Pest Management Professional • November 2022 • Take 2

It’s not uncommon for struggling companies to crash and burn when the economy takes a turn for the worse, but that has not been the case in the pest management industry.

Pest Management Professional’s 2023 State of the Industry report, which begins after p. 32, illustrates how most pest management professionals (PMPs) have risen above the challenges they encountered this year.

Rising fuel prices, inflation, supply chain disruptions, and high employee turnover are just a few of the business obstacles company owners are working hard to overcome.

Indeed, the results of our exclusive annual survey show 86 percent of respondents predict revenue gains in the year ahead. In addition, 78 percent tell us their 2022 revenue is up over last year’s.

PMPs who answered our survey say they keep their businesses flying high by employing strategies that include upselling general pest control customers on additional services, increasing prices, and providing excellent customer service to ensure repeat business.

The need for pest control is clear, but driving home that point is critical for continued business growth. As Philip Smith, president of Compass Pest Management in Cornelia, Ga., notes, PMPs should embrace their role as protectors of health and property. “Pest control is not a service of convenience, it’s a service of necessity,” he says.

‘In safety there is happiness’

Among the four deserving members we inducted into the Pest Management Professional Hall of Fame last month was Ted Oser. You can see coverage of the induction ceremony starting on p. 18, but I want to recommend a book that was important to our research for Oser’s bio: Orkin: The Making of the World’s Best Pest Control Company.

The book includes an excerpt Oser wrote for this very magazine (then called Pests) in 1944, which he implores readers to continue to make safety a priority:

We know our business best. It is definitely up to us to improve our methods, our technique, our standards, and our personnel and thus avail ourselves of new discoveries and developments in the use of rodenticides and insecticides… Remember, IN SAFETY THERE IS HAPPINESS.

I was glad to see at last month’s PestWorld that safety continues to be a top goal of suppliers as they roll out new solutions for the industry. Safe practices lead to professionalism and public health protection, which, as Oser said so presciently nearly eight decades ago, leads to continued good will for professional pest management.