4 Efficiencies You MUST Have for the Spring Rush

Hey, everyone, this is Mike Andes, and you're listening to the Landscape Business course podcast you might be watching on YouTube or on Facebook. I want to say a big thank you for joining me today. At the end of today's show, I'm going to be sharing with you how you can get your hands on a copy of the recording of the Landscape Summit 2019 that we had in January. So I'll talk about that in a little bit. But before we get into that, I want to share today's content, which is four efficiencies you got to have for the spring rush. So, as landscapers, lawn care professionals in our businesses, we know that the spring is a very, very important time for us. This is when you get a lot of your lawn care contracts, and the lifetime value over the next 12 months is greatly extended the sooner you can get that mowing customer. So instead of getting the customer in the middle of June, July, and only getting six, five months of revenue out of them in 2019, this is the time you want to get them. March, April, May. You get the most revenue from them per customer over the next annualized year. So I have four efficiencies because we're going to get bombarded. And I hear so oftentimes from landscapers, lawn care professionals, that they are just crowded with estimates. Lots and lots of work is coming in, and they begin to not even answer the phone. And just like so much is happening, they can't find enough people, they can't staff up enough. They don't have enough efficiencies built into their business to handle the demand, and thereby they're not able to capitalize on all the leads and all the new business coming in. So I'm gonna give you four efficiencies. This is by no means the end all, be all, or all you have to do to be efficient during the spring rush or to get ready for the spring rush. But if you do these four things, they'll @ least set you up, because this is literally, these four things are kind of like the preparation. It has nothing to do with a lot of other aspects. But I want to go over these four main efficiencies that I've identified that will really help you when it comes to the spring rush and managing all those leads as they come in. Number one.

Is how you estimate schedule. All right, so your estimate schedule. So maybe you, as a business owner are doing the estimates. Maybe you have estimators out doing this for you. But at the end of the day, you have to make when someone Calls your office or puts a web form in a contact form in on your website. How is that estimate scheduled? Is it within the next day, is it within the next week, Is it within the next? Whenever we get to it, you've got to create efficiencies so that you, you can quickly get estimates created and on the schedule. Because if someone is out there, potential customers out there, and they're looking for a landscaper, they're looking for someone to do their lawn care for the upcoming season. If they're waiting a few weeks into the season, all of a sudden that lawn is getting pretty long and they're gonna go after the first person that answers the phone, gets out there and gets a price to them. And so as you've heard from me before, take time out of the equation. Try to be the one that gets the estimate to them first. How do you do that? You've gotta make sure you efficiency built into your estimate scheduling. So that means having an estimator that knows exactly whether you have the estimate or not, being able to get to that customer within 24 hours and then within another 24 hours, at the very most, getting that estimate to them within 48 hours of them contacting you. You absolutely should be trying to get an estimate in their inbox. If you email it or if you present it in person. 48 hours, we are shooting for 24 hours or less. But definitely you can beat out 90% of your competition simply by getting that estimate to them within 48 hours. So how do you do that? You gotta have efficiencies, you gotta know where your estimators are at. If that's you or other people that you have employed for you, you've gotta know where they're at and what demographics or what areas they are going to be able to do estimates very quickly. So for example, I have two estimators within my business and they are also project managers. So they will be on projects in different areas of the county. My office staff knows where those jobs are at. And so they will also know then that between 10 and 3 o', clock, so 10am and 3pm they can schedule estimates around that local area. So north and south they kind of split up our county. And someone's gonna take the north side, someone's gonna take the south side. So they can get up to about 12, 15 estimates a day using that method. And, and having where the estimator gets their job for the day started with their project, with their team, with their crew, and then they able to do estimates all day. And then wrap up the job with their crew. And so that's how we baked in efficiencies in terms of breaking up the demographic because, sorry, the geographic, because that way the estimator can get to them fast. So if a contact form comes in at 8 o' clock in the morning, by 10, 11 o' clock we have an estimator at their house and by 2 to 3pm that day they have an estimate in their inbox. And by 4 or 5pm We've closed them, put them on the schedule and they're ready to go. That's our kind of our goal when it comes to efficiencies around the estimate scheduling process. Number two, the efficiency you've gotta have is following up with that estimate. So