PestWorld 2026 Showed How Much Pest Control Now Runs on Data

The Dream team spent four days at PestWorld 2026 in Grapevine, Texas, and had hundreds of conversations with pest control operators on the show floor, over dinner, at receptions and in the halls between sessions. Here's our read on the week. Homeowner demand for pest control is rising, and the floor showed us where some of it leaks out of the companies chasing it. Operators know their business runs on information about customers, routes, leads and service history, and a lot of them told us that information sits in tools that don't share it.

One session on the program was titled "Pest Control is a Data Business - That Happens to Send Trucks."

Leads from techs are growth a lot of operators aren't capturing

Techs spend more time on customer properties than anyone else in the company. They spot new work on routine visits. At one company we talked with, techs post those leads in a Slack channel for the office to pick up.

That's the gap LeadNow closes. A tech sends the address, the service and a photo or voice note from the driveway, the lead goes straight to the rep who covers that zip code, and a leaderboard shows which techs are sending the most.

Separate sales and service systems came up more than anything else

The setup we heard about most often was sales in one tool and service in another. A VP walked us through two separate sales and lead tools running next to the software for his routes. He's happy with them, but he said one platform for everything sounds good.

Another owner of several pest control companies is further from that point. Only one of those companies runs on software, and he isn't happy with it. The rest are on pen and paper. He wants a single back office across all of them, covering scheduling, routing, chemical inventory and an accounting sync.

When the sale and the service live in different systems, the office keys each new customer in twice. The owner pieces reports together from both. With Dream, sales and service run on one platform from lead to paid, so a signed agreement in the Sales CRM becomes the first service without anyone typing it in again.

Operators plan a switch a year ahead, and they worry about their data history

A smart CFO we spoke with is planning ahead, he has had a lot of problems with his current software. Things are quiet right now. He wants to make the move before the busy season so his people have time to learn the new system. He wants every customer to come along, residential and commercial, including records going back 30 years.

Many other operators are in the same boat. A slow-season switch has to be decided months ahead, and that's what we specialize in. Some also asked whether their history, from device data to conducive-conditions notes, would come with them.

Our team moves that history over when you switch, so the customer records you've built up come with you.

What the main stage means for operators

PestWorld 2026 was NPMA's 93rd, under the theme "Built for Your Business." In her opening remarks, NPMA CEO Dominique Stumpf noted 400 new members over the past year and named technology, including field service platforms and AI, as one of the forces shaping how companies operate and recruit, according to PCT. Bobby Jenkins, chair of the Professional Pest Management Alliance, said 47% of homeowners with family income over $75,000 used a pest management professional last year, compared with 18% in 2004 (PCT). The Alliance is calling 2027 its biggest year, with its largest budget. Its plans include work on how pest information shows up in AI-generated answers, plus national research on why homeowners delay treatment, titled "The Hidden Cost of Waiting" (PCT).

More of those homeowners will be calling, and the Alliance is putting its biggest budget yet into reaching them, including through AI answers. On the floor, we heard where leads get lost: in group chats and in the gap between a sales tool and a separate service system. Our Sales CRM puts every one of them on one record and in front of a rep.

See you in Boston

Dream has been part of PestWorld for years, and it's still the week we learn the most about where this industry is going. This year the floor talked about leads, data and timing, and that's the ground we built Dream to cover: running a pest control company from lead to paid on one platform.

If you're planning a move before spring, or your renewal comes up next year, book a 30-minute demo and we'll show you how your customer history moves over.

PestWorld 2027 is October 26 to 29 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. We're already looking forward to it.