Ep 98 - Scaling a Commercial Powerhouse with Andrea Brubaker

Andrea Brubaker: At first, I was still embarrassed. I’d go to the Restaurant Association meetings or chamber events and I would shake hands with business owners. I would shyly say, “I'm just in pest control. I just do pest control.” I look back on that now and I cringe because of what a powerful industry this is. At the time, I had no idea.

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Paul Giannamore: Mr. PB, we’re back on the air.

Patrick Baldwin: Back for a minute, at least.

Paul Giannamore: It's true. I was on the road quite a bit as were you and now we're back at it, for a couple of episodes and then we're going to be taking another break as we gear up for some things here for summer 2022. Let's talk a little bit about this episode.

Patrick Baldwin: Andrea Brubaker. This was incredible and I wish I had this years ago. She should get our readers ahead of the curve. If they don't already have a commercial sales program, this is where to start. This is where I'm going to send everyone.

Paul Giannamore: Let’s go see Andrea. Call her up. Why not? Andrea worked for Tony Sfreddo and his brother Phil at Triple ‘S’ so I got an opportunity to meet her when we did the Triple ‘S’ deal over four years ago now. She ran the commercial sales program at Triple ‘S’. She’s a total star in what she did. Here, in the interview, she had been in the business since she was 18 or 19 when she started working in Triple ‘S’.

Patrick Baldwin: We can’t talk about a woman's age here, Paul. It's not polite.

Paul Giannamore: That's true. We're not supposed to do that but she had been around a while. Patrick, we decided to do this because we do get a lot of questions about commercial versus residential. There are a lot of folks out there that own pest control businesses. They have not worked in either commercial sales or service historically, prior to starting their businesses they bought or otherwise joined a business that's largely residential. Commercial is separate. “It's a whole different ball of wax,” as they say and so I thought it would be interesting to get Andrea on here because quite frankly, I don't know anything at all about selling commercial services. That's what I was thinking.

Patrick Baldwin: I bet you know more about commercial sales than you let on to but that's okay.

Paul Giannamore: You know more about commercial sales than I let on.

Patrick Baldwin: I paid attention to Patrick Quigley's class, but you picked up what he was putting down while we're there. That's where we first met in person. It was 2017 in Pat Quigley’s. You said, “Get on up to New Jersey.”

Paul Giannamore: Yes, it was. We'd known each other for many moons before that but that's the first time we met in person.

Patrick Baldwin: You were getting company Bravo up and running and you said, “Bring a guy or two up here and get your learn-on with Quigley’s.” We did and learned a lot. Apparently, that's where Andrea picked up some extra commercial sales smarts as well. Shout out to Pat Quigley out there. What do you say? We’ll step into the boardroom with Andrea Brubaker.

Paul Giannamore: Let's do this, Patrick.

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Patrick Baldwin: Paul, I'm excited about this one. You got Andrea Brubaker into the boardroom. I'm like, “Who's Andrea?” “Do you know Tony?” I’m like, “I know Tony.” “You want to know Tony if it wasn't for Andrea.” That's what you said.

Paul Giannamore: That's right. The last time we talked about Andrea on The Buzz was Tony's episode and I remember that was episode five. That was the first actual guest that we had on The Buzz. Welcome, Andrea.

Andrea Brubaker: Thank you. We're glad to be here. The boardroom is fabulous.

Paul Giannamore: We’re glad to hear that. What I know about you because I got to see some of the results of your labors over the years is that you've been pretty damn fabulous yourself. Before we get deep into your history, we'll talk about Triple ‘S’ and talk about your old man a little bit. Maybe we'll talk about Tony and the rest of the crew over there but before we get started with that, what are you doing now?

Andrea Brubaker: In November of 2021, I made the tough decision to step away from the pest management industry and started a new business with my husband. He had already got the ball rolling. It's called District Enviro Services. He's super cool and he has always been a fixer so maintaining commercial properties and doing that for over a decade. This was something I would always call him in to help fix drywall or a door and he would do that for us.

Having a collaboration with him in a new business where we're doing hot water, pressure washing, and steam, it's a biological way to clean areas that our clients and the pest control industry seem to try to avoid at all costs. Sanitation. Now we have a cool service that we can offer that helps aid the IPM program, but we're delivering that steam and hot water pressure washing, cleaning, loading docks, trash areas, commercial kitchens, and all those places that need the extra support.

Paul Giannamore: You're doing it in the DC metro area?

Andrea Brubaker: Yeah. DC, Maryland, and Virginia.

Paul Giannamore: Patrick, I see a question springing up over there.

Patrick Baldwin: To me, it's a missed opportunity I've never thought of. I'm intrigued. The pressure washing or steaming, you're tied into the sanitation needs of a lot of your old clients, are you not?

Andrea Brubaker: I love this customer base. I know what they go through and the challenges that they have with getting things done in a timely manner by a good contractor and labor shortages. This is something that maybe they were shortcutting using cold water to clean their loading docks and so forth. When you have tough issues, and you have a buildup of scum, bacteria, and debris, this is when you want to call on a professional to come in and do it.

We can do it much more efficiently and we're not using hazardous products to do so. When you use cold water only, you need to use some type of detergent or chemical to break through that grease and hard stains so we're able to sanitize an area with that hot water. It's pretty cool. I never thought about hot water until this came up and how great it is. It’s all-natural and fabulous.

Patrick Baldwin: How did you stumble upon it?

Andrea Brubaker: My husband has been in the industry for a long time doing commercial services so regular pressure washing of exterior areas is quite common but adding the component of hot water is something that we decided would help clean better and it did. Adding that into the pest control industry and using it as a target to help prevent attractants for rodents and pest pressures and other insects, not just rodents but vespids, flies, and wasps are attracted to dumpster areas and nesting wildlife flies. It definitely cleans and gets in there and removes all of those attractants. Ultimately, the decision to use hot water was about that sanitation piece. During COVID, we learned about public health. We’re into delivering clean areas for clients with pest management so this was an add-on that came naturally.

Paul Giannamore: Is it a recurring service similar to commercial pest control?

Andrea Brubaker: It is. You won't believe the things I've seen. If you go to a trash room, you have a trash chute, and everything falls into a big bin and sometimes that's emptied in a timely manner and sometimes it's not. Debris builds up on the wall inside the chute on the floor and it's tough. Sometimes you have to manually scrape those items away, and then we use your steam and hot water to clean them effectively.

That would be the initial service. Get it all to where it should be and then you pop in on a recurring basis. Sometimes that's monthly for clients. Sometimes it's more frequent, depending on the level of trash. It’s really food trash and odors that we find have been our best clients so far and that's the grocery retail market.

Patrick Baldwin: Did you find yourself collaborating with other pest control operators? I've understood that you don't need to have a structural license to do this so you can go to the pest control operators that are dealing with it, and you’ve said it so nicely, I'm going to say, nasty people. These dirty accounts that need to have sanitation needs, do you go to the pest control operators and say, “Let's come alongside you and solve their problems?” Do you find yourself competing with them?

Andrea Brubaker: Pest Management Professionals are some of my best clients. They refer business to me and I've appreciated that. In this industry, we definitely know that cleaning sanitation and exclusion are two of the pieces that are most often missed. Some companies do exclusion, I certainly didn't want to take away from that revenue for them but I didn't see a lot in our market offering this type of service. I thought it would be a good add-on.

I'm active in the industry and this was something I could help other pest control companies that might not want to invest in this equipment that we have but provide a great service for their clients. Composting is the biggest thing right now, especially in the district. There's a lot going on. There's a new incentive in the District of Columbia to add composting to commercial properties. We know that with that we can have more of an attractant and more issues. It’s definitely a target for us as well.

Paul Giannamore: If I remember, you joined Triple ‘S’ when you were maybe 18 or 19 years old. That was a few years ago so it hasn't been that long.

Andrea Brubaker: Exactly. I started right out of high school. I stopped aging myself, but I did, Paul. It was quite an adventure.

Paul Giannamore: Tony has told the story a handful of times. He used to tell it at meetings when he used to talk about you in the commercial sales department that you built over there. He said your father worked for his father. That's how it happened and your old man came to work one day and said, “My daughter's going to be graduating soon. Let's give her a job. She's going to be better than I am. She's going to work hard.”

