Peak storm season starts this week. Five things to fix before the phone explodes
Atlantic activity peaks around September 10 and the derecho season is not over. What a tree company should fix in the next seven days, in order.
The National Hurricane Center puts the statistical peak of the Atlantic season around September 10. Inland, September and October still produce the straight-line wind events that drop half-grown maples across driveways. Whatever your region, the next eight weeks contain the highest-revenue days of your year, compressed into windows of about 96 hours each.
Here is the uncomfortable part. Almost none of what determines your storm revenue happens during the storm. It happens now, in the quiet week before, and most tree companies spend that week doing nothing different.
Five things, in the order they pay.
1. Decide today who answers the phone at 11 p.m.
In a real event your call volume can go from 30 a month to 90 in four days. Your crews are committed, your owner is on a roof, and the caller with a limb through the porch is dialing down the map pack until somebody picks up.
Set this now, not on the night:
- Missed-call text-back with a storm-specific message: "We are getting a lot of calls. Text your address and a photo of the tree and we will get you on the board tonight."
- A second person on the phone for the week. A spouse, a retired parent, a part-timer. The revenue in a four-day window justifies almost any hourly rate.
- An honest after-hours greeting with your actual backlog in it. Storm customers accept a wait. They do not accept a promise you break.
14.6% of tree companies list themselves as open 24 hours on Google. If you are one of them, something has to answer at 2 a.m., even if it is an automatic text. The missed calls guide has the setup and the calculator will show you what the gap costs at your ticket size.
2. Triage by photo, not by truck
The trap in storm week is spending your daylight driving to look at jobs instead of doing them.
Push every caller to text a photo and an address. Ten seconds of looking at a picture tells you whether it is a hazard on a structure that needs a crew tonight, a hanger you can schedule Thursday, or brush cleanup that can wait ten days. That triage is worth more than any additional crew you could hire, because it converts drive time back into billable hours.
Put "text a photo of the tree" on the home page, in the auto-text, and in the greeting. Say it three times and roughly half your callers will do it.
3. Get the emergency campaign built and capped now
If you wait until the wind stops to build a Google campaign, you will be in review approval while your competitors are booked out.
Build it this week and leave it paused:
- Its own campaign, its own budget, separate from removal and pruning so it cannot drain them.
- Keywords in exact and phrase: emergency tree removal, storm damage tree removal, fallen tree removal, tree on house, tree on car, tree removal today.
- A daily cap you can actually service. Unlimited budget during an event books you eleven days out and generates a month of angry voicemails.
- A landing page that says, in the first screen, that you are taking storm calls now, with a tap-to-call button and your insurance limits.
Expect $80 to $250 per call in a normal week and considerably more during a regional event. Against removal tickets that run $800 to $5,000, that math holds if and only if somebody answers. Structure is in the Google Ads guide.
4. Line up your subcontractors before you need them
The jobs you turn away in storm week are the largest jobs of your year. A crane you can call is worth more in October than any advertising you can buy.
Call this week and confirm rates and availability: a crane operator, a second chipper if you can rent one, a bucket truck backup, and two other tree companies you trust well enough to hand overflow to on a referral basis. That last one feels counterintuitive and it is not. A homeowner you referred to a competent company on the worst night of their year calls you first next time, and reciprocates the referral.
Have your certificate of insurance and your W-9 already in a folder on your phone. Property managers and insurance adjusters ask for both, and the company that produces them in ninety seconds gets the work.
5. Set up the review capture before the week, not after
Storm customers write the best reviews you will ever get. They are relieved, they are specific, and they mention response time, which is the exact language a future storm caller searches with.
They are also the easiest reviews to lose, because your crews are exhausted and the ask never happens.
Fix it mechanically. Saved text on every crew leader's phone, sent from the truck. Then a second pass ten days later when you come back to grind the stump, which is a calmer visit and gets a longer review. Across 87,219 tree service listings the median company sits at 17 reviews and 39.1% are under 10. A single well-run storm season can move you past most of your market. Scripts are in the reviews guide.
What not to do
Do not raise prices for the emergency. It is legally restricted in many states under price gouging statutes during declared emergencies, and it is remembered for a decade in a small market. Charge your normal emergency rate, which should already reflect the risk and the hours.
Do not promise a time you cannot hit. Give a range and a day, and call if it slips.
Do not post identifiable damage to somebody's house without asking. The footage performs, and it is not yours.
After the wind stops
The week after an event is the cheapest customer acquisition window your market will offer all year. Run a tight-radius Meta campaign to the neighborhoods that were hit, offering a free hazard assessment on any tree within falling distance of the house, and stop it after ten days. Response in that window runs several times normal, because every homeowner in the area just watched what a tree can do.
That is also the moment to sell the work that is not urgent: the leaning pine, the deadwood over the driveway, the crown reduction that will keep the next storm from taking the whole tree. Most of it books for spring, which is fine. You just filled April in September.
Storm campaigns, the after-hours answering setup and the neighborhood retargeting are all part of the free 14-day trial. Text or call (385) 832-6175.