How can landscape pros stay motivated during the winter months or slow season?
Landscape Professionals
Troy Clogg
Troy Clogg Landscape Associates
Wixom, Mich.
“The best use of time when the fieldwork slows down is to make a plan and then execute. What kind of plan you may ask? A plan to maintain or replace your equipment, a plan to organize your office, a plan for your sales, a plan for the people you may need and so on. These plans should involve analyzing what you did in the past and how it worked out … as well as looking at new ways of growing your profits, people and knowledge. Have fun with this time of year … as you design your business into the future, think of it as designing an amazing landscape or home or both. Then once you have the design, go build it.”
Paul Fraynd
Sun Valley Landscaping
Omaha, Neb.
“There is no off-season in our business! We stay motivated in the winter by preparing for a successful 2020, renewing contracts and updating our goals and strategies for the coming season. Also, hopefully (we have) lots of snow to push.”
Luke Henry
ProScape Lawn & Landscaping Services
Marion, Ohio
“Don’t think of it as a slow season, just as a season where activities may shift to working ‘on’ instead of ‘in’ the business. Meet some new people to help recruit team members or sell new work, look at what worked and didn’t work and build/adjust processes and formalize the business with new marketing materials, paperwork or a handbook.”
Aaron Katerberg
Grapids Irrigation
Grand Rapids, Mich.
“We stay motivated by ‘rocks,’ a system laid out in the book ‘Traction’ by Gino Wickman. It helps us have short-term goals and a 90-day focus to get them done. The term ‘rocks’ comes from the metaphor of putting the big things in the jar first and then working on the smaller ones. If you aren’t keeping score, you don’t know if you are winning.”
Industry Consultants
Marty Grunder
The Grow Group
Dayton, Ohio
“The winter can be long if you don’t have a vision of what the future looks like. To me, winter is the time to take care of all the things us busy landscape pros don’t have time to do in the other nine or ten months. Those of us who do snow don’t really have a downtime. For me, the weather can be a downer, so I always make sure to take a least one trip to someplace warm to do some relaxing and thinking. Beyond that, getting really organized and focused on what a win looks like is the best way to get motivated. As I reflect back on 2019, our best year ever, I know why it was our best year ever. We were fully staffed and had plenty of work, so naturally, the thing that I can do in the winter that will help me have a successful 2020 is to selling more landscaping at Grunder Landscaping, meeting with people who either are people we could work with or know people we could work with. I have goals on the number of people I want to meet with, and I have a sales goal that we push on in the winter heavily; that’s when our year is made. Having a clear vision of what a win looks like is a great way to get motivated.”
Phil Harwood
Grow the Bench
Grand Rapids, Mich.
“Keep a running list of ideas throughout the year (improvements, opportunities, etc.) and then select a handful of the best ideas to tackle during these slower times.”
Kevin Kehoe
3PG Consulting
Laguna, Calif.
“Staying motivated is easy … (it’s) fear of failure. Build a budget, review account profitability, install software that works, team retreat to build the team and delegate responsibility … (there’s) plenty to do.”
Jeffrey Scott
Jeffrey Scott Consulting
New Orleans, La.
“Involve everyone in strategic and divisional planning because people are driven by their ability to control their environment; supported by internal/external training and occasional social gatherings.”
