How to Survive the SPRING RUSH in Your Landscaping Business

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes. You're listening to Landscape Business Course Podcast you might be watching on YouTube or Facebook. Today I'm going to be talking about the spring rush. As landscapers, as small business owners, this is the time of year that we're going into. Right now you might have already started the spring rush. In my market, we've already kind of started, we're already in the middle of it, but I know we're ahead of the game because we're on the west coast. And so a lot of you are just about to go into the busiest time of year and, and into the season when you are loaded with work and you're up to your eyeballs in estimates and sales and trying to get back up to par with your customers. So I wanted to kind of give you a few tips as far as what you can do to stay ahead of the spring rush. Make sure that you come out of the spring rush and can capitalize on the wins and the inflow of customers that happen during those few months. So when I talk about the spring rush, it's like usually about an eight week window that we as landscapers go through. For some of us, it's like March, April, May. For some people it's more like April and May when they have their spring rush. But you just around eight to 10 weeks. And that's really what sets up the next 42 to 44 weeks of the year. So what I mean by that is how good you perform during the spring rush really will determine what your revenue is going to look like for the rest of the year. So as we go into 2018 and spring rush, what you do now is what's going to set you up for the rest of 2018. I can look at a spring rush from a company and have a pretty good idea of what their entire year is going to look like as far as revenue, profitability, how many people they're hiring, how many customers they have. Because the spring rush really determines where you are at as a company when it comes to systems, procedures, and then efficiency when you get busy. So a couple tips that I would have during the spring rush. There's eight weeks and it's really busy. Number one is to hire up. And I don't mean just higher up as in like higher people. I mean hire more than what you actually think you're going to need. So if you're going into the spring rush, this is perfect timing. But even if you've already started the spring rush higher up, hire an extra person than you actually think you need. So if you're at four or five guys, hire six, hire seven. And a lot of times people say, well, how do I keep them busy after the spring rush? This is the thing. If you can put the fire underneath you that you have extra employees that you have to go make sales for, it's an amazing thing how after the spring rush, you can suddenly figure out where those sales are at, how you can go back to existing customers and upsell them, how you can get them to cross sell the other different types of products from maintenance into landscaping, how you can figure out all of a sudden how to do tree service and other different types of services that you've never even performed before when you need to start making work for your guys after the spring rush. So I would recommend for you to push the envelope and push yourself as the salesperson and the driver of your business. If you're small and you're responsible for estimates and sending out sales proposals and the maintenance contracts, if that's your job, I would put the fire underneath you by hiring one or two more people than you actually need the rest of the year, but you need them during the spring. So a great way to stay ahead of the curve, not lose customers because things start falling through the cracks. And to be able to really capitalize on the influx of new leads that come during the next eight to 10 weeks. I would recommend getting that extra person, extra two people, depending on the size of your company because you will need them during the spring rush. That is inevitable. And they're going to make a lot of money for you during those years, those months. So even if you don't need them as much or they don't, aren't as profitable the next couple months as you catch up with your sales funnel, you will still make money on them during that period of time. Some people will bring in temp workers for that spring period. I personally don't use temp workers because I don't like to bring the morale down within the company. I like people to stay around for a long time, be full time, year round. And so I look at the spring rush as like, okay, I'm hiring more people than I know I can keep busy for the winter. However, by the time I get to the winter, I'll figure it out. We'll figure something out. We will sell more. It puts the fire underneath me to make sure we will get work during the slower season in the winter. So I would, if I was you, staff up, get one or two extra people than you think you can Actually keep busy year round and capitalize on, use them during that spring season to make extra dollars that you would otherwise not get because you'd be pushing customers jobs off for three, four months and then losing the job. So, so that's number one, higher up. Number two is really watch your cash flow. A lot of times we come to this season of the year, it's very, very easy to get caught up in the amount of sales you're getting and thereby go out and buy a bunch of equipment. I find so often with