They said, “Sure. Bring her in.” You started right after high school and you, along with the rest of your team over there, turned Triple ‘S’ into the commercial powerhouse there in the Washington DC Metro area. At the time in which Tony and company exited that business and ultimately sold it to Anticimex, you guys were doing the Pentagon, NSA, and a lot of cool marquee names over there. What I wanted to talk to you about is how you built one of the most successful commercial sales departments on the eastern seaboard and became super famous for it. Now people know you all over the place.

Andrea Brubaker: It all started early on. My father said, “Why don't you come for an interview at Triple ‘S’?” I was like, “Heck, no. I'm not working in the pest control industry. Are you crazy?” I was always embarrassed that my dad worked for a pest control company but I needed a job and I was definitely interested in working and getting out there and being a professional. I went and was interviewed by Tony and he seemed a little hesitant because I’m probably inexperienced but my dad sold it because that's what he was. He was a salesperson. He said, “I'm going to take her under my wing and we're going to do this.”

By golly, he did. I rode with him every day for nearly a year because, in our market, we had seasons back then. Now not so much but you have to experience all the different pests, biology, and behavior that happens throughout the year. You have clover mites, overwintering insects, or boxelder bugs. My father was extremely technical and it was important that his sales protege would know all of these things. He encouraged me early on to get hold of a registered technician and as soon as I could, a commercial technician.

He was always self-taught on a lot of things and he shared periodicals and things for me to read. At first, I was still embarrassed. I had a job. What do I do next? I’d go to the Restaurant Association meetings or chamber events and I would shake hands with business owners. I would shyly say, “I'm just in pest control. I just do pest control.” I look back on that now and I cringe because of what a powerful industry this is. At the time, I had no idea.

It took maybe 3 to 6 months. My dad had me in some cool places like some secret tunnels, underground, and all kinds of neat places that I got to go to. I finally realized that this was an industry that was serving some of the greatest landmarks we had and our metropolitan area was definitely a hotspot and had lots of great opportunities to be successful.

Once I figured that out, I still had a slow start going out there into the field. I ate a lot of lunches at first because I wanted to get those restaurant owners but I was too shy to approach them and learn what to do and say. I would sit there, order a meal, have a good lunch, and then I might ask the server if I could see the manager or compliment them on the meal and then try to sell them pest control service.

I came from that to being a competent and educated pest management sales professional. I did that by trial and error and falling back on all the things that I learned not just from my father but from other key players like Tony. Tony had salesmanship to him in a background that fostered my success and he cheered along with me when I won things. When I didn't win something, he knew it wasn't because I hadn't tried my best.

At Triple ‘S’ at the time, we didn't have many salespeople. When I first started, we had Cheryl, who was also a fabulous woman in pest management. I got to work with her for several years. We slowly ended up having a team of 5, 6, and 7 individuals who had geographical territories. I was a top salesperson through about 2015. I was elevated to sales manager and worked with the team to develop the sales beyond that. When I became sales manager, I was super excited about all of the things that Triple ‘S’ could offer our market and go from there.

Paul Giannamore: Back in the day when you were dining alone, at the restaurants looking around to see if there are any roaches or I don't know what else shows up in restaurants, was it purely commercial sales you were doing? If I remember correctly, was Triple ‘S’ a residential business that added commercial, or was it a commercial business that solely got more into residential?

Andrea Brubaker: We did start off with residential, but we were 80% commercial and government pretty much. We had a strong residential base and that was how Triple ‘S’ in 1981, termite and residential. When Tony joined in the early ‘90s. 1991 is when he wanted to start adding on that commercial base so when I joined in the late ‘90s, I had the commercial focus already ingrained. We had separate divisions at Triple ‘S’. We had a Residential Division, which had its own technicians, its own administrative staff, and its own phone answering. We had the Commercial Division, and we had a Termite Division. Later we added our Super Cool Bedbug Division.

Patrick Baldwin: Super Cool Bedbug Division?

Andrea Brubaker: Yes, it was amazing.

Patrick Baldwin: What makes the Super Cool Bedbug Division so cool?

Andrea Brubaker: It's super cool because we crushed it in bedbug sales. We had a good system and we had a good service where we would inspect areas. We had a team that was entirely devoted to it so technicians would do that. We had a coordinator that handled the bedbug schedule. We were efficient and good at it. I had some of my best experiences over the years in commercial office buildings and health care facilities with bedbugs.

Bedbugs popped up in our area about the time I joined the pest control industry. I learned about bedbugs pretty quickly and we were lucky. We serviced some high-end hotels that had foreign and international travel. We learned quickly about bedbugs and how to offer a great service, not only inspection, prevention treatment, and then we had a recurring model of monitoring that we set up as well so it was awesome.

Patrick Baldwin: Andrea, I know going from Triple ‘S’ and even into American when American acquired Triple ‘S’. Over the years, you went from sales to sales manager probably even creating and overseeing this huge commercial sales division but what does it take? I hear that the best salesperson automatically makes their way into sales manager and sometimes it's to their detriment. How do you identify and how do you manage a good salesperson and train them into good sales managers?

Andrea Brubaker: I was a top performer so whenever you're a business owner, and you have to make the decision of, “Who's going to be my sales manager,” sometimes you do think that it should be my top performer. They know how to do it because they're doing it but do they know how to instruct others, guide others, and be a good leader for them?

That's always a gamble. We hear about that a lot that sometimes that's a big failure and a big flop. I was determined not to be a big flop. When you're working in a smaller pest control business, even though you're the sales manager, at least for us, I still was a strong performer, if not still the top performer, and still managed the team. I had a unique perspective on how to help them because I had been through it.

When I had gone through those experiences, I knew all the excuses. I knew what the day-to-day should be like for a successful salesperson. In my case, it was smart to have me switch over to that position but it's also tough because I'm active. I like to sell. Another challenge that you have is a sales manager flubs up sales so they try to help the salesperson and they get involved maybe later in the sales process. They can over-talk them and can make your company look disorganized or disjointed. I was aware of that.

I did a lot of studying and I tried to do some self-awareness training about how to sit back and make sure that the team was able to learn on their own based on my instruction and help, rather than me doing it for them. I still did a lot of helpful things. When they would come to my office, I would say, “Before you come in here, what's your solution to your question.” I tried to ask them to figure it out but I had a learning curve there where I was doing a lot and that put a lot of pressure on me.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, we delivered what we needed to. Strategically, it all started at the top, whether I was at Triple ‘S’ or with American. You have to have clear communication with your business owner to determine what the goals are for this year and also forward thinking for next year. It’s being advanced on that and also thinking outside the box.

What is this industry evolving into? What can I offer next that no one else is? Tony was so open to my crazy ideas and he went with them. He trusted me on a lot of things that we tried and so did our operations manager. I had wonderful support in the role of a sales manager to roll out things and be a part of that conversation.

Paul Giannamore: On this topic, a lot of readers out there probably have businesses that are largely residential and some of them do commercial but they might not have a dedicated commercial salesperson. Patrick's running his business while his business is gone. Now it's been acquired but let's pretend that he was running a business down in Texas and looking to start a commercial sales program. I was the only one that applied. You guys look at me and go, “He's not particularly attractive. He seems rather not so bright. The personality is a little bit dull,” how would you take a guy like me and turn me into a commercial sales guy?

Andrea Brubaker: You would qualify because you have passion, you're here, you showed up so that's the first thing you can cross off the list. You showed up for work and then go from there. That's a challenge for a lot of companies. I get that question a lot. How do you do commercial sales? People think it's difficult. They think it's not profitable all the time so how you can have a positive sales force that generates that is a great question.

For Paul, the first thing we would do is come up with a training program because even if you have no sales experience if you have resources that you can fall back on, and that training to trigger you when you come up with a question but having a sales process that works for your business. A sales process can be figured out by the owner with the collaboration of outside resources. There are lots of sales trainers that can help you come up with a program.

For us, I recommend that you have a sales process where every time you treat your customer the same way and you're going out. That way you learn from each individual experience. You go back and the next time, maybe you'll improve upon it but have a sales process. Number one, having a great compensation plan so that Paul understands, “I can make this much money if I do this and this.” It’s having it clear and concise for him and making him feel motivated and excited to do commercial sales because it's not easy when you're going out there, especially if this is a new segment for your company.

You want to keep them motivated and excited. Having some sales training, whether it's an outside professional that you bring in. Create your own sales process that you follow, and then help Paul by going out with him to accounts, introducing yourself, and making him feel comfortable about the company itself. What are the benefits of your company? What value do you bring to that commercial customer? Going from there, it’s making sure that you understand pricing, and what's available in your market.

