It may not feel like it but the spring madness is getting ready to slow down but it is. And that's a perfect time to iron out your systems and focus on your profits as the season rolls on. Knowing your employee efficiency, man hour ratings, and revenue reports can [...]
The Benefits of Using Account Updater for Your Recurring Billing Customers As a lawn care or field service business owner, it’s not uncommon to put your regular customers on a recurring billing schedule. Doing so allows you to easily accept payments in the future — without requiring your customers to [...]
If you're unfamiliar with H-2B labor, it's a visa that you can get to bring in foreign workers to do seasonal temporary work that American workers don't want to do.
You've probably heard quite a lot about this on the news, especially since we're coming off of the holiday season. However, for this industry, our busiest time is coming soon.
Let's talk about using GPS trackers in your lawn care business. The Hard Sell on GPS devices You've seen the ads. You've likely had an encounter with the pushy salesperson. They probably hit you with the hard sell, too. "Just think! You can hide it out of sight, they'll never [...]
I know that even though it's March, a lot of you still have snow, and it's probably starting to feel like Spring will never come. However, you should view the snow as a blessing, because you'll have a little extra time to get your records in order and manage the [...]
It's almost springtime and that means you're going to be doing spring cleanups soon. That's a good thing because usually they're very profitable. In fact I know a couple of companies that all they do is spring and fall cleanups and they don't mow grass. We've been talking about piecework [...]
Delegation. I often joke with people that my spiritual gift is delegation. I like to tell people what to do and give them the power to do it. Delegation is an essential thing because unless you want to continue to do what you're doing and be involved in every different [...]
At the beginning of the partnership, take a moment to step back and think logically. Ask your partner what you’ll need to do if you decide to undo this partnership. Decide who will owe money, who they’ll owe the money to, and how much they’ll owe so that you can dissolve the partnership.
What sort of winter work do you typically do to get you through those cold months? Are you afraid of losing good employees? Maybe you're just scared of cabin fever. Either way, these tips will hopefully give you some ideas of what you can do during the long winter months. [...]
How can you tell when an employee has maxed out? Learning your employees' limits I thought a lot about this many years ago, and this little scenario came to mind. Let's say I hire a brand new employee into my company. I go to them and ask them to go [...]
No matter what, you should always be thinking about your exit strategy.
Considering the pros and cons of surcharges; yes, you make more money, especially with something like fuel. It's obvious, it's public, people drive past the gas station, and they see the price. It's an understandable expense that you could probably get away with adding to a bill.
On the other hand, creating customer loyalty can't be undervalued. Creating a nice, even, and boring business has a lot to be said for it.
You've probably noticed if you've been using CLIP that everything in CLIP is based on man-hours. Here's how to use CLIP to pay with Piecework.
Last week we introduced you to Piecework, or if you've been around a while, refreshed your memory. This week we're going to talk about how CLIP helps you pay with Piecework. You've probably noticed if you've been using CLIP that everything in CLIP is based on man-hours. You have a [...]
If you're like most landscape companies, especially this year, labor is hard to find. And motivating your employees to do that labor is even harder sometimes. Piecework can help make motivation a non-issue. We wrote a book on piecework and all of this information and a lot more it's in [...]
We've been talking about raising prices on your customers, the importance of job costing, and contracts. So now we're going to get to the next step; how do we actually do the job costing? This is probably the easiest topic, but it's the main thing you will need to determine [...]
Which lawn service customers should I raise prices for? A Tale Of Two Customers Let's say you have a customer called Maryland Institute for Education. They're a bit of a commercial customer. When you do the job costing report in CLIP, you find out that you're making$65 per man, per [...]
We're just about ready to get into winter time. Now is the time when most people sit down and say "Hmm, I should have made more money last year and I didn't." One way to make more money is to raise your lawn service prices, right? If everybody pays more, boom, [...]
You operate in the same neighborhoods all the time, sometimes weekly, and that makes them the best place to market your lawn care business locally. That's a ton of time your crews spend in a specific area, making impressions on neighbors and customers alike. Also, if you can attract more [...]
You have a full schedule each day — managing operations, running your crews, making your customers happy, handling emergencies, etc. This likely leaves you with little time for other things that come up. Something you likely don't have time for is collections. Collections Collections are necessary for any business and managing the process [...]