if you don't have a software package that does this already, I'd highly encourage you to track, even if it's on a whiteboard, what the dollar amount of estimates you create. What is that revenue? If everything was accepted and then what is actually accepted? So basically what has been won and what has been lost in terms of estimate dollars? And you'd be astounded to real, literally you are leaving 60%, maybe 50, 60% of revenue on the table by people that have said no or people that have not ever responded back to your estimate. So what do you have to do? You need to create automated system or at least a system of some sort to follow up with these estimates. You do not want people to go cold. You do not want to be emailing people two weeks after you set an estimate and just saying, hey, I'm just checking in to see if you got the estimate. That's not what you want to be doing. You have a process or Our process is 3, 5, 7 and 14 days. They're going to be getting emails, they're going to be getting videos, they're going to be getting content, they're going to be getting educated on what type of project they are asking for in their estimate. And we're going to give them pricing details and things like that to educate the customer and try to keep them warm. We do not want that estimate to be in vain. After all the admin time of setting up the estimate, having an office staff in place, sending an estimator out there creating the estimate, after all of that work, the last thing you want to do is never even get a yes or no from a customer. You want to make sure you follow up until you get an answer. And if it's no, that's fine. But the last thing you want is just estimates that go into oblivion and you never hear back from the customers. In order to do that, you have to have follow up efficiencies and follow up systems in place. Following up is absolutely where you're going to have a higher close ratio and the amount of the percentage of jobs that you actually close will dramatically increase. Number three, third efficiency you have to have for the spring rush when you get all of these jobs coming in is project management videos. So this is something we dug really deep in at the conference. And I know a lot of people that went away from the conference, implemented it and have really found success in creating videos for project management. What that means is the estimator, when they're already at the property of the client, will done the walkthrough, figured out what the job entails. They're then going to take out their phone, they're going to video that project so that they don't have to return back to the job when the crew comes out to actually install the work. All right, so this is going to be something that the estimators are going to do after talking to customer, they're going to video that job and then they're going to keep that job on video in some sort of storage area where they can then give it to the crew before they go out to perform the job. That way you don't have your estimator. You want to know a very valuable person in your organization. Instead of them having to go to four or five job sites in the morning and then starting estimates at 11, 12 in the morning, they can actually get started with estimates at 8 o', clock, 7 o' clock in the morning because they already have videos already sent out for the crews that already know what needs to be done. So this is a massive efficiency. This is definitely a way that you can get 40, 50% more estimates done in a day. And that is by creating a video of the job when the estimate is being done, thereby allowing the crew to get started without that estimator, have to orientate them to that job site. Another great thing about this is it's actually a sales tactic. After performing the estimate and the walkthrough, you can literally do assume the close and tell the customer, all right, what you want to do is build the job out in the mines. Customer have them already starting to see your trucks and see your guides and how the whole process is going to be carried out. And so what you want to do is just assume the close. Just say, hey Mrs. Jones, when the crew comes, they're going to be doing X, Y and Z. I am going to take a video for them so that when they come, not if they come. When they come, they'll be able to know exactly what you want and the specifications and instructions you've given me. And so assuming the close, they've already. Okay. In their mind, they're like, okay, the estimator's taking a video. The crew is going to come, they're going to see that video, know exactly what I want. And so they're building out that you're assuming the close. And it'll absolutely make it more efficient for. For you as the estimator. If you are that role, or even if you have someone in your business doing the estimates. That's a very costly role. They'll be able to do a lot more estimates if they can get that whole morning slot filled with estimates instead of having to orientate crews to the job. So that's the third thing. Number four is staff appropriately. I get so many people asking me how many staff members do I need to get for the spring rush. They know they're gonna get busy. They know that a lot more work is coming their way, but they don't know how many people to have in the. Their business out in the field working. Now, this is a very simple thing that you can do. Not the most accurate, but a simple way to determine how many staff members you need in the field for the level of growth you anticipate. So this is the kind of