Usually, an hourly rate is something that you want to come up with and then you can figure out how much time it takes to service the account, and then you use that hourly rate to calculate what your fees are. It’s taking into consideration the initial service and what products you might need to set up the account. Pricing is something that all salespeople get tripped up. Having a good plan for pricing, you talk to your service team, and ensure that you have a plan that's acceptable and makes sense. It's deliverable more than anything. It’s having that sales process.

Paul Giannamore: Let me ask you a question about the sales process. I realized that there's a lot of breadth and depth to various sales processes, but let's do plain vanilla. I show up. I apparently got the job. It's a tight labor market. You guys were forced to bring me in. I get it. I know every company is different. I know that Triple ‘S’ had to find territories man.

Tony talked about it when he was on The Buzz that you guys would continue to split up territories and give everyone a territory but let's not worry about that for a second. Let's say I'm in there, I understand the business, I understand the services, I've got a pretty good feel for it. What is the sale process? Is it me as a commercial sales guy showing up at a physical location? Is it me making a phone call? How am I prospecting to find these potential customers?

Andrea Brubaker: Prospecting is extremely important for a brand new salesperson. In my opinion, if you're a brand new salesperson, you've got plenty of time to be prospecting but you want to use your time wisely. We have so many technological advancements and aids. It's as simple as using Google Maps. You were right, that we would strategically have our sales team members work near where they lived so we helped combat that fatigue.

Paul, you would get up, stretch, look fabulous, get out there, visit and drive around your territory or the area that has been directed that we want to build a route in. You shouldn't be completely alone out there because you said you had a residential base so all of those residential clients work somewhere. You probably had gotten some calls to your company looking for commercial service and you had to turn them down.

I would start there and I would look at some of the opportunities that came in that you had to pass on. Where did those come from? Identify that with your service team. Hopefully, if you've hired a salesperson to sell commercial, you have someone on your service team who serviced commercial as well. You can brainstorm about some areas and targets that they would like you to pursue.

The low-hanging fruit in commercial is the restaurant. Little Andrea was in there eating lunch so that's something common that small pest control companies pursue first and then multifamily establishments. It gets a little bit tougher to walk into a five-star hotel or a hospital. Those can be a little bit more intimidating, but that's exactly what I would have you go after Paul.

Paul Giannamore: You'd have to go after the regular restaurants or you'd have to go after the five-star hotels?

Andrea Brubaker: We're going to get out there and we're going to go after the business that the other salespeople are afraid of. You're going to start off strong. You're going to get in there and you're going to start building the relationship. It's all about listening and learning. It's not about selling them anything at this point. You're going to go in, you're going to talk to these prospective clients, you're going to find out who they're using. It's non-confrontational. You're having a conversation. Who are you using for pest management now? What do you like about it? You're getting information. When do you go out for bid for pest control? Do you go out for bid? It’s finding out those pieces that help you understand your client more.

Paul Giannamore: Let me ask you this. I’d walk into one of these places and maybe it's a decent restaurant. Do I walk in and I'm like, “This place is a dump. It's a real crap show here? Who's the boss man?” Who am I talking to? Over the years, I've been at a lot of dinners and lunches with folks in the pest control industry. You sit down with somebody like Tony and he's only going to take you to a place where he knows Triple ‘S’ does the pest control right. You guys have been in to see The Kitchen but there are a lot of times where that can't happen.

You're traveling and you're in a different city. I can't tell you how many times I've been at lunch or dinner and one of the owners is looking around and sees some critter of some sort. The next thing you know he's trying to sell the manager who doesn't even live in that state. Is that what you're doing? Are you looking for cleanliness stuff? Are you looking for bugs? Are you walking in and striking up a conversation like, “I'm Paul from Patrick's Pest Control. Who does your pest control here?”

Andrea Brubaker: It should be natural. It should be casual. You can bring up some common denominator like, “I'm eating here.” Most people are not happy with you immediately pointing out that they're disgusting or that you saw a roach. You can say it in a helpful way. That's helping them but you don't want to approach a prospect by telling them immediately what they've done wrong. It is more of an introduction and it's more information gathering. You don't want to have that mentality at that point that you're selling them a service. You're gathering information so that you can help them further.

Paul Giannamore: Patrick, you're making a face over there? What kind of face are we making?

Patrick Baldwin: I'm thinking back because if Paul's came in and hired him at Patrick's Pest to do commercial sales and hopefully get them some cowboy boots so it fits in around here. He sits down in the restaurant, strikes up a conversation, and says, “Can I meet with a manager?” That sounds like the way to go if there's not a commercial sales program.

That's the easy target. We know they have bugs. I've been there. I've done that. You've been there. You've done that, Andrea. What was it that got you from, “I need to stop wasting every lunch eating a meal at a restaurant and get into better accounts or scaling up my business.” How did you change that cycle?

Andrea Brubaker: Lots of different ways. Starting off, that approach is good. It keeps you fresh and keeps you on your toes. You want to be able to sell all types of business. When you think about commercial, you close your eyes and think about all of the opportunities, it's everything except a single-family home. What does that leave you? It's amazing. The best way to break into a new territory is through new construction. It’s people that don't have a pest control company yet. You want to get out there and introduce yourself and that can help you tremendously.

New construction and understanding your community in that territory that you've been assigned to. What are the comings and goings? Make sure you're subscribing to your business journal. Follow all of those things. Also, networking. You want to make sure that you're talking to other service providers that provide like-service. In the pest management industry, you'll run into HVAC, fire, sprinkler, and trash and recycling companies. It's important to meet those people and align with them because they know the same contacts that you're trying to meet.

At Triple ‘S’, we had some great anchors already. Don't be afraid to talk about the accounts that you've successfully had an integrated pest management program. Those are significant references. Identify the type of accounts that your specific company and organization want you to pursue and those are going to be the ones that are profitable and don't have a lot of unnecessary hardships for your team and your technicians. You emulate that so you want to keep going out there and pursuing that same line of business.

Patrick Baldwin: There are restaurants. Paul goes in and he messes up the first ones. It’s like no big deal. It was jack in the box. There's a Taco Bell next door or whatever other restaurant. You don't want Paul on his first day to go into the big hospital and say, “Let me sell you some pest control because there's going to be a big strike.” They don't know what they're doing there. We don't want to kill his ambition but how do you decide what to target and what Paul's ready for not ready for?

Andrea Brubaker: It's hard when you're starting off and you're just hiring Paul and you don't have someone on your team or on staff to help him but the integrative part is having him ride along so you would have him watch a salesperson do it and then he would do it. You would critique and help that process so that's the best way but when you're starting off with just a Paul that does handicap for you.

You definitely want to be able to fall back on what the company's goals and objectives are for that type of establishment. It’s also learning beforehand, before you walk into the hospital or the hotel what do they need? What do you know they need? It's all about understanding the biology of certain pests, which is a whole other thing that a sports salesperson has to learn when they're coming into the pest management industry.

You want to know which pests are most active and most prevalent in your geographical area and how you could design a program that works best for them. It's a lot of learning but you want to make those contacts. You can always come back later with somebody to help you but it's about seeing what's out there. It’s about creating opportunities. If people want to talk to Paul about his little knowledge, that means they're probably pretty desperate for a good program. Use that as an opportunity to learn more but you won't get anywhere if you're not putting yourself out there. You have to start somewhere.

Paul Giannamore: Let me ask you this. Patrick hasn't hired me yet. He wants to build this commercial division. In your experience, is it better to go out and find somebody that has some commercial sales experience or get somebody fresh? I bring this up because, over the years, I think of a lot of different companies. I can think of one company that hired a guy from Cintas and he went out and killed it because he had all of these relationships.

There was another company who brought in, and it was back in the old yellow page sales day. He was going through town and all these businesses were buying yellow page. He knew all these folks. Even Mike Rogers, Patrick. He loved yellow page sales. In your past practice, how do you think about skills, relationships, pre-existing, not, and all that stuff?

Andrea Brubaker: It’s definitely an advantage if they've had business-to-business sales experience. The past management experience is helpful if you need to onboard someone, maybe a little bit more quickly because it is important. My success was based on having knowledge of the pest management industry and the different paths that are issued. That's not something that you pick up quickly. If they have some knowledge, that's helpful and definitely, the business-to-business sales experiences are okay. I've hired people with no sales experience just because when I met them, I was always looking for salespeople.

