The Greatest Money Maker for Your Company
Posted on June 16th, 2008 in General, Grow Your Sales, Competitive Advantage, InnerCircle |
If Labor, driving time, vehicle costs and fuel are 4 of the largest costs your business has, then it is obvious that extending the time between visits, or lowering the number of people that go to the account, will have a huge impact on your bottom line. True, most companies visit accounts weekly. That is the way the system was originally set up some 60 plus years ago. Why was every 7 days the magic formula? No one seems to know, but the first company did it that way and everyone from that day on followed suit. Even after the first subirrigation product s showed up, the majority continued to go weekly. Over the years, I’ve tried to get companies to look at this practice. Most argue that if they switch there will be dire consequences. Oh, I’ve heard all the arguements.. "The clients expect to see me every week, the techs think they’ll have their hours cut back so they argue against it, every week service is what the clients are paying for, there will be higher plant death, clients complaint calls will skyrocket with the extra yellow leaves", and so on and so on. Yep, I’ve heard it all before and then some. But, truth is, there is nothing else you can do to make/keep more money than to lengthen the time between or spend less time on visits.
The Plants. Truth is more plants are killed by overwatering than underwatering, so those every week visits are not only not needed, but hastening your foliage to an early demise. Every other week is just fine. Saves Gas and saves Plants.
Teach Anticipation. You do have to teach your techs to "anticipate". If a leaf is yellow on the tip, trust me, it will not turn green in 11 days. Pull before not after. Once techs start doing this, they get really good at anticipation and client calls are negligible.
There are lot of other tips on 2 Week Maintnenance Strategies. Inner Circle Members will find them all in their next Inner Circle Newsletter and we will discuss when next we have an Inner Circle Conference Call. Its all in how you implement and how you manage the expectations of your client. Now, Go Out There and Get ‘EM, Tiger.
June 19th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Hello Barb,
I have made my case on interiorscape.com but would like to know what you think of it.
In my opinion biweekly visits are bad for the industry.
Short term I couldn’t agree with you more: it reduces your costs without necessarily interfering with the quality.
Long term here is what happens: because margins are up, before you know it prices will be drawn down little by little to a point where you get back to where you were. At that point you will need 30 or 40% more accounts to bring your total profit to where you had it initially.
I would say it’s a good solution for some accounts, those that are far away from any route and the very small ones but for the bulk of the accounts, I am not convinced to it’s a smart long term move.
Your turn.
Patrice
June 20th, 2008 at 10:06 am
Ah Patrice,
It’s all in the how it is set up. Bottom line is that with increases in fuel and labor costs and the difficulty in getting good employees, we have to do something and extending maintenance is the most obvious. In past years, even before increases in fuel etc, I advised ’scapers to do this and got a lot of flack. Then, they would try it and a few months later would call me with their profuse thanks. And, best of all, most of the horror stories they anticipated just never happened. Its up to each company to see how they can make it work for them. Meanwhile, Inner Circle members have access to conference calls in the future that will address this topic in depth. Barb