PestBossPro Blog — Commercial Accounts

Quoting Commercial Pest Control Work With Online Approval

Commercial quotes tend to die in an inbox. You walk the building, the manager says it all sounds good, you email a PDF that night, and then nothing. The manager forwarded it to the owner. The owner meant to look at it. Two weeks later another company is servicing the building. A quote the manager can approve with one click, followed up automatically, gives you a much better shot at winning the work.

Reports Today, Quotes for Tomorrow

Reporting on existing accounts was covered in Commercial Pest Control Reports by Account: Answering “What Did You Do Here This Year?”. This article is about getting the next account in the door.

In PestBossPro, estimates are built from your own service list, priced off the property's measurements, and sent to the client to approve online. When they approve, the estimate becomes scheduled work. If they have not answered, estimate follow-up emails go out on their own.

Build a Commercial Service List First

Quotes are only as quick as the service list behind them. Before you quote your first commercial account, set up the commercial services you sell with your own prices. A starting list might include:

• Commercial initial service (cleanout before monthly service starts)
• Commercial monthly service
• Commercial bi-monthly service
• Rodent bait-station program, monthly
• Fly service, monthly
• Apartment unit treatment
• Exterior perimeter service for multi-building properties
• One-time services like wasp removal or an ant treatment

With those in place, a quote is a matter of picking the right items for the building, not writing a proposal from scratch every time.

Name the services in plain words the manager will understand. “Commercial monthly service: kitchen, dish area, dry storage and exterior perimeter” tells them what they are buying. A vague line like “Pest control package” invites the question “what does that include?” and slows down the approval.

Price Off the Property

Commercial buildings vary a lot in size, and guessing leads to underpriced accounts you regret. PestBossPro measures each property from the satellite map: building square feet and perimeter linear feet. Services and estimates price off those measurements.

That helps most on exterior work. A perimeter service on a warehouse with 1,200 linear feet of wall should cost more than one on a small office, and pricing by the foot makes that automatic. For interior work, building square feet gives you a starting point that you adjust for how much kitchen, storage or unit work the building has.

The site walk still matters. Measurements tell you how big the building is. The walk tells you how hard it will be. More on that in The Commercial Pest Control Walkthrough: Turning a Site Visit Into a Quote.

Send It for Online Approval

Once the estimate is built, send it to the decision maker. They open it, see the services and prices, and approve it online. They do not need to print, sign, scan or mail anything back.

For multi-location accounts, match the quote to how the client will decide. A restaurant group adding all three stores at once may want everything in front of them together. A property manager trying you out on one complex first can approve that one and add the others later.

Two-way texting helps after you send it. A short text, like “Just sent the estimate for your building, let me know if you have questions,” often gets a faster answer than the email alone.

Follow Up Without Remembering To

Plenty of commercial quotes are lost to silence rather than to a lower price. Estimate follow-up emails go out on their own to clients who have not responded, so the quote stays in front of them without you having to set reminders.

If they still have not answered after the follow-ups, it is worth a phone call. Ask whether anything in the quote needs to change. Sometimes the answer is a different start date, a different visit frequency, or splitting the initial service across two months.

From Approval to the Schedule

When the client approves, the estimate becomes scheduled jobs. Add the access notes and service notes from your walkthrough to the address, set the plan to monthly or whatever was quoted, and the location comes due on the Waiting List from there.

The first visit is often the initial service. Write what you saw on the walkthrough into the notes so the tech knows the problem areas before they arrive. Example pricing is entirely up to you, but a pattern many owners find easy to explain is an initial service at a higher price, like $199, followed by a lower monthly rate.

To see how quoting fits with every other part of running commercial accounts, visit the PestBossPro commercial pest control software page.