We’ll Keep You Sharp
As most of you know, I am a firm believer in the old adage that people do business with people they know, like, and trust. It seems obvious that this is true, but how many of us really keep this top of mind as we try to win at sales and grow our businesses? This week I dropped by one company that sure does and learned about the low-cost, high-dividend event they hold every month to drive client engagement:
On Friday, June 7, ambitious landscape professionals from all across the country gathered in Cincinnati for a one-day sales bootcamp led by Marty. One issue that came up again and again was the gap that sometimes grows between a sales team, with its single-minded focus on getting work, and the production team, who then have to actually deliver on what the former promised. When the two teams don’t approach their work as a partnership, you have a recipe for disaster.
With the ongoing labor challenge in our industry, nearly all of us are in a continual state of flux, losing team members and adding new ones. Many of our new hires do not have a lot of experience in landscaping, and sometimes it turns out that those that do have it learned bad or insufficient practices at another company that now have to be unlearned. This makes having a deliberate and . effective training program critical.
If your crews are heading out in the morning and stopping at McDonald’s or elsewhere to load up on breakfast or snacks before going to their job sites, you’re losing valuable time and money. We used to have this same problem at Grunder Landscaping, until w came up with a way to solve it that benefitted everyone.
With spring in full bloom now, most of us are going nonstop from early in the morning until late in the evening. The pace is unrelenting but, we tell ourselves, we just have to get through these super-busy months and then we’ll get back to all the “priorities” we’ve let slide—from thinking about our long-term business strategy and spending quality time with our families, to eating right and staying fit. But if you want to win at business and at life you have to plan for your future now.
One lesson we’ve learned over the years at Grunder Landscaping Co. is just how much poor communication can get in the way of great performance.
No matter how much energy and effort you devote to installing and maintaining landscapes, if your team members aren’t communicating with each other and with your clients, you’re going to have problems.
