[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Grow show brought to you by Marty Grunder's Grow Group where we specialize in helping landscaping companies to clarify their platform, grow their people, build their processes and realize profits. Everything we teach is grounded in real experience. Our team is actively involved in the day to day operations of Southwest Ohio's Grunder Landscaping Company.
New episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays and are made possible with the support of Bob Yard. Remember to subscribe so you never miss an episode. Now here's your host, Marty Grunder.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Well, good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever the case may be. This is Marty Grunder from Grunder Landscaping Co. And the Grow Group. Thanks for downloading the Grow Show. Today we're going to talk to a super bright and very kind landscape professional from outside of San Francisco, California, Lauren McKervin from Allied Landscape. Lauren, give a wave. I know you're going to love this conversation, but first a reminder. You can get the latest edition of the Grow show delivered to your phone, tablet or computer by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts or Watch us on YouTube for an enhanced learning experience.
The Grow show is the greatest thing since my 91 year old stepdad, affectionately known as Papa Tom. The kids called him Papa John when they were little Tom and my late mother. God bless my mother in heaven. They were married 25 years and Papa Tom's an inspiration to me in many ways, folks. I recently played around the golf with him and my son and my son in law and man, can you imagine being 91 and you can still get around a golf course? Okay. Just insane folks. Here's to hoping I can enjoy life like he does at 91. I hope my lovely wife Lisa is with me if I make it that long. My stepdad misses my mom. I sure do too folks. But I'm glad I played golf with him again. Is there someone important in your life and that maybe a round of golf or lunch or a dinner or just a visit or even a phone call would be in order? Go do it now folks. Now onto the Grow Show. With me Today is Lauren McIrvin from Allied Landscape outside of San Francisco. Lauren, welcome.
[00:02:05] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:02:06] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit about yourself so people can get to know you before we start learning from you.
[00:02:12] Speaker C: Yeah, well like most landscapers, I kind of just found into landscaping. I did grow up in a landscape maintenance family, really small company. My mom and dad had something just south of San Francisco that were all of three guys, mostly kids working for mom and dad and really got to see the do's and the Don'ts just from a unique perspective.
When I graduated high school, I had an older brother who said, hey, let's go start a company. We can do this. So it's been a long road.
It's been a long road of trying to educate myself and stay true to the craft. I think what I learned most of all from my upbringing was my dad was a consummate kind of car salesman. He was definitely a confidence man. He was just comfortable in his own skin, or at least that's how it came across to me. And what I told myself at a young age is I'm never going to sell anything that I don't believe in. I'm never going to do. I'm never going to ask anybody to sell anything that I don't believe in.
So it's a good tee up for the conversation we're having today. The concept of making sure that you are a technical advisor and that you're offering value to the client. So a little bit about myself.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: Love it. Tell us a little bit about your family.
[00:03:24] Speaker C: I have my lovely wife, high school sweetheart, so we've been together 25 years now. I've got my Donnie, my son Donnie, 14, he's going to be moving into high school, so that's very exciting. And then my daughter Elle Will, who is 11, going on 12, and she's going to be moving into middle school. So a lot of transition, but the family's great. We just finished a great vacation together into the summer months here. So it's always great to hang out with the kids.
[00:03:53] Speaker B: I'm jealous. And I can tell you because I'm several exits ahead of you on the highway called life.
Those ages, that they're super fun.
I have adult children. They go from 32 to 25. That's fun. I got grandkids. That's fun.
You're a very thoughtful guy. I'm sure you're embracing it. So enjoy the ride. The question that I want to have answered today, Lauren, is how do landscape companies become the trusted asset manager instead of a maintenance vendor? Or maybe said another way, how do we turn landscape maintenance accounts into long term asset management partnerships? Lauren, you think that many of us are asking the wrong question in this.
And you think instead of saying, how do I sell more enhancements, you think we should say, how do I help clients manage one of their most valuable assets? I had the privilege of watching you teach a session at Elevate last year in Phoenix.
It was fantastic. And as I was watching you, I emailed our office.
Lindsay, that helps Me with the podcast. I said, you get Lauren booked on the Grow show. I'll see if he'll do it for me. I hope he will because it was great. So that's why we've got you here today. And I just want to have that conversation. So what does it mean when you say landscape? Landscapes should be treated as managed assets?
