Whether it’s marketing, sales or operations, here are 7 best practices to prep your lawn care company for spring. Start reading the blog or click on the bookmarked links below to skip to the tip you need!
As the saying goes, a company is only as good as its employees. Investing in training can be tough - it means lost productivity in the short term, cuts into time for the trainer, and can sometimes cost money. But, often it pays in dividends.
For GrowninGreen Lawn Care, investing in employees allowed them to get more out of their current employees. “We are all facing a tight labor market and that’s not going to change anytime soon,” explains CEO and Founder Jonathan Rigsbee. “A few years ago, we changed our mindset to how we can get more out of what we have?” For Jonathan, that investment meant reduced employee turnover (Hint: that’s money savings!) and better customer satisfaction (Hint: that’s money savings and money creation!)
Spend time and resources training people during the winter - before spring - so training doesn’t eat into productivity. Here are some resources for training people in the lawn and landscape space:
While operations are calm, take the time to conduct annual personnel reviews. Sometimes doing reviews can fill employees and employers with a sense of dread - after all, no one likes to receive or give criticism. But, annual personnel reviews are so much more than critiques! They are a way to give feedback on what your employees rock at - and what they need a little help on. It also opens the door for ways to solve any issues employees are having with an aspect of their job. In other words, do they need more training to be successful at that task? Or, was the task not communicated properly by management?
Here are two resources for personnel reviews:
Now is the time to send out renewal letters so that your customers are locked in for the New Year. Renewal letters allow you to decipher how much of your customer base you can expect to carry into next year.
Here are three tips to make your renewal process a big success:
The wonderful thing about canceled customers is that they are already familiar with your company. Consider that just because a customer canceled services, doesn’t mean they were an unhappy customer; many customers cancel to take advantage of a price break or discount offered by a competitor.
Targeting your cancel list now before they sign up for another company’s service is the perfect opportunity to bring in new sales. In fact, if you conduct a mail campaign to canceled customers, often you can expect a close rate of 2.5 - 5%. If you combine a mail campaign with a call, the close rate can reach as high as 20%.
If you need help building any marketing tools to target canceled customers, consider checking out our Lawn & Landscape Marketing Support page. It contains dozens of marketing tools that are free to download!
As Thomas Edison once said, “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning!” If you haven’t already done so - crank out that 2020 marketing and sales plan. How do you get started?
Here are some resources to help you build out your marketing and sales plan:
Most of the time, agronomic programs fluctuate throughout the year based on weather. For example, too much rain causes problems with disease, and too little could spell for a nasty summer. Regardless of Mother Nature’s whims, it’s important to strategize what your ideal agronomic program looks like to ensure a successful year.
Consider meeting with your agronomic advisors to review last year’s program and discuss how to make your current fertilizer program more effective from an agronomic and economic point-of-view.
Check out this blog for our 5 Tips for Planning Your 2020 Fertilizer Program. Feel free to reach out to your Holganix agronomic representatives with any questions.
Before equipment hits the road this spring, take time to look over your equipment and conduct any maintenance needed. At the very least - consider reviewing your equipment for the basics like:
Here are some resources for conducting routine lawn and landscape maintenance: