Jeff HarknessNov 3, 2023
Building profits and increasing the value of your company in the current environment is a challenge. Does it seem like today’s economic climate and political…
Kevin KehoeNov 3, 2023
The most important of these is pricing. Competition and the customer are changing the notion of what fair price means. The reason is more capacity…
Frank RossNov 3, 2023
The absolute best management planning document on the planet is the rolling budget. Managed properly, there is no better management tool ever invented. Ever. In…
Kevin KehoeNov 9, 2023
There is still a lot of gnashing of teeth about market pricing. I showed a chart at a recent Professional Landcare Network (PLANET) event that…
News flash: Spring arrived about 45 days early this year. While this means opportunity and potential business for some companies, others will experience a substantial…
It’s not the product or service you are selling that matters to a prospect. It’s what ails them and what you can do about it…
By now you have closed out your 2011 financials and you might be asking what this thing is worth? It’s a metric you should quantify…
So, what’s your budget like this year? Budget!?! Frank, you know you can’t budget in this industry! There are way too many variables — there’s…
Kevin KehoeAug 26, 2024
We talk a lot about strategic plans, but rarely about strategy. A successful strategy increases enterprise value. Enterprise value is the financial worth of your…
The greatest personnel challenge we face these days in building a grounds maintenance business is finding and managing sales representatives. We are deep into the…
If you are in the grounds maintenance business — and who isn’t these days — the one position that will undergo dramatic transformation over the…
Developing a sales machine is the most important investment a landscape contractor can make. Given pricing conditions and the negative impact this is exacting on…
Kevin KehoeAug 27, 2024
Making a profit today relies on your ability to sell. In the old days, the key to profit was production management. Sales were easier to…
I like watching professional poker on TV. It is especially interesting to me that the young guns consistently beat the experienced pros. I think it’s…
The phone doesn’t ring as much anymore. Does this mean there’s no demand for your services? No, of course not. But it does mean that…
We live in deflationary times. Simply put, there’s less money chasing many goods and services. It’s the opposite of inflation, to which we’re more accustomed.…
It's time to shift your business focus from defense to offense. Reducing costs is essential, but the easy cuts already have been made. Additional cuts…
It's hard to make money these days, but it's particularly challenging for mid-sized companies — those in the $1 million to $5 million annual revenue…
Price competitiveness is a function of cost control and revenue generation. Cost control is a function of personal productivity (revenue per employee must increase). Revenue…
In my April column ("Get high profits with design/build," page 60), I went to a bid opening where 38 landscape companies bid a school construction…
Part one of a multi-part series. I promised I would drill down into the high-profit benchmarks from my 2008 survey. So here's the first take-home:…
The 2007 Fiesta Bowl was what I (and millions of other fans) consider to be the best college football game played in recent years. That…
Part two of a multi-part series. Let's look at the design/build segment's results of the 2008 Benchmark Survey to identify the reasons for higher profits…
There are two rules for managing in a tough economy: Control the things you can control, and minimize the risks of things you cannot. You…