That's a successful business if you find someone that looks suitable, seems trainable, teachable, and has a great personality. They seem to have a caring customer service-oriented demeanor. Those are the people that you're looking for. Even if you don't have a place for them, make room. Bring them on and give them plenty of time to onboard, learn and gain from this experience because this is the best career in the world. Commercial pest management sales. I can't tell you how fabulous it was. I never knew how much money you can make in this industry and how rewarding it is to be offering a service and making people happy. It definitely is an attractive line once you get people in the door and they understand it.

Paul Giannamore: I didn't know how much money you can make until I saw what you're making. You were killing it. Do you have a preference for hiring men or women as commercial sales folks?

Andrea Brubaker: I don't per se. Women have a great perspective in the industry. I want to support women. I love to have them on our team. My last hire was a female and they offer a whole different perspective on the sales aspects. I'm fine with either. I see an advantage to people who want to work and care about their job. Whether they're male or female, I'm happy to have him on the team.

Patrick Baldwin: It’s interesting knowing that Triple ‘S’ started his original residential company and made its way to commercial. Residential sales are prevalent because in their simplest form it's easily scalable. This house is similar to the next and the one way across town is very similar. For commercial sales, it’s not the case.

I was thinking about this earlier. Commercial sales is anything other than a single-family house. I was like, “Home Owners Association.” That's commercial. There's a follow-up. On the residential, you can go door to door or you do online leads. Usually, that’s one person involved in the decision like, “She's signing up.” Commercial sales is not the case. Maybe you got lucky on a one-and-done but what was it like for follow-up in commercial sales?

Andrea Brubaker: I wish I could say that it was the fairy tale, the Disney story, but in truth, commercial sales have the longest closing process. On average, it can take 45 to 60 days to close a commercial sale. Sometimes it’s 90 to 120. Sometimes a whole year. Sometimes people are looking for bids for the next year. Some people call that horrible. I call it exciting. It's called a sales funnel so you've got sales for next year already. I loved it.

I love the special needs of a commercial client. It's okay you can charge for your time and your services. I found them to be extremely profitable when sold correctly. That follow-through and the hard work to attain them is well worth it as long as you price it correctly. You definitely want to make sure that you have buy-in from your service department. Get lots of information about the client and make sure that when that sale does close, you get it started and it's successful.

For many years, we had a 98% retention of our commercial clients. We kept our clients for 10, 15, 20, and 30 years in some cases. That was due to our hard work. We worked hard to maintain that client pace. If we got a cancellation letter, my father taught me, “If you get a cancellation letter, email or call, you take that and you go to the client. Visit them in person and you say, ‘I received this letter. I'm sorry for what happened to make you write this letter, but what can we do to fix it today?’” I would say at least 70% of the time he left that account with them staying on service with us. If you accept a cancellation from a commercial client you're giving up.

Patrick Baldwin: Three times you mentioned something about pricing. You said, “There are so many dollars per hour if you price it.” Maybe there's extra on the initial extra chemicals or exclusion and all that. What happens when Paul undersells a commercial account? How do you go in as a manager and fix that? This is the best episode ever. We’re picking on Paul for once.

Andrea Brubaker: If I was the manager, that would not happen in the first place.

Patrick Baldwin: He’s at Patrick’s Pest so he’s doomed.

Andrea Brubaker: It does happen. We've had a lot of uncomfortable situations as a professional organization. If you sell a service to a client, you need to deliver that service. If you did undersell it, sometimes you have to bite that for the terms of that agreement and then you go back and you revise it. If it's grossly undersold then that's a time when the sales manager in the salesperson would go back and talk to the client and have a creative conversation with them about what they need service-wise, how that was discovered, and hopefully resell that agreement at a higher profit margin.

Sometimes we would have to look at Paul and say, “Paul, in this situation, we're not going to pay you a commission on the sale,” or we'd have a conversation with that but that would be in his compensation plan that he would have agreed to before that scenario ever played out. I don't like messing with people's money. I like them to get paid but if it was something that Paul did and was responsible for, Paul has to have repercussions for that.

If it was something that we did service-wise or the service team said, “Andrea, Paul sold these stations for $20 less than they cost.” I'm like, “I wasn't aware of that cost increase. When did that happen?” If it was the service side that contributed to the issue, I'm going to fight for Paul and I'm going to make that right with our organization. It's all about communication in many situations. What happened? It's definitely a teachable moment and I guarantee you that Paul wouldn’t do that again.

Patrick Baldwin: Speaking of compensation. What a good segue. Thank you. Designing a compensation plan for commercial sales. If you're new to commercial sales, where do you start? Is it annual sales? Is it one-time versus recurring? Is it off of gross profit? Is it, “You have a draw in commission. If you sell over this much a month, you're going to make commission?” Let's say I've never done it before. Where do I start?

Andrea Brubaker: In 2022, we must have a living wage for anybody that comes to work with us. That's how we're going to attract them to come in the first place. They need a salary. We are paying them to work 40 hours a week out there canvassing, looking around, looking for opportunities, and all the tasks that the sales manager would assign to them. You definitely want to start with a salary. I recommend that you have a ramp-up period where maybe you pay them a higher salary for a period of time. As they gain experience, you can adjust the salary and then they would add in commission values.

We had a complex commission system at Triple ‘S’. I would recommend that you have a simple commission plan but I like salary plus commission to answer your question and I love other incentives that you can bring in based on the company's goals for the year like bonuses and so forth. It’s exciting to have a bonus. If you only have salary and commission, it can get stale.

As they become more senior in the company, your company can decide if you want to increase their salary or if you want to increase their commission rates. It depends on the individual organization and what works best for them, but each employee needs to deliver a certain amount of profitability to have a seat at the company. Your sales manager and the president should figure out what that is and go from there.

A compensation plan is a key to success and happiness long term for your team. You need to put everything in the compensation plan. Think about situations that could come up. Paul, we might hire to Mexican to do sales, and then we would have to split them. If Paul is collaborating on a sale and he thinks he's getting all the commission, but he did have some support, there would be a split commission, for example.

All of those things you can get outlined in the compensation plan. It’s clear and concise so the salesperson knows what to go after, what they want to focus their time on and they can attain the goals with those funds. If they want to get a boat or a new house, how much do I need to sell to do that? You help them figure that out.

Patrick Baldwin: I don't know if the Mexican ever made a sales life without Paul’s help. Over thirteen years in the industry, I still don't have the answer so I'm depending on you for the right answer here, Andrea. No pressure. I ideally want to build a commercial sales department that's not depending on inbound leads. Eat what you kill. It’s fully creative. I don't know if compensations answer to do that because what I've found is commercial sales if they're expecting leads to come in, and then they become dependent on that they almost squash their creativity. Do leads go to certain salespeople and then you don't give other people leads? Do you figure that out through compensation? Tell me.

Andrea Brubaker: If a lead comes in, that should be sold. 110%. They did all the work. They called you so those should be treated like gold. They need to be responded to quickly and professionally. Holding leads back from the sales team when you're starting out isn’t a good idea because they need that practice. They need to go through that process and learn. In the right landscape, where you have directives on prospecting and what you're expecting the sales team member to do every week, they wouldn’t slack off on their creative sales from leads alone.

Ultimately, your ideal salesperson is going to be an Andrea who, over the years, worked so hard and had so many clients that she didn't have to prospect anymore. People would call her all day long for help and that's where you want your salesperson to independently grow and build their own resources and get those calls all the time.

Starting out, it's important for leads to be done based on the geographical area that way they can respond in a timely manner. It's a good experience. If you develop that lead, it can turn into five more leads. They're calling you. They called you for a reason. Find out what that is and expand on it. If they're excited, they want service, you can use that to generate momentum to get referrals and lots of things.

They deserve some leads later on or if a person's not performing, they're not doing what they're supposed to be doing, that's when you can turn off that faucet. You can direct it to other people. Leads that come in are very valuable to a company. Pay for them and they cost money so you do want to make sure that you're directing them wisely. That's up to the sales manager to make sure that if a lead comes in, that is sold, if it's a qualified lead,

Patrick Baldwin: You were able to get to a point where you had to stop working and they’re like, “That sounds so bad,” but then they kept calling you. Was that because you continue to work that relationship even after they were sold and you were looking for referrals and more other service offerings?

Andrea Brubaker: I said that I didn't have to do it but I still did. I'm always doing creative sales. That was the most fun for me. What happens as you grow in a smaller company, you have to be wary of this because at Triple ‘S’ we didn't spend a lot of money on marketing and we didn't have an account management team. We had service managers, we had technicians, and we had salespeople.

