How Foothills Pest turned a termite swarm into $93,000 in recurring plans.
Ray Castellano spent every spring watching swarm-week calls roll to voicemail while his eight techs were out treating. Sarah had been live three weeks when the first warm rain hit. By the end of the surge she'd booked the inspections, and locked the quarterly plans, that used to walk to the next firm in town.
“The phone tripled and every one of my guys was already on a job. She caught all of it.”Ray Castellano · 8:20 AM, April 18
Six metrics, year over year.
Pulled from the business's CRM exports and Sarah's call logs: the twelve months before signup, against the twelve months on Ansa.
Where they were, what they did, what's true now.
- 01Where they were
Six trucks, eight techs, and a business where 85% of the revenue is recurring: the $129-a-quarter plan, not the one-time treatment. But when the spring swarm tripled the phones, every tech was already in the field and the office line couldn't keep up. About 40% of surge-week calls hit voicemail, and 85% of those callers never called back. One of those calls was a $1,900 customer signing with whoever answered.
- 02What they did
March 2026, the cold dry stretch before the swarm. Ray counted what the previous spring's missed calls had cost: not $165 a piece, but $516-a-year plans signing with competitors. He signed up on a Tuesday and was live three weeks later, just before the first warm rain.
- 03What's true now
Sarah answers every swarm call, simultaneously, in under two seconds. She triages the pest, books the free inspection, and pitches the quarterly plan on every qualifying call, capturing the recurring revenue, not just the ticket. Foothills hasn't lost a swarm-week plan to a competitor's faster pickup since signup.
I used to dread the first warm week of spring. The swarm meant money, but it also meant I was watching half the calls die on voicemail while my guys were out. Now Sarah answers all of them and sells the plan on the call, so the swarm finally pays off the way it always should have.
Foothills is typical, not exceptional.
Most pest businesses on Ansa land in the same range: surge-week calls answered on first ring, recurring plans up across the board, payback inside the first swarm week. Here's where Foothills sits against the rest of our pest-control customers.
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