Happy customers are returning customers. 

We’ve talked about this before, but so much of what creates a positive experience for your clients depends on how you proactively communicate with them. 

Before you sign a contract, do your potential customers know what to expect? Have you completed site visits with all decision makers so they are able to review and sign off on the snow sitemaps? Do they know the invoicing schedule? It basically boils down to you creating an onboarding process that you follow with each client.

Be sure to find out your clients preferred method of contact and then use that method to  communicate before and after snow events. It provides you clients with peace of mind that will drastically lower the number of frantic calls you will receive during an event. I also recommend that you email a weekly operational update so they know when you were on site and what service was performed.  

It’s important to keep a log of all...

One of the best ways to ensure winter success is to plan ahead regarding your fleet needs.

Your relationship with your suppliers will play a key role in this. You can help them out by getting your equipment ordered early and/or getting your existing equipment scheduled for service before the forecast is calling for snow. Setting up a system where they can call you when they have some time and they know what equipment needs servicing is a small thing that can make a huge impact.

I highly recommend working with local suppliers for ordering and delivery of trucks, equipment and small machinery. I would also choose a supplier that allows you to standardize the equipment you’re using, making it easier for budgeting and repairs. If you’re using all the same equipment (ie, same type of plow), you can order parts that will work for all of the pieces. You can also identify when an issue is a manufacturer’s defect rather than just a one-off. For example, if you use one type...

Earlier this month we talked about the importance of pre-qualifying your sales calls. It’s also important to remember that clients typically need 8-12 “touches” before they’ll make a decision. Phone calls, emails, online or face to face meetings are all things that count as a “touch”.

A few years ago Kevin Kehoe wrote an article in which he stressed the importance of being persistent and creative to keep potential customers engaged with each touch point until a decision is made. 

For example, he says, “sending an email asking, ‘Have you made a decision?’ isn’t creative nor does it advance the decision. It’s much better to send an email that states, ‘I’ve thought about our conversations. Let me suggest a way to solve your problem…manage your price concerns…handle your primary concern for communication…Here’s how we do this …’ This is advancement.”

We know...

We’re focusing on sales this month and we want to provide you with tangible tips and tricks to help you be more successful. We’ve chosen Covert Cows & Chick-fil-A as the book of the month because we believe there are many practical things you can learn from the pages written by Steve Robinson.

Since the day they opened in 1946, Chick-fil-A has been closed Sundays to give staff a day with their families. Even when statistics indicated that Sunday was the busiest day in the fast food industry, they held to their conviction and remained very profitable. 

Their company culture is also something to note. The way franchise owners are treated, the care that is taken to properly train staff, their creative marketing and even how they chose to keep their menu small and focused strictly on chicken are all things that I found both interesting and inspiring.

We may not be in the fast food industry but I believe there is so much we can learn from them as business owners.

...

A number of years ago I had the opportunity to work with local Landscape companies and volunteers in London to complete a beautification project as a tribute to our veterans on Veterans Memorial Parkway.

It was a huge project and represented an opportunity for members and associates of Landscape Ontario (London) to show our pride and involvement in the community. Companies donated time, equipment and resources to work on the project and together with community volunteers we planted thousands of trees along the parkway over a 5-year period.

At the time I was the chair of the board for the VMP and worked alongside some incredible business leaders in the community including the President of Trojan Technologies, Canadian President of 3M, City of London deputy Mayor and other prominent business owners.

The project was an incredible experience because it brought the local members of Landscape Ontario together on a single project. It gave us the opportunity to use our expertise, experience...

Blog - part 2

Welcome back to the conversation with Ryan from Mountview Landscaping. We received such great feedback last week about this interview style blog post so if there is an area of your business that you’ve worked on we would love to hear from you. We can all learn from each other. 

Last week we covered the different things that Mountview tracks and how they track them. You can read that blog post here. 

Here’s part two from our interview with Ryan of Mountview Landscaping:

Why did you choose to measure these particular things?

So I can sleep!  Honestly it relieved so much stress. I like to be able to plan, know whats going to happen, have an idea what we need to do or change. If we wait till the end of the year it's too late. 

Measuring is a predictive tool that allows you to predict if you will make money but tracking also helps us when we are quoting on jobs. Let’s say a potential client told us they needed us to drop this...

Do you have a budget that you work from and review on a monthly basis? More often than not when I talk to business owners the answer to this is no, and though I have gotten used to this response it is not something we should be okay with. We simply cannot build successful business on hard work and hope - we need a budget.

When we started working with Mountview Landscaping I asked Ryan about their budget, like I always do, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that they have a budget and methods of tracking to ensure they are meeting that budget.

We interviewed him recently and Ryan agreed to share his insight with all of you. Here is part 1 of 2 posts from that interview:

What do you currently measure on a weekly, monthly and annual basis and why?

During the winter we track maintenance hours for snow, additional job hours from snow events, salt and icemelt product use on a weekly basis. This translates to lawn maintenance contracts during the summer season.  

We have people...

When do I need to hire someone to help with my books?

Who do I hire?

Do I need a book keeper, a controller, both?

You’re not alone in the questions you are asking yourself - This is one of the most common questions I get asked when we host our BOOST events. We want to ensure we are always giving you the best information, so we reached out to a friend who specializes in finance, Nathan (@southbrookconsulting), and he gave us a tonne of incredible information to share with you.

First up is hiring a bookkeeper, or as Nathan recommends calling them, an Accounting Associate. Traditionally this is someone who takes care of AR/ AP, invoicing, payroll, wsib, quickbooks, creating cheques and recording everything that comes in. Most are not accountants, will also do administration and are the 1st touch point for anything to related to finances in the company. 

Cost for hiring is around $18/30 per hour or $40-45,000 as salary and is for sure necessary around $1 million in sales....

I believe it’s imperative to be invoicing and reviewing A/R & A/P reports on a weekly basis with your team. Too often I speak with business owners who have installed a lot of work but haven’t invoiced or collected on that work they have completed and are quickly becoming stuck for cash.

When you are reviewing the following weekly you will always have a clear understanding of where you sit financially and it’s a great reminder to follow up on outstanding invoices. Waiting too long to invoice, or follow-up often results in the final payment never being collected because business owners feel like it’s been too long since the job to go collect. Too many of these result in a huge amount of lost revenue and can very quickly lead to the becoming noncollectable revenue for the business.

Weekly Accounts Payable/ Receivable Checklist

• Create invoices for work completed in the last 7 days
• Create files for work to completed next week 
• Track incoming receipts...

Have a weekly team meeting. This one piece of advice I give leadership teams every time I speak with them is also the one thing I seem to get the most push back on. Now, often this is because the meetings they are having are unstructured and therefore unproductive so the idea of doing more of them seems like a waste of time. 

Having and sticking to an agenda will add structure to your management team meeting. It’s the difference between sitting around talking about the business and having a purposeful conversation where you leave with actionable steps. 

Here are some helpful hints and tips for a successful weekly team meeting:

• Have a set agenda (topics for the agenda)
• Good news
• Company scorecards (tracking system)
• Employee and customer headlines
• IDS (identify, discuss solve) issues
• Cascading message (what do we need to communicate to the staff)
• Have a leader for the meeting
• Assign specific tasks to each person prior to ending the meeting.
• Have it at the same time...