Make bed bug physiology improve your image in your industry

by Tommy Underhill
May 24, 2018

A recently-fed bed bug is very docile and moves very little if at all. Think about how big your belly gets and how you feel after a big Thanksgiving meal! The bed bug feels just as sluggish, if not more. When a bed bug is brought into a new environment, and it falls from a person’s clothing, shoe, or luggage, it may not move for several hours, especially if it has recently fed.

University studies have repeatedly shown that the active soy ingredients in GreenTech Prevent will kill bedbugs within a minute of contact. So why does GreenTech Prevent guarantee a kill in six to eight hours? We need some “wiggle room”. Getting enough of the soy compound onto the bed bug requires wiggling and movement. We can guarantee even a recently-fed insect will start to move within six to eight hours.

Here’s a scenario for you to consider: you perform a heat treatment for bed bugs and achieve temperatures and maintain them at the hardest-to-heat locations for the required time, you are empirically guaranteed to have killed all the insects in the treatment zone. (Pro hint: differentiate yourself from your competition by offering a 100% kill of all insect pests within the job site! Heat and treat for the most heat-tolerant species and hardest-to-heat location in the site. You’re already there on the job site, and potentially running the equipment for a slightly-longer time may give you the marketing edge which will eclipse any additional costs experienced with the additional heating.) Regardless of your role in the market (hotel or motel, pest control company, property management company, homeless shelter, governmental agency, student housing coordinator, senior housing manager, church administrator, or apartment and multi-unit property manager), call-backs are a nuisance. This is where GreenTech Prevent comes to the rescue against bed bug reinfestations.

It may be enough to upset your customer if they see a bed bug in a heat-treated area where GreenTech Prevent has been applied. Don’t blame your customer, resident, or tenant for bringing bed bugs into your freshly-treated job site. Don’t explain or justify the time-frames required to achieve the residual kill. We have found that that process usually frustrates your customer, resident, or tenant. Ask if the insect has moved within the eight-hour timeframe. If it hasn’t moved in that time, it’s probably dead—and your treatment worked! If it has moved in the sprayed zone within that time, it’s also going to be dead.

When properly applied to fabrics and fibers, GreenTech Prevent remains effective for up to a year. When you have a claim against the guarantee, the important step is to be seen doing something. That something if often as simple and straightforward as stopping by to respray the immediate area where the customer reported the bed bug. You do not need to retreat the entire job site. It’s not a complete retreatment and should only take a few minutes. We will provide whatever amount of GreenTech Prevent that might be necessary to take care of the job and satisfy the customer. It’s all about keeping the customer, tenant, or resident and you keep the customer when they feel they can rely on you.

Make no argument, offer no excuses—you just do what you guaranteed to do. We have said that no program is perfect, but if it should happen that a bed bug is found during the one-year term of the guarantee and it upsets your customer enough to let you know, we help you take care of your customer.

We have complete confidence in our products and services and know that they always work. Every batch of GreenTech Prevent is tested on live bed bugs before we release it. It’s also necessary to consider the psychological impact a bed bug infestation places on people. Take care of your customer and understand their emotions. Give them what they want: someone they can rely on with confidence.

Once they understand you’re that person, they renew their annual contracts and leases year after year, you preserve your good name, and grow your business.