Do you have a plan for when the plan gets disrupted?

The weather varies so much from city to city, but one thing that's constant when working in landscaping is that the unpredictability of the weather can impact even the best-laid plans. 

We've had a pretty typical spring here in Southwest Ohio, which means that just about every day has some sort of rain in the forecast, but whether it falls enough to disrupt work can be hard to predict. A big mistake I see companies make is treating rain days like they're just a day off. You need to have a plan for rain days in order to make the most of the spring. Here's what our standard rain plan looks like:

1. Can We Still Work?
Even if we can't be as productive as we'd like to be, if we can still safely work in the rain we will. A partial day is better than not working at all, and because the exact timing of the weather can be unpredictable even if we know precipitation is coming we always try to get as much done as we can while the sun is shining. 

2. Can We Do Something Else?
If we have crews that definitely can't run a normal production schedule, we have "rain-day" work that we save. We'll have crews instead spend time:

• Performing truck or equipment maintenance
• Putting doorhangers on homes in a neighborhood the sales team has identified
• Working at our office: cleaning, organizing, building out a new area, etc.
• Completing training programs

3. Can We Work on Saturday?
Some of you reading this may work 4-10s and can shift your schedule a day to have teams work on Friday. We work a standard week, but if the weather looks nice on Saturday we may shift a production day there. That can help us make up for time lost in particularly rainy weeks and help our maintenance and mowing crews catch back up on visits. 

I think this mentality serves us well beyond just this season - having a plan but being flexible as the conditions change is something that landscaping companies are used to doing. Vince Torchia, our Vice President, often says that we need to stay on the offensive. Letting the weather dictate our success is a defensive move, we like to stick to offensive moves. When one of your coworkers is Mother Nature, you don't have much of a choice but to be flexible!

Keep on hustling this week, I'll talk to you next Sunday!

Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co. 

P.S. Have you signed up to join us for our Virtual Sales Bootcamp yet? This training program is a great investment for sales teams this time of year, and being able to join live or view the recordings gives teams the flexibility to fit the training in to their busy schedule! Register to join us on April 16-17 (or to get the recordings for 30 days and watch on your own time!)