What if I told you that you can make $30,000 in revenue without spending a single dollar on SEO, ad spend, or any form of marketing, and only using the current clients that you already have?
If you’re doing $7,000 to $15,000 a month and feel stuck, this is how you unlock real revenue in the next 60 days without adding a single new customer.
Most guys think they need more leads to grow. And that’s partly true, but it’s also wrong. There are only two ways to grow a company. One is to get more leads and more customers. The second is to increase the lifetime value (LTV) of the clients you already have, adding more revenue per client. That’s it. Those are the only two levers.
This article is focused on LTV. I’m breaking down the five plays we use to help owner-operators unlock $30K in revenue with the customers they already serve.
The easiest revenue you’ll ever earn comes from upsells. You’ve already won their trust. Most of the time at this stage, you’re already on site. Here’s how to do it right without being super pushy.
Send a pre-service text message.
If you’re doing $7,000 to $15,000 a month, you probably know all your customers by first name. They all know you by first name. You have a really good rapport. Send a message the day before service, the same day, or even do call-aheads by hand. It’s super easy. Something like:
“Hey Sally, I’ve been coming out to your house to service tomorrow. There’s been a lot of mosquitoes in the area. I’ll be doing mosquito treatments. Would you like me to add you to the list?”
Super simple. And it converts really, really well at this stage in business.
If you’re doing a call-ahead, try something like:
“Hey Sally, I’m on my way. I’ll be there in 15 minutes. I’ve been working with Miss Jones down the street. They’ve been having a lot of mosquito issues. Would you like me to add that to your list as well when I get there?”
Very high converting upsell opportunity.
Do a casual on-site pitch.
This is what we teach all of our technicians. As soon as the service is completed and you’ve told the customer what you found and what you were able to help them with that day, pitch the next thing. Whether that’s termites, rodents, bait stations, fertilizer, whatever services you offer. Something like:
“Hey, when I was out there, I saw some rodent activity” or “I was getting swarmed by mosquitoes.”
The easiest time to upsell is when you’re already there. You already have the product on you. You’re not having to hard sell anything because the problem is already there. Just say, “Hey, this is what I found. Would you like me to take care of this for you?”
I would highly recommend that every single one of you, if you’re not doing this, teach your technicians how to do it.
Follow up the next day.
If the customer wasn’t home, or if they said something like, “That sounds great, but I need to talk to Mark when he gets home,” your job is to follow up the next day. “Hey, were you able to chat with Mark? We talked yesterday about the mosquito treatment. Would you still like to get on my list?”
If they don’t respond, that’s okay. People live busy lives. But here’s a little trick: go back to that text thread and just send a question mark. That’s it. Just a “?” on the last message you sent. It gets them to look at it again, and it’ll convert a lot of those follow-up sales for you.
What to upsell.
Mosquito treatments are always a good upsell when you’re doing pest control. Rodent bait boxes, termite inspections, one-time projects you can see in the job, maybe an exclusion, maybe foundation work. There are so many opportunities to upsell a current customer and grow that lifetime value.
One of the hottest things the last few years has been bundling services. Pitch the customer on a bundle package: pest control, mosquito control, fertilizing, whatever it may be. Have them pay a monthly fee for 12 months to stay covered year-round. If they were on a $600 contract value, you could almost double or triple that LTV over the next 3 to 5 years by adding ancillary services.
If you do this consistently, you’re going to add an additional $3,000 to $5,000 per month in upsell revenue alone.
Play #2: Reactivate Old Clients
I see this all the time. I’ll go work with operators, and at this point I’ve worked with hundreds of them. They’ll have a whole list of past clients they built out over one to three, five, even ten years. But even if you’re just starting out and collecting data, you’re still going to have people that cancel.
And it’s not that they did anything bad. Maybe they were planning on moving and didn’t. Maybe something expensive came up. Maybe someone got hurt or lost their job. Or, and this happens all the time, you did such a good job that at some point they realized, “I haven’t seen a bug in years. I don’t need the service anymore.” Or people just forget to sign back up.
