Septic Tank Business Plan: What to Include, Benefits, Template

What is a Septic Tank Business Plan?

A septic tank business plan is a roadmap document containing details of how you plan to start and grow your business. It outlines different business goals and a timeline for implementing and achieving them.

This document has both external and internal roles. You can use it to guide business decision-making and secure funds from lenders and investors by proving your idea’s potential to generate revenue.

A common mistake people make is to conflate a business plan with a business model. Although they are both helpful in setting up a business, they are very different.

Business models only reveal how you plan to create and deliver your services in a way that generates revenue. On the other hand, a business plan reveals details about your company and its goals.

What to Include in a Septic Tank Business Plan

A well-written business plan consists of two crucial components: the correct information and logically sequenced sections. Below, we show you how to achieve this, and we end with a template you can use to start writing your business plan immediately.

1. Executive Summary

The executive summary is essentially a condensed, one-page overview of the rest of the business plan. This section aims to ensure that readers understand the document's goal and are convinced to read on.

Your executive summary should contain your business name, physical location, and target market. Also, take this opportunity to briefly explain what the document is about and who the business’s owner is—mention their name, experience, and certifications.

Although the executive summary comes first, write a placeholder text at the beginning and flesh it out after finalizing the other sections to ensure it accurately summarizes the entire document. List your mission and vision statements to communicate your business’s purpose to external stakeholders.

2. Business Overview

Unlike the executive summary, this section provides a detailed description of your septic tank business. It’s your opportunity to explain what the company is about, why you launched it, and why you believe it will be profitable (if you’re seeking funding to cover startup costs).

You should start this section by revealing your chosen legal structure—sole proprietorship, partnership, or limited liability company. Then, briefly mention your services, such as septic tank installation or cleaning—you’ll give a detailed description later.

The following subsection should either give a brief history of your business (if it’s an already established septic tank company) or reveal why you decided to start one (if it’s a new business). 

Either way, use a storytelling framework to connect with the reader. Then, use accurate statistics from reliable sources like septic tank industry reports and the United States Census Bureau to show market demand and justify your decision.

3. Services

This is where you list all your services. Examples include septic tank maintenance, installation, and pumping. You can also include unique service offerings, like routine maintenance and free inspections, to separate your company from competitors and convince homeowners to use you.

Furthermore, list the modern techniques and tools (physical and digital) you’ll use to deliver each service successfully and generate consistent profits. Examples include drain inspection cameras, vacuum trucks, hydrojets, and comprehensive septic tank company software like ServiceTitan.

ServiceTitan is designed to help septic tank companies automate vital business processes like invoicing, scheduling, and marketing. This reduces overhead expenses and allows you to manage your company from one platform.

Courtney Van Delden, vice president of Van Delden Wastewater Systems, shares her experience with the software and how it streamlined the company’s operations and accelerated revenue growth.

"Having a dispatch board where everybody can see the schedule at one time was amazing, but also just trying to be more efficient in where the guys are," she says. "How are they running? Without having to call them and distract them. Efficiency, big time."

ServiceTitan’s key features include the following.

• Schedule and dispatch optimization: Reveals each tech’s availability and schedule. This allows dispatchers to assign jobs days, weeks, and even months ahead. The feature also helps dispatchers distribute jobs based on each tech's availability, skill set, and current location, so techs arrive early at the job site.

• Robust customer relationship management system (CRM): Centralizes all customer records and service history into a cloud-based platform every employee can access. This helps maintain a single source of truth and helps employees spot and follow up on sales opportunities while they are still hot.

Technicians can also access the CRM from their mobile devices to confirm key customer details instead of calling the office.

• Digital invoicing and mobile payments: On-site technicians use this feature to invoice customers and collect cash, credit, and check payments, making it easy to maintain a stable cash flow.

With these tools, septic tank contractors can improve operational efficiency, enhance customer service, and run a profitable business.

4. Market Analysis

Market analysis is to survey the market landscape to discover more about your potential customers, direct competitors in your service area, and emerging trends.

So, how do you perform market research?

First, identify your target market and identify key details about them. This includes their age, gender, property size, and preferred septic tank type. This will help you discover and tailor your services to their needs.

Following that, create a list of your top five competitors. Then analyze each, focusing on their pricing strategy, business model, and marketing plan.

