The Service Your Customers Already Need (They Just Don't Know It Yet)

What if the most profitable work you could do does not involve a chainsaw?

Plant Health Care (PHC) is the care, monitoring, and treatment of trees and shrubs to keep them healthy before problems get out of hand. Soil management, pest prevention, deep root fertilization, trunk injections, disease monitoring.

Not flashy. Not dramatic. But the margins tell a different story.

PHC services routinely produce profit margins north of 50%. And because the work is recurring (seasonal treatments, annual monitoring contracts), it smooths out the feast-or-famine cycle that eats most tree companies alive.

According to the TCIA, PHC is one of the fastest-growing segments in tree care and is expected to more than double in the next decade.

Recurring PHC contracts are a valuation multiplier. If you ever plan to sell your business, a buyer would rather see $300K in annual recurring PHC revenue than $300K in one-time removal jobs. One is predictable. The other disappears the day you hand over the keys.

So why do the vast majority of tree service companies leave this on the table?

Two reasons.

Reason 1: It is preventative. Human nature works against you here. People buy painkillers, not vitamins. Your customer calls when the tree is already dying, not six months before it gets sick. That means you cannot just slap PHC on your website and wait for the phone to ring. You have to educate first, sell second.

Reason 2: Your customers do not know it exists. Most residential and even commercial clients have zero idea that tree health care programs are a thing. They think tree service means cutting, trimming, and removing. That is it. They are not searching for PHC on Google because they do not know the term.

This is a market awareness problem, and it changes everything about how you sell it.

You cannot run the same playbook you use for removals. Instead, you need to presell through education BEFORE your team ever brings it up on the job site. The goal: by the time your salesperson or crew lead mentions PHC, the customer already understands why it matters.

How do you do that? Keep reading.

Here is the problem: your customers are not going to Google to search for "plant health care near me." They do not know the term exists. But they ARE searching things like "why is my oak tree dying," "brown spots on maple leaves," and "when to treat for emerald ash borer."

If your website does not have pages that answer those questions, you are invisible to the exact customers you are trying to reach. And with 40% of local searches now showing an AI-generated answer before the map or any links, the bar just got higher. Google's AI pulls from pages that answer specific questions directly. Most tree service websites do not have a single page that does that.

That is why we built the AI-Proof Tree Service Playbook. Step-by-step templates to build service pages AI search actually pulls from, overhaul your Google Business Profile, and set up a review system that compounds. No agency required. About 3 hours of work.

It is built for exactly this: making sure that when a homeowner searches for a tree health problem in your city, your company shows up in the answer.

Launches Arbor Day, April 24. Pre-order price is $47.
One call from a $1,200 removal pays for it before lunch. 30-day money-back guarantee.

5 Low-Risk Ways to Test Selling PHC (Without Overhauling Your Business)

You do not need a spray rig or a six-figure investment to start testing PHC. You need to find out if your customers will buy it. Here is how to test it on the cheap.

1. Start with your existing customers, not cold prospects.

The easiest PHC sale is to someone who already trusts you. They hired you to take down a dead oak. They watched your crew do clean, professional work. They are happy.

That is the moment. Not with a hard pitch. With a seed (pun intended).

Train your crew lead or salesperson to say something simple after a completed job: "By the way, a few of the maples on the north side of your property are showing early signs of stress. It is nothing urgent now, but if you would like, we can put together a health assessment so you catch it before it becomes a $3,000 problem."

That is it. No script. No brochure. Just an observation from a professional they already trust.

When is the last time your crew mentioned anything about the rest of the property after finishing a job? Or do they pack up the chipper and move on?

2. Use the real estate you already own.

Dan Kennedy calls this "unused capacity." Where do you already have your customer's attention that you are not using?

You already have their attention in a dozen places:

You do not need a $5,000 ad campaign. Start with 2 sentences in your next invoice email: "Did you know? Treating a stressed tree early costs a fraction of removing a dead one. Ask us about our Plant Health Care assessments."

How many of those touchpoints are you currently wasting with just a logo and a phone number?

3. Run a small educational campaign to presell.

Your customers (and prospects) are at a low awareness level for PHC. They do not know they need it. So you cannot sell it directly. You have to move them from "never heard of it" to "that makes sense" before you ever ask for the sale.

A simple way to do this:

This works because the problem does the selling for you. The customer reads about dying ash trees and thinks "wait, do I have ash trees?" Now they want a solution. You never had to pitch anything.

What is the biggest tree health threat in your service area right now? Could you write three sentences about it for an email?

4. Add a PHC line item to your proposals.

When you are already writing up an estimate for pruning or removal, include an optional PHC assessment as a separate line item. Not as the main pitch. As an add-on.

Something like:

"Optional: Property Tree Health Assessment, $XXX. We will evaluate every tree on the property, identify early warning signs, and give you a written plan to protect your investment."

Some customers will check the box. Some will not. But you have planted the idea. And you have positioned yourself as more than just the tree-cutting company.

Are your proposals currently one service, one price, take it or leave it? Or are you giving customers options?

5. Start with soil care and work up.

Here is the insider move: soil care services (deep root fertilization, soil amendments, root collar excavation) often do not require a pesticide applicator license. So you can start offering them right now while you get trained and certified for the more advanced PHC treatments.

Most customers intuitively understand that healthy roots mean healthy trees. It is an easy conversation. And once they see results, they are primed for the full PHC program.

You can start with a backpack sprayer and some soil amendment products. The barrier to entry is lower than most owners think.

TCIA's Business of PHC series (free online at tcimag.tcia.org) walks through everything from business planning to marketing PHC contracts. Twelve articles. Worth bookmarking.

Rainbow Ecoscience's Roots Academy offers free on-demand courses on PHC fundamentals, application techniques, and tree biology. Good training resource for your team.

Your state's Cooperative Extension office can identify the top pest and disease threats in your specific region. Most will do this for free.

Why Removal-Only Companies Are Leaving Real Money Behind

Let us be blunt.

Most tree service owners are stuck in removal-and-pruning mode because that is what they know. The phone rings, they show up, they cut something down, they move on.

But the companies pulling ahead right now are the ones that keep showing up. PHC does that. A customer on a PHC program sees your truck every quarter. They call you first. They refer you to their neighbors. They do not price-shop because they trust you with their property.

Compare that to the one-and-done removal customer who you will never hear from again unless another tree falls.

If you are the kind of owner who says "we are plenty busy," fair enough. But ask yourself this: if you ever want to sell this business, what does a buyer want to see? One-time revenue from random jobs? Or recurring contracts with loyal customers who pay you every season?

PHC is what turns a tree service into a business that runs without you. A legacy you can leave.

Look, you do not need to become a plant scientist overnight. You do not need to hire extra arborists tomorrow. Just test whether your customers will buy it.

Pick one thing from the list above. Try it for 30 days. Track what happens.

Stay safe to those facing severe weather and tornadoes this week.
Talk to you all next week.

-Jacob Hastings
The Backcut