Whether you’re an owner or a team member, the next couple of months can be pivotal for a business. With the hectic demands of summer starting to wind down, it’s the perfect time to look back at what you’ve accomplished so far this year and where you hope to finish, what you did well, and where you came up short. We take the time to do this at GLC because it’s our last big chance to fix what we can for the season and to set ourselves up for success in the new year.

We reassess every area of our business—from finance and operations to sales and marketing—but none is more important than the way we’re treating our clients and our people. This fall, we'll be sure to:

Show Clients We Care
Every successful landscaping company I know is working hard all year long to deliver great service to their clients, but fall is the time to wrap it all up with a bow.
At GLC, we are taking extra care to ensure all our clients’ properties look exceptionally good and to get an extra touchpoint in with them before the year ends. This helps set the stage for us to convert design/build customers to ongoing maintenance clients, lock in renewals, and sell new work for next year. Our team leads are knocking on doors to check in with our clients, our group leads are following up to make certain we haven’t missed anything and I am sending handwritten thank-you notes to clients and offering to personally walk their property with them.

Is this time-intensive? Absolutely. But it’s worth it. Our best source of new business is word-of-mouth referrals from happy clients.

Keep Our People Front and Center
In my experience, the single best thing a company can do to attract and retain team members is to be a place where people want to work. This fall and winter, we'll be evaluating our vision, mission, and core values with our team. We want our vision to be more focused on what's in it for our team members so that we can have a better rallying cry.

Our culture is for our team, it's not for me as the owner, and we want the words we use to describe our culture to resonate with the team members we want to hire and retain. We'll share the changes we make with you as soon as they're final.

What do your clients and team members have to say about you? Now is a great time to ask. In the next few weeks, try to survey them and gather opinions. Remember, you don't have to implement every new idea or suggestion, just listening is sometimes enough.

We have space available in two Grunder Landscaping Co. Field Trips this month, on September 22-23 and September 28-29. If you'd like to see our company culture, and the millions of little ways that we support it so that we can be the best company for our team members and our clients, I encourage you to sign up.

Talk to you next week!