formula, what you should do. You should take your revenue from last year. Let's assume. Let's. Just for sake of round numbers, let's say last year you did a million dollars in revenue. And what you're gonna do is you're gonna divide that number by the number of team members you. You had out in the field. All right? So you're gonna say. Let's say you had 10 crew members out in the field working, and you generated $1 million in revenue. What that means is that per person, per person, per team member out in the field, you made $100,000. $100,000 times 10 team members. You made a million dollars in revenue last year. Now, what you can then do is take that number, that number of that revenue per man out in the field, and you can use that to determine how many team members you need this coming year based upon your projected revenue. All right? So now what you're gonna do is you're gonna take your projected revenue. Let's say you wanna do $1.5 million in sales this year. That's your projected revenue. You know, that's what's gonna happen based upon growth and revenues and things like that. So you say, you know what? I did a million dollars in revenue last year. I wanna do 1.5 this year. Now, this is what you do. You take your projected revenue and you divide it by that dollar per man rate or dollars per man for the whole year. So last year we made $100,000 per man. This year we want to do 1.5 million in revenue. Divide that by $100,000, and you realize that you need 15 people out in the field. All right? So, you know, this spring, coming into this spring rush, you're going to need five more staff members if you are going to accurately anticipate and staff up and get ready for 1.5 million in revenue. This is a very easy way, simplified. Usually as you grow. This is something we talked about in the Pro plus webinar a couple nights ago, is usually as you grow, that dollar per man per year begins to decline. So instead of 100,000, it might become like 95,000. Just because as you scale up, there's more inefficiencies just in the amount of scale and things like that. So generally, as a business grows, the. The revenue per man per year declines slightly. If everything else in the business stayed the same in terms of services and type of, you know, if they don't switch from lawn care to landscaping, et cetera. But generally that goes down slightly. However, just assuming that we go from a million dollars in revenue to 1.5 million in revenue this year, and we have 10 people this first year, there's a good chance we're gonna need 15 people to account for that $1.5 million in revenue this coming year. So what you should be doing now is staffing up. You should be getting career fairs. You've heard me talk about them before. You should be making sure you do Craigslist ads and Facebook ads and indeed ads and whatever you need to do flyers at local gyms. Whatever you have to do to get as many applicants and start the screening process. Have it where you just get used to doing interviews. The best way to get good at interviews is doing interviews over and over and over and over again. So I highly encourage you to staff up based upon your projected revenue and know exactly how many people you're gonna need to have trained, ready on the bench and ready to actually service your customers and hit that projected revenue goal. So let's go over those four things real quick again and Then we're gonna get into the recording of the Landscape Summit conference. Four efficiencies that you have to have for the spring rush. You're gonna have all these customers coming in. You've gotta have systems and efficiencies in place to make sure that you're able to service them and actually capitalize on all this new business coming in. Number one is have scheduling for your estimates, have efficiencies baked in. Make sure you get those estimates done quickly and efficiently, whether it be routing your estimators, scheduling from the office standpoint, those estimates, making sure it's very efficient. Number two is having a follow up process and automating that process if at all possible, but at least having a system to make sure that you follow up with every single estimate, regardless of the size of the estimate. Not just based upon like, oh, I forgot, I should call Peter because his was a big job. You have a system in place that does it for every single estimate. Number three is project management videos. And that is basically the estimator making videos when they're at the client's property so they don't have to return back to the client's property to orientate the crew to the job. That saves time, allows the estimator to get more estimates in per day, and allows you to capitalize on all those new leads coming in. Number four is, is you want to staff appropriately. The reason for that is you do not want to have to be staffing and training a whole bunch of people in the middle of the spring rush. You want to do that now, right beforehand, and get them on the bench ready to go. Even if you're slightly overstaffed for the first few weeks of the year. Those are the four efficiencies that will allow you to really capitalize on the spring rush this year. Now this is a big announcement I have for a lot of you that have asked about the conference. A lot of you couldn't make it to the conference, whether it be snow on the east coast we had that weekend, or just traveling expenses and things like that. So this is what we have done. I have basically created a recording of all the content. There's over 20 hours of keynotes on.

