just have to think about the time of year.
Customer calls in the fall because they’re having issues with Asian beetles. Perfect. Winter’s coming. Rodents are about to start moving indoors looking for warmth, food, and water. Where are they going to find that? Inside the customer’s house.
You say, “Hey, a lot of customers in your area have been dealing with this. As soon as it gets cold outside, everything’s moving in. We want to make sure you’re sealed up for the winter. We can bundle rodent control with your service. We don’t even need you there. We’ll handle it.”
That’s it. You’re not randomly upselling. You’re solving a problem based on the season and what you know is coming.
The Pictures Strategy Changes Everything
We always take pictures and upload them to the customer’s profile in our CRM. But the real magic happens when you physically show them the pictures in person. They can’t say they don’t have an issue when they’re looking right at it.
Our job is to solve customer problems. That’s what they bring us out for. That’s our expertise. So when you show them bats flying into their attic, or screens missing, or rodent droppings, you’re not being salesy. You’re being helpful.
When to Add More Services
I get asked all the time: when should I start adding more services? Should I offer lawn care? Should I do everything?
Not at first. Business is hard enough and complex enough as it is. Make it as simple as possible, take it to scale, and once you’re scaled, then you can add services.
Stay focused on general pest control when you’re starting out. But within that category, you can still offer plenty. If you’re doing pest control and you notice termite activity, you can offer termite bait stations, termite treatments, guarantees. There are so many upsell opportunities just within pest control itself.
The Sales Training Your Technicians Need
Here’s the thing most owners miss: all of your technicians should be sales trained. A hundred percent of them. That’s how they’re going to make more money, and it’s how you’re going to grow.
My goal from day one is to make sure my techs are getting close to six figures. How do we do that? It can’t just be from servicing. They need selling. They’re paid for performance. They have commissions on sales. They also get bonuses for reviews. When you stack all of that together, they can make serious money throughout the year.
But here’s the difference: technician sales are way different than door-to-door sales. It’s much easier because the customer is already there. The customer already trusts you. You’re the expert, and you’re selling from knowledge because you actually see the problem.
The door-to-door guy has to be more assertive. They have way more questions to handle. They have to work harder to get in the door. But once someone’s already a customer? The sale is so much easier.
The Monthly Focus Strategy
We have a marketing calendar planned out for the entire year from January first going forward. Every month, we focus on a specific upsell. Everyone is on the same page, from technicians to office staff to CSRs. We’re all pushing the same offer.
It’s organized. It’s not like we decide to do something one month and then switch it up a few weeks later. We stick to the plan. And every single person, from CSRs to technicians, is incentivized to go for that next sale.
First Impressions: Where Customer Retention Actually Starts
Here’s what most pest control companies don’t understand. First impressions aren’t just about looking professional. They’re about setting expectations that you can actually deliver on, and then delivering so well that customers forgive you when you mess up later. Because you will mess up. Everyone does.
The companies that retain customers aren’t the ones who never make mistakes. They’re the ones who built up so much goodwill in the beginning that customers are willing to give them a second chance.
Why First Impressions Fix Churn
We talk about churn rate all the time in this industry, but most people are trying to fix it in the wrong places. They’re sending out win-back emails or offering discounts to keep people from canceling. That’s too late.
Churn is fixed at the first impression. If you nail that first service, you can mess up once or twice down the road and the customer will stick with you. If you don’t nail it, they’ll cancel after the first mistake.
It Starts Before You Even Show Up
Branding matters. Your wrapped truck, your technicians in uniforms, everything matching your marketing. That’s what gets them to call in the first place. Your ads look the same. Your marketing looks the same. They see consistency.
Then you show up, and they see that same consistency in person. At Pest Badger, we wear pink shirts and black pants. Athletic joggers, not stuffy uniforms. It’s a cool, hip, fun, young look. That’s our brand. That’s what we’re going for.
Your technicians need to look presentable and clean. They need to be in uniform. Standard across the board. If they have a beard, it better be manicured and look good, not sloppy. Appearance matters. That’s just the truth.
Setting Expectations at the Door
When you walk up to that door, you introduce yourself. You tell the customer exactly what you’re going to do. You solve all their issues. And you’re very, very upfront and honest with them.
Here’s what you say: “Every problem you’re dealing with, nothing is an overnight solution. Nothing is going to be a one-time fix where we never come back. You’re going to see some bugs. I need you to understand that.”
