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Many new business owners don’t prioritize creating a pest control business plan before doing anything else. As a result, a lot of them either fail or scramble to create one later on.
Building your business without a pest control business plan is like trying to start a car without gas in the tank… it just doesn’t work.
The best pest control business plan helps you to accomplish a wide variety of things. Your new business plan will help you to:
In this article, we’ll talk about what it takes to build a great business plan - even if you’ve never done it before.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or updating your current business plan, use this complete guide to help you create the best pest control business plan for you.
Your business plan helps you to organize your goals and discover new growth opportunities:
As a result, you can get the building blocks for success just by creating your pest control business plan!
Pro tip! Your business plan is not a one-and-done document. A good practice is to update your plan with monthly financial revisions and complete annual revisions.
Your cover page is a quick reference point for your employees and other viewers to get an overview of your management and contact structure.
Cover pages are a great resource for your new employees and can fast-track the training process by giving them a brief business overview. This is especially important as your pest control business grows and you take on new employees.
Plus, cover pages are beneficial if you apply for grants or loans because it gives them a quick reference point for your contact information.
Your cover page is similar to a cover letter for your business. It’s the first page everyone sees, and it’s a quick way to introduce your business.
As a result, your pest control business plan should appear as a professional booklet.
The main elements you need to include in your cover page are:
When you’ve built out your cover page, you can begin on your executive summary.
Essentially, your executive summary is a brief, on-page summary of your entire pest control business plan.
Your executive summary helps you to finalize the main concepts of your business by establishing clear growth goals that aid you scaling up your pest control business later on down the road.
The main elements you’ll need to include in your executive summary are:
When you’ve finished your executive summary, you’re ready to go onto the next step - your business overview.
Your business overview outlines your pest control business’ everyday functions, basic information, business operations, and operational structure.
This overview serves as a way for newcomers (like new employees or third-party accountants) to instantly understand how your business operates.
The company summary is a quick explanation of your vision for your pest control business.
The main elements you’ll want to include are:
After answering these questions, you’ll complete your company summary.
Although, every pest control business varies, so you might need to answer additional questions in your company summary.
Based on your vision for your business, your company summary should give you a clearer picture of what your ideal pest control client looks like.
Upon starting your pest control business, you had to choose between partnership, corporation, sole proprietorship, and etc…
Due to your business entity holding tax implications, you must include how you registered your business in your pest control business plan.
When you establish your business as an entity, you essentially protect your personal assets from any potential financial implications in your business. Otherwise, your personal assets can be impacted by your business.
As a result, it’s a good idea to formally establish in writing this significant part of your business.
Your start-up summary explains your start-up costs and bases the overall value of your pest control business by evaluating your assets.
This is important because your start-up costs and assets are generally a great predictor of your success.
Also, if you ever apply for loans or grants, this is one of the most important sections in your pest control business plan that they’ll review.
It’s important to note that if you’re just starting out, then this section will include your start-up summary. However, if you’re an established business, then this will include your business expenses and assets.
In this section, you’ll estimate your start-up costs so that you can include it in your overhead costs.
After you determine your pest control prices, you can lump your start-up costs into your overhead costs.
It’s important not to skim over this section, or you could end up underselling yourself and losing money on low pricing.
First off, you’ll add up your start-up costs.
In other words, you need to find out how much you’ll spend to buy pest control equipment, materials, and chemicals to get your business started.
Make sure to exclude any tools and equipment that you already own, since this section should only include the items you need to purchase.
These are a few things your start-up costs might include:
Add up all of your expenses like the ones listed above to determine your start-up costs.
Your start-up costs are a great way for you to develop a financial plan for your business - even if you’re not looking at outside investors or loans.
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Your long-term assets include any of your assets that will contribute to your business’ success in the long-term.
For instance, your truck or trailer would be examples of long-term assets that you own since they won’t need to be replaced often.
Your long-term assets are important because they play a huge role in predicting your pest control business’ success. Plus, they also help to determine your business’ value.
If you apply for grants or loans (or any other third-party financial assistance), they’ll use this section to weigh what your business is worth.
Since your long-term assets hold so much weight, be as detailed as possible in this section (year, make, model, cost, and etc… ).
Your short-term assets are anything you own that will contribute to your business’ success in the short-term.
To name a few, your short-term assets include things like:
In general, the more assets you have will decrease your overhead, which increases the revenue going to your profits.
The short-term assets section of your pest control business plan helps to determine your business’ revenue, increase it, and weigh your business’ value.