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, I think this comes down to messaging. And it's not just. It's not just messaging to our customers, which is very important. They're used to managing assets. They're used to looking at H vac paving. They're looking. They're used to looking at the envelope of the building as an asset. But messaging from the landscape industry in most cases is a little bit weak on that topic. And I'll speak for myself. I'm 21 years in. I can say I did not do this at first, but I always had that underlining from my childhood. Okay, I've got to believe in what I'm doing. Is this valuable? Does it make sense? So the concept for me was, well, a landscape is of value and it is an asset. And I need to quantify that a little bit. And I need to have the messaging and the tools and communication style that I can relay that to a customer. That makes sense. But what I would say is even more important, more important from a messaging standpoint is that the message is received by your team.
The mindset around adding value and not selling on the team level is incredibly important. If your culture is not simplified around the concept of us making and building and maintaining meaningful landscapes. That's the messaging we say with building and maintaining great partnerships. And that serves as a guiding point, a messaging internally for us. If we go to a client and we are explaining to them that landscapes are assets and that we have a plan to improve that asset.
And we don't have a partnership that understands. Well, from our culture, from our mission at Allied, we know that this is not a great partnership. This doesn't work.
So the messaging around asset management, adding property value, that is a critical component right out of the gates.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Tell us a little bit. And I was remiss in not getting this. Tell us a little bit about Allied, number of locations.
If you're comfortable sharing sales, Give us a little bit of cause. You've got a sizable operation.
And I want to give people. I want to make sure people are like, okay, now I get this guy. I really need to listen to him.
[00:07:35] Speaker C: Yeah. So I started in 2005. I committed myself to commercial landscape maintenance. It was Another hard lesson learned watching my family try to be the jack of all trades and not be slowly focused in a direction. So I concentrate on commercial landscape management in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. It's a large market, it's a very competitive market.
And the traffic, like many locations around the country, are just atrocious. So what that means is I do 22 million in revenue of that, about 50% of that is maintenance. And then everything tied to that in terms of upsells and in terms of everything else that we add on from irrigation management, from improving property value to tree care and the locations just based on traffic and is I need to have five locations, five little branches, we call them around the Bay Area just to deal with traffic. We are hovering around 225 employees, so it's enough to be a lot of headaches. But it's also of a size that we have a lot of support. We have a couple branch managers, we have some great account managers and some great production managers. So that's a little bit about the size and what we do.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: And I, I love how you framed that. I appreciate you sharing. And you mentioned before about partnerships. I think it's a mindset here that you're getting at. Why do you think most landscape companies struggle to generate consistent enhancement sales? You said of your 22 million, half of it. So 11 million May it's projects, but it's also enhancements. It's things that you've. I'm assuming that's your existing maintenance client base. That's where most of those jobs are coming from, right?
[00:09:21] Speaker C: It is primarily.
[00:09:24] Speaker B: Why do companies struggle to generate that?
[00:09:27] Speaker C: Yeah.
So again, I think it comes down to the mindset first and foremost and then secondarily putting together what we call a roadmap or a longer range plan. The concept of working with your client on either a one year, three year or four, five year plan helps them look at the property from a longer view and helps them budget and helps them go to ownership or stakeholders and explain, here's what we're trying to accomplish, here's how we're breaking it up over the next five years. And that becomes something to where you're not just chasing and sending out reactive proposals, you're actually setting up your year and. And it becomes much easier. You know the difference, Marty, between hey listen, let's all get together and let's, let's get some bids out for fill in the blank versus one, we have long term, long term plans and budgets set up with our clients and then that third Component which is really important is annual sales campaigns, right? Annual property improvement campaigns. This is the concept of us saying as a company, in January and February, we're doing this, and this is why we're doing it. And then in March and April, we're doing this.
This gives us an opportunity and gives any landscaper an opportunity to one, do some preliminary education by way of newsletter, by way of social media, all of, hey, this is what's coming. Here's what you should be focused on, right? And then by the way, we've got this locked away in your budget. And by the way, here's the proposal. You and then your operations team gets to benefit by having all of those tasks consolidated in certain segments of the year. So we can do all of, not just the education for the client, but educate the account managers on how to sell this or how to rather educate this. And then we can go to our operations and say, let's get safe, let's get efficient. We're going to be doing mulch. We know what to do. We've got to get everything in a row. But it all starts with one a good mindset, a good calendar, and making sure we're living that calendar and everybody understands why we're doing what we're doing at the company in terms of growth and why we're growing as a company. And then third, that the client has not only been educated, but also has been told a year ago, hey, this is what we're thinking about putting in your budget. And they've already got it earmarked. So concept of long term planning and a commitment to annual seasonal campaigns.
