Jeff Lawson, with Arizona Exterminating, shares how the Always Active ingredient has taken care of desert subterranean termites.
Desert subterranean termites can be fickle. Disrupt them and they might flee. Offer something unacceptable and they will ignore it. But according to Arizona Exterminating in Scottsdale, Arizona, the Sentricon® System with Always Active™ technology has overcome both issues to eliminate the “skittish” heterotermes aureus – the dessert subterranean termite.
According to the Mallis Handbook of Pest Control, the desert subterranean termite is notoriously “skittish” and “finicky” especially when it comes to baiting. “They tend to feed for a time in bait stations, disappear for a while and then reappear…it is often difficult to achieve sustained feeding in bait stations…” (page 328)
Jeff Lawson, branch manager with Arizona Exterminating, says he’s never seen heterotermes eat any form of termite bait the way they eat the Recruit® HD termite bait at the heart of the Sentricon System with Always Active technology.
“With Always Active it’s been great,” he says. “We’ve been getting a lot of bait acceptance from the termites and we’re solving customers’ problems.”
Lawson, who has almost 30 years of experience in the pest control industry, says they’re easily scared away from the bait stations by servicing.
“Not having to open the stations, it’s makes this a much more effective process for us,” he explains.
Arizona Exterminating services their preventive Sentricon System customers annually and those customers with known termite activity are serviced twice per year. All of their Sentricon System customers have Always Active technology. Lawson recommends other companies follow suit.
“It’s all positives,” he says. “We’re providing a real solution for our customers now. It’s more of a proactive approach. We’ve been tracking our retreats and Always Active is cutting down on our call backs. When you start cutting down on re-treats and call backs, that really enhances your business from a financial standpoint. Plus, with the model of how we sell, it’s increased our profit margins. We can do a big job in half the time. So that helps with labor, equipment costs, materials, supplies, the whole thing.”
One of the challenges Arizona Exterminating found when they became a Certified Sentricon Specialist® was convincing their sales team that Sentricon would solve customer’s termite problems.
“The biggest challenge I had was getting through to the salespeople and getting them to buy into it,” Lawson says. “When we got our first hit, we took pictures of it and shared it with everyone and then the sales just took off.
“Last month Arizona Exterminating had a record profit and revenue month and we attribute that to Sentricon.”