Be realistic. If they’ve never had pest control before and it’s their first application, tell them they’re going to see more bugs at first. You’re flushing everything out. That’s common and expected. If they see activity starting to form, they should call you back and you’ll come back for free.
Don’t promise them they’ll never see a bug again. That’s not realistic, and when they do see bugs, they’ll think you lied to them.
Same thing with mosquito control. You tell them it’s a reduction service. Typically we can reduce mosquitoes by seventy to eighty percent. They’ll still have a few here and there, but at the end of the day, they should really be able to enjoy their outdoors.
Walk them through their program at the door. Show them on the agreement exactly what you’re going to do, step by step, A to Z, right there. Then you go perform the service.
The Picture Documentation System
Take pictures along the way. Front yard, backyard, any issues you see, any issues you found. Do the entire job. Look for potential upsells, but at this point you’re not pushing for the upsell. You’re just documenting issues and letting the customer know how you can solve them.
Let’s say there’s a wasp nest up in the eaves. Make sure you take a before and after picture. You found it, you took it down. Be very detailed. Put these in the customer notes so you know where issues are forming. When you come back, the next technician knows what happened at the house.
All these small details matter. Then you go back to the customer and show them what you found and how you solved it. Ask if they have any other issues. Make sure they’re happy with the service you provided.
The One Act of Kindness Rule
Here’s something I make my guys do that goes beyond the standard service. One act of kindness. I don’t care if the customer never sees it.
It could be as simple as this: they had an Amazon package left at the garage door. You grab it and bring it to them. Their garbage can was just dropped off by the trash truck and it’s still at the curb. Make sure your technician grabs it and brings it up to the house. There are dog toys or kids’ toys in the yard. Pick them up and put them on the porch.
If there’s a hose stretched across the lawn and your tech is going to be there for twenty minutes anyway, blow off the leaves in the front yard. Do something above and beyond a normal service.
These simple things go a long way. Customers remember this stuff.
The Dog Name Strategy
UPS started giving dog treats to dogs a long time ago, partly because they were getting bit, but also because they wanted to be friends with the dogs. We do the same thing.
Pro tip: if you can get the dog’s name and put it in your notes for the next technician, when you go back you can say, “Hey, how’s Floppy doing?” The customer is blown away. “Oh my god, he remembered my dog’s name. How cool is that?”
Simple things like that build relationships.
Welcome Packages That Wow
Back in the day, we used to send out welcome packages in envelopes. We’d include a flyswatter with our branding, five-star review cards, and some coupons. Every time a customer signed up, we’d put this envelope together and send it off.
Now it’s automated. You can send brownies, dog treats, anything you want. We actually create welcome packages in-house now and keep them in the garage or in the vans. After the first service, we drop off a package.
In a perfect world, I’d like it to arrive twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the first service. At one of our other locations, Mosquito Crush, the trucks are orange. After every first service, we leave a can of orange Crush soda. Just to be different. It’s something they didn’t expect a pest control company to do.
If you can wow them on the first service with not only your service but your customer service, your branding, everything, the odds of that customer leaving go way down. Even if you mess up later, they remember all the good stuff you did. They’re willing to give you another shot.
The Retention Math
You’re never going to get rid of churn completely. People move. People pass away. People lose their jobs. There are a million reasons churn occurs, and you’ll never eliminate it entirely.
But if you can reduce churn by three percent and you have ten thousand customers, that’s a massive move. If you mess up once or twice and they forgive you instead of canceling, you just doubled or tripled your lifetime value from that client.
Let’s say your average customer stays with you for three years. But they were going to cancel after a year because of one bad experience. This first impression goodwill gives you an extra two years. You went from one year to three years. That’s a huge win. And it didn’t cost you a whole lot of money up front.
Communication Before and After Service
Most people do this now, but it’s worth saying again. Do your call-aheads. Morning of the service, send out text messages or phone calls. Let homeowners know when you’re coming so they can plan to be there.
Give them a window and show up during that window if possible. If you’re running late, send them a text. We have automations that go out when a technician leaves one job heading to the next: “Hey, we’re on our way. We’ll be there in the next fifteen to twenty minutes.”
You’re never going to be perfect with arrival times. But the more upfront you are with the customer, the better. If you call them and say, “Hey ma’am, I’m running a little behind. This job took longer than expected, but I will be there,” they’re going to be understanding.
But if you just don’t show up? That pisses them off.
