How to get more pest control jobs

Pest control work comes from two very different kinds of customer:

• Domestic: homeowners and tenants with wasps, rats, mice, bed bugs or fleas. Urgent, seasonal and one-off.
• Commercial: restaurants, cafés, food factories, warehouses, shops, schools and offices. Planned visits under a contract, paid every month or quarter.
• Public sector: councils, housing associations and NHS sites, usually through tenders.
• Letting agents and property managers who need a reliable contractor for their tenants.
• Facilities management companies that subcontract pest control across many sites.

Domestic work is good cash flow in the busy months. Commercial contracts are what keep you busy in the quiet ones. Most growing pest control businesses want more of the second.

Start with businesses that have to control pests. Under food hygiene law, food business premises must have adequate procedures in place to control pests. A local environmental health inspection that finds signs of pests is a bad day for any food business owner, so many prefer a contractor on a regular schedule.

To win those contracts:

1. 1Make a list of food businesses, warehouses and multi-site operators within easy reach of your base.
2. 2Offer a clear service agreement: how many routine visits a year, what each visit covers, call-out response times and the report they'll get after every visit.
3. 3Make the paperwork easy. A tidy report and site records help the customer show an inspector that pest control is under control.
4. 4Ask existing customers for introductions to other sites or businesses they know.
5. 5Follow up on every enquiry the same day. A business with a sighting today won't wait until next week.

Price contracts so they pay for themselves. Our guide on how to price pest control jobs covers pricing per treatment and per contract.

Public sector work is advertised. Contracts Finder lists government and agency contracts worth over £12,000 including VAT, and high-value contracts, usually above £139,688 including VAT, are on Find a Tender. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own procurement websites.

GOV.UK also suggests contacting your local council or public sector organisation about how to become an approved supplier. Ask how they buy work that's too small to tender.

To give yourself a chance:

• Create a Contracts Finder account and save a search for pest control, so new tenders come to you.
• Have your documents ready: insurance, health and safety policies, risk assessments, method statements, training certificates and references.
• Show rodenticide competence. The Health and Safety Executive says professional use of anticoagulant rodenticides must follow one of the UK rodenticide stewardship regimes.
• Start with smaller contracts you can deliver well, and use them as references for bigger ones.

For commercial and public sector work, it often helps. The British Pest Control Association says its members have at least £2 million of public and products liability insurance, are audited to the BS EN 16636 standard for pest management and follow its codes of best practice. It runs a Find a pest controller search that customers can filter by commercial or residential premises.

Membership costs depend on turnover. For 2026, BPCA lists full membership at £350 plus VAT in your first and second years of trading, then £536 plus VAT for turnover under £50,000, rising with turnover. There's a processing fee of £180 including VAT when you apply, which comes off your first subscription if you're accepted.

Weigh that against one commercial contract. If membership helps you win a single monthly service agreement, it has probably paid for itself.

Homeowners search on the day they find the problem, so be easy to find and easy to reach:

1. 1Fill in your Google Business Profile. Google's advice is to keep your information complete and accurate, respond to reviews and add photos. If you work from home, hide your address and set a service area.
2. 2List each pest you deal with as a service, with a short, plain description.
3. 3Ask for reviews after every job. Customers with a wasp nest or rats want proof you're trusted in people's homes.
4. 4Consider Google Local Services Ads, which charge per lead. Google warns that if you regularly fail to answer calls or respond to messages, your ad ranking may be affected. Our guide to Local Services Ads and missed calls explains the rules.
5. 5Tell letting agents you can attend tenanted properties quickly, and send them the report.

Domestic work comes in waves. Wasp season can bring more calls in a week than you can take, which is exactly when answering matters most.

Very fast. Someone with rats in the kitchen or wasps by the back door rings the next number if you don't answer. In a 2026 survey, 75% of UK adults said they'd give a business three call attempts before giving up on it, and 58% said they'd tell friends and family to avoid a business that didn't pick up.

The cost of a missed enquiry is the job's value times the chance the caller would have booked. For example, in a busy week, missing eight wasp calls that book half the time at £80 each is £320 that week. A missed enquiry from a restaurant that would have signed a year-long contract costs far more. Put your own numbers into our missed call calculator.

Then follow up:

1. 1Ring back missed callers within the hour, starting with the most urgent.
2. 2Send commercial quotes within a day of the survey.
3. 3Chase quotes after two or three days.

For calls in the evening and at weekends, see our guide to out-of-hours call answering. Commercial cleaning firms deal with many of the same buyers, so our guide on how to get cleaning contracts is worth a read for the tendering side.