Mike Andes shows landscaping companies how to get new hires productive fast. Write estimate notes so detailed that any crew member can finish the job from notes alone, then have the estimator record videos walking through the project so the crew has minimal questions.
Where would one start? With processes and procedures for landscape projects. How to outline the project in such detail that someone with little experience can get plugged into the system. Alright, so I could again spend a whole episode on this. But what I would say is a couple takeaways. If you listen, if you've been at the conference, you know how important these are to me. Number one, your estimate notes need to be so detailed that anyone from your company to be able to walk on the property and based upon just the notes from the estimate, be able to perform the work. We do our estimate notes and our job notes the exact same. So that way what the customer sees is what the crew sees. Which means sometimes on the estimate tells where something is at in the property or something. That's really clarification for our crew. But that way the information the customer sees and the information that our crew sees is exactly the same. There's no miscommunication. Second thing. So I talk about estimate notes. The second thing is project management videos where the estimator takes a video for the crew. So between, between the estimate notes, which should be really, really clear, and the project management video, there should be absolutely no questions. And guess what? There always is. People are people and there's going to be things fall through the cracks and customers change their minds, they don't forget, they don't remember things, and all sorts of chaos. But doing those two things will dramatically help at least.