Finally, run a SWOT analysis of each competitor to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Using the weaknesses you identified, create your value proposition.

After conducting competitive and target market analyses, use the results to run marketing campaigns to promote your services using ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing software.

The software has tools for creating and running campaigns on various marketing channels and generating performance reports that reveal the revenue each campaign produces.

One such tool is the Local Services Ads integration, which was created in partnership with Google. 

It allows septic tank companies to include a calendar booking icon and attach a Google form to their Local Services Ads. This lets customers submit their personal information and pick a time, date, and service type without calling.

Furthermore, the system automatically sends the customer’s details and appointment information directly to ServiceTitan’s CRM and job schedule. This allows you to follow up on bookings and get jobs outside working hours.

ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing software also has a functionality that ranks campaigns by the revenue they generate and pinpoints the high-performing zipcodes using a heatmap.

Sheryl Creech, owner of Creech's Plumbing and Septic, believes the more the company uses ServiceTitan, the more valuable information it will receive to help it target the right areas for the business.

“Be aware of where your profitability is coming from,” Sheryl said. “I feel like now we've got a good year with the data to be able to look at, and now we can start comparing month over month, year over year, where before we didn't have anything to compare it to.”

Deploying these features can help septic service providers optimize their advertising spend, improve local search rankings, and drive more qualified leads to their business.

5. Equipment

This section encompasses all the tools, materials, and equipment you’ll need to run your septic tank cleaning business, alongside their estimated costs.

When buying tools and equipment, remember that purchasing substandard ones will increase your repair costs and reduce your service quality, resulting in low customer satisfaction.

Therefore, instead of purchasing low-grade tools to save costs, buy only the high-quality ones you need to start your business. As your income increases, you can purchase other low-priority equipment and partner with leasing companies for expensive equipment to handle complex jobs.

Here are some examples of essential septic tank company tools and equipment:

• Septic pump trucks 

• High-pressure hoses 

• Skid steers and backhoes

• Inspection cameras

• Water tanks

• Probes

• Protective gear

After buying these tools, invest in business insurance policies like equipment insurance to safeguard against damage and loss. The following additional policies will ensure you’re adequately protected from work-related lawsuits and property damage:

• General liability insurance

• Property insurance

• Worker’s compensation

You can also keep your equipment readily available by using ServiceTitan’s Contractor Inventory software to monitor the location of tools and materials across multiple warehouses and trucks.

The software also automatically updates your replenishment schedule to account for an item once a technician adds it to a customer’s invoice. Users can also manually start the requisition process for a specific part or tool to complete every project on time.

Using ServiceTitan’s Contractor Inventory software allows you to easily maintain optimum stock levels and ensure technicians always have the tools they need for each project, which grows your company.

6. Marketing Plan

A marketing plan encompasses all the strategies you plan to use to promote your septic tank cleaning services and grow awareness. It also contains tactical plans for implementing each strategy alongside the progress benchmarks and timeline for success.

An effective marketing plan comprises both digital marketing strategies for building an online presence and offline marketing strategies for growing local brand awareness and reaching non-internet users.

Some low-cost digital and offline marketing strategies you can explore include the following:

• Social media marketing

• Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)

• Email marketing

• Direct mail

• Search engine optimization (SEO)

• Flyer distribution

You should also create a website to promote your services, fill up your Google Business Profile (GBP) with multiple positive reviews, and use social proof to attract new customers.

Rather than increasing your overhead by subscribing to several tools and reducing employee productivity by context-switching between different software programs, consider investing in Marketing Pro, ServiceTitan’s all-in-one marketing software.

Marketing Pro has a Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI) functionality that allows users to create and assign unique numbers to marketing campaigns.

This makes it easy to attribute each incoming call to a source campaign, which reveals the exact ROI each campaign generates.

The software also has fully customizable email and direct mail templates and a Reputation Management feature that collates customer reviews from multiple platforms.

With ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro, you can make data-driven decisions to refine your marketing approach and increase your market presence and customer base.

7. Management Summary

Your company’s greatest resource is its employees. This section allows you to reveal these people to the reader—the rank-and-file staff, you (the business owner), and the heads of the different units (if it’s not a one-person company).

You can score extra points with investors by listing each employee's qualifications and expertise, which makes them competent to help run the business.