The Door Hanger Note
Something so easy to do is leave a note on a door hanger when the customer isn’t home. We have one technician who’s incredible at this. She’ll leave a paragraph about what she found, what she did, what to watch for.
You would not believe how many gifts, food, drinks, and tips this girl gets. It’s absolutely unbelievable. All from doing this one simple thing.
Leave your door hanger. Put your stake in the yard. Leave detailed notes in the customer’s account so if they weren’t home, they can see exactly what you did. Upload pictures.
This stuff goes a long way. Yes, we want it as the company and the owner to make sure our technicians are doing their job. But consumers want to know what happened too.
The more pictures you take and the more notes you leave, the better off you are. Even if you were only there for twelve minutes, if you document everything and leave a great note, they’re going to be happy with you.
It’s Hard to Fire Jonas the Technician
Here’s something critical to understand. It’s really easy to fire Pest Badger the company. But it’s really, really hard to fire Jonas the technician who’s been servicing your house for two years.
We talk to so many other companies, and customers will say, “Yeah, but I just really like the technician. He’s been servicing my house for three or five years. I know him by his first name. We invite him over for dinner. We’re close.”
It’s hard to fire Jonas as the person, but it’s easy to fire Pest Badger as the brand. That means your technician in the field is the front line. They’re the ones who know what’s going on with the customer and what the customer is saying.
You have to hire great technicians because they’re the ones who are actually going to reduce churn. When we’re hiring, we look for people who have empathy. I can teach you all the skills. But as long as you fit our culture and you have empathy, I can teach you the rest.
If you care about your customers, they’re going to care about you. That’s what matters most.
Referral Programs: How to Grow to $300K Without Ads
I genuinely believe you can grow a pest control company to three hundred thousand dollars a year just through referrals. No Google Ads. No Facebook Ads. No door knocking. Just leveraging your existing customers to get you new ones.
This is one of my favorite strategies to grow the business, especially early on. Obviously even today it still works incredibly well. But it’s the easiest way to get customers, and the best customers you can get.
Why Referrals Convert at 80%+
When someone gets referred by a friend, the odds of them signing up are over eighty percent. You’re not paying Google. You’re not paying Facebook. You’re not paying your sales guys. You’re paying your customers, which is way better.
It’s the easiest way to solve problems. You solve the customer’s problem, then you solve their friend’s problem, and the customer gets to win too. Everyone wins.
The Math on Referral Growth
Let’s walk through how this actually scales. You sign up five customers. All five of those customers get a great first service. You ask each one, “Hey, do you know three to five people who could use my service?” You just showed up and crushed their service. They like you. You solved their problem.
They’re going to say yes. Even if they only give you two names each, that’s ten more potential customers. Of those ten people, you’re probably going to close eight of them because they were referred by a friend.
Now you have eighteen customers. You ask those eighteen for referrals. Let’s say half of them give you two names each. That’s eighteen more potential customers. You close fifteen of them.
Now you have thirty-three customers. You can see how fast this spirals. From zero to three hundred thousand dollars, just by asking for referrals every single time.
The Giveaway Strategy
We’ve been doing giveaways for years. The first time we ever did one was for the iPhone 8. That’s how far back this goes. We wanted to incentivize our customers to post on social media. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, share links, share with their friends.
The first time I heard this idea, I thought it was going to be massive. And it was. I think within the first week we had a couple hundred reviews. Actually, back then we were technically paying for reviews by doing the giveaway, which worked incredibly well at the time.
Now it’s evolved. We’re currently giving away a three thousand dollar trip. It’s going to run all summer long. In the last seven days since we launched it, we’ve had 148 referrals that converted to 47 sales. That’s insane.
We just posted it on social media two days ago. We haven’t even put it on Facebook yet. We just sent it to our customers for the first time. And it’s already working.
Our average contract value is roughly a thousand bucks, so that’s $47,000 in revenue in one week. That cost us zero money up front. Obviously it’s going to cost us the trip, which we cap at three thousand dollars, but they get to choose where they want to go.
How the Giveaway System Works
Customers get a referral link. We track all the referrals. At the end of the summer, we take all the referrals and put them into a digital wheel. We do this live so everyone can watch. Wherever it lands, that’s the winner.
Here’s the great thing about doing this: you get to create content around it. We’re going to go out there, meet the winner, create content with them, show them packing their backpacks, take pictures of their family. We can use that content again next year.
