[PCT Leadership Winner] Bob Wanzer

Since graduating from college, Bob Wanzer, president and COO of Centex Corporation’s HomeTeam Pest Defense®, has worked in several high-profile service industries — from overnight delivery to lawn care, then finally pest management. In many ways — such as routing, improving productivity, quality control, and basic business practices — service industries are very similar, Wanzer said. But there is a difference in the pest management industry; an intangible that is not only what he most enjoys about the industry but is also the key focus of his own business: the people.
“I really enjoy the people, the camaraderie,” Wanzer said. “Even though the (pest control) industry is very fragmented, there are a lot of good, quality companies with a lot of good quality people. That’s something I really didn’t experience very much earlier in my career.
“It’s an industry that works very well together, trying to improve everyone’s position, not just their own — which is pretty unique,” Wanzer added. And it’s an industry philosophy that he carries into his own company, emphasizing HomeTeam’s customer-focused culture, concentrating on communication and setting goals for continuous improvement in customer and employee satisfaction.

AN OVERACHIEVER
Wanzer’s management and service history were the foundation for his rapid success in the pest control industry. After earning a bachelor’s degree in business administration from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., Wanzer went on to secure his MBA from the University of New Haven in Connecticut. His education prepared him well for the business world, where he quickly rose through the ranks at Purolator Courier, becoming a branch manager at 27, overseeing men twice his age. At 30, he took on the position of regional manager for Purolator Courier and Wanzer began to see business in a different way. As a chain of events sparked a flurry of buy- outs in the package delivery industry, Wanzer decided it was time to carefully consider his professional options. “We got bought out at Purolator,” he recalls. “Emery then got bought out by Consolidated, and that’s when I said, ‘This is probably a good industry to get out of.’” With the delivery industry continuing to undergo consolidation, Wanzer’s business instincts proved to be accurate.
Disenchanted with the pace of consolidation in the package delivery business, Wanzer turned to the lawn care industry for his next challenge, joining ChemLawn Corporation as regional manager in 1990. Just a year later, however, the company was sold to ServiceMaster, which proved to be “a very good deal for everybody,” including Wanzer, who learned a great deal during his tenure at the nation’s leading provider of home services.
In 1998, after a successful eight-year run as the regional vice president, Wanzer was asked to join Centex HomeTeam, which was trying to break into home services businesses. They asked him to start their lawn care business, but because he had been a limited partner with TruGreen/Chemlawn, he responded, “Hey, thanks, it looks like a great opportunity, but I enjoy doing what I’m doing. I don’t want to get into any legal situations due to non-compete issues.” Six months later they asked him to run the company’s pest management business.
Once in the pest management industry, Wanzer has continued to achieve success in both his business and personal life: He sits on the board of directors for both the National Pest Management Association (NPMA) and the Professional Pest Management Alliance (PPMA); is president of a company that generates about $100 million in sales this past year; and is raising two daughters, Marti, 12, and Madison, 9, with Nancy, his wife of 14 years.