[00:12:05] Speaker B: I love what you're talking about here. And when you say we're telling you when to do that. So my guess is when you refer to this calendar, we're talking about an operational calendar. Like when do we have capacity laid out over a horticultural calendar? Like, we're not going to be. I know the, the climate is a little different in San Francisco and you don't get snow.
So, you know, there's a lot of folks listening to us here. Their budgets are blown by snow. Like if, if they get too much snow, there may not be enhancements to do, if that makes sense. But it's almost like the operational calendar laid over the opportunity. When we can do this, it's all those things on that calendar, right? Like when you're talking about when we can do it, part of it is demand to capacity, but also a big part of it is horticulturally. Like in Ohio, for example, late August and the month of September is when you seed. Like, that's your window. So that's when we're going out to all of our clients with aerating, top dressing, overseeding. There's a horticultural calendar. Is. Am I saying. Am I explaining the way you have it laid out?
[00:13:06] Speaker C: You're 100% right. And I have the. Well, I have the distinct benefit of not having the seasonality, a compressed season. Like you.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:13:15] Speaker C: That said, we. The concept of overlaying when you want it to land for operations and that it matches from an agronomic or horticultural calendar, and not only that, from a customer mindset. I see that critical. I think there's a psych. There's a psychological component that our customers in March come out of hibernation. They're like, well, you know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see X.
So the only thing that I would add to your layering of those, hey, here's operations calendar. Here's horticultural calendar. Here is customer mindset, where they're at psychologically. I get it.
[00:13:53] Speaker B: You're super smart.
[00:13:55] Speaker C: So then listen, I've got so many mistakes. It's just. That's what I committed to, is learning from each mistake. And if you do this game long enough.
[00:14:03] Speaker B: I know, and I. And I'm not patronizing you. I've had so much respect for you. Whenever we do a webinar, whenever we have a field trip, whatever we do, you're there. Like, you, you. And I'm grateful for the business, but I'm so impressed. Like, you're there, and you're there to learn. I still have a vision of you at a field trip. You came, and you were right there to the left of me, and you were engaged the entire time. Like, you're really into your business, and that's what it takes to get some of these systems in place. Like, you lay the groundwork, and then you kind of go out into the marketplace and say, okay, what are others doing? What are little things I can tweak here? So as I listen to you, I, you know, I have a question. Like, what does Lauren McIrvin think that property managers are really hiring us to do then.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, before. I just want to touch on that, because, Marty, I can, you know, not to patronize you, but at the end of the day, the concept of your tours and how many tours you have done. Yeah, that has been the greatest educational things that have occurred for me. It's picking up those tribal stories. Me visiting Grunder, me visiting all of the tours, primarily That I could attend. That you put on.
[00:15:14] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:15:14] Speaker C: It's just picking up those tribal stories. And that is the same way I educate my team around sales and it's. What are the little tribal stories from your peers?
We can't fly you around all over the country like I do. But I'll bring some stories home and we'll bring you to some of those events.
[00:15:32] Speaker B: Right.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: But we try to create a little microcosm of, hey, this is what's working for Veronica. Here's how she approached it. This is how she's educating. Right.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: 100. And you know about those tours. Lauren, just to digress just a second.
Sure.
You know, I'm getting to know you more and more as we do more stuff together. But I think you and I are a lot alike. Like sit me in a room and dim the lights and show me PowerPoint for eight hours. Like flipping. Shoot me. Like nobody wants to do that. Get me moving around. Do the experiential learning. Like share. You know, we try to find owners and we encourage them when we do these tours. Lauren, like talk about what you've screwed up. Like to your point about, I've screwed up so much stuff. It's unbelievable.
And anymore, Lauren, I'm not even. I'm embarrassed by some of it. But you've been around me a lot. Like, I talk pretty freely about my mistakes because those mistakes were golden learning opportunities. They really were.
