Creating A Sticky Culture to Combat Employee Attrition
Last week, during one of my Leader’s Edge Peer Group meetings, a longtime member (Scott Frampton, Landscape Renovations, MN) raised the question of how others are dealing with wage inflation? He asked if others were seeing employees threatening to leave for more...
Private Equity in Landscaping – What Does it Mean For You?
There is a resurgence of private equity investing in landscaping firms—this will impact everyone. The large amount of money flowing into investments and the financial markets is making itself felt in the green industry. My best residential landscape clients are also...
Only You Can Raise Expectations
The world seems to be lowering expectations in all corners - and only you can raise them. Your company can become a bulwark against complacency, where higher expectations become the celebrated norm. My sister Rebekah is a minister and consultant to the church. She...
Culture Is More Than Just a Buzzword
I was asked recently to give feedback to Landscape Management Magazine on how to ensure that culture is more than a buzzword. Even though I wrote the book on this topic, Become A Destination Company ®, I wanted to gather fresh anecdotes from my clients on how they...
Why Cross Selling Fails in Most Companies
Why does cross selling fail in most companies, and why should you care? The main reason to care is that your current clients are your best clients, meaning they will buy services at higher margins than a brand new client would. You may think you are too busy to care...
Fast Growth Companies Have This in Common
There is one thing that fast-growth companies have in common: they are always contemplating their next critical hire. A common question I hear regarding new hires, "Which comes first, the growth to support the new critical hire, or do we make the critical hire first...
Things We Both Need To Do – Even in a Hot Market
Let’s turn the tables, we spend all our time talking about how to make your landscape business better – did you ever wonder how I make my business great and what you can learn/apply from that? Successful business building requires a combination of a great product and...
Smarter Pricing Techniques To Ensure Better Profits
What if you could use smarter pricing techniques to ensure better profits this year? Last week I held a quarterly Leader’s Edge peer group meeting where one member - Tim O’Connor, LCI Landscapes, MN - presented his new sales commission plan. He had been working on it...
Staying Calm, Cool and Collected During Busy Season
How do you stay calm, cool and collected during the busy season? Do you have a system that works well for you? I asked my best and highest performing clients this question, and the answers were eye opening in their consistency. There is a common thread in what the...
Removing the Culture Killer
A single culture killer can disrupt the performance of everyone on your team, if you let that person's behavior persist. A culture killer is a person who's strong personality plus bad behavior combine to form a poison that slowly (or quickly) infects the output and...
