Why is speed to lead so important for pest control companies?
The biggest reason why speed to lead is so important is because your competition is getting to their leads very quickly now these days.
I’m Jake Sheldon, co-founder of Pest Control Millionaires. I also own a portfolio of various service companies including pest control, cleaning, movers, and more. And I can tell you from talking to buddies who have been in the industry 20, 30 years, speed to lead wasn’t as important as it is now.
Your competition is getting after these leads very, very, very quickly. So you need to be too now. It’s just the way it is. It’s the way the world is. You have to be quick to your leads.
Now, one thing we need to talk about is that every platform is a little different when it comes to speed to lead.
Referrals vs Cold Leads From Facebook
Your referrals, of course, people that you may have talked to that are already kind of interested in the service, the speed to lead isn’t going to be quite as important.
These are people that already know your brand, know your service. Maybe they were a referral. So it’s not going to be as big of a deal on the speed to lead. You could probably even take a day to get back to them.
That is very untrue about Facebook or even some of these paid directories. You have to be fast. Because if you’re even going sometimes even 10 minutes, depending on your area, they’re already signed up with another company and the company’s coming out in a few hours.
That is sometimes actually the case.
You have to be very aware of what platform it is and how quickly you need to respond depending on that platform. But I know for me and my locations, for Facebook, paid directories, Google, if we miss a call or if we’re not calling that lead within five to 10 minutes, it’s gone.
That quick. Yeah. Sometimes even faster.
Just Pick Up the Phone
So let’s talk about specifically what’s in that first response. The lead maybe fills out a contact form or they call you. How are you responding to that lead? How are you converting them as fast as possible?
The first thing that I always do and I always tell anyone that’s in our class is you need to get on the phone with them as quickly as you can possible.
Because the other company, let’s say you’re trying to sit there and close them over messenger. You’re sitting there texting them. “Hey, what are you having problems with?” “There’s cockroaches.”
Well, let’s say that goes on for an hour. Well, your competition could have called them already, booked them, answered all the questions, and got them on the schedule while you’re sitting there trying to text them.
Just pick up the phone. Get them on the phone and close them. Or have someone on your team do it, of course.
That is the best way, still to this day. Just call your leads.
You Should Still Call Warm Leads
How does it compare, cold leads versus warm leads? Someone who’s completely cold, maybe they just kind of contacted you out of the blue, maybe they saw a Facebook ad, versus someone who’s warm, they’ve done a ton of research, they’re totally ready to buy basically now. Are you talking to those leads differently?
If they are a referral, you don’t have to, like I said, your speed to lead isn’t as important. You can actually close those people over text.
My personal opinion is you should still call them. We’re a premium service. We want to come off as they are very, very important, because they are. They are important. So we still like to call.
I know a lot of people in the industry, a lot of my friends, they’ll text people, close them over text. This is just my personal opinion. I don’t like doing that.
I like giving them a call, having that personal experience with someone on our team, thanking them personally. “Hey, thanks for your business. Hey, we really greatly appreciate you.”
And that also gives us the opportunity to talk to them about our referral program, our gift giveaway program. And that’s hard to do through text.
Again, this is just my personal opinion. I think that calling them is the best way to do it.
So it’s not necessarily different the way we’re talking to people. The only thing is when it’s a cold lead, you do have to educate them a little bit more because they’re not riding the fence. But when it is a cold lead, you just do have to explain more in that process.
86% of People Won't Answer Unknown Numbers
How can we start to automate that? And what does that look like? Is that just an automatic form fill response or what?
It will depend on the platform. My favorite platform is Facebook. There’s a bunch of reasons why we go into that in another section.
But for Facebook, I do like sending out an automated text, letting them know I’m going to be calling them and that we got their information.
Because we find statistically, if you’re just calling them out of the blue, there’s like an 80% to 86% chance, depending on which study you’re reading, that they aren’t going to answer that phone call.
They don’t have your number saved. For a lot of you reading this, how many times do you answer your phone from a number that’s not saved?
Maybe pest control owners will answer every call because there might be a client or a prospect. But most normal people that work a nine to five, a normal job, they don’t want to be bombarded by random callers. They want to know who’s calling.
And that’s why I always suggest you text right before you’re calling. And that’s why this automation is so important.
The Exact Follow-Up Sequence
As soon as the lead fills out the contact info, within 30 seconds to a minute, you need to have a text that goes out and then you call them.
That way they’re getting kind of a double hit. And then once you call, if they don’t pick up, you actually hang up and you call again. Do what we call back to back.
That is going to be really, really important. Just like I mentioned, most people don’t answer a phone number from a number that’s not saved in their phone. So just do the back to back call.
It may feel pushy. It may feel salesy. That’s what I said. And I first heard that from a very, very large pest control company. They’re like, “Just do back to back call.”
I’m like, “No way I’m doing that. That’s so pushy.”
No, it’s not. I promise you it works. If you work with Facebook or Google and you have a rep, they’ll actually call you three times in a row.
Definitely do the back to back calls, have the automated texting if they don’t answer, and of course leave a voicemail.
Those several calls show urgency. If something crazy happened and you really have to call your mom, are you just going to call her once? No, you’re going to keep calling until she picks up.
What to Say in the Voicemail
So let’s talk about that voicemail. What’s in that?
Something super simple. Just letting them know that you got their information from a form they filled out or they called you and you may have missed it. You don’t want to do that, by the way. But that does happen, especially for newer companies.
