Lenny Gray is the CEO of Rove Pest Control and D2D Millionaire. He shares how he built his million-dollar home services business based on principles of hard work, mental toughness, and commitment. 

Entering the Door-to-Door Sales Industry

Lenny says that his door-to-door experience all began when a buddy encouraged him to take a door-to-door sales job to pay for tuition and books in college. In the summer of 1998, he drove across the country to Birmingham, AL with his wife. That summer, he became the top sales representative for a pest control company and never looked back. 

After graduation, he was hired to run Orkin’s marketing team and developed their sales training for them. He set out to start his own business Rove Pest Control once his first child was born, with a partner who knew how to do the fieldwork. With his expertise in knocking on doors, and his partner working in the field, they did half a million in sales in the first year and hit the million-dollar mark in two years. 

The Road to Scaling Success

“We put it all on the line. It wasn’t just me, it was my business partner as well. We needed each other to make this thing work from the get-go. And I mean It was 6 days a week, 10 hours a day, whether I was busting out knocking doors, or he was spraying, from sun up to sundown. And I mean you hear that all the time, but that’s the first core value, we call the value of victory in our company, is it’s hard work.” 

Lenny highlights that scaling with door-to-door sales is a numbers game. How many doors you knock on and how many customers you are able to interact with each day, will determine how many opportunities you have to sell. 

In order to maximize these opportunities, Lenny prioritized growing smart, not crazy. He also says that they focused on growing with the right people, which is key. These steps led to them hiring new salesmen, and opening new locations across states in the Midwest. By year five, they became the largest pest control company in Alabama, and an acquirer bought them out in that state. Lenny shares that they continued to grow in their other locations by:

• Delegating.
• Letting go and trying to get to know people and their fears.
• Helping employees overcome those fears so that they can do their best.

Personalized Training Process

“There’s not a single rep that’s not from my company that hasn’t been on the doors with me. And that’s crazy to think because I’ve been doing this for a long time. But I still go knock doors with my guys. I kind of feel like if I can’t see them, hear them, kind of interact and read kind of those nonverbals, that’s a big part of the communication and sales game is just reading some of those nuances that you’re not going to pick up any other way than just being there. And for me, actually spending the time to be on the doors with my guys, I mean that holds a lot of values in other ways too, right. They see you’re willing to go to bat for them, they see you’re willing to be there side by side with them.”

He credits this training system as an important part of being able to replicate himself, build a positive company culture, boost employee retention, and cultivate strong personal relationships. 

Company Principles

The company principles that define Rove Pest Control are: 

1. Hard work
2. Mental toughness
3. Commitment

Lenny says that whether you’re a tech or a CSR or middle management or a door-to-door sales representative, if you can stick to these values, you will be successful in any area. He also emphasizes that you will only have success in business if you have success at home. 

“If you want to be the type of person that other people want to work for, I hope you’re a good husband, I hope you’re a good father, I hope you’re a good person not just those 8 to 10 to 12 hours you’re at work but those five or six to eight hours you have to be home with the people you should care about the most. So I think it all goes together and those that are the most successful aren’t just successful in business.”

As a busy leader, Lenny’s tips for success are simple: 

1. Pray and maintain an organized, detailed calendar filled with your personal and professional commitments. 
2. Be willing to do anything in your company that is necessary for success. Just get the work done.