Best Practices

Dancing days

These crucial steps got Duke’s Landscape Management moving in the right direction.

Eric Cross was 45 years old, and he had owned his company for more than a quarter of a century, had built it up from nothing.

He wanted to make it great.

So he rented a hotel ballroom, and he filled it for what he referred to as a town-hall meeting with every one of the employees he had hired at Duke's Landscape Management. Be early, he said. Look nice, no jeans. Take notes. And then he and the rest of his team shared every bit of information about performance and profits and outlooks. He had been preaching to them to work harder, to work smarter, to be safe out there. In that ballroom, he told them why.

"Nobody knew the big picture except me and a couple of managers," Cross says. "So we started to talk about how we were doing. Safety, client retention, gross sales, profit. That was the beginning. We were either going to make this a great company again, or we were going to go out of business."

That meeting provided a proverbial and literal turning point for Cross and Duke's. Three years ago, with about three dozen employees on board, and another three or four dozen added each spring, the company booked about $3.5 million in sales. Now, with an identical number of folks in the offices and out in the field, the company booked $5.2 million. How? How could a company in suburban New Jersey – headquarters are in Hackettstown, with a planned move this year to a LEED certified building in Mount Olive – increase its sales nearly 50 percent in three years? In this environment?

How about we start with football? Cross played the sport at Delaware Valley College in the early 1980s, a tight end by trade, and he likes to highlight similarities between landscape businesses and football teams, the parallels apt. "You have a season and an offseason," he says. "You have your team and your strategy, you have a coach, you have a score." One of the many things Cross did to prepare for the town-hall meeting was to slap the company logo on a football helmet and ask his employees to vote whether they had just finished a good season. He offered up different records like 10-0, 3-7, 0-10. Most said yes, the season had been a success, they had finished 10-0, best in the business.

Then Cross broke down the numbers. The company had scheduled about 3,500 hours over budget.
 

Read what Cross did next and sign up for our monthly A Cut Above e-newsletter for maintenance contractors at www.lawnandlandscape.com/newsletters.

Matt LaWell

 

An argument for sustainable landscapes

Fockele Garden Co. is in the business of saving customers water.

Mark Fockele wound up in the green industry because it was something he truly loved, but it wasn't the career path he'd always been on. In fact, he went to law school and practiced law for 10 years before even starting his landscape business. "I found out law wasn't the career for me," says Fockele, who now owns The Fockele Garden Co. in Gainesville, Ga. "But whenever I wasn't at work, I was outside, doing a lot of gardening work. It was something I really loved. So about 21 years ago, I decided to make a big change."

Though he didn't know much about running a professional landscape business, Fockele threw himself into the industry and started working from the ground level up. He hired a couple of laborers and began to slowly pick up landscape work. Today Fockele's company brings in more than $3 million in revenue and is 45 percent maintenance work and 55 percent installation for a 60 percent commercial client base.

In the early years, Fockele says business was one huge learning experience. "For a long time, just about every project I did required learning something new since I didn't have any professional background in the field," he says. "But I learned as I went along. I learned stone work, drainage and irrigation, plantings of various kinds, how to do water features and more. I learned it all on the job."

Today Fockele has become a leader for offering sustainable landscaping practices that are still new to many. But Fockele says that it's been yet another learning experience for him. While the company has become well known for these offerings, he says they essentially "stumbled" into such techniques with one intuitive client.

"A very forward-thinking customer of ours asked if we could build a rainwater collection system," says Fockele. "This was five years ago, so she was ahead of her time. It was the first system we'd ever put in, but it was very successful. She wanted a rainwater system that she could use to water her gardens. And in 2007, when Georgia had a total water ban, she never ran out of water. She was able to keep her garden in good condition throughout the entire ban – relying only on rainwater. That was an eye opening experience for us."

Read the rest of Fockele’s story and sign up for our Water Works e-newsletter for irrigation contractors at www.lawnandlandscape.com/newsletters.
 

Lindsey Getz

Successful by design

Borst Landscape & Design has maintained a strong business by focusing on its strengths. 
 

