How to Start a Pest Control Business in 10 Easy Steps?

The pest control industry is a promising and ever-growing industry that offers plenty of opportunities for entrepreneurs. And if you are one of them, then kudos.

The pest control business is one such business that is involved in removing pests from homes or offices. But, starting a pest control business is not an easy task. You need to be ready to face some common challenges like:

• Selecting the target market
• Taking essential pest control training and certification
• Licensing and insurance

Looks difficult? Trust me; it’s not as difficult as it seems. You need to take care of the essential factors highlighted in the article on how to start a pest control business from scratch.

10 Easy Steps on How to Start a Pest Control Business

For starting a pest control business, you need to follow these steps.

Step 1: Write a Business Plan

The first step that you need to perform is to write a perfect pest control business plan. A plan defines a clear roadmap of your pest control company to remove pest problems from the customers’ site.

A business plan for your pest control company must have followed, but not limited to metrics mentioned:

• Startup costs: You need to define the expenses related to equipment, labor, business licenses and insurance costs, and even vehicle expenses.
• Business structure: The next thing you need to include is defining the structure you want to set for your business. It can be Sole Proprietorships, Partnerships, Corporations, S Corporations, or even Limited Liability Company (LLC).
• Target audience: Generally, a property owner is a person who will be your target audience.
• Business name: Give an attractive and catchy name to your business which makes it easy for your customers to know what you’re offering.

Step 2: Decide Which Pest Control Services You’ll Provide

The next step is to decide which pest control service offerings you’re going to provide to your customers. Here’s the list of the services that you can include in your business:

• Attic insulation
• Lawn treatments
• Moisture control
• Mosquito control
• Wildlife management
• Carpenter ant control
• Flea control
• Tick control
• Attic Insulation
• Stinging pests

You need to analyze the customer’s requirements and then make a selection of the services for your pest control business.

Step 3: Develop Your Value Proposition

A value proposition is something that makes you different from your competitors. In simple words, your value proposition is the main benefit customers receive when they choose your business.

As a pest control business owner, you can easily find the value proposition by answering the following questions:

• What are the steps you perform to remove the pest from the customer’s home or office?
• What are the unique services you’re offering to the customers?
• How are you different from your competitors?

Your value proposition is a summary of your business practices and their results. Get to the core of what makes your clients want to buy from you.

Step 4: Get Essential Training and Certification

Pest control is highly regulated, and no specific education and experience is required to pursue this business. Usually, it depends on the state where you live and need to follow the regulation standards.

You need to attend training and grab certification courses from the state’s Department of Agriculture (DOA) to handle chemical treatment and pesticides. Also, you need to complete an online examination for apprenticeship to get basic knowledge about pest control services.

Apply For Online Examination Now!

Such certification is proof that you are expert professionals to deal with pest management with ease. Often, you need to consult local and federal regulations as you are going to use chemicals regularly. Moreover, you can check the exam schedules and other exam-related information.

Step 5: Open Your Business Bank Account

Having a business bank account helps you stay legally protected. It will benefit both you and your prime customers.

One of the best recommendations is to use a personal and commercial bank account separately. Otherwise, there are more chances of getting your business sued.

For opening a new business bank account, you need to obtain a federal and state tax ID number.

Now, it’s time to open a business bank account.

Along with a bank account, it is also essential to maintain business credit. It helps you get credit cards on your business name, and also, you can receive better interest rates on other transactions.

If you have your business credit card, then it becomes pretty easy for you to manage all the personal and business expenses in one place.

Step 6: Get Your Business License

Business licensing is essential for any business and pest control business is no exception. You need to get occupational licensing for your pest control business before you start pesticide customer’s homes or businesses.

Such licensing must be approved by a state’s department of agriculture or state pesticide regulation office.

To get more details about the licensing requirements from different states, you need to first consult the American Pesticide Control Officials.

Step 7: Get Business Insurance

The primary role of insurance is to protect you and your employees from some unfortunate events. The events can be in any form:

• Damaging a customer’s property
• Employee injury while working
• Removing stains using chemicals

Many insurance companies are available when you can easily buy insurance policies based on your work. Remember that you do not have to spend single money if you have general liability insurance.

Apply for Business Insurance Now

You can also opt for commercial auto insurance as it allows you to cover the insurance on your business vehicles if an accident occurs.

Step 8: Include New Employees in Your Pest Control Business

As stated earlier, the pest control business involves more challenging work to perform. So you must hire employees that may help you and have a strong ability to deal with any situation that might arise.

Before you hire the employees for your business, make sure you check their:

• Pest control experience
• Professional and personal references
• Work history
• Personality to check whether they are a good match for the company

Apart from this, you can attract employees by offering them a fun, flexible, and rewarding work environment.

Step 9: Build Your Brand

Along with defining your value proposition, you need to develop a strong company’s identity and that is branding.

With appropriate branding, your customers will know about you and your business. And how’s that possible?

• By having a catchy business name
• By creating an attractive business logo
• By creating a tagline

Once you have your name, logo, and tagline, you’ll want to use your brand image on:

• Your business website
• Uniforms – shirts and hats
• Vehicles – wrap your trucks
• Social Media – your Facebook page
• Advertising – any ads should contain your name, logo, and company colors

Step 10: PREMIUM: Adopt the Best Pest Control Business Software To Enhance Your Business Productivity

The primary goal of pest control business owners is to streamline business operations smoothly, and it is made possible by adopting pest control business software.

The pest control software helps you maintain the overall aspects of the business operations like:

• Creating and assigning jobs to the cleaners
• Easily creates invoices for the customers
• Track the cleaner’s status
• Ease in payment processing for the customers

One such example of pest control business software is FieldCamp. It helps you enhance your business growth by automating your daily business operations. To make your pest control business successful, you can consider these tips for your pest control business.

Conclusion
The pest control business comes up with huge business potential and property owners’ opportunities to eradicate creepy crawlies and remove bed bugs.

To start a new pest control business, you need to take care of the following aspects:

• Your business plan must be accurate and up-to-date
• Get your essential business legal formalities
• Train your team to provide the best pest control services to customers

Along with such aspects, you can adopt pest control scheduling software in your pest control business to streamline your daily business activities. Such software solutions help you automate your business operations and efficiently manage your cleaners. Moreover, you can save up to 80% of your time and think about how you can expand your business.

In case, if you are still not sure how such software solutions help your business, then you can start your FREE trial with FieldCamp, which is a service scheduling software solution. This solution will take care of the overall responsibilities of your pest control business and help you manage things easily. But don’t take my word for it. Instead, see for yourself how FieldCamp will change your life.