Just something super simple. “Hey, my name is Jake, Green Day Pest Control. I saw that you filled out your info on our Facebook form. I just called to get you set up and answer any questions that you may have before you sign up for the service.”
Something super simple.
The Text Message That Saves Your Number
Let’s get a little bit more tactical here. What is that text message? And you also said text message and phone call. Is it text and then phone call right away or two minutes after?
The first thing that has to go out is that text message. Super important that it goes out.
Because a lot of the times for most phones, a lot of iPhones, it will say “Maybe Jake Sheldon” or “Maybe” before the name. When you text before and you say your name, it will say “Maybe.”
I should have known that. Exactly. So it, not all the time, I’m not sure about Androids, but I know for the iPhone it typically will say “Maybe.”
So text message must go out before, 30 seconds to a minute after they fill out a form or show interest in a service. And then you call them within the first five minutes.
If they don’t answer, you do a back to back call. If they don’t answer that second call, you’re going to leave a voicemail.
And then our team actually calls again three to four hours later, and then again that night. So we actually do three calls technically, and they’re all back to back. So you’re actually doing six calls.
But it sounds like a lot, right? Because when I heard that, I was like, “Oh my gosh, you’re crazy for doing that.”
But it works very, very well.
10% Close Rate to 45% Close Rate
Talk to me about how well it works. What is the impact of that?
Even just for our Facebook leads, we went from like a 10% to 15% close rate all the way up to a 40% to 45% close rate.
That’s literally a 3x on leads.
That is insane. And because people will ask me, even when I show them my results on Facebook, show it in the class, and our lead cost is pretty good, but they’re like, “Jake, how the heck are you guys closing this many leads?”
Because that’s a really, really high close rate for Facebook.
I’m like, if you even knew how many times we called these leads, it’s a lot of work. But when you’re closing a lot of sales throughout the year, it’s worth it. It’s worth it if you’re closing a lot of leads.
Very, very important for follow up.
Now, I will mention that if they’re Google leads, you really just need to answer the phone. You’re more experienced than I am on the Google side of things, but it’s so important just to have someone that answers the phone.
It doesn’t have to be the owner. You just need someone to answer. Because every time you’re missing a call, just think about it as money literally flying away. Because that’s what it is.
You have to answer the phone.
The Two Biggest Mistakes
Let’s talk about some of the top mistakes regarding speed to lead when someone has contacted you. What are some of the biggest problems people are making here?
The biggest problem that I see in the industry as a whole, I’ve literally talked to thousands of pest control owners, and the number one mistake is just people aren’t answering the phone.
And that’s because they’re busy. They’re out there, they’re doing work. They might have 10, 15, 20 routes on their schedule. And while they’re underneath the crawl space or knocking down a wasp nest, maybe they’ve missed two, three, four, five calls.
I’m like, “No. This is why you’re not growing.”
You’re busy right now, but you could have easily paid someone to answer the phone for you. Because that money has already flown away. And then what? Your competition got it.
But a lot of people don’t see it that way. You have to start seeing every phone call as money. Because that money that you missed could have paid for a CSR to answer that phone for you.
That’s the biggest mistake.
And then the second mistake I see people making is just not following up their leads enough and not tracking their leads. And I’m sure we’ll get into that. But tracking is super important.
I’ll ask people numbers. I’m like, “So how many sales did you get from Facebook this year?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many sales did you get from Google?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many sales did you get from your website?”
“I don’t know.”
And it sounds silly to us because we’re so in this. But it’s so common. So, so common.
And we’re not making fun of anyone who does that. It’s just, you don’t know what you don’t know.
Please track your leads. It’s going to make your life way better. And you’re going to start, at least for me, I started seeing how much business I was missing and how much money I was leaving on the table.
I’m like, “Oh my gosh, two phone calls that I missed in that day doesn’t seem like a lot.” But you add that up, six days that we’re working, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, we’re missing 10 to 15 calls per week.”
That’s a lot of calls per month. That’s a lot of calls per year.
And you start adding those up and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, the two calls that I missed in a day didn’t seem like a lot. But when you add up a year, maybe we’re missing 100, 200 calls in a year. If we’ve closed 50% of those, we have 100 new sales now.”
That could completely change so many people’s businesses.
Just track your leads. Make sure you’re following up with them quickly. And follow up with them more than you think.
Start Implementing This Today
The bottom line is this: you’ve done the hard work of generating the lead. Now actually close it.
Text them within 30 seconds to a minute. Call them within five minutes. Do back to back calls. Leave a voicemail. Call again three to four hours later. Call again that night. Six total call attempts.
Automate the initial text so their phone shows “Maybe Jake Sheldon” and they actually answer. Because 86% of people won’t answer an unknown number.
And for the love of God, answer your phone. Or hire someone to answer it for you. Every missed call is money flying away.
This is low hanging fruit. You’ve already paid to generate that lead. Don’t waste it by being slow or lazy with follow up.
Keep Learning and Growing
Want to connect with over 2,000 pest control business owners who are mastering speed to lead? Join our free Facebook group, Pest Control Millionaires. We share follow up strategies, call scripts, and automation workflows every day.
And if you want the complete playbook for converting leads at a 40-45% close rate like we do, check out Zip Code Kings. We break down the exact sequences, timing, and systems that are working right now.
Now go answer those calls and follow up like your business depends on it. Because it does.
