Robert's Rants
Robert's Rants
A personal blog on the Canadian pesticide industry and other pet peeves and interests

Big Company Eats Small Company. Output turns to (fill in the blank)

It’s the bane of the Industry, at least in pest management, when some big company decides to buy out a well oiled, profitable little company and then manages to loose all customer focus and sales in about 2 years time. Suppliers, PCO’s alike. Suppliers are the best,  prime example is BASF destroying the Whitmire legacy […]

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IPM – cheaper than you think

IPM IPM IPM. Do we really practice it much in Canada?  Not really. Should we?   Certainly. Do we hafta???   Once the insecticides are banned I guess so. Reason this train wreck of thought came up is I was reviewing our products and sales for the year, and one product sticks out like a sore thumb: […]

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Changing Your Customers’ Expectations…there is no “Silver Bullet”

I had a new customer in last week, a start up company actually, that was facing a tough problem with a roach cleanout.  Huge populations. The property manager wanted them gone…now (the roaches, not the PCO’s).   A simple matter of coming in and spraying and killing everything! Sure… Not…. So here’s the situation: Apartment building […]

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ON SPECIALS… ON DISCOUNTS (on Prancer and…nah) SALES AND PROMOS….WHY?

If you are a registered user of this site (basically a Gardex active customer…although we may have a few dead ones subscribed) you get the occasional email blast showing products we have on sale. Seems the world is full of Sales and Discounts.  BOGO…gotta love that one.  Is it in Webster’s yet?  Senior’s Day for […]

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If you’re billing at last year’s price…..you’re gonna go broke

As the jobs really start rolling in, I hope you did a serious breakdown of your costs, and are charging your customers appropriately. You’re 2 biggest line item expenses have all gone up… Labor…vehicles/fuel… Did anyone cut their technicians wages?   Nah Drive less or buy gas cheaper?  Nah I bet your insurance is way down?????   […]

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SPECIALS SPECIALS SPECIALS….why we do them

“Enough with the Specials…just give me a price!” I have said the same thing to our own suppliers…just give me a flat price and I’ll do the rest to manage my business. But… To be honest having an occasional special sale on products does serve several purposes, and which is why you see it so […]

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Single-mindedness and Value Add PART II

Further to my post on Value Add (which is a term I am going to cease using), I think one of the biggest pitfalls on promoting your overall service and reason to purchase is by focusing on each individual line item in your customer discussions. I see we do it daily as a company, and […]

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Stealing a customer…under my own eyes!

Taking a break in writing my rant about value and charging for added service etc. to share a small story.  One that I really find hard to believe, but since it did happen it has me thinking of customer loyalty. So the story… Two customers are in yesterday…Customer A is a somewhat “regular” stopping in once a […]

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