Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Hello, this is Ben. And it’s time for another Ben’s pest control podcast. And today, we’re going to talk about a shake up in the pest control industry. And for a lot of people they may not be aware yet, the news just broke last week that the largest company in our industry, Termin
ex, is being brought out by a large English company by the name of Rentokil. And now, both companies are perfectly good companies, but we’re talking about the largest company in our, in our industry in the United States. And there’s, I’m sure going to be a transition, we’ll call it as the new company takes over, I have worked for some, some big companies and been part of acquisitions. And whenever a new company comes in, there’s always some uncertainty and changes that come with with that transition. And that doesn’t mean there’s anything bad. It’s just, it can be very different for the employees, for the customers. And, and nobody’s really certain always what that means. So it’s going to be interesting to see how this unfolds. But you might be wondering why I mentioned this to you. Well, Ben’s one of the things I’ve said for a long time having worked for big companies, is that when you work for these large corporations, it’s perfectly fine. Obviously customers have every right to choose whoever they want to use. But you’re you’re dealing with a company that isn’t local. And even though they have employees that are probably local, their roots aren’t necessarily in your neighborhood. And and what does that mean to you? Well, one of the things we’ve always said is that all of our customers have access to me, the owner 24/7, I’ve given up my cell phone number, it’s on my business cards, it’s on my website, it’s on videos, I am more than happy to talk to my customers at any point in time. And as the owner, I feel like that’s a completely logical thing to do. Well, having worked for the large companies, it can be very difficult sometimes for customers who are frustrated or upset to, to move up the chain, to talk to the people that they may feel they need to talk to to get resolution on their problems. I can tell you having worked for one company that the boss, the owner used to say, Well, if the customers have to get to me, then I don’t know why I have you or why I’m paying you because I don’t need you if you can’t resolve the customer’s problems. And though that may be a completely legitimate statement, it doesn’t mean that sometimes the customers don’t feel that they need to talk to somebody at the highest level to resolve those issues. I’ll give you an example. I worked for a company on the West Coast and my boss, who was our operations manager of our location, decided that he was going to help fill in one day and pick up some of the workload on a weekend. And it happened to be the Saturday before Easter. Well, we had a client who was due to have his lawn treated. And for treatment, they were going to air rate his lawn. Well, when you area a lawn, you bring in a machine and it’s got these big spikes, and it pulls out soil from the ground to allow air to to flow to the root systems. And the biggest drawback to it is that right after you perform the aeration, the the soil that’s brought up makes the yard look really dirty. I mean it there’s all this soil sitting on top of the grass from where these plugs were pulled out. Well, the customer I guess, was planning to have a big family gathering for Easter and I had just actually gone to this office. And I got the call that I needed to go out and talk to this gentleman. So I went out I met with him and I talked to him and I mean to say he was outraged. She said he told the person above me not to do the lawn. He didn’t want the lawn done. He paid to have his lawn manicured. He had everything perfect for his celebration. Well, he wanted resolution and he wanted something to be done. Well needless to say, when you look at the chain of command, I mean I’m under the gentleman your man, my boss’s him so I can go back to him and tell him you’re upset. But it doesn’t do me a whole lot of good to
to go to him if he’s already told you he pretty much didn’t care what you wanted and went ahead and did a treatment to your grass that you asked him not to do so in that situation. We literally had to, I had to give that customer the corporate office so they could go up and, and talk to somebody above that person. Well, that can be very difficult to do, because it’s not always readily available, nor do people at all necessarily give out those numbers. A lot of the branches are there, and the employees are there trying to protect the people that they work with. So it can be difficult to necessarily move up that chain of command. And I can’t speak for you. I mean, email is a great way to contact sometimes corporate offices or corporate employees. But so many of us get so much email, it is very difficult to know if anybody actually received the email or if they cared, or they just thought it was maybe some junk mail, who knows they may have thrown it out. So the whole process can be very frustrating. So one of the things we’ve always said is, when you’re dealing with a local company, like ourselves, Ben’s pest control, I mean, you have access to me, the owner. This is a family business. Now, I can’t honestly say wholeheartedly that we would never possibly sell out because I have no idea what the future holds health wise and things like that. But at least for us, I know that my my daughter, Hannah, who answers the phones is in the business. My son James has joined the business this year, he graduated from high school. My daughter, Hannah, who I just mentioned, wants to take classes in entomology, and possibly go to school and get her degree in that. So I mean, we feel here that we are going to have this business for a long time and hopefully be there for our clients for years and years, maybe even generations to come in the future. So that, to me is a big deal for for the consumer, you have access to the ownership, the people who make the decisions to people who can hopefully make you happy and take care of you. Another thing that I’ve always said when it comes to companies is having worked for larger companies. The money that you you spend supports the local company. So when you’re able to support a local company, it makes a difference to your local community. Everything. I live here in Port St. Lucie, just this year, we did a toy drive for the guardians of the guardians for The Guardian, ad items, for guardians for Bright Future program, sorry. And we were able to raise I believe, between 100 and 150 toys to go to kids here in our own community, where, in my opinion, some of the bigger companies, they may have nationwide charities that they give to. But it’s not necessarily at the local level affecting your neighbors or the people that you know are the members of your church events, pest control, we have supported Little League baseball in the past, we’ve supported soccer. In town here, we’ve supported our local schools, we’ve sponsored teams from centennial, we’ve sponsored, great schools, middle schools, we have been here trying to help the people of our community and take care of those people. So it does make a difference. You know, which businesses you support. And so that’s one of those things that we have said all along is hopefully you take the time and support your local business, and not see that money go to another town. Now, in the case of the companies I just spoke about when we started this podcast, one of their corporate offices, the company that’s being bought out is is in Memphis, I believe Tennessee. So you know, all the, you know, all the funds that make their way up the ladder are are making their way there, the new buyer is actually from England. So that’s overseas. And that’s just, you know, watching your money go now, it’s great that they support the local people as far as giving people jobs. Obviously, that does help support the community.
It’s just a matter of whether or not the local people have the ability to go to them and say, hey, you know, we’re looking to support our school will, will you donate? And maybe they will, I can’t say for sure. I know. I know, the one company that I worked for that I mentioned, we didn’t do a whole lot. We weren’t able to give our employees let’s say forms and, and ways to get the funding to support their children or their programs that they were in. Usually if, say one of our people’s kids was earning Boy Scouts, we support it by buying cookies because we all work together. Which is good also, but it’s not quite as much as what a mega corporation would have the ability to do if they wanted to. And then their thing is always well, we can’t Do that on a local level. Because if we do it for one, we have to do it for all. And when they have hundreds of branches, to do it for all for them is is impossible, as they like to say. So that’s just one of a couple of the things that, you know, this is gonna be interesting to see how this is unfold, or those are I’m sorry. Those are a couple of the reasons we feel it’s important to support local companies. I can only tell you from my industry, there are a lot of people in the industry that are just wondering what this is going to do. It’s it’s going to be interesting to see how this affects us coming into 2021, or I’m sorry, 2022. And where this goes from here, so be prepared. If if you haven’t heard this, or if you’re not aware, we know that there are definitely changes on the horizon. And we’ll see what this does for all of us. But again, this is Ben with Ben’s pest control. And hopefully if the things we talked about today are the things you’re interested in supporting the local company, supporting people that you know, help support your community, please check out our website at WWW dot Ben’s pest stop is or if you’re interested in one of our free 50 Point pest surveys and analysis, give us a call at 772-878-1972 Thank you and have a great day.