A lot of the account management fell on the salespeople to handle. They went to events. They were marketing themselves in networking groups or golf tournaments. You're out there doing things to market Triple ‘S’ and that's how we got more business. In a sense, that's what we all did. We all had people calling us because they knew us, they liked us, they had worked with us before and that's the ultimate goal.

There's always prospecting that needs to be done and you always want to be aligned with the ownership in finding out what type of accounts you want to add and where you need to add route value. If you're lean in the area, or you want to expand to an area. That's the fun part. I'm always jealous of brand new territories that are open and you get out there and you get it and it's the most fun ever. You definitely have to have a blend of it but that referral base grows. I would have another person handle some of those or pan off those accounts as we continue to grow.

Patrick Baldwin: You did a lot more of commercial sales than I've ever done. You service a lot of cooler accounts. Although occasionally you'll hear SpaceX rumble the windows out here, which was a good account for a while. There were times when our CRM was limiting us. Because we weren't in PestPac, we didn't have the reports as far as monitoring and tracking down to a station. You've had experience with SMART now. I’m curious about how you leverage that to get into bigger, more profitable accounts, and also how you differentiate yourself from a larger company versus a smaller company as you grew.

Andrea Brubaker: When you have any advantage, and of course, with Anticimex, SMART is an amazing tool. It definitely sets you apart from your competitors. There are other methodologies of technology out there and it became more pressing to get out there and talk about this as newer items come to market.

Nothing is compared to the experience that we had in SMART products and the 24/7 Monitoring, the reduction of using rodenticides and getting it in places that were hard to reach with our devices was epic. It definitely was a talking point when you would reach out to some of the different targets like food manufacturing, warehouses, and medical laboratory environments, where there was a zero tolerance for pests.

Why wouldn't you want to use everything available on the market to help your team keep that area pest-free? That was what SMART was. Other technologies became available over the years. We did a great job marketing, utilizing baits and so forth as. It's similar to talking about how it impacts revenue for them and efficiency for them and real-time information that helps us to serve clients better and faster.

Patrick Baldwin: Going back to when you started in the late ‘90s and Triple ‘S’ was smaller, how would you compete against the larger ones that were there like Orkin and Terminix. I don't know what was there in the late ‘90s.

Paul Giannamore: The email was probably TripleS@Hotmail.com.

Andrea Brubaker: We didn't even have email. We had a typewriter and I had my favorite payphone but no matter what, I can't say one bad thing about being a small business at Triple ‘S’ because they did try hard to have all the technology available that we could at the time. It was pretty easy to compare Triple ‘S’ to some of the larger companies in the DC market because we had some great references and accounts that we already service successfully.

We had the strength of technicians that would become staples at that account so we didn't have a lot of turnover with our team. They knew the technician, they became familiar with them and that was a good thing. Especially if it was in our area where we have a lot of accounts that are secure. You have to have badges and passes.

It's challenging for the client to have to re-badge people. To tell them that you're going to have one technician assigned to your account and a backup if he's ever ill or on vacation, it is an easy sell. That was important for us and also our responsiveness. We had a great reputation for responding on the same day, 24 hours. We worked hard to get out there and help our clients as quickly as possible and that made all the difference.

Paul Giannamore: It's interesting what you bring up, Andrea because I was thinking about the fact that when you try to think about competitive differentiation in the market, it's not like a pest control business is a technology firm, an engineering firm, or even a firm like Walmart that has a chain link computer system and real-time data.

In a pest control company, there's not a lot of difference between a ten-man pest control firm and a 150-man or a 1,000-man firm as far as capabilities go. In my mind, where it comes down to is the actual people that are at that firm and then, of course, the processes and systems and incentive structures that are put up to govern that, the culture of the firm. These are the competitive advantages that small firms can potentially have over the larger ones.

Andrea Brubaker: I agree completely. Triple ‘S’ definitely had a corner on that market. We had people there for 25 or 30 years. We had a great tenure at Triple ‘S’ and it showed the amount of experience that was at that company was impressive. The training was important to them. I hear people say, “Anybody can go out and do the pest control part. That's something that's not the hard part. It's everything else about running the business that's the difficult part.”

I disagree. When you go into an account as a commercial professional service technician or go to a government facility, you have to be on your A game. You have to know where to place mouse traps. You need to place them correctly. You need to understand the biology of it. You need to be able to do a good survey of what's going on. Not every pest control company can deliver that every time a technician is on-site and we did. If we didn’t, we fixed it very quickly. That's something I'm proud of and your service delivery is super important.

Patrick Baldwin: What training or certifications would you recommend so that as a commercial sales program improves and gets into bigger and better counts that are more profitable and more sophisticated, where do they go?

Paul Giannamore: Are you talking about training a sales professional? Are you talking about training for the salespeople?

Patrick Baldwin: Right or for the business. Is it QualityPro? Is it Perdue or AIB?

Andrea Brubaker: Depending on your market, and what types of accounts you're servicing, all of those that you mentioned are awesome. NPMA offers an amazing resource with QualityPro and GreenPro. It’s a great service that you can tap into as a small business and help you improve and have a set standard that you and your company follow. I'm a big fan of that. Triple ‘S’ did do that and so did American Pest. I had a client call and say that we needed to QualityPro our GreenPro company. I was like, “Here I am.” It's something that's known amongst your higher-end clients so it's definitely important to have that.

As an individual, it's awesome when a sales team member is registered or certified if they're doing termite work that they have a Wood-Destroying Insect Certification and go on from there. I was happy to pursue all courses available. I did my Associate Certified Entomologist and added the public health certification in 2022. You should always be learning as an individual and as an organization to make sure that you're accredited and have the right training for the service line and market segments that you're going after.

Patrick Baldwin: I didn’t know we were talking to an ACE. Congrats.

Andrea Brubaker: My father was studying for his ACE exam during his chemotherapy treatments so I would sit with him and read him the questions. Unfortunately, he passed away before he could take the exam. That was one of the things that I wanted to do immediately. I went on and applied and made sure I got that.

Patrick Baldwin: Were there any commercial accounts that you did not have certification or training to get into?

Andrea Brubaker: Yeah. Don't let that hold you back. As long as you're a licensed pest control business, you want to have certified pest management technicians who can apply a range of products, if needed. You want to be able to be versatile for your clients because you’ll never know what's going to come up. In a commercial setting, there are liabilities that they want to avoid, and you as their service provider can inform them about safety issues and things that they need to be looking out for. You can certainly pursue it. If you want to educate yourself in the District of Columbia, for example, if you want to provide service at a childcare center, you need to have a written IPM plan.

It's a great tool for salespeople if you're going out knocking on doors, and you ask them, “Where's your IPM plan,” and they don't have one. By golly, you get in there and you help them create one and you deliver on that for them. It is important to understand and study which segment you want to pursue and learn as much as you can about that but there are many that don't require any special certification other than being a licensed business.

Patrick Baldwin: You mentioned being self-taught. I heard something earlier. When you were making your sales pitch, you would say, “Tell me what you like about your current program.” You're avoiding cognitive dissonance. I'm wondering what books you've read, where you've studied, or where you picked up on the extra sales training, or is this the school of hard knocks?

Andrea Brubaker: A lot of it was with my father. He taught me a lot about understanding and being self-aware. We have two ears and one mouth. It’s listening. I took a lot of notes. When customers were talking, I'd write down everything like their dog's name, what school they went to, and all of those things. Patrick, quickly, I was a big sales trainer in our market. Later, I went through Sandler Training so I've had some sales training but for a majority of my time at Triple ‘S’ I was unaware of professional sales training, to be honest, because we kept our head down, our nose to the grind, we worked hard, and a lot of it was trial and error and experience that helps you understand it.

If it didn't work this time, if I didn't win a bid, I would ask them why. A lot of salespeople don't do that. You have to be confident. You don’t have to say, “I invested this time,” but you have to prepare yourself mentally. It’s like, “I invested this time doing a site survey inspection and coming up with a solution. Why didn't you choose me?” Sales process, if you do it correctly, they should choose you because you have identified all of their concerns. You address them way before you get to the point where you give them that agreement.

Patrick Baldwin: Do you have a favorite sales book?

Andrea Brubaker: I don't. I like How to Win Friends and Influence People. I have it right here. Those are the basics. There's another one about time management like Eat That Frog!. That's a good one for salespeople who get busy and you can lose sight of your goals and track what you need to be doing every day. Sales isn't an emotional process so you have to ensure that you're confident you wake up every morning and it's a brand new day.