Landscape firms in the business of building dream backyards have been slapped with a reality check in the last couple of years. While clients are "vacationing" at home and outfitting their properties to provide a getaway experience, often their budgets for these accommodations are more economy hotel than luxury villa. There are always exceptions, but generally speaking, Mark Borst has also watched the price tags on his award-winning design/build projects drop over the years.

That doesn't mean that profit is suffering, though. Borst still expects an average of 15 percent on each job. And he is still producing the highest-quality work, garnering recognition from PLANET as a 2010 industry Trailblazer for his longevity and success in the hardscape and landscape arenas.

The key to maintaining steady, strong business at Borst Landscape & Design, Allendale, N.J., is three-fold: delivering outstanding customer care; focusing on strengths (and subcontracting the rest) and managing projects so the end result is always high-quality.

Here is how Borst focuses on its strengths:

Borst Landscape & Design acts as a general contractor for the outside of the home. Crews do most of the work, but there are some components on a job that Borst won't touch, namely irrigation and lighting. "I've learned my limitations and what we're good at," Borst says. "We are good at doing hardscape and interlocking pavers, bluestone work, drainage – and the irrigation is stuff I don't want to get my guys caught up in, nor do I want to start another division."

So Borst will coordinate irrigation jobs, but his crews don't perform the work. "I surround myself with good contractors," he says. "We have our liaisons."

For instance, Borst Landscape & Design will sub out an asphalt driveway or hire a mason to build a sophisticated barbecue. But foremen, and ultimately Borst, will oversee that work. "We realized we can't be all things to all people," Borst says.

That said, Borst doesn't like to say "no" to any landscape design project. "We do everything that comes in our door," he says. That means taking on $10,000 planting jobs and near-million dollar outdoor rooms.
 

Read how Borst handles customers and sign up for our monthly Business Builder e-newsletter for design/build contractors at www.lawnandlandscape.com/newsletters.

Kristen Hampshire

Constant contact

Your Green Team has grown by paying close attention to customer communication.

Unfortunately, one of the worst stereotypes about contractors is often true: Even good ones can find themselves too busy to communicate with their clients between service calls. Feeling stood up, customers begin to wonder if they're truly getting their money's worth; even worse, they become vulnerable to competitors' pick-up lines.

Yet contractors do have the power to keep their clients from acting like a jilted boyfriend or girlfriend. Successful companies build strong relationships with their customers by communicating with them effectively.

Just ask Kevin Igoe, co-owner of Your Green Team (YGT), a lawn and landscape company in Plant City, Fla., that specializes in fertilization, plant and tree care and pest control. Igoe and his partner, Shane Karlson, have developed tried-and-true techniques that have earned them near-perfect marks on customer surveys.

"It's the personal touch of being communicated with regularly," says Igoe. "Our customers can't say they never hear from us; they hear from us all the time."

It's not just that YGT employs friendly technicians that explain lawn treatments while standing on customers' doorsteps. Nor is it simply the educational "Time Out Cards" that are provided to clients after a service call. No, what clinches the deal is the personal follow-up call from Karlson or Igoe within two weeks. They inquire about customers' satisfaction and if needed, take additional steps to ensure they're happy.

It's time-consuming, yes, but evidence shows that it's working: Since YGT was founded three years ago, it has grown 45-60 percent per year to more than $1 million dollars in annual revenue. Although the Tampa metropolitan area remains a highly competitive market for lawn and landscape companies, business continues to flourish.

"You don't find many people that communicate well in this industry," Igoe says. "The number one customer complaint is, 'Once I signed up, I never heard from them anymore.' We want to be a good, honest company focused on customers. To do that, Shane and I make sure we reach out to our customers personally."

YGT's Time Out cards help to explain basic problems such as worms, Chinch bugs or funguses. If a customer is not home or reachable by phone, techs leave a Time Out Card with the invoice to ensure the client stays informed about their treatments.

Karlson and Igoe also track Time Out Cards on a daily basis, using the laptops that are installed in every truck. When they place follow-up calls to customers using this system, they're able to reference specific treatments.

Read more about how YGT communicates with customers and sign up for our monthly Growing Green e-newsletter at www.lawnandlandscape.com/newsletters.

Lee Chilcote