You saw me yesterday outside taking a bunch of pictures with my kids’ backpacks and luggage. Disney themed stuff. Standing in front of my car like I’m packing for a trip. Different pictures to see which one works best throughout the summer with my kids.
This strategy just works. Customers share their link on social media. Their friends see it. Their friends’ friends see it. Anyone who has pest issues can sign up. They get a discount on their initial service because we’re not paying anyone else to do this other than our customers.
The Clicky Software Advantage
I’m going to give a shout out to one of my buddies, Kendall, who built Clicky. It’s amazing software, and I’ve been saying for years that someone needed to build something like this.
With Clicky, you can track every single link. Each customer has their own unique link. Customers can track their own referrals in real time. You can run a competition in the background with a leaderboard showing who has the most referrals for the summer.
Every time someone clicks their link, they get paid. I think it’s a dollar for every link that’s clicked. But when that customer actually signs up, the person who referred them gets fifty to a hundred dollars in cold cash. Venmo from our account to theirs.
Plus they’re entered into the giveaway. Every referral is like another ticket. The more referrals you give, the more chances you have to win.
Customers as Paid Affiliates
This is the key insight: customers are already using your service. Now you’re paying them to be affiliates. You’re driving them with a giveaway to do it even more.
Everyone needs to be incentivized to hit that next level. CSRs, sales guys, technicians, C-suite executives. That’s just how you do it in business.
What If You Don’t Want to Do a Big Giveaway?
I’m not saying you have to give away a three thousand dollar trip right out of the gate. I’m saying work your way up. But referrals are an easy way to grow your company even when you’re just starting out. It doesn’t cost anything.
You don’t even need software. Just say, “Hey, if you know anyone who could use my service, can you give me three phone numbers of friends or family?” That’s it. They’re going to say, “Yeah, I’d love to.”
Get them to shoot you a text message right there on the spot: “This is Jonas Olson from Pest Badger. Send me those referrals when you can.” Or ideally, get them on the spot. If they’re busy or not home, still ask. Send out an email or text campaign to get those referrals.
Say you’ll knock off half their service, or do their next service for free. For every person that signs up, you’ll do their service for free that quarter. Let’s say you do four services a year at a hundred bucks each. That’s four hundred dollars. But you just got four new customers worth a thousand dollars each. That’s four thousand dollars.
Was it worth spending four hundred in forgone revenue to get four thousand in new revenue? Absolutely. That’s a hundred dollar customer acquisition cost. I’d do that all day long.
ROI Is All That Matters
At the end of the day, it’s about the ROI. Don’t worry about spending money to incentivize customers. You’re already spending more than that on Google or Facebook. It’s literally just about customer acquisition cost.
Would you rather pay the customer or pay Google? I’d rather pay the customer. I want to incentivize my customers. I don’t want to give Google more money if I don’t have to.
And here’s the thing: if customers are giving you four referrals that make you four thousand dollars and they’re getting service for free, what do you think they’re going to do next year? They’re going to keep doing it. They’re going to keep giving you referrals because it’s working for them too.
Starting Small with Referrals
You don’t have to be a big company to do this. It’s almost easier to do it small. This is an easy way to grow a company fast.
If you have ten customers, you can turn that into twenty. If you have a hundred, you can turn that into two hundred. Any existing client base can be leveraged for referrals.
The Two Biggest Mistakes
The biggest mistake is not having a referral program at all. If you’re doing a couple hundred thousand in revenue, I’d say not having a referral program is a million dollar mistake. Literally.
The second biggest mistake is not having a way to track it. If you have a CRM, make sure you put in the CRM where the referral came from. You need to track this stuff.
Other than that, there aren’t a lot of mistakes you can make with referrals. Just implement it and watch it work.
Keeping Customers Paying Year After Year
We’ve paid to acquire the customer. Now we need to keep them as long as possible. Let’s say our customer acquisition cost is a hundred and fifty dollars. If they only stay for one year at a thousand dollar contract value, our LTV to CAC ratio isn’t great.
But if that same customer stays for three years, we made three thousand dollars. If they stay for five years, we made five thousand dollars. And we have the potential to upsell them to a second or third offering, so maybe that five thousand turns into twenty thousand with insulation or other services.
The longer the customer stays, the better. The stickiest customer is the best customer.
LTV to CAC Explained
Lifetime value is how long they stay with you on average multiplied by what they pay. If they stay for a year and your average contract value is a thousand dollars, your LTV is a thousand.
