Lawn & Landscape August 2017 By Marty Grunder “It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.” –Paul Graham The other week I came across this quote from Paul Graham, founder of YCombinator, a leading provider of seed funding for start-ups in Silicon Valley. Graham and team count.

When I speak with our industry’s business owners, I often hear a familiar complaint. Their teams, they grumble, just won’t do what they’re supposed to do. Their crews, they grouse, just don’t seem to care. How can they get their teams to change? My answer? Listen. Listen to yourself and how you talk about the problem..

My MGI colleague Jim Cali is a master of tactics, always at the ready with a fresh approach to the kinds of organizational problems that vex us all. In this video Jim shares with us the 5/10 Rule, a straightforward standard that’s easy to implement but that can have a profound effect on how you and your team.

Are top salespeople born or made? Is success at pitching a job a gift you either have or don’t? I recently put this question to Gib Durden, vice president of business development at HighGrove Partners in Atlanta, one of the most successful commercial landscape companies in the country. According to Gib, the best.

There’s no getting around it: Landscaping is hard work. It’s hot and dry out, or it’s wet and muddy. It can be hard on your back, and your knees, and your hands. The days are long. We ask a lot of our teams in the field, and it’s important we show them we appreciate all they do. A good and fair compensation program is.

Lawn & Landscape July 2017 By Marty Grunder First off: Congratulations to everyone reading this. You’ve made it halfway through the 100 days of hell for landscape pros. We’re all still in the thick of long days, selling jobs, managing client demands and motivating our teams, but we’ve rounded the corner and can see.

Tell me if this ever happens to you. You get a call from a new prospect saying they’d like some help with their landscaping. So you schedule a consult and drive out to their property for the first time, and then before you even pull into the drive you think: “Wow. This is one of the worst landscape designs I’ve ever.

It never ceases to amaze me how many businesses get sales wrong. They pressure you to sign on the dotted line. They ignore what you ask for and tack on bells and whistles you didn’t ask for. They hammer you with phone calls. They tell you to act today or lose out on the offer, and then when you don’t bite they call.

When I travel around the country speaking to green-industry pros, I make sure to always save enough time for a Q-and-A session. And pretty much every time—no matter if my talk was on sales, or leadership, or developing your right-hand man or woman, or something else entirely—I am asked a version of the same question:.

An MGI client recently called me in a panic. He was feeling overwhelmed by all the demands landscape pros face this time of year. He was running from job to appointment and back again, with sales to close, numbers to hit, and a team to manage and motivate. I listened to him voice his concerns and vent his.