landscapers, they have three, four trucks and it comes the spring rush and all of a sudden it's like, this is the year they're going to expand. The massive amounts of growth is coming in and they go out and buy a bunch of equipment. I would rather see you go get a hire because it's a variable cost. It's someone that if you needed to, you could lay off. It's someone that is when their work is high volume, you are able to pump the variable cost, that is their salary or wages into the funnel. Whereas with a fixed cost, like a piece of equipment, a truck, bigger mower, trailers, those are fixed costs. And so I find a lot of people invest too much money in infrastructure during the spring because they get wrapped up in all the sales of things that are happening with dealerships and with their local vendors. And they're like, wow, this is the season to buy big mowers, big trailers, more equipment, nicer brand new truck, get a lease on a truck. And this is not the season for that. This is the season to focus on generating revenue. Because as you've heard me talk about before, a lot of times if you start mowing, say March 1st, you're not going to see that money until the middle of April because you'll mow all throughout March and then you'll build them at the end of March. And by the time they pay you, you're not gonna see that from March 1st to like the middle of April, five, six weeks before you might even see that money. And so in that six week period, that's also your busy season. So that might be an April 1st for you, but it just so happens that that first billing cycle is usually when your spring rushes. So a lot of times I find people, they're super busy, but then they're like, there's no money in the bank. And because they're in that first sales cycle of when they actually bill out at the end of the month. And that's especially true for maintenance, landscaping companies and Long care companies that are mostly maintenance because they usually bill at the end of the month and they don't see that money for a couple weeks. And so during their spring rush, they really gotta watch their cash flow because their money isn't coming in. And yet they are paying overtime because they're so busy and they need more equipment and all these other things are trying to draw on the money. This is when they want to advertise and get new clients and all this stuff. And yet they don't see the money because they're still in that first billing cycle. And so really watch your cash flow. If you're coming into spring rush, make sure you have cash in the bank, like more cash than you think you need, because you'll suck it up in the amount of growth that you need. You might need more equipment, but I would hold off on equipment until later in the year when you have plenty of cash and you're in the middle of having several billing cycles already, and your cash flow is already on the upswing. A lot of times coming out of winter, your cash reserves are coming low, and then the last thing you want to do is dip really hard during your spring rush because you're buying equipment and trucks and all these other things. So try to do that later in the year if you can, or if you can even hold out another month. Try to hold out throughout the spring rush so that your cash flows are high enough and really, really watch the amount of cash that you have on hand. That's number two, cash flow. So number one is higher up. Get that extra one or two people to put the fire under you after the spring rush to continue growing the company. Number two is to watch your cash flow. Watch where you're spending your money, equipment, things like that. Number three is to advertise the correct demographic. So like I said, these eight, 10 weeks of your spring rush really determine the rest of your year when it comes to profitability and when it comes to your revenue. And so it's important to advertise. It's important to get new leads, it's important to get new customers, but make sure they're the right ones. It's very easy during the spring rush to get the wrong clients. The reason for that is because everyone needs their lawn mowed. Everyone all of a sudden needs landscaping all at the same time during your spring rush. And so it's easy for you to start grabbing clients from anywhere. It's easy if you start advertising and getting clients from anywhere because everyone is in need of your services. During those first few weeks. That being said, that's why spring rush is so important is because you're getting set up on maintenance contracts that are going to extend for the rest of the year and everyone makes their buying decision during spring rush. That's why it's so important. However, don't advertise the wrong type of people. You're going out and try to get those clients because during that spring rush when they are making a buying decision, they're choosing between you and they're choosing between a competitor and you want to make sure they choose you. However, they don't market to the wrong audience by having the wrong type of marketing and advertising. Don't go out there and offer free services in order for someone to join your company because that same person is going to jump ship when some other company comes along and offers free services. And so don't go out there offering a free mow if they start mowing with you or first mowing service is free or free weed and feed pack and just offer all this free stuff.

