Three Warning Signs That You Need To Organize Your Lawn Business

Owning and running your own business is a bit of a roller coaster ride.

It’s fun at times, stomach churning at others, and packed full of ups, downs, twists and turns along the way.

All of those experiences play out in the life cycle of your business.

Author and business coach Les McKeown provides a great explanation of the business life cycle in his book, Predictable Success.  In the book, he covers the seven stages of the life cycle as shown below.

See that section called white-water? That’s what we want to cover in today’s post.

It’s a painful and exhaustive time in your company filled with chaos, a lack of organization and structure, dropped balls, and poorly assigned tasks, and it’s when most businesses die.

Now that you know what whitewater is, how do you determine if your landscape or lawn care company is in this churning cauldron of frustration and, better yet, how do you get out?

Here are three warning signs your lawn care, tree service, or landscape company might be in whitewater.

1. You find yourself repeatedly responding to the same recurring problems.

Example: Billing information for various jobs never seems to make it to the billing department in an efficient manner.

2. Customer response is consistently falling through the cracks.

Example: Sending emails and thank-you letters to customers is sporadic.

3. Bottlenecks with people or jobs are creating inefficiencies.

Example: An inability to prioritize jobs is increasing the fuel costs for your crews.

Those are just a few examples.

How do you get out of whitewater? Systems!

What is a system? According to Dictionary.com, it is “any formulated, regular, or special method or plan of procedures.”

Notice the words “formulated”, “regular”, and “plan”.

These four tips will help you organize your lawn business.

(Take a deep breath…it’s actually not as hard as you think)

1. Make an “I wish” list. Here are some examples:

– I wish there was a way to better coordinate my tree service crews in the field
– I wish we had a better way to file and keep track of our invoices
– I wish there was a better way to follow up with customers

Think in terms of outcomes or “wins” and not vague ideas like “I wish we had more customers.”

Another way to identify what needs to go on your wish list, is to make a list of recurring problems that happen in your company.

Recurring problems are a symptom of something that needs attention.

2. Get key stakeholders together to map out and discuss how to improve those problem areas. Why is this important?

The people who are impacted by the system, need to have input into the system.

3. Put it on paper.

This makes sure everyone is on the same page and ensures nothing was lost in translation.

4. Automate, automate, automate!

This is where lawn care service software (like Arborgold) is a lifesaver. You can streamline every system your business needs to run smoothly.

This eliminates inefficiency, saves your company a ton of money, and just makes everyone’s lives a lot easier.

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Interested in learning how Arborgold software can automate your lawn care company?  Request a live demo here, or call us at 812-269-8402. We’d love to speak with you!