Jeff Davenport is the kind of guest I could have talked to all day.
Jeff and his brothers built Official Pest Prevention in Sacramento. They grew it to over $20 million a year, and by the end they had 170 employees. In their last year alone, they put on more than 11,000 new customers. They sold the company to Anticimex at the end of 2021.
Then he did something most people wouldn’t, and he started over. His new company is Prize Pest Control near Dallas.
Here’s what stood out.
Jeff started knocking doors in San Jose in 1994. He sold 300 accounts his first summer, and the funny part is he didn’t even like selling. He told me he sold hard because he was scared to zero, not because he loved to win.
He learned the real lesson on his mission years before. You have to talk to a ton of people to get a few yeses. As Jeff put it, “you just got to be rejected by the right number of people and you keep going and eventually there’s success.”
That’s the whole game, and most reps quit before they hit their number.
One conversation changed his whole business
Jeff knocked doors for 12 years. He spent zero dollars on marketing the whole time.
Then one talk flipped everything. He was signing up a landscaper. He asked the guy how he got new customers. The landscaper said he got 60 customers last month from an online lead service. The leads cost about $19 each.
Jeff was shocked, so he signed up that day and got a cell phone just for those leads. His first sale came at 6 in the morning, when he jumped out of bed and put on his best wide-awake voice.
Soon one phone wasn’t enough. Before they had a real phone system, they bought more cell phones and forwarded them in a little circle. One rings, then the next, then the next.
That pivot took them from about $4 million to over $20 million between 2013 and 2020.
More leads beat better reps
This one hit me hard. Jeff doesn’t obsess over sales training, he obsesses over leads.
His point is simple, because your reps are who they are. As Jeff said, “If I give them a hundred leads, their sales are going to double.” Good rep or bad rep, more leads mean more sales.
So if you want to grow, get more leads first, and the rep math takes care of itself.
The one to three million dark hole
I asked Jeff for advice on the stretch that kills most owners. Going from one to three million.
He was honest about it, because you can’t just hire your way out. As Jeff put it, “it’s really tough to hire your way out of there.” You make a big hire to manage two people, and it feels like going backwards.
His fix is the key. Get to where your team can train new people, not you, because you already work 60 hours a week. If training also falls on you, you will burn out and quit.
Retention is about the tech, not the contract
This was my favorite part. Jeff said people don’t stay because of a contract, they stay because of a person.
“What makes a customer not want to cancel is the relationship they have with a service technician,” he told me. When a customer thinks about quitting, it’s not “I’m canceling Prize.” It’s “Dave’s not coming here anymore.”
So train your techs to talk. Send a photo of the wasp nest they pulled, thank the customer, and make them feel it.
And when someone does call to cancel, lead with empathy and let them vent. Then remind them why they signed up in the first place. A great person on that phone can cut your cancel rate in half.
One more thing changed since his early days. He used to fight to hold customers to the contract. Not anymore, because reviews matter too much now. Let the $200 go, and they often come back later anyway.
The price increase trick
Anticimex taught Jeff something smart after the sale. They raised prices 15% on January 1. They told him exactly what would happen. About 3% of customers would call to complain, they would save half of those, and lose the other half.
The trick was in the billing. They gave each upset customer a credit equal to the full year’s increase. So the monthly bill looked the same that first year. Then year two, the credit is gone and they pay the new price. Smart, and almost no one notices.
Don’t take momentum for granted
At Official, Jeff got around 200 customer referrals a month. He thought that number was small, and he wanted way more.
Then he started Prize from zero, nobody knew the brand, and every single customer was a fight. Now he closes about 1 in 3 inbound calls and about 1 in 5 form leads.
The lesson is clear. Momentum is a real asset, so when you have it, do not stop.
The chase beats the finish
Here’s the thing I keep coming back to. Jeff sold his company for life-changing money. Then he went right back to work with no long break, and he even felt a little down when it was gone.
Why start over? His answer was simple. “It is a lot more fun and a lot more fulfilling to chase a goal than to achieve one.”
He was also honest about the stress. He used to blame his anxiety on the company. Then he sold it, and the worry was still there. “You spend a lot of time worried about certain things that you think are going to destroy you that don’t,” he said. His dad used to tell him, “a coward dies a thousand times but a brave man dies once.”
Find people who have done it
I asked Jeff for his best piece of advice. He didn’t hesitate, and his answer was to find mentors.
“The path to success is going to be a lot slower if you have to figure out and solve every one of your problems alone,” he said. Someone who has been there can save you years.
That’s why I do this podcast. Guys like Jeff have already paid for the lessons, and we just have to listen.