In order to give you the most informed advice, this section is useful to pass onto your third-party financial advisors.
Even though documenting ALL of your short-term assets is tedious work, it’ll become especially useful when you begin tracking your inventory.
The costs you calculated in the previous step will help you to determine what pest control services you’ll offer.
Your decision on which pest control services you’ll provide is based on these two things:
Using the information above, write a paragraph that’s 3 to 5 sentences, and explain the services you’re going to offer.
Also, in order to establish your foundation for everyday business operations, make sure you take seasonality and frequency into account for each of your pest control services.
In your market analysis summary, you’ll identify your ideal client, pinpoint industry trends, and explain how you’re going to meet their needs.
One of the best ways to get a good grasp on your target market and local competition is by detailing it in your market analysis summary.
Take a look at the questions below and include the answers in your market analysis summary:
Feel free to include any additional information that’s relevant to your market analysis summary… The more detailed, the better!
The previous steps in your pest control business plan have prepared you to create a business strategy.
Your business strategy connects all of the information in your business plan to help you develop an effective pest control pricing strategy.
Use your business strategy to help you scale your business and increase your profits.
One of the best ways to grow a successful pest control business is through maximizing your profits by properly pricing your services.
Consider these things as you decide on your pricing strategy:
Consider these factors - and more - as you’re choosing your pest control prices.
Download our FREE pest control pricing calculator to quickly and easily see how much you should charge for your services in under 10 minutes!
In your implementation summary, you’ll outline the marketing and sales strategies you’ll use to sell your pest control services.
Evaluate your overhead costs and service prices you calculated in the previous sections to determine how many new clients you’ll need to win to conquer your profit goals.
Then, figure out how you’re going to win those clients.
In order to get started, you’ll need to know how to tackle these basic marketing strategies:
Plus, you can dive deeper by including things like:
The most effective implementation strategies use what they know about their target market to win their ideal clients.
As a result, your implementation strategy provides you with a marketing campaign action plan to help you reach your goals.
In short, your management summary outlines your labor costs.
Also, labor costs can make up to 30% of your annual revenue costs!
In other words, your management summary plays a huge role in your pest control business plan.
Unlike your other costs, you likely have more control over your labor costs than any other costs.
After all, there are a variety of ways you can cut labor costs by streamlining your everyday operations, increasing your route density, and improving your time management.
By the way, Service Autopilot has the power to automate all of these tasks and so much more.
The key to keeping down your labor costs is knowing when it’s the right time to hire pest control employees.
Consider your prices, operational costs, profits, and business needs to help you decide when it’s time.
These are the main elements to include in your management summary:
In the beginning, you may not have enough clients to support you in hiring an employee, which is 100% normal and okay.
There are plenty of new pest control business owners who run a solo operation for a year or two. They’ll wait until they have enough clients to support hiring their first employee.
When you’re consistently feeling exhausted and overworked, then you’ll know it’s time to hire a pest control employee.
Also, if you’re ready to hire a new employee but you can’t afford it, then it’s time to increase your pest control prices.
Instant invoicing
Better scheduling
Manage your clients and employees all in one system
In order to ensure your pest control business’ long-lasting success and scalable growth, you’ll need to develop a financial plan.
A financial plan gives you a clear picture of your profitability and overall financial state.
It’s easy to try to skim through this step. However, this step can make or break your business’ finances.
If you take your time on any of the sections in your pest control business plan, then it needs to be this one.
Once you’ve finished this section, I suggest reaching out to a trusted bookkeeper or accountant to finalize everything.
By working with a financial advisor, they can take things a step further to find any profit holes or red flags in your finances BEFORE it becomes an issue.
Since your finances can make or break your success, I strongly urge you to contact a trusted financial advisor ASAP. I promise, it’ll be worth every penny.
When it comes to your finances, there’s not a whole lot of room for error (hence, the need for a financial advisor). This is why it’s so important to get it done right the first time.
Take a look at the main things you can include in your financial plan:
All of the items in bold listed above are the essential pieces you NEED to include in your financial plan. The other things mentioned are different ways you can use to kick your financial plan up a notch or two.
Even though everything might not apply to your business, this will give you an excellent running start in creating your own pest control business plan.
Finally, you have all the information and tools you need to create your own pest control business plan.
Even though a professional business plan takes time to build, you can use the outline and information in this article to streamline the process.
Now, you’re ready to start using your pest control business plan to open up more opportunities for your business to be successful!
Related: How to Run a Successful Pest Control Business
Originally published April 22, 2021 3:02 PM
Tags: Business Operation, Featured Post
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