The recorded content. All right, so obviously you're not gonna get the breakout sessions in terms of like me talking to people and the one on one connection. You're not gonna get the introduction game that we played to get to know all the landscapers there and had a lot of fun. That's not in this recording. But this is the next best thing to being there in person. All right, so what we're going to do is instead of just sending you a whole bunch of links, I actually want to send you some physical products and content because there's just a lot there now. So instead of sending you a bunch of links for the videos, we actually got these big USBs. I never knew they had 256 gigabytes on a USB, but they do make those. They're expensive, but they work. And so we are going to load up all the videos on this usb so that way you have it forever. You can put it on your desktop, you can save it however you want, and that will be great. So it will be yours and you'll be able to keep it. You'll be able to do whatever you want with it. Those files will be sent to you. In addition to those files, you're also going to get the handbook that we actually used at the conference. So if you go back a couple months ago, you'll actually see me go through this in more detail. But basically this is the handbook we used throughout the entire conference. And this is all the handouts, the workbook. So this workbook basically goes right through a lot of the things we talk about in the conference. So as you're going through the videos, we're gonna be going through this workbook, talking about the one thing, writing down these different goals and things that we used for the workbook for. We're going to create a master plan for your business. Where do you want your business to be in 5, 10 years? What is the goal of the business? Why does it exist? Create a five year plan with a revenue, take home pay, number of team members and the big events at every single year. Then we're going to break it down. We're actually going to go into this one year plan, 2019. So right now it's February. You can still fill this entire thing out if you ordered this. And what we did is we went through revenue, cash on hand and, and the action list for every single month of 2019 in order to achieve your goal for revenue this year. Marketing plan. We create a marketing plan and this workbook basically walks you through that process along with the keynotes. Then we create an estimate process. So I just talked about having an estimate process as an efficiency on here. I went through the 20 steps of the estimate process and every single one where you can input customer experience, sales and marketing and efficiencies within that 20 step process of making a landscape estimate. All right, then we will go through your company organization, you know, figuring out the roles and responsibilities of everyone within the organization. We talk about creating a hiring process and all the different ways to find, hire, and retain individuals on your team and making an actual system instead of just doing it by the seat of your pants. We talk about customer experience and how you, you know, someone goes from a prospect customer to, you know, being a recurring customer, where you're asking for reviews before, during, and after the transaction. And we talk about all the different steps at every single one of those, you know, junctions within the customer relationship. So this is going to all be sent to you. So I'm gonna send you a box. I'll send it to you within a couple weeks. I know we have already got quite a few orders, so we're gonna get some more of these made, and I will send them out to you. This is only available. This offer is only available through March. So right now, as I'm recording this, we're at the end of February. For the next four or five weeks, this will be available. After that, it will not be available. The recordings will be done with, and we will not be able to buy it because we're gonna start getting ready for Landscape Summit 2020, which is gonna be a massive event and I'm really looking forward to. So this is only for the people that couldn't make it. Whether it be scheduling, they had other things going on. I know there was a big snow event over on the east coast. A lot of people couldn't make it. The cost for this is $599. And that's gonna get you all 20 hours of the content. It's gonna get you the workbook. And a lot of people say, well, hey, that's more than it actually costs to be at the conference. And the reason I'm doing that is because the people who came to the conference, they had to pay for a hotel, they had to pay for food and accommodations, they had to pay for a rental car, they had to pay for their flights. And so this is actually gonna cost you a whole lot less than having to be there for an entire weekend. So this is gonna be something you can use at your house. You can listen to it on demand whenever you want. This is not something that you have to come and fly to pay for airfare, all of those things. And so in order to make it fair, I'm charging the 599 for the recorded version. And all of the money, 100% of the money, is going into building out the training facility. So if you actually listen to the conference, you'll actually hear what we launched at the conference in terms of ProPlus, 14 companies at the conference took advantage of the program, got locked in the program. And just so everyone knows, in case you do get the conference, we are not accepting people, more people into ProPlus. There's only going to be 14 people until next Landscape Summit. That's the only way you'll be able to get in. There is a waiting list in case anything happens to the 14 that are currently in there. And currently there's four or five companies that are already in the waiting list, but they won't get in unless someone drops out of ProPlus. And in general, the waiting list will not be opened up and allowed new people in over 14 until next landscape Summit. So just as a caveat, Proprilus is technically closed. You can just get on the waiting list right now. But because of those 14 companies that really stepped up the plate and supported the goals and missions of what we're doing, this whole studio's been made possible. I know you haven't seen very much of it. This is kind of just one little corner of it. We're still building out the set and things, but they really allowed that to be manifested by stepping up the plate and financially supporting it. All the revenue that comes from this recorded conference is going to go directly into the build out of this facility that we are