After Memorial Day my wife and I flew to Edinburgh (joined by her girlfriend) for a week long drive up into the Highlands.
We had many eye-opening experiences, here a couple that you may find interesting and insightful:
Did you know that you can use “throughput” to guide your sales team on which sales to go after, and even how to price them?Here is a brief case study, with a resource (podcast) at the bottom for you to learn more. Using Throughput To Your AdvantageI met this spring with a green roof company. (They had been to many of my events and finally pulled the trigger to meet with me.) The two owners brought their team to NOLA where we performed a two-day strategic review of their entire business, top to bottom. When we got to the financial analysis, we uncovered something interesting.
Landscape professionals are always asking me “What is the best incentive?”
While that answer depends on the company situation, the best overall incentive is to empower your employees with “trust” in the form of more information.
One of the best ways to do that is with Open Book Management.
In March, I wrote that the common industry expression “100 days of hell” should be changed to “100 days to sell.”
It’s more upbeat and helps your team stay optimistic in tough times.
Here are two quick tips to keep you sane and selling in the 100 days of sales.
Last week I shared two things that Mariani does uniquely well.
Here is the third thing they do uniquely well: Selling “premium specialty services” which helps to keep their clients “sticking” around.
Below are 3 examples, plus I explain “what it means for you.”
It’s a brilliant strategy, and one that you can copy.
(Note: Today’s the last day to get the super early bird discount for the Summer Growth Summit.)
Mariani’s Premium Specialty Services.
It’s not enough to do a great job serving your clients with commoditized landscape services.
It helps to find opportunities for additional services that go above and beyond your competition.
Mariani does this well.
For anyone who watches the show, Shark Tank, you have learned how the Sharks love companies with a unique, hard-to-copy product. It’s even more important for the Sharks that this uniqueness is translated into strong sales and profits.In prep for my Summer Growth Summit, I asked the marketing director at Mariani Landscape, Andrew Gross: What does Mariani do uniquely well? He shared with me 3 eye-opening answers.Over the next two weeks I am going to share those responses with you, in two parts. Here is Part 1.Note, I have included my own assessment on “What it means to you.”
In order to succeed in this economy, someone needs to be in charge of building your sales team: Hiring, Motivating, Steering and Managing. You need a Professional Sales Manager to do all this. The funny thing about Sales Management: You can’t study it at school, there are not many books about it, and a great many sales managers are really salespeople pretending they enjoy managing. For those of you who are dedicated to this mysterious trade, here are few practical updated tips from my Sales Symposium, that I held last year: 7 Tips To Improve Your Sales Team’s Performance:
Mike Bogan returns for a follow up podcast to dive deeper into the nuts and bolts of Landcare. Mike shares with Jeffrey the business philosophy of People First that drives their growth. Jeffrey and Mike discuss Landcare's core values, purpose and systems, high...
Grace can play a very powerful role in your business, and separate you in a crowded market.
Last week I wrote about my client and friend, Kevin Werbrich, who uses grace when firing employees and when they quit.
He reported that his grace-based “Red Carpet Exit” has created a backlog of past employees who want to return to his company.
He has filled and “re” filled many foremen and high level positions with men who have grown up and learnt their lessons.
They return better people.
It takes real vision to consistently give people the benefit of the doubt and invest in them right as they leave your firm.
As I reflect on the year ahead, I like to make sure we bring along the important lessons from the previous year.
Because “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905.
The year was tough enough, lets learn from the experience.
HERE ARE MY SIX IMPORTANT LESSONS FROM 2022
