PMP Growth Summit 2025: Obstacles and Opportunities Roundtable

Attendees at the 2025 PMP Growth Summit who participated in the Wednesday and Thursday morning breakfast roundtables found the early rise worthwhile. The opportunity offered attendees a chance for a candid discussion on various obstacles and potential growth opportunities in the industry.

“It’s a minor thing, but we keep a refrigerator in the warehouse stocked with free water and sports drinks they can take in the morning for their day. It’s free to them.” — Kevin Citarella, Partner, Florida Pest Pros, Spring Hill, Fla.

“We’ve really ramped up our driver training this year. We sent some of our staff to a driving school to become certified driving instructors. Now, we have a full-day program in-house. In the morning, it’s all classroom instruction. The afternoon is when we take it on the road and put into play what we talked about.” — Kevin Hathorne, Training and Technical Director, Terminix Service, Columbia, S.C.

“We use a third-party program where we get a quarterly report that will tell us which customers’ service anniversary dates are coming up. We’ll look at each of those customers and see how much time we spend on the property vs. our hourly rate. We leave them at their current pricing if they’re meeting our hourly rate. If they’re not, then we raise them proportionately. So, it’s a small segment of customers every month, and we get very little pushback. I’m old school, and raising prices makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because I think, ‘Everybody’s going to quit and leave!’ But they don’t.” — Daren Horton, Gecko Pest Control, Marshall, Texas

“Based on our service managers’ input, we started a monthly leadership training program a couple of years ago. We brought in outside trainers for interested employees to learn more about the business and management side vs. the pest control side. The bigger we get, the more titles we have — a field supervisor, a service manager, regional roles. We’ve been able to fill these positions with employees who are already familiar with our business.” — Jeff Keller, Technical Director, Burns Pest Elimination, Phoenix, Ariz.

“We see using our vehicle camera system as a way to protect everyone. Our technician was at a stoplight with a truck next to him, so he couldn’t see the crosswalk. The light turned green, and he started going. A bicyclist was coming across, and he hit the guy. But we watched the video: The bicyclist crossed illegally, and there was a truck there, so our guy did nothing wrong. The cops could see on the video that he was paying attention the entire time.” — Jason Miller, Project Manager, Nozzle Nolen, West Palm Beach, Fla.