Do Your Landscaping Company's Process Allow for Strong Relationships?
In my view, everything we do as landscape professionals is all about relationships. The relationships we have with clients, prospects, and our community help us to sell, and the relationships we have within our team and with subcontractors help us to deliver results. All these relationships are equally important, and nurturing them is key to the success of a business.
At our upcoming Field Trip at Russell Landscape in partnership with NALP, I will lead a session all about relationships and how underlying processes can support teams as they build and nurture these relationships. I'm excited for this session because I know it will help our attendees better navigate the specific challenges we're facing this season: it remains difficult to find and retain team members and at the same time, it's getting harder to close sales.
My session, Building Effective Relationships in Sales and Operations, will address both issues by looking at the underlying processes teams should have to support both their sales and operations teams and foster positive relationships with all the stakeholders involved in every job. This is something I've seen the Russell team do well, so this session will allow us to build on what our attendees will see earlier in the day when we tour their facility.
One topic we'll cover is the importance of having a plan for jobs you bid on and plan to do. Whether it's a design-build job or a maintenance account, it's important to create a plan. To create it, try to:
- Plan to do all the same work simultaneously to build efficiencies. Remove all the debris first, then go back and plant all the flowers, then go back and lay all the mulch.
- Create steps to your plan during the bid. We do this using Aspire at Grunder Landscaping Co., and you can do it with whatever bidding process you use. Create each step and estimate how many hours are required for each one.
- Get help from the production team on the front end. It's all about relationships! Ask for the production team's help, especially on complicated jobs or properties. They're the ones doing the installation or maintenance and may have ideas or see problems you wouldn't think of.
The bottom line: have a process and use it. Processes help teams to operate consistently so that everyone's expectations are met. And when expectations are met, we foster an environment where easy-to-avoid mistakes don't weigh down relationships.
See how this all works together?
I hope you'll join me in Atlanta on June 6-7 for this annual event, I am so excited for our attendees to meet Teddy Russell and his team, and to see and learn from this company that does such an exceptional job of fostering relationships with all their important stakeholders.
Marty Grunder
President & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.
Learn More and Register for the 2023 Field Trip at Russell Landscape
