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One of the great things about operating a snow business is its seasonality, which provides a great opportunity to fine-tune your operation during the off-season so that you’re better prepared for next winter. This process begins with a comprehensive winter season wrap-up.
Properly wrapping up the winter season is critical because your performance next winter depends on it. It’s one of the few aspects of a snow business we can control. We can’t control the weather, but we can control our internal business processes.
Top snow pros know season wrap-ups require a comprehensive business review, not just equipment storage.
Assessing event management
One of the most important areas to review is how effective events are being managed and where improvements may be made. Event management involves three categories: pre-storm, during the storm and post-storm.
Pre-storm event management includes reviewing procedures for:
- Weather monitoring/weather alerts
- Employee and service partner notifications/stand-by
- Storm-specific strategy/decision-making authority
- Employee and service partner mobilization
- Storm-specific routing/assignments
- Customer communications/notifications
During-storm event management includes reviewing procedures for:
- Command/communication structure
- Issue identification/response/follow-up
- Customer communications/updates
- Employee and service partner quality assurance
- Incident reporting/information gathering
- Emergency response capacity
Post-storm event management includes reviewing procedures for:
- Service verification/documentation
- Issue assignment/follow-up/completion
- Customer surveys/feedback
- Materials inventory/reorders
- Certified storm totals/reports
- Billing summary/invoicing
- Insurance/legal claims
Functional areas
Wrapping up the winter season involves reviewing each functional area of your snow business to identify and close gaps over the summer months.
Areas to consider include:
- Sales team/goals/performance/closing rates
- Marketing budget/execution/ROI of marketing initiatives
- Account management/customer service/renewal rate
- Subcontracting/gross margin/quality assurance
- Scorecards/operational metrics/job costing
- Equipment selection/purchasing/decommissioning
- Compensation/bonuses/incentives
- HR/recruiting/onboarding/training
- Technology/performance/adoption rate
- Finances/budgeting/cash management/billing
- Admin team/support structures
- Peer group/networking
- Professional development/learning
Contracts
Another important area to review at the end of the winter is your contracts — employment agreements, sales agreements, subcontractor agreements, purchase agreements, lease/rental agreements, etc. These contracts have implications that affect your snow business in terms of risk, cash flow and profitability.
A best practice for snow pros is to retain a qualified and experienced attorney who understands the business and can provide legal advice in addition to reviewing contract language. If you are looking for an attorney who can assist you, click here.
Wrapping it up
There are other considerations beyond the scope of this article. Additionally, plans are in the works for GROW! Snow, an in-person event in 2026 focused on snow pros and industry suppliers serving that space. More details will be available soon; you can go to growgroupinc.com/grow-snow-coming-soon to receive information about this event as it becomes available.
