I want to pull back the curtain and show you something that’s made a huge difference inside my own company. A system that helped us book more jobs, reactivate old customers, and add well over six figures in revenue in a single year. And we did it without hiring any new employees.
I get asked all the time how we run our inside call center. So I figured I’d just lay it all out.
Let me give you an example before I even get into it. Let’s say you have 500 customers who are all on general pest control, and you’ve never properly pitched them on mosquito service, rodent bait boxes, or any other ancillary service. With the right system in place, you can send automated text messages on a timed sequence that generates revenue on autopilot. You don’t have to remember to do it. There are so many things that owners can automate that they don’t even know they can, and those things directly impact not just your revenue but your bottom line profit.
If you run a pest control company, a fertilizer and lawn care company, or really any service company, you already know the problem. Spring rush hits and it all suddenly creates chaos. You start getting more leads, more customers, more missed calls, and text messages you just don’t have time to respond to. People fall through the cracks. I promise you are not alone. It happens to a lot of people.
And it’s not like we purposely don’t try to follow up. It’s that we’re stretched so thin. We’ve got technicians out in the field. We have CSRs managing routes, doing billing, handling cancellations. There’s only so many hours in the day. And let’s be honest, our people just want to go home. Even during spring rush, 8 or 10 o’clock rolls around and they still have to go home. But the leads still have to get answered. The calls still have to get responded to. So we have to figure out how to handle that.
Instead of hiring more people, I started looking for a way to systematize communication. That’s exactly where I came across the software that honestly changed how we operate as a company.
The Software That Changed Everything
It’s called Next Gen Of Leads. It’s a lead management CRM that automates nearly all of your front-end communication. But here’s an important distinction: this does not replace your routing or scheduling CRM.
I get asked this question all the time. People say, “Well, I already have a CRM. It does emails, it does text campaigns, it does all of that.” And I agree. But here’s the problem. As soon as a customer opts out of your text campaign or email campaign, all of a sudden when you send them a billing email or a billing text, they don’t get it. Or if you send them a reminder the day before a technician shows up, they’re not getting those either. That’s why I like to keep these separated. There are a lot of other functionalities I like about running two separate CRMs. They can link together in the back end, but let me walk through a few more things.
I’ve been using automations for probably 10-plus years. And there are so many automations you can use that you just don’t even know are out there and available. There are pest control specific automations for new leads, for upsells, for reactivation campaigns, for old customers. And I would honestly use the reactivation function right away, like day one. You can add thousands of dollars of revenue in your very first week using the CRM. For the price you pay, it’ll be hundreds of thousands of times ROI. It’s incredibly powerful.
How We Actually Use It
If you have multiple salespeople, or maybe it’s just you, or if you run multiple branches, here’s exactly how we use the software. You can see all your leads in one spot, all your customers in one place. There are conversation tabs and a section for all your messages so you can keep up with replies and make sure every single person gets responded to. It also has AI built in, so if something does fall through the cracks and you miss a message, the system automatically sends one for you.
One of my favorite parts is the marketing and social planner. There are places where you can create email templates for campaigns. You can make them as polished or as simple as you want. There are already templates in there that you can just rebrand for yourself. I get asked all the time, “How do you guys post so much social media content?” Well, I do it right out of this CRM. You can post to multiple platforms at the same exact time. You can automate everything. You can set it up to go out at specific times. It’s exactly how we do it.
I get it. There are a ton of tools out there. New software getting developed every single day. They throw so much at us that it’s hard to know what to use. I’m just trying to show you what’s working for me right now. Maybe it’s not the long-term answer, but for right now, this is what’s working best for us.
If you’re good with tech and automations like I am, you can log into their software and set it all up yourself. I’ve been doing automations for 10 years, so it’s relatively easy for me. Or you can do what I did. Even though I’m good at it, I don’t have the time. I just hired their team to set everything up for us. I’m pretty sure it was even free. And there are tutorials for every single part of the system.
The Automations That Actually Move the Needle
Here’s where it gets good. When a new lead fills out a form, calls, or messages in, the system automatically creates an opportunity for us, tags it with the offer, notifies our team that we got a new lead, and messages the client for us. The system is set up to message clients once a day for a week if you don’t get a response. All the messages are already pest control specific. And if you want to tweak them or change any wording, you can do that easily.
Whenever your lead responds, the whole team gets notified so you’re never late to a message. Or you can even have their pest AI respond to leads for you. It can handle the conversation, find out what pest issues they’re dealing with, and even get a day and time they’re available for a free inspection. All your team has to do is book it. There’s a mobile app too. I can open my phone at any time and see people responding with times they’re available so we can easily get them scheduled.
Now here’s where it gets really interesting. Every pest control company has a gold mine of past customers. People who bought once but never renewed, or cancelled and never came back. This system has a simple pre-built reactivation automation that brings those customers back automatically. And the best part is it just sits there in the background running itself and booking appointments, just like all of your new leads.
If you’ve been in business for a few years, you probably have tens of thousands of dollars just sitting in your database. You just need the right system to tap into it.
When spring comes around, we send out quick texts to our current customers offering mosquito control add-ons. You’d be shocked at how many people just say yes. It takes minutes to set up, but adds thousands of dollars per month. And no one has to manually text or call these customers. The system handles everything.
The AI That Catches What You Miss
One of my favorite parts is the pest control AI that’s built into NextGen. Let’s say a call comes in after hours or when everyone’s busy. Normally that lead is gone. They probably won’t leave a voicemail. They’re going to go back to Google and call the next company in line. And if that company answers, they’re going to get the sale.
But if you’re using this system, you can automatically answer those missed calls, get the customer’s contact information, their issue, their address, the days and times they’re available, and then it sends you a summary so you can easily put them on the schedule the next morning or the same day.
We actually have a bunch of AI agents working for us now. We have people managing our AI agents. There’s an awesome knowledge base that shows you how and when to set up your AI, how to add specific information about your business, and how to test it to make sure it’s responding exactly how you want. The more information you feed it, the better it knows your company and the better its responses get.
Why I'm Telling You This
Here’s what I’m trying to get across. I didn’t start using automation to replace people. I’ve been using automation for 10-plus years, but it gave my team breathing room and made sure no opportunity gets lost just because we’re busy. And the best part is, I’m not a super techy person. If I can use the software, you can use the software. It’s super easy. It’s more about building systems to support your people instead of just relying on them to remember everything.
I remember back in the day I used to pride myself on being able to remember everything. But then you get thousands and thousands of accounts and it’s just impossible. That’s not how you scale. Building these systems is how you scale. Your system starts doing the work for you.
If you want to test the system for yourself, there’s a setup team that helps you get started for free. I’m not even saying you have to use this specific software. But if you’re trying to free up more time, get more consistency, and stop leaving money on the table watching those leads fall through the cracks that you’re already paying for, this is one of the best tools I’ve personally ever implemented in our business.
If you want to sign up, choose the pest control specific account. Someone from the NextGen Leads team will give you a call and help you get everything connected. You’ll also get access to a full tutorial course that goes over every automation, every AI feature, and even troubleshooting tips so you can run it confidently by yourself or hand it off to someone on your team.
If you’re tired of running on a hamster wheel every single spring, answering calls all day, following up at night, and still missing out on jobs, start putting the systems in place that’ll handle that for you. That’s what allowed me to step back from the day-to-day and actually focus on growing the business.
