By Amanda Leon, founder of OilMoney.io. Houston-raised, came up in the Houston marketing team of Vallourec, and has run Unrth, a brand and growth studio for oil and gas and industrial companies, since 2017, with her boots on client locations in Midland and Odessa. Last reviewed October 20, 2026.
The phones are still ringing and the tickets are still getting signed, but you've watched enough cycles to wonder what happens to your book if oil falls and the entertainment budget gets cut. The dinners and hunting trips go first. An oilfield salesman we interviewed talked about "cancelled meetings," and a slow year is when those pile up. Get ready now, while the work is still coming in: sharpen the rate sheet, keep the safety grade clean, know more than one person at every customer, and build a name buyers already know. None of this forecasts the price of oil.
I grew up in Houston, where everyone around you is in oil and gas, and my dad has been in and out of the trucking industry. Oil and gas is a labor-intensive industry. You have to work hard, get dirty, and put your back into it, and that's how I was raised. So don't wait for a slow year to start working harder. In the good months, put your back into the dull work that pays off later: learning your pricing floor, knowing your safety numbers cold, and getting your name in front of buyers before the dinners stop.
What Survey Respondents Expected While Oil Was High
The Dallas Fed Energy Survey for the third quarter of 2026 took its responses from September 16 to 24, 2026, and WTI spot averaged $98.70 a barrel during that period. Respondents expected $88 a barrel at year-end 2026, with answers ranging from $70 to $126.
The firms answering that survey work in oil and gas every day, and they were tens of dollars apart on where the year would end. Nobody can tell you which number wins. What you can do is use a stretch of high prices to get ready for a low one.
Service Pricing Was Already Tight Before Any Drop
The same survey heard from 42 oilfield service firms, and their input cost index came in at 60.4 against a prices received index of 16.3. One respondent cited "pricing pressure from operators" as weighing on margins.
The cost index sat far above the price index, and that was with oil averaging $98.70 during the survey period. If oil falls from there, a service company may not have much rate left to give. A rep who has only ever competed on price runs out of room fast when the shop down the road matches him.
Use the good months to find your floor. Sit down with whoever sets pricing at your company and learn which service lines can take a cut and which can't, so you aren't finding out in the middle of a bid.
How Fast the Rig Count Can Fall
The Permian rig count fell through 2025, from 304 at the start of the year to 247 on December 30, 2025, an 18.75 percent drop, according to Baker Hughes figures reported by Permian Basin Oil and Gas Magazine. For a later reading, Baker Hughes counted 272 Permian rigs in the week ending October 16, 2026.
That 2025 slide took out almost one Permian rig in five in a single year. Every rig that stacks takes a location off somebody's route, along with the company man and the crew who were on it. Fewer rigs means fewer doors, and every rep still calling is knocking on the ones that are left. If your whole book rides on a handful of locations, a few stacked rigs can empty your week, so get known across more than one rig and more than one operator.
What One Acquisition Did to a Texas Service Firm
A Texas-based oilfield services firm filed for bankruptcy in May 2024 and largely blamed operator consolidation, according to a July 2024 Reuters analysis. Permian Resources had acquired Earthstone Energy, one of the firm's top customers, and the firm said its monthly average revenue fell from $1.2 million in 2023 to less than $100,000 in March 2024.
For a rep, the lesson is concentration. If one operator writes most of your tickets and that operator gets bought, the person who said yes to you may not be the one deciding anymore. Know how much of your work sits with your top customer, and know people there beyond your one contact, in the field and in supply chain. If you're thinking about changing companies when a customer gets bought, read Will Your Customers Follow You to a New Oilfield Service Company?
Before Price Decides a Bid: The Safety Grade
Operators like Apache won't let a contractor on location without an acceptable ISNetworld grade, so a slipping grade can knock you out before anyone reads your rate sheet (details in how to get on an approved vendor list).
Know your company's grade at every operator you sell to, and check it before a bid goes in.
Learn the numbers behind it (TRIR, DART, and EMR) well enough to talk about them on location without a cheat sheet.
If your record is clean, bring it up before the buyer asks. A cheaper shop can match your rate in an afternoon. It can't match your safety history that fast.
A Founder Who Spoke Up About Layoffs
When budgets tighten, a known name is the cheapest lead you've got. The Warm Walk-In™ builds yours before you need it: one story dump a quarter, posts in your voice, and your yes on every one.
The founder we work with, a fourth-generation oilfield man, wrote about something a bad stretch puts on everybody's mind, layoffs and what they do to safety, and that post reached roughly 5,000 impressions. Saying the true thing about safety under your own name is the kind of reputation that holds up after the dinners stop. Read the full story.
Where Price Wins No Matter Who You Are
In a downturn, procurement decides price-led bids on the number. A sharper rate sheet and a clean safety record win more of those bids than any reputation does. If most of your work comes through a bid portal and gets awarded on price, fix the rate sheet and keep the grade clean first. A better LinkedIn profile won't change a number on a bid tab.
A known name can help with the work that isn't bid on price alone, like the emergency call-out or the job where the company man asks for your crew by name.
If your plan for a slow year is to dial more, know that Cognism, a B2B data firm, put its own 2025 cold-calling success rate at 2.3% of conversations ending in a booked meeting, almost half its 2024 rate (more in Is Cold Calling Dead in Oil and Gas Sales?). The most expensive hour in the patch is the one you spend cold-calling.
If your pipeline is already thinning, start with What Do I Do When Oil Drops and My Pipeline Dries Up? PVF and OCTG reps have their own guide: How to Sell PVF and OCTG If Oil Prices Drop. Service reps can find the rest of the playbook on our page for oilfield service reps and in oilfield service sales in the Permian.
Get Your Bison Walk-Around
Fix your name while the phones still ring.
Send us your LinkedIn. We'll send back the Bison Walk-Around: five minutes of plain English on what's costing you callbacks and what we'd build. No call. No invoice. We give first.
Sources and As-Of Dates
Dallas Fed Energy Survey, Third Quarter 2026, September 30, 2026 (responses September 16 to 24, 2026). WTI during the survey period, year-end expectations, and the oilfield services cost and price indexes.
Permian Basin Oil and Gas Magazine, Rig counts for 2025 down 18.75 percent in Permian, January 6, 2026, covering through December 30, 2025. The 2025 rig slide.
Oil & Gas 360, reporting Baker Hughes, week ending October 16, 2026. Permian rig count.
Reuters via Oil and Gas 360, US oilfield firms slash prices as mega-mergers shrink customer base, July 24, 2024 (older). The Texas service firm, Nitro Fluids, and its revenue figures from 2023 and early 2024.
Apache Corporation, ISNetworld Requirements for Onsite Suppliers, July 2025. One operator's grade rules.
Cognism, Cold calling success rates (Daisy Shevlin, updated November 28, 2025) and The State of Cold Calling in 2025, 2025. One B2B data firm's own rates, counted as meetings booked per conversation, not per dial, and not oil and gas data.
The founder's LinkedIn analytics export, September 15, 2025 to October 19, 2026, held by Unrth. The layoffs post. See the full proof story.
The Warm Walk-In™ is an original method created by Amanda Leon and owned by The Valours Creative Innovation LLC.