How Bio-Spray Went Digital With RealGreen
And Saw 15% Growth in One Year
The Company:
Based in Greenland, NH, Bio-Spray was founded in 1984. They offer residential and commercial customers professional lawn care and eco-friendly tick and mosquito solutions.
For more than four decades, they have been using industry-leading techniques and products to help their customers enjoy lush, green lawns free from unwanted pests. They were purchased by current owner Matthew Daniels in 2024, which is also when they became a RealGreen customer.
The Problem:
Bio-Spray had a decades-long history of providing excellent service to customers in three states. New owner Daniels was committed to maintaining that while modernizing and growing the business. However, Bio-Spray’s decidedly old-school way of running things was an impediment: Everything was done on pen and paper. “They were using a system from the early 1990s to print out every work order. It would be up to 250 sheets of paper every day,” Daniels explains. “The techs would write down what they did that day, and we would have to key all of that into a system to record everything. And then it would have to get input into QuickBooks for billing.” Every single work order had to be touched by at least four people; it was far too easy for papers to get lost or misplaced, and customer visibility into their programs, payment history and accounts was nonexistent. “The phone rang constantly. Emails were out of control. There would be routing confusion, and we’d end up visiting the same street multiple times in the same week. All pre-notifications were either hand-typed or phone calls, with no ability to automate that process. It was a nightmare.”
The Solution:
Daniels knew the answer was to bring Bio-Spray into the 21st century with the right software. Having previously purchased a pen-and-paper business and digitized their operations, he knew he and his team were up to the task. So, he started researching potential solutions. After exploring various softwares from big players to small startups, he landed on RealGreen. “For me, RealGreen had the most comprehensive use case for both lawn and tick/mosquito — nobody else we looked at had that aspect. Dynamic routing was a selling piece as well.”
The Results:
Once the company was onboarded to RealGreen, Bio-Spray saw positive ripple effects throughout their entire business right away across operations, customer experience and growth.
Being able to provide a customer portal and self-service options through RealGreen has also dramatically improved Bio-Spray’s client experience. Customers have enthusiastically embraced the ability to log in and manage their accounts; according to Daniels, many have said this feature alone is a “game changer” for their relationship with the company. The portal allows clients to browse the complete service catalog, often discovering offerings they weren’t previously aware of since there was never a comprehensive menu available to them before. This improved visibility has directly contributed to increased service adoption.
Plus, the system has transformed the company’s cash flow situation. Compared to the previous year, when only about 20 customers had prepaid before the season began, nearly 100 clients had already signed up for prepayment plans by March 2025. This substantial increase in prepayments has considerably reduced the need to borrow operational funds, creating meaningful improvements in the company’s financial position and stability right from the start of the season. Thanks to this improved cash flow, Daniels says the company was able to purchase two electric transit vans prior to the start of the season — vehicles that will save on gas and maintenance while expanding their fleet.
Daniels notes that RealGreen’s extensive API capabilities also provide a competitive advantage, allowing businesses to build
customizable, scalable systems that grow with their needs. Unlike competing solutions with more limited interfaces, RealGreen’s open API architecture fosters deeper integration and flexibility. He also notes RealGreen’s comprehensive service versatility as a significant advantage. “Being able to go to a customer’s house and record that we did ant control, mosquito service, poison ivy treatment and lawn care — each using different pesticides or fertilizers — and track all of those different service lines per customer is invaluable. Most other CRMs would require creating multiple customer records for multiple services, which is way more complicated.”
According to Daniels, the original plan for year one was simply to modernize processes and get everything running smoothly. However, with RealGreen in place, Bio-Spray saw first-year growth of 15%. “We weren’t even trying to grow — but now, with every foundation in place, we have the infrastructure to do it right. We can handle 20-30% growth, whereas before, we couldn’t even handle what we had. We have just totally changed the business from an efficiency standpoint.”
Daniels emphasizes that this growth would be nearly impossible without switching to RealGreen. “You’re never going to be able to grow and provide a high level of customer service and engagement along the way without software. You need to be able to touch those customers multiple times — before the service, after the service and throughout the year. Then, hopefully, in the off-season or pre-season, you connect with them a couple more times about what you’re offering and what’s new. If you have a business with 1,000 or more customers, and you’re trying to touch them 10 times a year, I don’t know how you do that manually. It’s impossible. So you become stuck — your growth becomes limited,” he adds. “I think if you’re doing half a million in business or more on pen and paper, you’re wasting a ton of time, and you’re getting to the point where you can’t expand any further. You probably need multiple staff just to manage the flow of paperwork. A good software system will run everything and provide a much better experience for customers.”
Ultimately, Bio-Spray hopes to double or even triple their business over the next several years, potentially opening up additional branches. “We can be so much more productive and work ON the business instead of IN the business and just managing the hurricane of paper.”