If you mess something up yesterday, today is a brand new day and you have a whole fresh outlook to get out there and fix it, get it right, and sell something. Whenever I talked to the sales team members at the closing, I was like, “Go sell something.” It's always got to be front of mind, what's my objective today? To sell something. It's simple. You have to keep it on your task list every day.

Patrick Baldwin: Andrea, I have a million-dollar question for you. Tell me about the sale that you are most proud of?

Paul Giannamore: Did you find that question in a book of questions?

Andrea Brubaker: There are many. It's hard to pick one but probably the one that I'm most proud of is a top-secret agency. They had a significant German cockroach problem in their food service area.

Patrick Baldwin: Was that in World War II?

Andrea Brubaker: No. It’s a little bit later. We were able to get into their food service area and clean it up. We did an amazing job. We had an amazing team there. I'm talking about 6 or 7 technicians getting in there working hard from ceiling to floor and all the equipment. It blew their mind how we were able to remediate that problem when so many others have not been able to.

After we were able to establish that service, we set them up on recurring service for the food service area. It was my first big account that we were able to get the rest of that campus, all of the buildings. It was a pretty huge contract that I was able to do. It was the first big thing that I had accomplished solo and it was exciting.

Paul Giannamore: Speaking of top secret agencies, Triple ‘S’ did a lot of these things, with the Pentagon being one. I know there were a ton of others. Without naming any specific agency, what security protocols did you guys have to deal with to be able to go into these facilities and either sell things to them or otherwise service the facility? What stuff do you have to do?

Andrea Brubaker: I'm glad you brought that up, Paul because for professional salespeople, you can get invited to bid on some of these contracts. If you are unfamiliar with such things, it can seem daunting. If you get the opportunity to bid on some of these facilities, you want to thoroughly read the material immediately when you get it because sometimes they'll say, “If you want to attend a site visit, you need to send this information by a certain date.” If you miss that, you don't get to go on the site visit.

Sometimes site visits are mandatory and you can miss out on an opportunity. First and foremost, most of the requirements are provided to you so that you can review them before you visit the site. Once you get on-site, that's another thing that you have to make sure you're charging for the administrative time to collect this data from your technicians because you have to give them sometimes a 40-page packet of information that they have to fill out.

It’s a full background check often through the FBI or Secret Service or whatever the entity is that you're going through and it's invasive. You have to make sure that you have team members on staff who are willing to participate in that before you start bidding on these types of accounts. It’s expansive. It talks about your family history and fingerprinting. It’s very in-depth and you definitely have to have a team of motivated individuals to service that type of account. It's not for the faint of heart. It takes a lot of work and if you miss a box on one of those forms, you can look unprofessional. You're creating more work for your client so you want to have that down and you get better with the practice for sure.

Things increase further with COVID protocols. If you're an active pest management company, working in commercial and government accounts, there were certainly many protocols that we had to follow and it took time. Whenever you are selling commercial and government accounts, you want to always have a little buffer for things that come up like this that are unexpected.

Sometimes we would be at accounts and there would be a drill or there would be some type of lockdown and you had a technician stuck at this account for 4 to 6 hours. That's on profitable time for him. He's stuck there. He has to stay. It's mandatory. That's one of the risks of servicing these types of accounts so it's always good when you're selling to get with your service team and build in a little bit of a buffer for those types of events because unfortunately, you have them.

Paul Giannamore: As you're talking, Andrea, we're talking about The DC area federal government institutions there, but it got me thinking about the competitive environment since you started in the late ‘90s until today. We didn't have Rentokil. I would imagine back when you started, the largest commercial competitor that you had was probably Western.

Andrea Brubaker: Western, Steritech, and Ecolab.

Paul Giannamore: For the most part, I would imagine the chessboard looked different from a competitive perspective than it does today. Absolutely. Has there been pricing pressure due to the increased number of competitors in the commercial market in DC or up and down the eastern seaboard? What do you see?

Andrea Brubaker: There's an opportunity to always do more and do better. For any pest management firm that charges a reasonable rate, sticks to it, and increases it regularly, they are doing the best thing for this industry. Sometimes startups come in. If Patrick were to start his commercial, he might make the mistake of selling things for a lower cost. That's never a win-win for this industry. You're going to end up losing out on the back end.

No matter what you have to stick to your prices. The only time that I recommend that you lower your hourly rate is if you are in a more rural area where that is the price point and it's your job as a sales manager or business owner to know the running rates for your competitors in this market but you're not selling against your competitor.

In that situation, you're delivering a service that's a priority for your client and you have to start there. If your clients start saying, “I can get those for $150 and you're charging this,” then you start to look at it more closely. That gives you an opportunity to sometimes look at your competitors and what they are offering. Ask those questions. What are the comparisons? Dig in there and find out more.

Paul Giannamore: On that topic, what do you think, from a price and elasticity perspective. For example, if I live in the suburbs, I'm a residential customer, I might have some guys knocking on my door but for the most part, people are beating down the doors to get to me. If I own a decent-sized light manufacturing company in an industrial park in DC there are probably people coming to my shop wondering who's doing my pest control.

When you think about the commercial market, how often is it that a company might be satisfied with their service provider and satisfied feeling like they're not being gouged? They’re like, “We're paying a reasonable price. We're getting great service.” How often does somebody else come along and say, “I'll be able to do it for 30% cheaper.”

Andrea Brubaker: The only time that comes into play is if it's a long-standing client that they gave pricing raises to over time and they became a giant bubble. They're overpaying for a service that only takes 30 minutes and they've been increased over time.

Paul Giannamore: Prices have gone up and quality has gone down.

Andrea Brubaker: Service level didn't. It's good to review your account sometimes and see. That's a wonderful way to get a client for life and maybe more referrals. If you do see that you are personally overcharging a client, sometimes it's in your best interest to reach out to them and adjust that for them. When you're out there selling against that, it's rarely a lower price for a professional company. It can be, but it's usually a hard sell.

Price is your number one objective that you come up with if you haven't done a good job ebbing out the hot points and the pain points and making them realize that they're spending more on other departments and they need to take that money and invest it in the pest control line. It's about educating the client if they have time to listen to you.

It's not easy every time but in the commercial pest management industry, prospecting, and cold calling are still dying. There aren't that many people out there doing it. If you are, you are going to be successful. People don't do it anymore. They rely on email, phone calls, and other things and not going out there on the street.

Patrick Baldwin: Paul mentioned efficiency earlier and scheduling appointments. You mentioned Patrick Quigley. Part of his sales process is scheduling so you're super efficient. Did you pre-schedule your sales appointments or did you step in?

Andrea Brubaker: When you're prospecting, it's a hard day. You want to hopefully have something scheduled and you start from there. You have to have something that you're focused on for the day. Hopefully, you've several things. Maybe you've called and made some appointments and then when you're in that area on 4th Street, you walk around, you see what else is there and you do that cold calling and canvassing.

In this day and age, it's not always appropriate to knock on doors. That can be a black mark on your company if you're the one out there door-knocking. You have to be aware of the situation. If you can go in and you can talk to security, an engineer, or a facilities person with ease, that's great. That's what you need to be doing getting out there and hitting the street but having a schedule and having a planned day for a sales team member is critical.

You want to have a goal of some set appointments and then how many prospecting things you're going to do. On some days, you spend working on paperwork. We weren't always that efficient. If you made a sale, there were steps that you had to take in order to deliver that sale. We had stringent requirements. If you made a sale, you don't say, “I sold this,” go do it.

We had a lot of information pertaining to their business hours, the best time to service it, who was the contact person for service, and the contact person for billing. A lot of information goes into that so part of the sales process is that paperwork and making sure you're giving the service team every single opportunity to be successful. If you're not, you're in trouble.

Patrick Baldwin: Did you manage your salespeople through activities or finished results? Was it a combination of the two?

Andrea Brubaker: Definitely. All of the above through my tenure in that role. What I found worked well was proposals. No one comes to you and you start doing their service. The proposal is the piece that has to be done in order to get the service done. We made it a little bit easier on the sales team by telling them that we expected a proposal value every week. Breaking down goals by day or by week helps them seem more attainable for our sales team members.

If you wanted to sell $30,000 in recurring work in a month, we asked the salesperson to please do $75,000 and proposals that month. That helped them be conscious to be out there actively selling all the time. We started seeing proposals for their mom's house. They had to be valid clients that we wanted to ensure were the type of business that we wanted but that drove a lot of successes for us. If you have new team members, or maybe some low performers, you're getting into how many calls they're making, how many emails, and how many touches. Follow-up is critical in the sales process.