So I just wanted to make that point back to what property managers are really hiring us to do. What are they hiring us to do?
[00:16:37] Speaker C: First and foremost, reduce risk. And that plays right into the concept of enhancement sales. They are looking for you to minimize and identify risk. Just period. That can be short term, acute risk and that could be long term risk. That could be tied to trip and falls.
That could be tied to compliance issues that are on. That's going to come up. Hey, there's this new law coming up. We need to do this. It could be operating expense. Hey, your irrigation system is so inefficient that it's going to pose a risk for you as costs increase.
So the concept of framing asset management or what I consider landscape management.
Okay, here's everything. Here's the risk and opportunities tied to it. So first and foremost, risk. Second, I touched on opportunity. I think one of the big things is they do not want surprises.
You have to be great at communication. So reduce risk, identify opportunity, make sure that we're great communicators and they are not surprised and look bad from their higher ups or their stakeholders.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:47] Speaker C: And then lastly, and this is a big one, make their job easy, right? Make their job easy. If you're an account manager listening and you're leaning into ChatGPT and you're giving them a dissertation or a three page email, you're not making their life easy. Right. You might be giving them all the facts, but ultimately putting ourselves in the client's shoes and how can we make their job easy? No risk opportunity and make their job easy for sure.
[00:18:15] Speaker B: And you know, I have found, last year I went out in a week and I visited seven large commercial clients. They all were very happy with us. I asked them, not all of them were present, but I got to talk to about four of them and I said, how's it going? Oh, you guys communicate great. It's just amazing.
Your men turn down their blowers when our tenants or our customers are walking by.
They're here the same time every week. They, they really, they don't try to get in the way. They're really nice people. And all of them, I had to say, well, how's the landscaping? And they were like, oh, that's great too. But your communication is what sets you apart. And it's just like, I was kind of like, wow, like you can be good at the landscaping part, but there's other ways.
Like to your point here, what you're alluding to, to make their job easy. And so my next question for you that I want to know how you've done is like, how do you get your account managers to think like advisors instead of salespeople? Like, how do you get them into that mindset to where they don't have commission breath? Like, you were talking about risk, you were talking about slip and fall areas, trip and fall areas, compliance issues. Like, how do you get them to take on the mindset of an advisor instead of a salesperson?
[00:19:31] Speaker C: Yeah. So you know what I'd like to put in front of the advisor piece is how do you get them to just create a great partnership? Because to me at Allied, the concept of being a humble, trusted advisor, in that order, is what's critical.
So before I want to teach my folks how to be great advisors, that's the final step. First, we want to teach them to be humble. The concept of turning down your blower when somebody walks by, that's what you should be doing. The concept of listening more than talking, that's what you should be doing. The concept of being on time is important. So the concept of being humble, being a good listener, having an emotional IQ that really matches the client is critical.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:20:16] Speaker C: Then the trusted piece, real simple, do what you say right now and believe in what you say.
Then we can get into what it is to be an advisor because we've. If we haven't earned the customer's trust, if we haven't shown them that we're good listeners and that we care about them and we care about the customer being successful and we know what they're trying to accomplish, the advisor piece is completely secondary. I see now the advisor piece that to me this is a training component and this is the most challenging component because it usually comes with 20 years experience. Right. How do I identify all those things?
So for us, it's a commitment to getting the account managers into regular trainings, meeting out in the field, identifying on different properties. Okay, what do you see? Okay, this is what I see.
So the concept of doing those trainings on identifying opportunities is critical. But I would start with the menu. Right. We talked earlier about having annual sales campaigns. Well, all of that is driven based on one, the problem that the customer might have or the opportunity that the customer might have. And then the solutions or the menu that we offer, training them on all of the menu items in terms of solutions or services that we offer that address those problems. Then it becomes here's problem, here's solution, and then one added piece. Who is my operational expert to be able to talk to that?
Our account managers, first and foremost are about owning the client and making sure that they have a great partnership and they're great listeners and great communicators.
But our account managers don't start by becoming landscape experts. What we care more about is them reaching out to resources internally and externally to get the answers.