Customer acquisition cost is what it actually cost to purchase that customer. Maybe it cost you eighty dollars online. Then you have commission costs for your sales guy. Add that in, and let’s say it’s a hundred bucks total.
Your LTV to CAC is one hundred dollars to one thousand dollars, or ten to one. That’s pretty good. But if that customer stays for five years, your LTV to CAC becomes one hundred to five thousand, or fifty to one. That’s incredible.
We Want Lifetime Customers, Not Annual Contracts
In a perfect scenario, we’re selling them an unlimited lifetime package. We don’t want the customer to stay for a year or three years. We want to service them until they die or move out of the house. Hopefully when they move, we can convert the new homeowner and keep the business going.
We don’t try to sell customers a twelve-month agreement. We try to keep them for a lifetime. We put them on an annual agreement, and we just keep showing up every single year until they cancel.
Whether you’re doing monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly services, it doesn’t matter. We just keep showing up.
The Old School Problem
There are cases, especially with old school guys, where they do tri-annual or bi-annual or even one-time services. In those cases, you almost have to resell every single year because you have to send out a letter saying you’re coming.
I know a company I purchased a few years ago that had five thousand clients, and every single spring the CSR would call every single customer to say, “Hey, we’re coming out this year.” She’d write it on a yellow pad and check them off.
There are still lots of companies that do this. Obviously I don’t like that model. I like to show up every quarter on the schedule and continue servicing them until they call and cancel.
When Recurring Contracts Make Sense
There are different scenarios where you might need annual contracts. In the Midwest, lawn care is a good one. Mosquito control is another. Termites might require annual inspections. Same with bats.
But I still like to put those cards on file and charge them in the off season. January and February are slow months. Make sure you’re charging all those annual inspections then. Let’s say you charge two hundred dollars for an inspection. You go do the inspection and charge the card on file.
The Renewal Email Strategy
For mosquito and lawn care, the biggest churn happens in early spring when people get renewal letters. We send out renewals to these customers every single year, and we typically give them a discount for signing up and prepaying for the year.
A lot of customers want to pay for the year if you give them a discount. We do that. Now, you don’t actually have to give them a discount off your regular price. Just make sure you factor in your interest cost and adjust the price accordingly.
The best churn rate we’ve ever seen is from prepayments. If someone paid for the year and you show up to do the service, the odds of them wanting to cancel go way down. They already paid. Why would they cancel now?
Timing Those Renewal Campaigns
Let’s use lawn care as an example. Fertilization and weed control. It’s a known seasonal thing. You let everyone know you’re coming back out to do services. You offer the discount for prepaying or signing up for the year again.
You’re always going to have some churn there because customers want to go somewhere else or try something different. But these tactics help you keep more of them.
You want to think about specific times of the year and the issues people are having. If mosquitoes are crazy and someone canceled their mosquito service last year, hit them with the reactivation campaign in the middle of May when mosquitoes are insane.
They’re going to think, “Man, why did I cancel that? Mosquitoes are terrible this year. I need them right now.”
Multi-Year Contracts: My Take
A lot of companies do multi-year contracts so they can hold customers hostage. If someone wants to cancel, they get pissed off because they have to pay a penalty to get out.
I’m not talking bad about those companies. They’re massive for a reason. It just isn’t the philosophy I like to run with. I come from the world of not having contracts, so that’s my bias.
People are sick of contracts. Phone contracts, AT&T, wireless, whatever. Everyone’s in a contract, and when you call to cancel they hold you hostage. You have to pay six hundred or a thousand dollars to get out. It’s annoying. You’re pissed off. It’s just not a good way to treat people.
In pest control and lawn care, you do have to have an agreement on file by law in most states. The state says you need mutual agreement between the customer and the company that you can come to their property and service it.
But there’s a difference between a required agreement and a contract that penalizes people for leaving. I can talk about this all day, but that’s my take on it.
In my world, if customers want to call and cancel for whatever reason, we let them go and hopefully we’ll win back their business in the future. I don’t want a bad reputation, especially online.
Marketing Without Contracts
If you’re in a heavily knocked area or heavily sales-driven area and you don’t do contracts, you can actually put that on your flyers or direct mail or postcards. It might help because people don’t want to be locked into contracts. That’s been my experience anyway.
The Biggest Mistake
Not having an agreement in place at all is probably the biggest mistake. You need some verbiage in there. There are so many things the agreement has to have for legal protection.
