Profitability is what fuels our landscaping businesses and our longterm success. It enables us to provide more for our teams, to purchase new tools and trucks, to give back to our communities and to GROW. For all of these reasons, profitability should matter to the whole team and not just to the CEO.
The good news is there are opportunities to increase the profitability of your business everywhere you look, especially when you involve your team. To increase your company’s profitability, evaluate your processes before, during and after a job. To start, make sure you’re:
- Creating a highly detailed work order and project map, with photos, drawings and budgeted labor hours to meet or beat. At Grunder Landscaping Co., we live by the mantra of “No surprises.” Detailed plans save us from wasting valuable time on the job site and, by including notes from our sales professionals, they help our production crews exceed client expectations. What’s more, having a goal to hit makes it clear to your team what they’re working toward and motivates them to deliver.
- Holding a daily huddle with your field crew to coordinate a plan of attack and ensure everyone is working in unison. If a team arrives at a job site and just starts blowing leaves without coordinating first, what happens? You look up a couple of hours later and discover you each went in a different direction and now have a mess on your hands. Agree on your game plan ahead of time and works as a team to execute.
- Recapping the job with everyone involved once it’s complete. Ask yourselves what did you do well. What can you do better next time? If it’s a clean-up you do every year, what notes about the property will enable you to operate more efficiently next time? What did you learn that you can apply to similar jobs? Get it all down and into your software management system so it’s there for you to refer back to. This is how you create a culture of continual improvement and drive up profits year over year.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ll take a much deeper dive into this topic on Aug. 13 in my new virtual workshop, Profit Pros: What to Do Before, During and After a Job to Maximize Profits. Join me and learn the step-by-step process we follow at Grunder Landscaping Co. to optimize our ROI and start building a brighter future for your company and team.
Have a great (hot!) week and, as always, if we can help you in any way at The Grow Group, drop us a line at grow@growgroupinc.com.