I find myself not even talking about it as much as I should because it's natural that you do follow up. That's a missing piece for a lot of salespeople and following up in a way that's effective and always asking for referrals. That's another piece that people don't do and you deserve it. You've delivered a great service. You showed up on time. You're smiling and you gave them what they needed. Let's ask them who would also benefit from that type of service.

Patrick Baldwin: Tell me what's not an effective follow-up.

Andrea Brubaker: Just emailing, “Did you have a chance to look at that proposal yet?” No, that's not effective. You want to have meaning every time you reach out to your client. Their time is valuable just like how yours is so you want to have a specific question. Every follow-up should be predicted and planned. When you talk to your client, maybe you've presented the proposal and they have to talk to Dean. Surprise. Where's Dean? Where did he come out of the woodwork? Then you say, “You’ll be talking to Dean tomorrow at 7:00. I'll go ahead and give you a call at about 8:00. Does that work for you?”

You have to have a pre-planned time for that call or follow-up. You call and follow up. You say, “How did it go with Dean?” That's a specific follow-up. “You told me that Dean might be concerned if crickets are included because he's very scared of crickets.” Whatever the factor is, you're specific on that follow-up and that makes them more impactful.

Being like, “When do you want to start,” is not a good follow-up tactic at all but some follow-up is better than none. I have to say that. Some people submit the proposal and run away but when you're in a commercial sales manager role, it's important that you have your team pursuing all types of business. We joked around about the restaurant and then more of the high-end types of clients, hotels, and healthcare are important but you have a range of businesses and different types of accounts that generate more value. You want to make sure that you're pursuing a combination of all of those because the closing process is different.

If it's a small restaurant or cafe, they probably have an issue and they're willing to switch to you, or maybe they're opening and they're required to have pest management services so they want to get you. Those are faster sales but maybe a lower revenue for you. The bigger accounts like a big federal bid or government that takes a little bit longer, those accounts, you want to have a lot of those in your funnel too and mix it up. Your bread and butter is that middle account that has your good profit margins and will close at least within that 60-day timeframe.

Patrick Baldwin: Hopefully this doesn't chase a rabbit going back into compensation. The previous sales commission we had set up wouldn't have ever compensated you for renewal like that. What happens when you're getting a commercial account to sign up for another year or two? How do you pay your salesperson?

Andrea Brubaker: It's something that you need to outline clearly in your compensation plan but we did pay a small percentage, 3% or something small for a renewal contract of a certain value. If you put in the effort like spending the night at someone's house or going to the site visit and so forth. If it was an easy paperwork thing, that was not eligible for commission but if you work for it, you may get a smaller percentage, but your time is valuable and the company should appreciate that retention. A smaller percentage is good because ultimately, it's helping with that organic growth plan ultimately.

Paul Giannamore: We’re super excited for you and your new venture. What's your focus on that? Are you going to grow that thing big?

Andrea Brubaker: Yeah. We will have a good company and business model once we set up. We already have a good base and recurring services going so it's a matter of adding to it, keeping up, and adding teams as we grow but definitely want to work the whole Mid-Atlantic area, Pennsylvania, New York, and so forth.

Paul Giannamore: This is one of those examples where it pays to bring a seasoned sales professional over to the organization because you slid right in. You've had decades of practice doing this. You've got a lot of relationships.

Andrea Brubaker: Hopefully. That's the plan and I care about it. I'm a big nerd when it comes to rats. They're my biggest passion to learn about and study. They're pretty cool. Helping to keep them away from some of these buildings is an add-on. It helps other pest control professionals. They should be happy to have me working and cleaning their accounts because if I have to move their bait stations to clean, I'm going to put them back where they belong and it's still going to be an effective program and good communication with them.

Patrick Baldwin: I learned a lot. This was awesome, Andrea. Thank you so much.

Andrea Brubaker: I can't tell you how much this industry has given to me over the years. It's helped me change the lives of many other people, both my clients and others. I'll always be an advocate for it until I don't have time for it, which I hope never happens. It's always going to be a priority for me.

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Patrick Baldwin: I do have a question now that you're talking about commercial sales and you're going to do your best to dodge it. I know you. It's almost every week. I know it even came up in Bubble Trouble. Commercial versus residential. I've heard you answer in different ways. I know there are a lot of variabilities. I know your answer today might be different than your answer a few months ago, Paul.

Paul Giannamore: What's more valuable? Does it require a pay more for one versus the other? I always think that that's the wrong question because it becomes, in my mind, what it is that you want to do? What kind of business do you want to build? Building a commercial services business is different from building a residential business.

For example, for me, tomorrow I could probably start a residential services pest control business pretty easily on my own. I don't know that I personally would be able to go out and start a commercial pest control business on my own because it is different. When I say commercial, I'm not talking about the Mexican restaurant down the road. I'm also not talking about the other end of the spectrum, which is government, security clearance, high-tech stuff, and hospitals. I'm talking about that meaty part of the commercial bell curve, which is an industrial park.

You’ve got a tool and dye manufacturer. You've got a warehouse facility. You've got some good solid commercial work that may need weekly or maybe monthly service but it's nothing particularly intricate. I think about commercial. You've got the logbook activity. It's a different sort of business. It's more complicated. In some ways, it's easier.

If you're doing it right, you don't get those random callbacks. To me, it comes down to what business you want to build. Here in 2022, if I had a $10 million pure-play commercial business and a $10 million pure-play residential business, it's likely that commercial player would sell for more. The price would be higher largely because it's a scarce asset.

If you think about it, I don't know what the statistics are on this but the extreme majority of pest control businesses out there are either pure-play residential companies or they're that mix. We do 60/40 and our commercial is some multifamily in some restaurants and a bank. When I think about a sophisticated commercial services business, I'm thinking about the guys that are going in and doing hospitals and food processing centers and effectively the more complicated aspects of the commercial market.

Patrick Baldwin: Sprague comes to mind. It’s 100% commercial.

Paul Giannamore: Like a Sprague or a Versacor down in Texas. I can't remember if they are out of Dallas or out of Houston.

Patrick Baldwin: Dallas.

Paul Giannamore: That's the Eicher brothers, former Steritech folks that started that business some years ago. Those are different businesses than your run-of-the-mill commercial. That's a question that will always be asked and I don't know if I can give a better answer.

Patrick Baldwin: I hope you don't prevent me from asking that question again because I love to ask and to get a little stir, a little rise into you.

Paul Giannamore: You tend to because I dodged it on Bubble Trouble. That's for sure.

Patrick Baldwin: You dodged it very well. I had this question. I want to call one of our favorite couples on The Boardroom Buzz. You know who.

Paul Giannamore: I do not know. Our favorite couples. I'm trying to think. You're saying couples on The Buzz?

Patrick Baldwin: Like a married couple.

Paul Giannamore: A married couple that has been on The Buzz?

Patrick Baldwin: They have been on The Buzz.

Paul Giannamore: Mike and Debbie?

Patrick Baldwin: That is definitely America's couple but it’s Liz and Jesse. We spent some time with them on the phone. Their business has taken off and they were asking questions about routing and all this stuff. A lot of the questions I get. It’s like, “What did you do in the past? How did you do this? How did you route? How did you schedule all that stuff?” The question is not, “How did I,” so much, but what would I do differently.

Going forward, if you had a $10 million business and commercial residential, or if you would go start a business tomorrow, what would you do? The question that came up with Liz and Jesse and it's things I've learned in speaking to other operators and doing The Buzz. Structuring commercial technicians and residential technicians, Bobby and I tried that at one point and it flopped but I would do it again. I would, knowing the future in mind if that's where I want to grow the business to have strong residential service capabilities and strong commercial capabilities. A lot of it has to do with how you have your technician structured.

Paul Giannamore: Are you saying that you would have a commercial tech and a residential tech?

Patrick Baldwin: All day. I would build it out from there. Would you?

Paul Giannamore: I had this discussion, as a matter of fact. It's with a client that does north of $30 million in revenue and he's got the majority of his commercial texts dedicated but some of them are more or less universal texts. I said, “Why have you done that?” He said, “It’s very simple. I'm in some dense urban areas but a few of our offices are out rural. We're out on the periphery. I can't support separate commercial and residential techs out there.” He said that it didn't make sense. He said, “At some point, I will.” At some point, those texts are going to either become pure residential or pure commercial but he said right now they're cross-trained to do both and their routes include both residential and commercial from a density perspective.