If you want to do social media posts, if you want to take pictures, have all that in the agreement so customers know they signed off on it. If you have a pissed off customer later who says you took a picture of their house, well, they signed an agreement saying you could.
Make sure the customer knows what they’re paying for upfront and what the terms are. But have a lawyer write this, not me. This is not legal advice.
Winning Back Customers You Lost
You’re always going to have cancellations. Unfortunately, that’s just part of it. Our job is to reduce churn and increase retention. But even when we do everything right, some customers are going to leave.
The question is: how do we get them back?
Preventing Cancellations First
Before we talk about winning people back, let’s talk about preventing cancellations when someone’s thinking about leaving.
Have a good conversation with the customer if you can. Someone might text or email to cancel, but always give the customer a call. If you have a branch manager, send that branch manager out to talk to the customer in person.
There are multiple ways to save a customer, but most people just want to be heard. That’s where it starts. Get them on the phone or get your branch manager, your technician, or yourself out to their house to see if you can solve the problem and fix the relationship.
The Question That Saves Customers
I always like to figure out what made them sign up with us in the first place. Why did you even want to sign up for service?
They’re going to tell you the issue they were having. Maybe you solved the issue and now they’re not seeing any bugs. Now it’s your job to tell them, “Yeah, I’m glad we were able to take care of it. And this is how we’re going to prevent that from happening ever again.”
People think of pest control as reactive instead of preventative. Reactive versus proactive. We just have to educate our customers on why they still need pest control.
Why Customers Actually Cancel
There are a million reasons people cancel. Someone’s moving. How are you going to save them? You probably can’t.
But here’s the thing I hate saying out loud: customers lie too. You can get really creative here if you want. On the phone, you can look up if the person’s house is actually listed for sale. If you choose to call them out on it, that’s up to you.
The reason I bring this up is because there are a lot of door-to-door companies out there with savvy sales guys who will call to cancel the customer’s service before the customer even knows what’s happening.
You want to make sure you’re actually talking to the customer. Either they call from the phone number on file, or at least they know the last four digits of the card on file. There are things you can do to help reduce those situations from happening.
You want the actual customer to cancel themselves so you at least get an opportunity to talk through it with them.
The Nurture Campaign for Canceled Customers
Let’s say they have canceled. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, you couldn’t save them. Maybe they’re unhappy. Maybe it’s too expensive. Maybe they switched to another company.
Your goal is to constantly have a campaign going in the background. A nurture sequence. You’ve already paid the customer acquisition cost at this point. How do we get them back?
Could you give them a discount? Could you send them text campaigns, email campaigns, whatever that looks like throughout the entire year?
Let’s say they canceled because they weren’t having issues. But you’re constantly putting them in a drip campaign where they see you twice a month. You talk about the bugs of the month, the problems people are having, what issues are going on in the community.
You’re constantly top of mind through email or text. Then fall comes around and they start having issues with stinging insects or mice or rodents. You’ve been campaigning them throughout the year. They canceled last year, but they remember you.
They think, “Man, I have a rodent problem. I’m going to give these guys a call.” They’ve seen the texts. They’ve seen the emails. They call you back, and you actually win back quite a few people this way.
The Two-Week Start Point
I like to start this nurture sequence almost two weeks after they cancel. Not immediately, but pretty quickly. Then have a drip campaign every single month.
Constantly tell them what issues they might be dealing with. Fast forward to fall. They have rodent issues. They remember you’ve been staying in touch. They call you back.
When to Use Discounts and Offers
If you’ve really messed up, people just want to be heard. Maybe discount that whole service that you messed up. Or maybe they just couldn’t afford it. Maybe they lost their job.
If they lost their job, you have to have some empathy. Maybe you put them on hold for three months. Maybe you still do their service because you want to show that act of kindness. Service them and don’t charge them that quarter until three months later when they’ve gotten a job and they’re back on their feet.
They still need pest control. What can you do for the customer to show you really understand and you’re sorry that happened? Maybe you reduce the monthly cost from forty dollars to ten dollars just to keep their subscription active.
Then let’s say they have canceled and you want to get that customer back. This is the time where you want to send them a crazy offer. You’ve already paid the customer acquisition cost. Now you want to reactivate them and get as much lifetime value out of them as possible.
You’ve already paid for that customer. You’re going to want to offer them something compelling to jump back on board.