A GROWING BUSINESS
While his business skills have helped Wanzer carve out a successful career in the pest control industry, even he admits his pest control knowledge was lacking upon initially entering the field. He sums up his success, in part, to be being “smart enough to surround myself with people like Jerry Gahlhoff [technical director of HomeTeam], who really understands the business and makes sure we don’t go down any roads we shouldn’t.”
Rob Swartz joined Centex Corporation as senior vice president of strategic planning and mergers and acquisitions one year after Wanzer. In 2000, Swartz became chairman and CEO of HomeTeam and the two developed into a dynamic management team.
Swartz, who has worked with Wanzer to guide HomeTeam into what it is today, commented on how well their leadership styles complement each other, despite their differences. “We are leaders of a team of professionals who are clearly focused on growing a high-satisfaction, high-quality pest management company,” Swartz said. “Our leadership style is focused around having a culture in the company that emphasizes ultimate commitment to the customer and a strong emphasis on employee satisfaction.”
Wanzer focuses his style more on his clients’ and employees’ needs, Swartz explained, utilizing his direct and concise managerial expertise to get the most out of his staff. Those who work with him say they always know what his expectations are, which cuts away the gray areas in business.
Having worked with Wanzer since the beginning, Gahlhoff sees the Swartz/Wanzer team as a perfect fit for the company. “I think in their situation, their two personalities complement each other,” Gahlhoff said. “Bob is that day-to-day, results-oriented, driver of the business. Rob is the strategy guy that provides the vision and helps provide the infrastructure to allow Bob to do what he does.”
With such different leadership styles, Wanzer and Swartz cover all the bases. Along with how well they work together, Gahlhoff says the thing that makes their styles mesh so well is their ability to communicate, which allows them to “set the culture for the organization.”
Gahlhoff also noted Wanzer’s ability to get his point across and adaptability to employees’ needs as other factors in his success. “I think Bob’s leadership style is situational,” Gahlhoff said. “If there’s an area where he anticipates it needs more direction, or for some reason he thinks there’s an area that he feels I could use some help in a particular area, he senses that and then he becomes much more hands on. He’ll take a more active role in watching it develop and tracking it.”
One of the things Wanzer introduced to the company was the position of regional technical director, Gahlhoff said. The directors help technicians and managers deal with technical and quality assurance issues that arise in their regions. When he first started working with HomeTeam, Gahlhoff explained, there were a handful of technical directors at the company who were spread very thin. But Wanzer wanted to see the company’s customer satisfaction scores increase, so he invested heavily in the firm’s Technical Service Department, adding several regional directors and enhancing the company’s training program. Those investments have paid off handsomely for the company, which boasts more than $100 million in annual sales and a well-trained, highly motivated workforce.
Gahlhoff said Wanzer’s “tough love” attitude is readily apparent to employees. Emphasizing his appreciation for hard work, Wanzer makes his employees earn his support and trust. But once they earn it, Wanzer doesn’t hold back. “Once anyone working for Bob proves to him that they can execute, you’ll have continued, ongoing support from Bob,” Gahlhoff says. “He’s very results driven, to where if you put a dollar into doing something, you better have a way to measure or track it to be able to justify what you’ve done and essentially earn the next dollar that he may give you to spend on something else.”
While empowering branch managers to run their business, Wanzer does not preach results from the comfort of his own office, but by working side-by-side with managers in the trenches. “I spend most of my time out in the field,” he said. “I’m probably in the field three days a week.” In addition, regular assessments of both employee and customer satisfaction help the company identify issues and make changes. One such customer assessment is the company’s use of an outside service to bi-annually interview three to four percent of its customer base, ranking them on 13 criteria. “One we really hold ourselves accountable to is ‘likely to recommend,’” Wanzer said, and since the interviews were started in 2000, the company’s scores have increas-
ed from 62% ‘likely to recommend’
to 84%.
This is a result, at least in part, to the company’s focus on communication, according to Wanzer – calls to every new start, re-treat and about 20% of ongoing customers; pre-notification — knocking on the door before starting the service; and  “crisp, clear” notes afterward explaining the service and concerns. The company has a strong customer-focused culture, he said, but it is an ongoing challenge as the company continues to grow and make acquisitions. “These five years we’ve more than doubled in size and doubled the number of branches we have, so it’s key that we maintain our culture and not morph into somebody else’s culture.”

A VOICE OF THE INDUSTRY
Although Wanzer is the president of a rapidly expanding division of a Fortune 500 company, he’s not content to rest on his laurels, choosing instead to give back to the industry in a variety of ways. 
Cindy Mannes, executive director of the Professional Pest Management Alliance (PPMA), said she has interacted with Wanzer enough to know he is devoted to what he does, and he brings that attitude to PPMA. “Bob sits and listens to everything and then he’ll come up with ideas and questions,” Mannes says. “He’s a really good person with a very active mind.”
With the PPMA Board of Director seats being appointed positions, Wanzer also has the opportunity to implement his ideas, Mannes said. And because directors are “on [the board] for a long time,” his attitude and ideas may be just what this “voice of the pest control industry” needs.
Wanzer was appointed to the PPMA position, “because of the leadership he had demonstrated in growing his business and what he was doing with his business overall,” Mannes said. “He’s definitely a very strong leader. He’s a member of our fundraising subcommittee. He’s very big picture in terms of conceptually helping to develop the big picture for PPMA.”
With public perception being the greatest challenge facing the industry, Wanzer himself sees PPMA as being very important to building a positive image for the industry. “From an environmental standpoint, a safety standpoint, it really makes a lot more sense to rely on a professional than a do-it-yourselfer,” he said. “I figure, it’s just totally, absolutely the best thing for the whole industry.”
Mannes explained that Wanzer works with people to stimulate more involvement in the industry. One idea Wanzer is currently exploring is that of transportation. Since all pest control operators need some sort of transportation to their work site, Mannes says, Wanzer is discussing fundraising possibilities with Ford Motor Company and General Motors Corporation to get the two companies more involved in the pest management industry. It’s an initiative that could pay big dividends for the industry down the road.
Mannes sees Wanzer as holding a rare talent, a talent which helps to provide direction for PPMA, NPMA and HomeTeam Pest Defense. “Bob sees things in places where maybe somebody else may not,” Mannes says. “He’s good at identifying market opportunities.”
And it is just such talents that have helped Wanzer launch and run a successful business, hold important industry leadership positions, and become an accomplished, respected voice of the pest management industry.