Finally, create an organizational chart that reveals each employee’s responsibilities and the chain of command you’ll use to make key business decisions.

8. Financials

Though complex due to the multiple numbers involved, this section is vital for two reasons.

First, your business remains an idea without an initial investment to cover startup costs. Second, running a successful business requires maintaining a healthy financial state that provides funds to handle operational expenses and invest in growth.

If you’re starting a new business, open a business account and get a dedicated business credit card before you write this section. This makes it easier to file taxes and helps you build up your credit rating to qualify for business loans.

After that, give a detailed breakdown of all the items you’ll spend to get the business running. This includes equipment purchases, certification fees, utilities, labor costs, etc.

For new ventures, outline your financial projections for the next three to five years to show long-term viability. Include your predicted revenue, profit margin, operating expenses, cash flow forecast, and break-even analysis.

Consider investing in ServiceTitan's Contractor Payroll and Customer Payment platforms to streamline financial reporting and collect payments easily.

With the Contractor Payroll platform, you can create custom pay structures using technician overtime, bonuses, and commissions. This ensures every employee is fairly compensated, which boosts productivity.

ServiceTitan's Payments software empowers on-site technicians to collect multiple forms of customer payment—cash, credit card, or check. Providing flexible payment options helps increase conversions.

Another great advantage of the Payments software is that the system automatically deposits credit card and check payments into your business account within 24 hours. It also reconciles all electronic payments with cash deposits, making it easy to maintain accurate records.

Together, these tools minimize administrative burdens and provide critical financial data that helps business owners make informed decisions to drive profitability and growth.

9. Legal & Regulatory Compliance

States and local government authorities have specific laws and regulations every septic company must comply with to avoid closure, lawsuits, and hefty fines. This section lets you list them all and explain how you plan to comply with them.

First, outline all the business licenses and permits you have acquired. Then, explain how you plan to keep training and retraining staff to ensure they are aware and comply with the latest regulations and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.

Ready to write your business plan? Download our handy template to get started quickly.

Why Write a Business Plan for a Septic Tank Company?

Earlier, we briefly mentioned some benefits of writing a business plan, such as target market identification. Here’s a more detailed breakdown of why you should write a business plan:

1. Writing a business plan helps you lay out your goals and objectives and communicate them to your employees. This ensures everyone works together toward achieving the same objective: to grow the company.

2. A business plan helps you answer key questions like how you’ll differentiate your company and promote its services ahead of time. These answers increase your chances of success.

3. Great ideas and passion although great, may not be sufficient to convince investors, who prefer to see concrete proof. A well-written business plan can prove your idea’s viability, which helps secure valuable funding.

Set Your Business Up for Success With the Right Technology

From our experience and discussions with septic tank company owners, we have learned that empowering employees with the right technology to streamline processes is a critical aspect of running a successful business.

This allows employees to focus on more productive tasks likely to impact revenue directly.

Understanding the importance of technology in building a successful business, ServiceTitan created the Field Reporting and Service Scheduling software.

ServiceTitan's Field Reporting software lets you monitor your company’s performance using pre-built and custom-made reports. Such reports reveal the revenue generated within a chosen period, customer satisfaction, and employee performance.

ServiceTitan users rely on these reports to reward high-performing employees and identify potential performance bottlenecks early.

Similarly, ServiceTitan's Service Scheduling software helps septic tank company entrepreneurs easily schedule and manage appointments from one central hub.

Immediately an existing customer calls, the software reveals the caller’s identity, service history, and property details to the CSR. The CSR can then use drop-down menus to access call scripts to ensure they collect the correct information.

Furthermore, ServiceTitan's Service Scheduling allows the CSR to see the entire schedule weeks and months in advance without flipping through calendars or clipboards. This allows them to schedule future jobs and tag those requiring special expertise, tools, or language proficiency.

Both platforms help businesses plan for the future and allocate resources efficiently, which helps to grow revenue.

Over to You

Now, you can create a detailed business plan that sets the foundation for long-term success. Use our template to ensure you include the right details and use a format readers can understand easily.

Remember to use septic tank company software like ServiceTitan to streamline critical processes and boost employee productivity. 

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one solution service providers use to optimize their operations, manage customer relations, and boost profitability. Join thousands of other home service businesses nationwide who already use it.