eventually throughout 2019. We're building this out, getting it ready so that buy it. Before we Start Landscape Summit 2020 next conference, we're gonna actually be able to have training facility here live in person. All right, so you're gonna be able to send your project managers, send your estimators. You as the owner will be able to come here, you send your office staff. My office staff, my project managers, my estimators can teach your people exactly how we do things, take them to our job sites, walk them through our processes over the course of two or three days at a seminar here. So they're. That's what we're trying to build out here. And I'm really looking forward to that last announcement because it kind of ties into this. And if you're at the conference and you heard, you know exactly how I look at this whole process and this whole industry and the money I'm making from the course and from recorded webinar or recorded conference, like all that, the money from Proplus, which has been a big help, all of that is going directly back into creating content for you all. And probably next month, I'M actually gonna become super transparent with what that money's being used for. So obviously right now a big expense is building out this training facility. I really see it being as our first step in creating a gold standard for our industry in terms of what an estimator should be doing, how a project manager should be acting, how office staff efficiently and really how can they service a customer and create a great experience. That's what I'm wanting to create a standard within our industry and the training facility is gonna allow me to do that. Obviously, having this video studio is nice too, just for creating better content for you guys. But something that is kind of a new announcement, I've mentioned it over some live streams in the past week, is I'm working right now with a computer programmer to create two templates of websites for landscapers. So if you've ever asked me about your website, I've always said the same thing. And that is, I don't really care if someone builds you the website or if you build the website yourself, make sure you can edit it, change pictures, add blog posts, change headlines according to the time of season, offers special things that are happening in your local area. And so I'm really stepping up to the plate right now in terms of just trying to get this made instead of just trying to push you guys in kind of general direction and saying, hey, try Wix or try Squarespace or try.

Weebly or maybe you have someone else you hire do it. Instead of doing that, I'm actually creating a template that I can give to you and then have a bunch of video tutorials on how to make the edits, how to add a blog post, how to add pictures, how to add before and afters and walk you through the process. So you can do the back end servicing and not have to pay someone 2, 300 bucks a month to basically just host your website. So I'm working on that. It's taking some, you know, some financial commitment on my end. And that's where this money is going. That's where all of this money goes. None of this is going in my pocket. I'm not driving a crazy nice car or anything like that. This money that goes is from the recorded conference, that is from everyone that's bought the course from Pro plus. All of that is going directly into two things right now. This training facility that we're building out over the course of 2019 and then also the website templates that we're building. I hope that within about five months that template is ready and ready to Go. And we have other stuff that we're building out right now too. And so a lot of people have asked for SOP standard operating procedures for their field staff and they said, hey, you know, you're creating this training facility for estimators, project managers and office staff, but what about our field staff? And so again, we're working on some technology and, and that's gonna be hopefully launching again at Landscape Summit 2020. So all the money I'm making right now, 100% of it is going back into creating tools and resources for the community. And because most people don't believe me when I say that I am gonna become really transparent in starting in March in terms of where all the money's going, what the revenue is that I'm making off of PRO plus and the course and recorded conference and all this stuff, and then showing where that money's going. Because I, my goal and my long term vision is really to change this industry that is aligning with my passion, my mission, my goal set. And so right now, making money and putting it in my pocket just is not super appealing to me. And so all the money is going back into making better content and making better tools for your business. So I hope to actually be able to show you more of that in March in terms of where the money's going. But right now, this training facility and then technology in terms of a website template for landscapers, as well as some SOP stuff that we're working on. So thank you all so much for your support. Again, I know this is my second episode here in this studio on Landscape Business course, but I just can't imagine, I can't say enough. Thanks to the PRO plus members especially for stepping up financially, but also everyone that's bought a course, bought a book, like all of that money has allowed us to do this and 2019 is going to be massive for us. And, and in terms of getting ready for 2020, come 2020, I have a lot of things that will be done in terms of the training facility, the website builder and SOP website. So we're working a lot of that stuff. It takes money and I appreciate everyone's support. And so if you want to buy the conference, all of that content, all 20 hours, we went through all sorts of stuff and you can look and see what you know, go back a few months ago, back into December and see exactly what we talked about at the conference. I showed the schedule and I believe it will change your business. If you bought the conference, sorry, if you bought the course, landscape business course, the conference is gonna be that next step. Cause I talk a lot about my business. I talk a lot. I use a lot of personal examples and really show a lot of behind the scenes in my business. So I hope that it helps. And I just wanna make sure that you know that the money that is being generated from that is going right back into creating some tools for this industry. So thank you so much. My name is Mike Andes. You've been listening to landscapebusinesscourse.com until next time, guys. Be great because nothing else pays.