So if anything, it's all about training. It's all about teaching the problem tied to solution. And then it's really about where do you go for added help. We can send our water conservation manager with you, we can send our enhancement operations manager with you. We can send a designer with you. The account manager should be excellent at managing the client. And then there's an operational piece that I keep somewhat separate.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: So these salespeople, that is the training, like if you hire somebody that doesn't have experience, but they have a great attitude and they're, they're humble. You said they're. You could see them being humble, you could see them being trusted, you could see them being advisor. Those were the three things that you said. How long before somebody's calling a client? I mean, is there an elaborate training program in place? What, what role do you play in onboarding them? Just talk a little bit about that, please.
[00:23:08] Speaker C: Yeah, so we have a meaningful first week, that's for sure. We throw a lot at them just so they, our company, what we're trying to accomplish, what our customers are and what they're trying to accomplish and what a landscape is.
So, you know, we prefer to build people from the ground up. As much as I would love to grab a graduate from byu, it is hard to get somebody to move to the San Francisco Bay area. Yep.
Moving to Cincinnati might be an easier thing.
[00:23:39] Speaker B: I don't know. It's not that easy either. I side with your comments there.
[00:23:44] Speaker C: Yeah. So we prefer to build them up. It starts with an intensive first week on just what is everything?
And then beyond that, they don't go client facing until a senior account manager has said, hey, I've had he or she follow me. They're shadowing, they're doing all of the, all of the functional system and administrative components for that senior account manager. So they learn everything behind it, but we make it to where they feel comfortable with it. And it's a slow kind of. Okay, I'm going to let you talk to the client this time. Okay. We're going to give you one account. We're going to give you 10 accounts. Right.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: So what at Allied, what separates or in the world according to Lauren, what separates a great account manager from an average one?
[00:24:33] Speaker C: First and foremost, they know what we're trying to accomplish at Allied. First and foremost, we are trying to accomplish great partnerships and they know what that means. Right. So for us, a great partnership is one, somebody who has, who knows themselves from a personality profile standpoint and knows customers from a personality profile standpoint. They know how to listen, they know how to communicate in a way that works with that person. I think I've heard you bring it up and I agree with it. It's the old kind of how to win friends and influence people.
[00:25:12] Speaker B: Right.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: So you got to know how to create relationships and those relationships need to turn into partnerships. That's before anything.
Once we feel like they've got that. If you are great at partnerships, then the secondary piece is you got to do the hustle. You've got to do two things. You've got to be great at communication and that's with reporting, that's with getting out there and making sure that the customer is not surprised, as I mentioned. And then it is. You have to be great at putting together plans and adding value.
So great partnerships, great at communication and great at planning and Showing value and creating what we call meaningful landscapes.
[00:25:54] Speaker B: Man, that's great stuff, folks. And now let's hear from one of the trusted partners that Grunder Landscaping Company works with.
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[00:26:36] Speaker B: All right, back here with Lauren McKervin from Allied Landscapes outside of San Francisco, we're having a awesome conversation.
In your presentation in Phoenix last year, you talked about the Allied road map, and I think I know what that is. I think you were briefing.
We touched a little bit of it, but I'd love for you to go a little bit more in depth on what that is and why it's been so effective.
[00:27:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's the concept of making sure the customers understand the what and the where. What are the assets? It's easy. And, you know, very close to landscape management is tree care. Right, Right. They're great about identifying where the assets are.
They're very great about saying, here's where our H vac unit's located. Here's its useful life. Here's what we think the preventative maintenance should be. Here's where we think it needs to be replaced. So it starts first and foremost by creating, by creating an inventory of the landscape. The concept of saying, okay, here's what we see the landscape as and creating those polygons within some type of asset tracking map, whether that's site recon or whether that's fill in the blank, whatever you can create as far as a visual digital tool on. Here's where all of the things are, and here's a value to those things. Here's the age of those things. Here's where we would think about. Here's where they are in terms of a risk. Here's where they are in terms of an opportunity. For example, we would go and take a look at our turf areas in California and say, well, here's your asset. Here's. Here's the turf.
Currently, it's at risk because we have a compliance law for our commercial and homeowners associations that they need to remove their turf and replace them with drought efficient plant material.
So identifying that one asset and being able to say, okay, before this law came out, this wasn't the top of our list. We had some irrigation stuff tied to the turf asset.
But now we've got a compliance issue. We have to get this on the budget. We need to start planning things out.