But there’s always this whole list of canceled customers sitting in the CRM. Even if you have just 30 to 70 past clients that once used you but have disappeared, you need to reactivate them.
You should be sending a nurture email campaign monthly, maybe a text message campaign. But especially in the spring, make sure you’re running an activation campaign. The best way I’ve ever found to sell is giving away free information. Be the go-to guy in your area who has the answer. Maybe you’ve sent them an email about mosquitoes six other times, and now they’re actually having the issue. That’s when they convert. Timing matters. Send these campaigns when the pain point is high. When the mosquitoes just come out, when wasps are coming out, when rodents become an actual problem. That’s the best time to send, and they’ll convert much better.
A simple example text: “Hey Sally, it’s been a while. We’re offering a free inspection this week. I’ll be in your area. Would you like me to stop by?”
And if you’re listening to the great marketers, guys like David Ogilvy, Alex Hormozi, Russell Brunson, they’ll all tell you the same thing: sell with urgency and scarcity. Something like: “I only have four spots left this week. Let me know by Friday.” There’s scarcity because you only have four spots. There’s urgency because they need to respond by Friday. It gets them to move much faster.
Most of these old clients will respond because they already know you. You’ve been doing their work. Even if it’s only been six months, you’ve met them in person. It’s very easy to convert them back into a recurring client and increase the LTV. And again, this costs you $0 in ad spend and $0 in marketing.
Play #3: Build a Referral Program
I feel like I talk about this all the time because it’s so powerful, and even early on in my career, it’s one of those huge things I missed. We didn’t have an easy way for customers to make referrals. We didn’t have a good system to track who gave the referrals. And obviously we weren’t paying out because there was no tracking.
But if you make it super easy for customers, they will refer. And when they get paid or get a free service for that referral, you’ll be surprised at how many more they’ll do and how many more customers you’ll get.
Referral customers are the best leads you can get. They’re almost free, and they convert at an insanely high rate because it’s Miss Sally Jones referring her sister, her husband’s friends, whoever. In our company, referral leads close at or above 80%.
Make the offer compelling.
$20 or $25 off their next service works. Or give them $25 cash. I actually prefer cash myself. It’s easier for the customer and gets them more motivated. You can also do something like three referrals earns one free month of service.
Easy ways to roll this out.
Get some door hanger bags and put postcards in there with the customer’s name on it. Write their name on five postcards, include an information sheet explaining the referral program, and leave it on their door. Or if they’re home, walk them through the whole program. Say something like:
“Hey, I’d really appreciate it if you could give me five people’s names that you know that use pest control.”
More often than not, customers will give you three to five names and connect you.
If the customer isn’t home, send them a text: “Hey Sally, I left you some postcards on the door. Here’s what they’re for.”
Referrals stack so fast. It’s the easiest and fastest way to grow your company. It might be a lot of work to set up, but I promise you it’s easy after that and definitely worth it. I have a whole separate video just on referral strategy that I’d highly recommend checking out.
Play #4: Offer Pre-Pays
There are so many reasons I like prepays. In lawn care it’s very common because the work is more seasonal. But it works in pest control too.
At the end of the fall or before the new season starts, send out a prepaid letter. Something like: “Hey, to lock in 2025 pricing before the increases come in 2026, sign up now and save the difference.” Maybe it’s a 3%, 5%, even 10% discount for paying the full year upfront.
Why this works:
It stacks a lot of cash in the offseason or early in the spring. Yes, you’ll have to budget a little more carefully. But spring is when you’re buying trucks, wrapping trucks, buying equipment, buying chemicals, prepaying for all this stuff. That’s exactly when you don’t have a lot of cash. Even if you get $5,000 to $10,000 in prepays early on, that’ll help you purchase everything you need to get ahead of the schedule.
Prepays also reduce churn by about 6 to 8% overall. The lowest churn rate is always in prepaid customers. When another company comes and knocks on their door, if your customer has already prepaid and they know you personally, they’re not going to want to switch. They’re not going to try to get their money back. They’ve already committed for the year. Retention is super high.