Patrick Baldwin: Good point. I feel like I need to call them back. They're going to hear this anyway.

Paul Giannamore: He also said that like many of us, we would like to hire people from outside the industry. He said by giving them the experience to do both, both the technicians as well as he can determine who's better at what because they're slightly different a skillset. If you think about it on the commercial side, it's a lot more record-keeping than it is on the residential side. Some technicians are into that. They're organized. Like you, you take a lot of notes and you’re organized. You'd be a great commercial tech.

Patrick Baldwin: Thanks, Paul.

Paul Giannamore: Me? How am I doing with my notes? Not so great. Maybe I'm a better residential tech. Who the hell knows? That’s the long and short of that one.

Patrick Baldwin: I'd be fighting for commercial tech because you get to spend a little bit more time indoors with air conditioning.

Paul Giannamore: That’s true. I forgot about that. Speaking of, you were talking to Jesse and Liz about what you've learned on The Buzz. You spoke at the Texas Association and had a shindig down in Dallas Fort Worth. Can we talk about that a little bit? You gave a speech on the big stage about the top ten things you learned on the old Buzz.

Patrick Baldwin: That's right. One was subscription billing, which came up with Jesse and Liz. Do as much as you can as subscription billing. We talked through pest control, mosquito control, and, in their case, the new Trelona. The Sentricon Bait Station was similar. Do as much as you can unbundle and then have your price broken out as much as possible. They were talking like, “We live in a neighborhood that's similar when we're talking about Jim McHale, this white glove service.” I said, “Roll out your concierge service if they want to bundle all three and price that accordingly.”

Because it's a transient community, if you ever think that they're going to split out in a certain month, and you're going to lose your shirt over having some discounted price, you can always bump up some excess service getting started. The subscription was a big thing. There are not a lot of subscription by-in in Texas. I don't think of Texas being ahead of the curve in that way.

Paul Giannamore: Most of the industry hasn't bought into that yet, believe it or not.

Patrick Baldwin: They better get stepping. It’s time.

Paul Giannamore: What else?

Patrick Baldwin: You're dealing with these acquirers every day twice a day. Is that not something that they continue to ask for?

Paul Giannamore: They're always looking. Always wondering and always asking questions. That's true.

Patrick Baldwin: We're picking on Jesse and Liz for a second. Maybe we'll send them some Chick-fil-A or something, but they have their mosquito service prepaid for the year. I said, “That's another hurdle for you in operations. Every year, you're asking for this big check or credit card payment and you're having them re-sign it every year and just flatten it out.” That's one less decision for your client. That's one less thing that you have to do come April when your mosquito season starts. Also thinking about when the acquirer takes it over, that's one less thing that they're going to have to do once they take it over. No one wants to do it.

I'm thinking of the chicken or the egg. You said that we're living in an echo chamber. It is the great people that make the industry or vice versa. I talked about Mike and Debbie Rogers. Here's America's couple. I had a slide called the Double Wide Doozy. For two people that came from virtually nothing with a high school education selling phone books as they've done well for themselves with a lot of grit and determination.

Financially sophisticated from how he's grown that, his business, and himself. I’m super impressed. You can do pest control and make lots of money so it's a wonderful industry. The family was another one. I call it the Family Feud but we've had a lot of conversations offline, on the Buzz, these phone calls, where a family makes for an interesting, difficult at times dynamic. I’m thinking about Bryan Dodge. We're all for the family business. This industry is built on the back of a family business and a dirty blue-collar industry that sets a lot of people up for life. The family dynamic is one more instinct thing that makes a business do well or makes it that much harder.

Paul Giannamore: In my experience more times than not, unfortunately, that doesn't work out. The family, whether it's brother, sister, father, brother, father, son, the whole nine yards. It's complicated. You talked a little bit about family. Let's see if you can remember one more top ten lesson you learned.

Patrick Baldwin: Here's one that ties into the whole family thing, which you deal with a lot. I call it ID Theft. When you sell the business, if you're a family business, and all you do is talk about the pest control company, your whole life revolves around it. When you go to sell the pest control company, I know that there is an identity shift like, “What do I do now?”

I think about Richard Kramer. He's like, “You're going to find me with a BNG rusted out in a neighborhood somewhere or out working on my farm. I'm not going to retire. This is who I am.” Jeff Bain. Hefei. That's like, “I have not not been a pest control guy,” double negative intended, “I've always been the Bug Guy.” What other hobbies or things are you going to do after selling, whatever can be done to avoid the surprise of the day after closing? Think about what's going to come next.

Paul Giannamore: It's an important topic. It's been more difficult for sellers in recent years. I've been doing this for a long time and when valuations weren't what they have been people often planned more because the market wasn't so dynamic. There wasn't a huge difference between selling this quarter versus eight quarters for now. You could plan. It's July 2022. You could say, “I'm going to sell in July 2024.”

I've got two years so I can start focusing more on my hobbies. I could, as an owner, step back from my business. Some guys will see a therapist which is a healthy thing to do. They'll see a psychologist or a therapist to help pull them away from the business and get them focused on other things so that it's not ripping the band-aid off. It is a slow and thoughtful shift.

Patrick Baldwin: There's a lot less succession now. Wasn't that the old model? It’s like, “I'm going to pass on my kids.”

Paul Giannamore: It’s much more passing the business down to other generations than there has been in recent years or where valuations have been. In 2020, 2021, and 2022, we've seen a lot of volatility in the public markets but also the private markets where we've seen valuations change month to month, quarter to quarter.

If you wanted to get out there and kill it to sell your business, you had to be opportunistic. You couldn't say, “I want to do this deal in October when it's April. Now might be the time to pull the trigger.” We saw people much less prepared for that. I do try to have conversations with clients, especially the ones that we've got time from a planning perspective, which are ways to step away from the business and start to focus on what are you going to do? Are you going to retire? Are you going to go into another line of business? You talk about Kramer. He became a consultant and wanted to focus on his department of defense entomology type of stuff.

Some guys want to get into an entirely separate line of business and other guys want to be retired and golf, ski, or whatever else retired people do, which is great as well. That's a difficult change. By the way, I have had this conversation quite a bit. Usually, the first three to six months is a great period for the seller because they get their check, they’re out of there, and somebody else takes on the hassle of owning a business.

They get to about the six-month mark, and that's when they start to say, “I've got nothing to do.” It's not, “Nothing to do,” per se because everyone can create work for themselves. It's almost that purpose, right? They lose their status. They're not signing a check for 80 people every other week. It's difficult. It's more difficult for older individuals. For those guys that are over 65, it's difficult for them more so than the 40-year-old that's off to something different.

Patrick Baldwin: I’m thinking about how they have to go spend more time with their wives now.

Paul Giannamore: Nowhere to hide.

Patrick Baldwin: “Why are you going to the office again? You don't own the business.” Seth Garber gave me a recommendation a while back and said, “Unplug for a week, at least a week. Whether it's a staycation or whatever. Do nothing and re-energize and plan for whatever comes to you.” That was good advice out there but I know there's a strong support system out there. If you think about the previous guests we've had on the show that might still be figuring this out. I know a lot of them are available or they probably want someone to talk to. We're not going to warn them.

Paul Giannamore: I'm trying.

Patrick Baldwin: Paul, it’s great getting Andrea on here. It’s fantastic information. I wish I had this almost playbook years ago but here it is.

Paul Giannamore: She was good. The time was much too short with her because I felt like we were getting rolling on it. Thank you for joining us. Andrea, thank you for joining us on The Buzz.

Patrick Baldwin: I am going to youth camp and Disneyland. To be clear, I don't want that to be creepy. Those are not the same thing.

Paul Giannamore: I only watched the Mexican we're here to hear that.

Patrick Baldwin That's why he goes to Disney. That's it

Paul Giannamore: Mexican does go to Disney.

Patrick Baldwin: We're going to be gone for a few weeks and then we'll be back here in the latter summer of 2022.

Paul Giannamore: We have some super cool stuff coming down the pipe. One interview we recorded, Patrick that I thought was fantastic, but we're going to re-record it because we had a few technical issues. We're going to do that and our guests will be at your home this time. Patrick, until next time.

Patrick Baldwin: See you, Paul.

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Dylan Seals: I want to remind you to go ahead and subscribe to The Boardroom Buzz. We have got some incredible episodes coming up that you're not going to want to miss. Also, if you've enjoyed the podcast, please go to the Apple Podcasts app and leave us a short review. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks so much again for reading. We'll see you next episode.

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