So the idea of a roadmap is trying to identify all of the assets that make sense. I would start small. Here's all of the irrigation controllers, here's all the irrigation valves, here's all the trees.
Here are groups of plantings at high visibility areas.
You don't need to include every little plant in there. But the concept is, okay, the customer has told us these key areas are very important from an aesthetic standpoint and those are going to become their own little asset.
So the what and the where and then how to maintain, that's the idea.
[00:29:27] Speaker B: When.
[00:29:28] Speaker C: But you can't do it unless you have an inventory.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
When you get a call or an inquiry on a new property and you tell us a little bit about the screening, I mean, because I'm listening to what you're doing. There's a lot of work with putting together a proposal with all of these one and three year plans. Even if there's not drawings, even if you're just like on your proposal saying, hey, this is an area that's been neglected. It's the back area where people go to smoke. It looks awful. You know, maybe it should just be cobbles, but there's some lower hang, you know, whatever you could, you could get into a lot of time into that. Do you wait to do that assessment until you've secured the contract or do you go ahead and propose all that with the hope that they look and say, my other landscaper never said anything about that. My goodness, look at this.
[00:30:21] Speaker C: So it's a little bit of both. But what I would say is that it's definitely holding back. Marty, at the end of the day, the concept of showing what we've done for other customers, ideally other customers that are in their trade, if we're talking to a facility management company, well, we're going to say, here's what we've put together for them so we can show them what the future looks like with us and then try to gauge are these before we secure the contract, before we secure our kind of reoccurring annual contract we're trying to assess, is this a good partner for us?
[00:30:55] Speaker B: I see.
[00:30:56] Speaker C: But you don't always get the opportunity to do that. And most people in the Bay Area and around the country have a commercial maintenance closing ratio between 35, 45%. If they're doing great.
[00:31:07] Speaker D: That's true.
[00:31:08] Speaker C: So we definitely do not waste our resources on that.
As far as doing everything in advance, I would consider that a mistake.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: Yeah, I would.
[00:31:17] Speaker C: So we show them what we can do by way of validation with maybe their peers in their particular industry.
Then once we secure the contract, the concept is in the first 90 days, we're trying to figure out if this is a good partnership for us.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: I see.
[00:31:33] Speaker C: And try to figure that out. We start going down the road and start going down the discussion. Fantastic, right? We, we don't give them the full laid plan. We. This is a collaboration to create this plan. And if they're not into it and we find out in the first 90 days, we will, we will self terminate our contract. I have a contract right now that this kills me. But it is a half a million dollars a year in HOA maintenance that we finished our 90 days and we said, we got to get out, we got to get out. We cannot finish creating all this stuff. The collaboration has not been right. And again, this, you know, this isn't me being smart. This is me being cut over and over, year after year, and saying, okay, we're gonna give them a fair deal, we're gonna try to collaborate with them. But the concept, either with your potential employees and potential customers to hire slow, fire fast, that's an important mantra for us, and it applies to customers just as much as it does employees. We try to hire slow. We try. We try to be methodical about gaining as much information to see if they're right for our company, both employee and customer. But then once you start the relationship, be dogmatic about trying to figure out, is this the right employee or is this the right customer? Not fire fast.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: Right.
So this is something we struggle with here. I don't necessarily struggle with it personally, and I'm still selling a small amount. I'm doing more coaching and mentoring and ride along.
So in the ride alongs, sometimes I end up like, if something's missed, I try not to step on my team. But I'll say, you know, something else we should talk about? You know, I'm not going to be completely quiet. I don't want to miss out on an opportunity. But one of the things our salespeople struggle with, and I'd just be curious, your perspective. How do you uncover opportunities that you. That you see that the clients should do without them feeling like oh, gosh. Lauren's on site again. That means he's going to have some $50,000 proposal to show me.
[00:33:36] Speaker C: Yeah, that's tough, right? Because on one hand, if you sat in my elevate training and we might touch on it here, there's the concept of we need to change the topic away from tasks and hay weeds and talk about bigger picture and improving property value.
[00:33:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:57] Speaker C: But what I would say is any account manager has to start with maintenance. The discussion has to start with maintenance. So we ask our account managers to go to any meeting an hour early, go out there, meet with their production manager, come up with everything that you need to do, and then start the meeting by saying, hey, just to start this meeting, I want to address just a few maintenance things for you before we talk about anything else. To show you, I've created a fair amount of work orders here. We're going to concentrate on the back 40. We've slipped a little bit back there. We're going to concentrate on the VIP section. We see some opportunities to kind of deadhead some roses out there.
