The original article by Kate Heinz and updated by Jessica Powers can be found HERE. 

Organizational culture influences the success of your company, directly affecting the sort of candidates you attract and the employees you hold onto. There are several different types of organizational culture too; so you have to find the one that works best for you.

What Is Organizational Culture?

Organizational culture, or company culture, is defined as the shared values, attitudes and practices that characterize an organization. It’s the personality of your company, and it plays a large part in your employees’ overall satisfaction.

Having a strong organizational culture is important because it helps attract the right candidates and it keeps them engaged as employees. According to a 2019 Glassdoor study, 77 percent of adults would evaluate a company’s culture before applying to an open position, with more than half ranking an organization’s...

The original article by Kate Heinz can be found here. 

Engaging employees is a highly effective business strategy, but it’s easier said than done. Your first inclination might be to build out a new benefits package or offer office perks like cold brew on tap or a wellness room. While your team will likely appreciate the new stuff, these changes do more to increase job satisfaction than boost employee engagement — two related but different concepts. 

Employee Engagement Strategies:

• Take employee surveys.
• Uphold your company’s core values.
• Carve out career paths and provide opportunities for growth.
• Promote employees from within.
• Recognize top performers.
• Promote transparency.
• Allow for honest feedback.
• Hold employees accountable.
• Hold leadership accountable. 

What Is Employee Engagement?

Employee engagement is defined as the degree to which an employee is motivated and passionate about their work. While it’s often confused...

The original article by Alan Kohll can be found HERE.

Company culture is an integral part of business. It affects nearly every aspect of a company. From recruiting top talent to improving employee satisfaction, it’s the backbone of a happy workforce. Without a positive corporate culture, many employees will struggle to find the real value in their work, and this leads to a variety of negative consequences for your bottom line.

According to research by Deloitte, 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct corporate culture is important to a business’ success. Deloitte’s survey also found that there is a strong correlation between employees who claim to feel happy and valued at work and those who say their company has a strong culture.

There’s a reason why companies who are named as a Best Place to Work see so much success. These organizations tend to have strong, positive corporate cultures that help employees feel and perform...

Our industry offers a vast amount of professional development opportunities. This is one of the things that sets us apart from other industries.

As we continue our focus on lifelong learning, we wanted to make you aware, if you aren’t already, of some of the great learning opportunities available to you that are specific to our industry.

LANDSCAPE ONTARIO PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Landscape Ontario's Professional Development has extensive resources to help provide you with tools for personal and business growth. They offer a wide range of topics, allowing you to update your skills or learn something new. They offer in-person and online seminars. Click HERE to see the list of 2023 seminars.

LMN (Landscape Management Network)

LMN offers a number of ebooks, videos and on-demand webinars covering topics related to running and growing a business: budgeting, business planning and growth, estimating, hiring, improving efficiency, and marketing and sales. For a list of the...

The original article by Tsh Oxenreider can be found here. 

Sure, most of us want to be intelligent, well-rounded, informed people with an interesting opinion and an ability to conduct an adult conversation. But sometimes that’s hard when your days mostly involve diaper changes, the carpool line, or conference calls.

As a student in school, it’s easy to learn new stuff—you’re bombarded with it. But as you dig into the trenches of post-school adulthood, it’s easy to move into survival mode. Your brain can turn to mush without exercise.

I want to be a lifelong learner, and I want to raise kids who feel the same. This means that to thrive as a well-informed person, I need to seek out learning resources for myself, even during parenting and running a business.

Here’s a few things that have helped me.

1. Read.

Get in the habit of always reading something. There’s no possible way to read everything available, so start your...

The popularity of podcasts is increasing[1]. Not only are more people listening to podcasts, but they’re listening to more podcasts. The beauty of podcasts is their accessibility. They’re free, they’re available through many different apps and programs, and you can listen anywhere at any time. I enjoy listening to podcasts while I’m driving or walking the dog. Marla and I listen together when we’re on road trips. 

Most podcasts put out new content on a regular basis, usually weekly or monthly. And I usually anticipate the release of a new podcast. I love hearing interviews with successful business owners who are willing to share their struggles and victories. These are real life stories of well-known people and businesses. I find I am encouraged to persevere and always take away some new knowledge or best practice suggestion. The podcasts provide links and additional content regarding the topic being discussed in the show notes.  With so many...

We love books. We love reading books, We love recommending books. We love it when people recommend books to us. Here's a list of some of the books that we read and recommend over and over!  

Good to Great - Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don’t by Jim Collins

This book describes how companies transition from being good companies to great companies, and how most companies fail to make the transition. "Greatness" is defined as financial performance several multiples better than the market average over a sustained period. Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. Collins finds the main reason certain companies become great is they narrowly focus the company’s resources on their field of key competence.

The Speed of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey

Written by Stephen R. Covey's eldest son, this book guides business...

This article is written by Chad Diller and the original post can be found HERE. 

Over the past two years I’ve spent a lot of time scouring YouTube and the Internet. I’ve wanted to get a really good sense of what kind of marketing tips are out there for lawn and landscape companies.

I’ve made a few general observations…

• The large majority of content addressing marketing for landscapers is geared towards entrepreneurs and businesses under $2 million in annual revenue. 
• Most of the people offering these tips are either A) well-intentioned small business owners sharing their personal advice or, B) landscaping marketing agencies that specialize in small businesses.
• And lastly, most of the popular "influencers" make money by producing videos (ads on YouTube, product endorsements, selling software, franchises, or courses for startup businesses).

None of these things are bad. However, these landscaping marketing strategies may not apply for companies...

The original article can be found HERE.

It’s as true in the landscape industry as it is in any other: without sales, you don’t have a business. A key goal for any landscape company that’s serious about planning for profitability is to excel not only in the work that you do but also in your ability to generate leads and win jobs.

12 Sales Tips to Increase Your Close Rates and Your Profits

1) Don’t drop the ball by not following up

Always follow up! Responding in a timely manner shows professionalism, and that the customer has your attention. Following up is critical not only to your sales success but also to your company’s reputation. Your follow-up process should be structured and could include emails, thank you cards, phone calls, and site visits. Keeping communication honest, open, and timely is an easy way to differentiate your sales process from your competition.

Following up shows an even further level of care for your customer. Even if you...

HOW TO DRIVE SALES by Kevin Kehoe

What drives successful commercial landscape sales? First, it’s a sense of the effort required by the reality of the numbers involved to achieve a goal. Specifically, benchmark figures tell us a close rate has an upper limit given the competitive nature of the commercial business. The limit of that close rate is driven by a number of positive touches with a customer. Second, it depends on a plan that accounts for these benchmarks when it comes to building a strategy that revolves around organizing and managing weekly sales activities.

In essence, a 20-percent close rate is driven by 12 touches per prospect. It’s a handy rule of thumb that helps a salesman set personal goals.

Now, pay attention to two important definitions related to the sales goal chart below:

• Close rate—dollars sold divided by dollars bid. For example, if I close $200,000 in sales and I bid $1 million, I have a 20-percent close rate. In contract sales,...