When I was working with Alex Hormozi, we were talking about churn rate, and the best churn rate was always prepaid. It reduced churn by about 6 to 8% per year just by offering prepaid pricing.
I do actually have a prepaid letter I can share. Drop a comment and I can connect with you on that.
A simple message could be: “Hey Sally, you can prepay your plan for next season. Get $100 off plus a free mosquito treatment. Want me to send you the invoice?”
We do this every single year. In one of our branches, we consistently get 50% of our whole client base to prepay throughout the year. Coming into March, April, May, we have a stack of cash to get us through the summer just from this one prepay letter.
Let’s say you have 40 clients prepaying $600 per year. That’s $24,000 in upfront cash sitting in your bank account, and you’re not having to track that money down throughout the entire year. You don’t have a bunch of accounts receivable, and it’s hard to build a company off accounts receivable.
Play #5: Raise Your Prices
This never sounds fun. It’s always scary. I had to learn the hard way too. But once you’ve done it a couple times, it’s not so scary anymore. It’s something we constantly work on. We’re constantly raising prices.
One of the first things I’m going to do when I come in to work with you side by side is just raise prices. Minimum 3%. But I’d say 10 to 20% if you haven’t raised prices in a while.
Here’s the thing: you could double what you’re charging, lose 50% of your customers, and still be doing the same amount of revenue with fewer clients. And they’re probably the better clients because they’re willing to pay you what you’re worth.
There’s another side to this too. If you offer someone a cheap service, that’s exactly what they think they’re getting. They’re not emotionally invested. Those cheap clients are always the ones that complain, always the ones you get the most callbacks from. The people who are paying the most? You almost never hear from them.
Every single year, raise prices. At minimum, bump the bottom 10 to 20% of your client list by 10 to 20%. You’ll have some fall off, sure. But even if you raised them by 10% and lost 10% of those clients, you’re still further ahead. Less work, more revenue, better customers.
Your customers expect this. Any reputable company they’ve worked with in the past raises prices every single year, whether that’s 3 to 5% or more.
I remember how scared I was the first time. I was in an academy with a good mentor and he told me, “Don’t be afraid. Just go do it.” I sent out the email and I was just sitting there waiting for something bad to happen. And there was almost zero pushback. Maybe three or four complaints, I can’t remember exactly. We raised prices about 20%. No pushback. That was when the light bulb clicked. I think that summer I made an additional $30,000 to $50,000 in pure profit just by raising prices.
If you’re going to send an email, you can keep it simple. Let customers know that costs have gone up: product, fuel, payroll, it all increases every single year. Unfortunately, customers have to take on some of that burden as well. And honestly, they expect it. An annual bump is normal.
A simple message: “Hey, due to the rising cost of delivering high-quality service, our monthly rate will be going from $X to $Y, effective [start date].”
If you have 10 clients worth $100 each and you raise prices by $10, that’s $1,000 extra per month in pure profit.
Bonus Play #6: Offer Seasonal and Specialty Add-On Services
This one’s easy wins. If you’re out doing pest control, think about what else you could offer: flea and tick treatments, crawl space encapsulation, ant barriers, lawn treatments, exclusion work, insulation, ridge vent covers. All the things that make sure you’re excluding the house properly and protecting the customer from all bugs and rodents.
The range on these services is huge. You could be doing a $100 lawn spray or an $8,000 sealant for a home. But on average, you can still generate $5,000 to $10,000 in extra one-time service revenue throughout the year.
The Revenue Recap
Here’s what all of this adds up to when you put these plays into action:
Rodent setup + recurring work: Up to $11,500
Mosquito upsells: Around $6,000 extra per month
Reactivation campaign: $3,000 to $4,500 per month
Referral strategy: $2,500 to $3,700
Price increase: $200 to $3,000
Plan upgrades and additional services: $5,000 to $6,000
That’s a total of $35,000 to $38,000 in real revenue over the next 60 days, all from the clients you already serve, without spending a single dollar in marketing.
If you’re doing $8,000 to $15,000 a month and feel stuck, this is how you break through, get unstuck, and add revenue with a lot more profit and better customers.