Okay. Once you've gotten past that, now you've earned the right to talk about enhancements as far as I'm concerned.
But if you go in there with more questions than answers about maintenance, you're going to be talking about maintenance.
If you go into it and just start talking about enhancements and fancy things that you want to do over the next three years, meanwhile, there's humongous weeds in the VIP area in the black 40.
[00:35:00] Speaker B: That's commission breath.
[00:35:02] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So you need to engage and try to head it off by starting the meeting with, hey, I just want to run through a few things so you understand that first and foremost, my job is to preserve your landscape. That's our maintenance team.
Then we can talk about restoring and improving your landscape. But first is preservation. That's part of the maintenance contract. We want to maintain and preserve the value of your asset.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: It's fantastic. And this kind of leads really well into this.
In your presentation at Elevate Lauren, you had a slide that said protect the quarterback. Can you talk about this idea and why operations must support the account manager?
[00:35:48] Speaker C: Yeah, well, it's critical, and I think what it means, first and foremost, is that the company as a whole is behind the concept of growing enhancement sales.
Everybody has to understand the why behind that. We grow enhancement sales because of X at Allied.
Once they know that, and once the production manager or the operational side of the house understands that, hey, part of my job is to Protect the account manager or we're calling quarterback so that the quarterback can run plays to improve the value of the property, increase our overall revenue, increase the size of our company to allow everybody to have career paths that are heading somewhere. If we just hold on to jobs and we don't have commercial business developers out there trying to grow contract maintenance and if we don't have our account managers focusing on improving landscapes, we're going to get ourselves into trouble. So this is the concept of operations or the production manager making sure that we are doing everything we can to one in an acute fashion before a site walk that we know when sitewalks are coming up and that site's going to be prepped so they don't have to talk about weeds.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: I see what you're saying, right? Because a couple.
[00:37:06] Speaker C: Second, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, second. They should be involved in helping identify things. Some of these can be a win win thing for operations. They should be saying the irrigation system is awful. If I had one of those fancy self adjusting controllers. If we could upgrade and change these little sprinkler heads into MP rotators. Fill in the blank.
There's a. Or better yet, if we could get rid of this fast growing shrub that is right along the sidewalk, right underneath low hanging windows. How about we replace those shrubs with shrubs that are appropriately sized or ground cover that's appropriately sized. When you start teaching the why behind protecting the quarterback, you get the production side of the operations manager on board.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: I see. You know, and a couple thoughts come to mind. I we did a field trip in Chicago at a landscaping company in a partnership with nalp.
And one of the concepts made there was that, you know, sometimes I think salespeople are afraid to present opportunities and things.
And at the company we were touring, one of the sales managers said that you gotta look at that differently. Like you gotta look at the fact like you don't want the owner of the property to come in and ask the property manager why is that dead tree there? You know, and the property manager is gonna be like, God dang it, my landscaper didn't tell me about that. What's he doing?
So you know, all that protecting the quarterback and what you're talking about, it makes a lot of sense. Also, as I listen to you here, it reminds me of something Bob Grover said. Who I'm sure you know, Bob, we did an event at his place many years ago and he said on stage that our, our opinion here at Pacific Landscape Management is if we point something out to a customer, we probably have an opportunity to bill for it and for them to look at us as a trusted partner that we're helping them. If they have to point it out to us, we've lost leverage. They're wondering why they have us here and we might have to pay for it because we should have been caught that in the first place. And I just think those mindsets, Lauren, are critically important to looking like. You got to have your salesperson to understand the why.
To your point there.
[00:39:20] Speaker C: Yeah. And what I would say is, um, it's. It's a greater.
It's more than the salesperson. It is the operations side of the house.
[00:39:31] Speaker B: I get it.
[00:39:32] Speaker C: That concept is that same phrase. My branch manager says it all the time. One of my branch managers.
If we see it, they pay. If they see it, we pay.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. Right.
[00:39:44] Speaker C: And the concept of breaking our companies down into these small sayings. It's important, these small stories that you. That stick from listening to a Bob. Right.