I don't mind when people give free things away later in the year to get people after the spring rush, but during the spring rush the last thing you need is to be giving away valuable resources that is the time of your cruise which you're already paying overtime. The last thing you want to be doing is giving that away for free and giving product for free and having a piece of equipment sitting on a job doing something for free when it could be a hundred other places making money. So I would focus. If you're going to have promotional material that is going to give away free services, do it later in the year, not during the spring rush. During the spring rush you want to be marketing after the client that is going to have full service landscaping and lawn care. They are going to have you not only mow the lawn, they're going to have you fertilize, they're going to have you trim the trees, they're going to have you install mulch, they're going to have you clean up the gutters and pressure wash. They're going to have year round service. These are the people you want to be targeting during the spring rush. That's because they're the highest profit margin, they're the longest lifetime value and they're going to stick with you for a longer period of time than someone that goes after the free mowing service or the first fertilization free. Don't go after those people during spring rush. You can get them later on if you want. But right now, focus on the high profit margin people that are actually going to generate revenue for your business. And don't waste your man hours on free work on a customer that probably isn't going to stay with you very long. So remember, who you're advertising to is important. It's important that you advertise. You got to make sure you got your name out in front of those people that are making that buying decision for the rest of that year's contract for their maintenance. You gotta make that, you gotta do that, you gotta get in front of people, make sure you're getting in front of the right people and you're advertising the correct way to make sure that they are closing the right sales and the right customers. So that's number three is advertise to the correct demographic. Number four, the last one is to save. In other words, be efficient. So two different areas that you want to be really efficient on is number one is estimating and number two is your crews. So when it comes to estimates, you're getting a massive amount of requests for estimates. And we at our company still offer free estimates. However, this year, in order to save time and be more efficient, we've started to do estimates over the phone. We've started to do estimates, we always try to get them within 24 hours to our customers. But how can we do that more efficiently? How can we charge by the square foot?

We make sure that we route our estimators so that they can get 20 done in a day instead of 10 because their route is more efficient. How can we get question, get answers from certain questions from the client so that they're pre qualified and they're a good client before we even send our estimator out there, those are things you want to be thinking about. How can you make it more efficient and your closing ratio higher just by pre qualifying people when they call. I don't want to be sending my estimator out 30, 40 minutes drive to talk to a customer that wants $20 worth of something done or $30 worth of something done. That might be something I want to do later in the year. June, July. Right now I'm focusing on contracts, I'm focusing on big landscaping jobs, I'm focused on booking my crew out past the spring. And so when it comes to estimating be more efficient, how can you charge by square foot, how can you do estimates over the phone, how can you use GPS in the future, how can you use the drone and all these other, how can you use Zillow for square Footage of a lot, things like that to make it more efficient for your estimating. The other part of being more efficient is just your cruise. Big part of that is the load time. If you start at 7am how do you get your cruise out at 7:10 instead of 7:15? Cutting those extra five minutes off in the morning. A big thing that we've done in the past couple years is having a Saturday. One of the crew come by for Saturdays. It doesn't have to be a highly paid individual. It can even be a high schooler that just in school during the week and then Saturdays they work for you. They come and they clean the trucks. They, they take them down to the gas station, fill all up the trucks, they fill up all the equipment with gas. They do the two cycle mixtures, the 50 to 1 ratio for the two cycle. They come in and they stockpile materials, they clean out the trailers, they clean out the trucks, they make sure they debris. They organize our shed and our storage containers. And so it makes it much more efficient for when you have your guys that you're paying 15, 20, 25 bucks an hour come in for five days of the week and everything's organized. They don't have go to the gas station every day. They don't have to fuel up the equipment, they don't have to wash it, they don't have to clean out trash. That is all done on a Saturday by someone that can be lower paid in hourly wages and is not going to be on overtime because they just work that one day. So those are a couple ideas for efficiency for estimating and then also for your cruise. How do you save them time in the morning for load time, also unload time at the end of the day. And one of the best ways to do that is have that Saturday individual come to that is part time that is low paid, can just fuel up the trucks, clean them out, organize things so that when your crews do get there from Monday to Friday, that they are efficient, that they come to work and they're getting work done. They increase the amount of billable hours that you are doing and decrease the amount of time sitting at gas stations waiting for fuel cleaning trucks when that could be much well spent spent out in the field making 60, 80 bucks an hour on a job. So those are the four things that I'd recommend during the spring rush to think about. Number one is hiring up. Number two is watch your cash flow. Number three is to advertise to the correct demographic, the right audience. And number four is to save time and be efficient. Thanks again. Mike Andes with landscapebusinesscourse.com A lot of you have been asking questions about Pro Plus. If you are wanting to sign up, just go to landscapebinniscourse.com p r o p l u s or you can just text pro plus p r o p l u s one word p r o p l u s. Text that to 44222 and it will get you set up on the waiting list if you can't get in. Or it'll register you and we'll get in contact with you via email. So if you're interested in ProPlus, just text ProPlus. That's P R O P L U S. One word to four four.

And we'll get in touch again. Mike Annies landscapebusinesscourse com.