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 Gary LaScaleaWhat is new with GroGreen since you won the Leadership Award in 2001?
We’ve had some pretty dramatic growth. We’ve gotten into the pest control side of the business. Ever since I won the Leadership Award, our years have gotten better and better and better. This year (2010) was probably the best year the company has ever had.
My concern is there are a lot of people struggling with the economy, and I know it depends on the marketplace – certain areas of the Midwest where it’s still industrial people just don’t have jobs – but I also think we, as businesspeople in our industry, can’t look around, and cry, and feel sorry about things, and blame things on the economy.
You have to be creative. A lot of times that creates a lot of other opportunity as well.
How do you maintain GroGreen’s growth momentum?
We get our technicians involved with the sales process. I think some companies have separate sales people. What we’ve learned over the years is that may get you more sales, but your customer retention isn’t as good.
We call it route ownership. “This is my route. This is his route.” What he sells he has to service, so he’s going to show more ownership that way. If a sales guy is selling something, sometimes they sell things wrong, they sell things too cheap, they make promises or the expectations might not be what it should be, and the one who is going out and doing the service has to try to follow through on that.
The technicians do all of the selling. We do the marketing and we give them the leads.
Then you incentivize them to pick up their own leads as well with next door neighbors and people they run into when they’re out in the field. There was a time when the industry was real telemarketing driven. They would get people to make phone calls off of different listings every evening. Sometimes those sales and customers you would get that way were high pressured and your retention wasn’t real good.
When and why did you decide to add pest control to your list of services?
It’s been five years now. ... I’m an old Ohio guy born and raised in Cincinnati, and you just don’t have the insect activities up there that you have in the south. You get people up there that say, ‘I don’t want you to spray anything; I’m worried about this and that.’ Here you have roaches. No one wants roaches in their home. You have ants. You get scorpions. There’s a lot more pressure. When you build trust with your customer and you’re servicing their lawn, servicing their trees and shrubs, if you’re talking to them, they need to use somebody for pest control. They’d rather use one company than separate companies.
I’ve seen in our industry where there are some pest companies that have tried to get into the lawn care end. That is a real tough transition for them.
They don’t seem like they’re able to grasp it as well because you’re talking bigger trucks, and it takes more expense, and it’s just a tougher industry to be in than actual pest with smaller trucks.
It seems like the transition for us is just an add-on, just like doing fire ants, or just like doing a certain grass or weed control or grubs. Doing pest isn’t really much more difficult. Raising the average value of customers has been a real growth opportunity.
What is your take on how the industry will recover from the latest recession?
I moved here from the East Coast in the mid-80s, end of ’86, and the economy in Texas was pretty bad at that time. ... But I was looking back and saying, well, we’re still showing growth in our industry because people still want to take care of their homes, they want to maintain their homes, and really the cost of what we do on a lawn isn’t real expensive.
You’re talking something that is averaging $350 a year compared to a full-service landscape.
Maybe people didn’t want to buy new landscape, and do landscape improvement, and add new beds or add new decks – that sometimes can be a considerable investment. I think those are the companies that will struggle during tougher times. Maybe someone won’t go buy an expensive car or take an expensive vacation. The American dream is to take care of their homes, and they want to maintain them.
You just have to be out there to ask for their business and stay competitive. When times do get tougher, you have to make sure you’re giving the best business and your people are attuned with that. You’re really watching that so (customers) know who you are, and what you’re doing, and you’re showing them true value.
Where do you see the industry in 2020?
I think it’s easy sometimes for people to think that the industry is showing a decline, but I think there’s still opportunity for growth. Seeing the year we’ve had, this year in particular, it shows me the growth opportunity is out there. But you still have to be making your changes and staying on top of your marketing and being involved in your community. We’re selling a service business, and if you show value, and you really market that value, and you build your name, you have to continually do that.
(There are) a lot of issues about regulatory things and fertilizers and different chemistries and pesticides and so forth. That has been an issue ever since the industry started. It’s just a matter of being responsible. I always hear the comment, ‘Don’t take a risk because you don’t want something to go wrong.’ We had an issue with a house when I was in Maryland. There was a company that was spraying trees, and they weren’t paying attention, and the (customer) had some windows open, and the spray drifted through a window, through a screen onto a baby and it caused chaos in the media and so forth. Those are things you really have to be responsible for and don’t take risks that cause the industry some bad publicity.
The service is needed out there, and I think people will pay for it. When I say the word pesticide, I try to get that word out of our vocabulary. We don’t use that word in our company. That’s what some of the environmentalist like to do. They like to look at everything skull and cross bones, and pesticides, and chemicals, and they’re anti this and that. You don’t like to use those kinds of words because then people take them the wrong way.
We talk about control products, weed controls, insect controls. ‘We’ll take care of your insects.’ It’s not a matter of saying, ‘Yeah, we’ll use this insecticide.’ You don’t want to use words that sound like they kill things. If anything, in our pest it’s helped a lot because we try to do more pest prevention where we’re treating the outside and around the home so that the insects don’t go inside.
Do you have any last advice?
My success in the industry all of these years I think is (because) I’ve always been known for taking care of our people. That is what you have to do. They have to be with you. Sometimes you hire so many guys, and you don’t care if you can keep them around or not and there’s a big turnover. We have people in our routes who have been there for many years and our customers know them so well.
Your guys can’t just go out and just do the lawn, or do the pest, and put a bill on their door. They have to knock on the door. They have to talk to the customer. They have to know the name of the dog. You have to have that first name basis.
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