So for me, and I'm going to be at Elevate this year talking about contracts, I'll be.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: I'll be in the. I'll probably be in the back, but I'm going to be in there listening.
[00:40:06] Speaker C: Well, it's the concept of this is a team sport. This is a team sport, and if you're not doing it as a team, it's just not going to work.
[00:40:16] Speaker B: Very true.
[00:40:17] Speaker C: The crew supervisor has to be a part of it. They have to understand the concept of we see, they pay, they see we pay. And the funny part is they pay the hardest price. Usually if we fall behind and we lose trust, they are going to micromanage our operations team in a grueling fashion for an extended period of time.
So, yeah, a team sport for sure. Whether or not we're talking about enhancement sales now, I'm going to be talking about contract sales and end of the year at Elevate. But it's about a team. It's about a team sport driven based on great culture and mission.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: And really, at the end of the day, Lauren, all this stuff that you've been talking about, it's about being a professional. It's about being proactive. When you're a professional and you're proactive, instead of an unprofessional, reactive individual, you lose leverage. If they have to keep telling you, what is this all about? Why is this way they're gonna. I don't need you anymore. Like, I gotta get somebody in here that's gonna take a better interest in what we're doing here.
[00:41:19] Speaker C: Yeah. And inevitably, with my company definitely included, we get those lessons because I see us.
It's one thing to talk a good game, but I can tell you these things slip through the cracks at my company all the time.
[00:41:33] Speaker B: Mine too.
[00:41:34] Speaker C: But the concept of us dirt saying, okay, what happened? Let's go back to the play. Let's watch the game tape. What happened? Let's get back to the fundamentals.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: You're an excellent teacher. I love the words, your cadence. I enjoy listening to you. We're going to wrap this up as we say, land the plane.
Lauren, finish this sentence for me. Okay.
The future of landscape maintenance isn't maintenance. It's.
[00:42:02] Speaker C: Yeah. So what I would finish that by saying is it's not maintenance, it's landscape management.
So for me, it's landscape management. And if you are treating it as asset management, you're going to get ahead of things and you're going to start using a language that fits with your client. Right.
So landscape maintenance. The future of landscape maintenance is landscape management.
[00:42:26] Speaker B: Is there anything that you hope every listener takes away from today's conversation? What is that?
[00:42:33] Speaker C: Yeah, you know, learn from your mistakes one small step at a time. At the end of the day, I would say there's.
For every two steps we take forward, we're taking a half a step, step back.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: I am.
[00:42:50] Speaker C: So I think, to me, this is.
Yeah, to me, this is a perseverance game. It's about everybody being on board, having some blameless problem solving and making sure that we're constantly working against the tide and just keep pushing to raise the bar. Whether that's on a company level, whether that's on an industry level, keep pushing. I love this industry. I love my team, and I'm pushing them to get better. But recognize that issues are going to come up along the way and we're going to learn from them.
[00:43:22] Speaker B: Well, Lauren, this has been a fantastic conversation. I look forward to seeing you at Elevate in Tampa. I'm going to come into your session, I believe, Lauren, and so do all of our listeners. Now, I think they have to believe that enhancement sales, they are the result of great asset management and great client partnerships, not just great salesmanship. And so I thank you. This has been awesome, to say the least.
You're a smart guy. You're a great teacher. I'm grateful for the sharing. Best of luck to you, Lauren.
[00:43:49] Speaker C: Thanks so much. Appreciate it.
[00:43:51] Speaker B: All right, folks, that's going to do it for this week's edition of the Grow Show. If you haven't done so already. Subscribe to the Grow show and subscribe and if you can give it a rating or share a comment that helps more success minded landscape professionals find us. And if you really want to help us share this episode with your team or any landscape pro you know, take out your phone right now or wherever you're listening to this podcast. Send it on to them. Ask them what they think. We'd love to have them listen to the Grow Show. Thanks for joining us on the Grow show this week. We'll talk to you next week.
[00:44:21] Speaker A: Join Marty and the Grow Group team at Grunder Landscaping Co. This year we host GLC Field Trip events at our living Laboratory, Grender Landscaping Co. Where we show you how we operate and how you can too. This event features small groups so you get the one on one attention you need and features a full 27 hours on site at GLC where we dive deep into everything from operations to sales to administration.
Find more information and sign
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