From plantscapers all over the country I hear that business is tough and getting tougher.  New jobs are fewer and with fewer plants, clients are cutting back, competitors are going in to accounts and offerring to do the work for less and, to top it all off, your costs, particularly fuel, just keep rising. 

What to do??  Well, it doesn’t help if you just keep doing business as usual.  Nope, extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures.  You’ve got to focus on two solutions.  First, you need to be increasingly attentive to your existing client base and, second, you’ve got to go out there and get more Sales.  Now I know you’ve been doing this all along, so what is new or different?  What more can you do? 

Start by drawing up a Game Plan for existing client relations.  If you are covered up with work and time is critical, look around and see if one of your supervisors or other sales persons can help.  The two of you can divide and conquer.  Draw up a list of clients and put them in order of desirability.  The ones that pay the most, the ones that are the most profitable, and the ones you just like the best.  Divide the list between you and take one day a week to "do the list".  Keep notes and get ready for some extra work as the clients will use this opportunity to not only ask that a plant or two be replaced but, also, add a few.  As for Sales, you have to shake things up, try something new.  If you have been thinking about joining a new Leads group or the LEED group, stop thinking and just do it.  Or, if you’ve been thinking about approaching the tenants in that new office park, just do it.  One ’scaper told me that he has been thinking about doing this in his city but the property managers of the buildings will not permit solicitors.  OK, figure out a way around that.  Get creative.  Walk into the lobby of each building, look on the directory and copy down all the names thereon.  Then go back to your office and look up these names either in the phone boales ok or on the web and get the phone numbers and do a phone sales blitz.  Will you get some appointments?  Probably.  Will you get appointments if you do nothing?  Nope. 

For most of us Sales is the part of the business we like the least.  Many of you woukld much prefer just being with the plants.  I know, but in todays world you just have to take the bull by the horns.  Jobs are just not going to come in over the transom.  You MUST get out there….on the firing line.  Now go out there and get ‘em, Tiger.