My Franchise Journey…”Owner-Stuff”
Note: Post #33. Imagine being 61 years old with a Ph. D. and 35+ years of non-profit administration experience, most as Vice President or Assistant Vice President of Institutional Advancement in colleges and universities. Now I am in my first few months of small business franchise ownership. This is my story.
The best news at the moment is that I am working on “owner-stuff” (I’m told this is a technical MBA term!) while my new Field Technician is out treating properties as the most recent employee of Mosquito Hunters of Cherry Hill North-Riverton-Mount Laurel! Those who have been following this journey know that this is a huge step in beginning to scale the business. There is simply too much to do for one person. I learned a long time ago that an important aspect of effective leadership is to delegate whatever can be delegated and focus one’s energy on those things only the leader can address. In my case, this means training and coaching a Field Technician to handle most of the treatments so that I can focus on client satisfaction, building client relationships, marketing, finance, etc. For now, it also means scheduling, managing records, product inventory, etc. It’s still a lot, but much more manageable than trying to do it all.
In addition to the great Field Technician news, we signed on our 100th customer earlier this week (and added 3 more since then). This is both good and disappointing news at the same time. Truthfully, before I really got started and certainly before I knew much of anything about the business I hoped to have many more clients at this point in the season. A variety of things have hindered the pace of growth. Being solo for the first month or so before my Marketing Intern came on board slowed growth (check out previous posts for that part of the journey). Not having a Tech in place until now was also a factor. In addition, the sweet spot for marketing mosquito control services in the northeast is mid-April thru July 4th. The first 2/3rds of that period was unusually cool and dry. The last third is doing its best to make up for that, but that’s another story! Cool and dry keeps the mosquito population down and people inside, thus folks were not thinking about mosquito control the way they might if it were hot and more normal in terms of rain. Now that we are past July 4 many folks choose not to think about taking care of their mosquito problem because its only a problem for a short period of time. As a result, the number of interested folks has dropped off considerably.
These issues seem to be a challenge for all 21 of my first-year Mosquito Hunters franchise colleagues. My numbers put me solidly in the middle of this group. Most of those with stronger numbers are located in warmer climates and have a longer season to build business, have more than one territory, or both. Thus, my single territory in the northeast is consistent with the results others are seeing and stronger than many who have deployed the same tactics and under similar circumstances as me. All this to say, new business growth is hard to predict. The only assurance is that limited effort will produce limited results. The numbers are not where I had hoped, but they would be so much more disappointing if we had not done the work we did!
Another issue faced by mosquito control providers is the number of “call-backs” or “re-treats” one has. These are interchangeable terms that describe a customer calling back and reporting a return of mosquitos to their property which then necessitates returning to the property and treating it again. Mosquito Hunters has a Happiness Promise that states we will re-treat a property within 21 days if a customer is not happy with the results of their service. As an aside, we use the term “Happiness Promise” rather than “satisfaction guarantee” because happiness is better than satisfaction and business make guarantees while people make promises. Some would argue this is a matter of semantics. My take is that words matter. Happiness Promise sends the message that you have chosen people for your mosquito control and we are invested in your and our outcomes.
Given the nature of mosquito control, re-treats are inevitable. This is particularly true in hot, humid, wet weather that accelerates mosquito breeding and gestation cycles. Here in New Jersey we have experienced about a month of exactly this type of weather. High temps in the mid-to-upper 90’s, very humid with Heat Indexes well above 100, and unusually wet. As mentioned earlier, the weather gods are making up for an unusually cool and dry April, May, and early June. The result in terms of mosquitoes is predictable, an explosion in the volume of the annoying critters. It is difficult, if not impossible to quickly and fully control this type of infestation. It certainly won’t be done in one treatment and the effects of that one treatment will likely not last our promised 21-days. We do our best to explain the science and set customer expectations. This is key to a productive customer/provider relationship. Still, like mosquitoes, call-backs are a given.
My instinct is think that even one re-treat is an indication of some type of failure on our part. We did not apply our product adequately. We used the wrong product mix. We did not take enough time to get full coverage, etc. Any of these could be the case of course, but it is just as likely (maybe even more likely) that the issue is something like the aforementioned mosquito population explosion, a couple of days of hard rain that negatively impacted the treatment’s effectiveness, etc. A big reason for call-backs is that the property is not easily conducive to effective treatment. It is impossible to create a foliage barrier if a property has little to no foliage. Believe me, I know. I’ve tried! Other properties are inundated with standing, stale water that are prime breeding spots for mosquitoes. There are things that can be done to mitigate mosquitoes on such challenging properties, but it takes more effort and more than one treatment. Sometimes it can take most of the season and that hopefully sets you up for more success the following year. As you can imagine, not everyone wants to hear that it will take months to get their mosquitoes under control.
All this brings us back to the earlier statement. Re-treats are inevitable. I have learned from both my Franchisor and from my product vendor that a 10% re-treat rate is fairly normal and can be considered reasonable. I have heard from some providers who have much higher rates than this. They are understandably taking a hard look at things like Field Technician performance, product mix, types of properties, approach to setting expectations, etc. I ran my numbers and learned that I currently have a 4.8% re-treat rate and all of them have come in the last 3–4 weeks. Prior to doing more research I had been concerned about the increased re-treats. Now I understand that not only are they inevitable, my rate is well-below the acceptable industry norm. I guess we are doing something right!
Coming full circle on this post… All of this is an example of the kind of things I should be doing as a small-business owner: research, evaluation, analysis, number-crunching, call it what you want. These are things that cannot be delegated, or at least not fully delegated. This activity is essential to planning and essential for business growth. It sure is nice to have some time for “owner-stuff!”