The Nature and Nurture Email Strategy
Nature and nurture. Nature is telling them what’s going on out there. Nurture is getting them to want to buy from you again.
Give them real life problems that customers are having. Tell them about an actual customer’s issue that month and how you overcame it. Walk them through the process. Send out those emails.
Then include the offers. Free initial service. Free inspection. Free bait box install. Whatever you can do to win back that customer and get them back on board.
You want to do email campaigns and text campaigns. You also still want to call these customers. Let’s say you have a thousand customers who canceled in the past five years and nobody’s touched them. That’s so much untapped potential.
In the off season, make sure your salespeople or you yourself are reaching out to these people and trying to connect with them.
What Actually Gets Them Back
It could be all the above. It’s hard to say exactly why they canceled. Maybe they lost their job and didn’t want to tell you. Maybe they weren’t having issues but now they do. Maybe the tech pissed them off and they didn’t want to tell you.
You finally get ahold of them and ask why they canceled. They tell you the real reason. You didn’t know. You say, “I’m sorry. You should have told us from the beginning.”
Most times, they just want to be heard. If you listen to them, you can usually solve that problem.
A lot of customers don’t like confrontation at all. They’d rather just send a text or email saying they want to cancel, and you don’t know why. You try to call them and they don’t answer. Then for some reason they answer two months later, and they tell you the real reason why. And you’re able to fix them.
Win-Back Percentages
It’s pretty small. I’d say one to three percent. That might sound low, but if your churn rate is two percent a month and you win back two percent a month, that’s not terrible. You’re holding steady with churn.
If you have a lot of people canceling and you’re a big company, that ends up being a lot of accounts. You’re constantly watching this and testing different offers. What works, what doesn’t work.
Think about specific times of the year and issues people are having. If mosquitoes are crazy and they canceled their mosquito service last year, hit them with the reactivation campaign in the middle of May when mosquitoes are insane.
They’re going to think, “Why did I cancel that? Mosquitoes are terrible this year. We need them right now.”
The Biggest Mistake
Zero follow-up. Very few people actually run a reactivation campaign or want to call their canceled customers. They think, “I don’t want to call them. These are people who left us.”
But these are the people you want to reach out to because you’ve already paid for the customer acquisition. They’ve already seen your great service. They know your brand. Maybe you did something wrong. Maybe you didn’t. You just have to figure out why.
How This All Fits Together
Growing a pest control business isn’t about having the biggest ad budget. It’s about maximizing the value of every customer you acquire. You’ve already paid to get them. Now you need to keep them, upsell them, get referrals from them, and win them back if they leave.
The service upgrade strategy means you’re making more money from every customer you acquire. The first impression strategy means they’re staying longer and forgiving you when you mess up. The referral program means you’re getting new customers for a fraction of what you’d pay Google or Facebook. The annual renewal tactics mean you’re keeping customers for years instead of months. And the win-back campaign means you’re getting a second chance with customers who left.
Stack all of these together, and you have a growth engine that doesn’t depend on constantly spending more on advertising.
Could you grow to three hundred thousand just on referrals? Absolutely. Could you get to a million by doing all of this well? Without question. Could you hit ten million like we did at Pest Badger? That’s exactly what we did.
The companies that are struggling are the ones ignoring their existing customers and throwing money at ads. The companies that are winning are the ones who realize the real goldmine is the customers they’ve already got.
If you want to connect with other pest control owners who are implementing these exact strategies, join our free Facebook group, Pest Control Millionaires. We’ve got over two thousand active members sharing what’s working in their businesses.
And if you want the complete blueprint for building a pest control business from the ground up, check out our book Zip Code Kings. It’s the pest control marketing bible, and it covers everything we just talked about in way more detail.
Now go build your million dollar pest control company.
Related Articles
- Reconnecting with Old Clients in Pest Control: The Reactivation Strategy That Recovers 3-5% of Lost Revenue – Jonas Olson
- Pest Control Selling Subscriptions: How to Keep Customers Paying Year After Year (Without Locking Them Into Contracts) – Jonas Olson
- How to Get More Pest Control Customer Referrals: The $47K Strategy That Generated 148 New Customers in 7 Days – Jonas Olson
- First Impressions in Pest Control: The 10 Minute Window That Determines If Customers Stay or Churn – Jonas Olson
- Pest Control Upselling and Cross Selling: How to Double Revenue Per Customer Without Being Pushy – Jonas Olson
