Writing the Book on Your Business

If someone wrote a book about your company, what story would it tell?

Fred Strickland Jr., board certified entomologist and vice president of customer experience at Waynes, Birmingham, Ala., asked this question during his presentation at the National Pest Management Association’s PestWorld 2020 virtual conference.

Strickland spent nearly 35 years in pest control as a second-generation PMP before switching career tracks: at the time of his PestWorld presentation, he was senior manager at facilities maintenance company Miner Corporation in Dallas. He returned to the pest control industry in December 2020 when he assumed his current position at Waynes.

In a way, Strickland said, a PMP pens the book on his or her company each day. He quoted a Paul Gilbert poem: “You’re writing a gospel, a chapter each day. By the deeds that you do, by the words that you say. Men read what you write, whether faithless or true; say, what is the gospel according to you?”

If PMPs envision the building blocks of their business as chapters in a book, they can get a better big-picture vision of their company’s identity and pinpoint areas where it can improve and grow. Strickland outlined seven chapters for a successful business based on his career in and outside of the pest control industry.

Chapter 1: Why Are You in Business? The first question PMPs must ask themselves, Strickland said, is why they started their business in the first place.

“Are you going to build something?” he asked. “Are you going to earn a living and make some money and help others as well? Do you provide an essential service?”

Strickland warned against staying “inside the box” when defining a business. Often, he said, businesses “fall into the sea of sameness.” To avoid this, owners must differentiate what makes their company stand apart.

Strickland used 2020’s pandemic-related challenges as an example of working outside the box, with conferences turning virtual and employees working remotely. He urged PMPs to think about how that upheaval taught them to grow in business.

Each company has its unique fingerprint, Strickland said. PMPs should strive to leave an impression that satisfies customers. And if it doesn’t, “What can you do to clean off that fingerprint and make sure the right one is given so that they have not only a pleasant taste, but that service was so well done that they will recommend you in a heartbeat to a neighbor, a friend or a family member?” he asked.

Chapter 2: Core Values. Next, PMPs must clearly define their core values, the principles that guide a company’s actions. These values boil down to the heart of a company’s leadership team, said Strickland. PMPs should make sure they are woven into every customer experience and employee interaction.

“You want to be aggressively authentic, not pie-in-the-sky,” Strickland said. “Not a marketing spin of, ‘Oh, that sounds pretty.’ Or you grab it off the internet from some social media page. The key is, why did you choose that? And what does it mean to you and your associates in the form of action?”

When determining core values, Strickland said PMPs should analyze both the tangible and intangible aspects of business. “Tangible, we know, are things you can measure,” he said. “OK, we have 200 customers, we have $1 million dollars in the bank. We can measure by month, by day. We have a plan to grow by five percent, 10 percent. We can budget for it. We can achieve it. It’s something that you can see and write down.”

Intangible aspects include why employees want to work at a company. Paying attention to both the tangible and intangible helps to develop “a place the team members can feel like they’re a part of something much bigger than themselves,” Strickland said. “They’re fighting for something: a bigger, better cost, not for the owner, not for the manager, but for the customer, for their family, for the person that’s on the right or left in the trenches with them.”

Chapter 3: Battle Cards. PMPs must next assess their business model. Having a successful business is all about math, Strickland said. The question is, what needs to be measured?

“What are the important three or five things you see or look at every morning? Those are things that you can put on a daily operating report or a weekly operating report,” he said. Examples include a profit and loss statement, the number of customers being serviced each day, the percentage a company wants to grow in a month or a year, or customer retention statistics.

Successful business professionals must also research their competition. Drawing from his background as an athlete, Strickland has developed a unique competitor analysis. When Strickland played basketball, he once happened upon a “battle card” a rival team had created for him. “[It said] that I was right-handed; I couldn’t dribble very well on my left hand. True,” he said. “I was better shooting 15 feet to the basket. I was a center. And the idea was to gain statistics about me and information. But it told my weaknesses; it told my strengths.”

Strickland asked PMPs to envision a battle card on their competition that included information such as their target market, products, strengths and weaknesses. Then, he flipped that concept on its head. “Here’s my twist: don’t think about it as the companies that you battle with every day,” he said. “What if you wrote one on your company, wrote one on your staff or you got a competitor’s battle card on you?”

Chapter 4: Communicate Basic Concepts. PMPs already know the basic concepts and principles of pest control. But how can they communicate those to customers in an easily digestible way?

Take time answering customers’ questions and putting them at ease, Strickland said. Company team members should be on the same page so they can present consistent, accurate information to customers. In the past, Strickland has used a training concept he called “lemon-squeezing” to facilitate this.

“When you squeeze a lemon, what comes out? Whatever’s inside of it,” he said. “So, we would put all of our associates in this question-and-answer session. A role play, if you would, among the peers, asking these questions and then teaching them how to answer it. ‘The product that I’m using is this formulation. … This is how it helps with the insect problem that you have. And here’s what I need you to know as far as the safety aspect and what it is.’”

Chapter 5: Business Maturity. Strickland asked PMPs if their business was at the same maturity level as its age. “If you’ve been 10 years in business, here’s my challenge for you: Are you 10 years mature, 10 years in the business, or are you one year in business, but you’ve been doing the one year for 10 years?” he asked.

Companies should take stock of their arsenal of tools, he said, and make sure they are evolving with their maturity. “You might use a five iron in your golf bag,” Strickland said. “This particular tool is an important tool, and we need it. But let’s make sure it’s not the only tool that we have.”

He recommended PMPs write down every product in their chemical storage unit. “Put them on a piece of paper with the active ingredient and the formulation,” he said. “A dust, an aerosol, a liquid, an EC.” This helps PMPs keep track of their supply, but also ensures they don’t use products that contradict one another.

Another component of business maturity is documenting customer feedback and quality of service, he said. Customers might appreciate when a technician sweeps their cobwebs, puts covers on their shoes or takes time to explain a process. Any positive feedback should be documented for future reference so it can be consistently repeated, Strickland said.

Chapter 6: Your Customer. It’s important to know what a customer likes about your company, but also what they don’t like, Strickland said.

“What have you or your associates done that continues to cause pain to your customers?” he asked. He encouraged PMPs to look for pain points and find ways to improve them to facilitate customer satisfaction and build loyalty. “Can you make it easier for them to pay the bill?” he asked. “Can you make it easier for them to schedule service? Can you make it easier for them to get in contact with someone? With today’s society, they don’t necessarily want it now, they want it yesterday.”

If companies don’t address these issues, they run the risk of negative reviews on social media and beyond, Strickland said. He used the three-legged race as an example to demonstrate how company members should work together to achieve customer satisfaction. In the race, with legs tied together, partners must communicate a plan, move in sync and, most importantly, trust each other. “Two different people doing two different things, but the cadence is there, and when it’s all said and done, if we went on a three-legged race, we don’t care whether you came in first or I came in first, because we’re together,” Strickland said.

Chapter 7: Your People. The people on your team are the most important component of your business, Strickland said. “That’s the point of touch to our customers, whether it’s virtually on the phone or on the computer,” he said.

He referenced a saying attributed to Greek soldier Archilochus, also used by the U.S. Navy SEALs: “Under pressure, you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training.” In challenging situations, Strickland said, employees will fall to their highest level of training. Therefore, training well is one of the most important tasks a company can undertake.

If you’re writing the book on your company, Strickland said, and you want to make it better than the competition’s, focus on the promises you make to your people: your customers and employees. “What separates you is your team and your customers,” he said. “And that’s what you sell on. That’s what makes you special.”

The author is senior editor at PCT magazine.