TALKING BUSINESS: Good to Great

Seven years ago, Rob Palmer started Weed Pro Ltd., specializing in fertilization, weed control and ornamental services. He’s built his business by partnering with local landscape companies such as Schill Landscaping in Sheffield Village, Ohio, to outsource their chemical needs. Since the partnership, Jerry Schill’s business has soared from $200,000 to almost $5 million in annual revenue. The business partners  – and office neighbors – sat down with Lawn & Landscape editor Margaret Hepp to discuss how they’ve profited from reinventing themselves.

How did your businesses come together?
Jerry Schill: We started out doing fertilization in-house. We got into some of the lean processes, looking at ways to become more competitive in the marketplace as we expanded our footprint. But then we decided the amount of overhead and the dollars we spent managing the fertilization side of our business was getting out of alignment with what we were doing. It wasn’t something we had a passion for.

But our job is to make properties look great. So, through networking – we’d known Rob for years – we were able to sit down and say: ‘You offer probably the best service in our marketplace. How can we partner together?’

If you’ve ever read the book “Good to Great,” you know about the hedgehog concept: Do one thing and be great at it. That was the philosophy we took when we approached Weed Pro to take over the fertilization side of our business. Our organizational structure allows us to interact with them on a daily basis. Weed Pro is almost like an extension of our organization without all the overhead expenses. We have a much better product allowing Weed Pro to do what they’re great at than we would have ever gotten doing it in-house. We have 16 agronomists on staff at Schill that really are Weed Pro people. What we’ve done is we’ve actually used that, from a marketing standpoint, with our client base to say, “Look, we readily admit that this isn’t what we’re great at.” It’s a product we offer, but we understand that these are the professionals. Our organizational structure allows the integration of minds to collaborate and come up with effective solutions. We would never go back to doing it the traditional way.

In this economy, we provide a service that’s needed on the commercial end of things. We’re stronger working together than against each other. Rob’s technicians know more than I do about lawn care, which is fantastic. They offer services to us. They can meet the clients with us and serve as representatives – and likewise.

Rob Palmer: From top to bottom, we’ve always considered ourselves a department. We’re friends with a lot of these guys. Schill will talk to my technicians on days more than I do. When we’re on properties, it’s the same thing. If I’ve got guys who are doing nothing but fertilization, we can keep our costs minimized, keep our training focused and keep our advertising costs focused. We’re not out to do a lot of things okay. We do a few things very well, and we’re just focused on that. We have a fairly streamlined process and we stick to it.

Why does this partnership work so well?
RP: You can’t work for people who don’t have the same quality intentions you do. I’ll give you an example. I’ve been in this position seven years and early on, you want work, you want work, you want work. So you work with a guy who says, ‘Do round one and round two of fertilization, but then don’t do round three though six.’ What ends up happening is our trucks are on a property that doesn’t look so good later in the year. The client might have had a contract that dictated four to six applications, but that landscaper was trying to save money by only having us do two. And we’ve been burnt. I still, to this day, seven years later, have a management company in this area that’s hesitant to give me any work because I was working for a landscaper who had me do a single application. I did it, not knowing that contractor was supposed to be providing five or six applications on that property. The management company now thinks that I don’t do a good job because of the way that property looked. I probably should have immediately gone right to the source and confessed the contractor’s negligence, but there has to be a trust between us. What I’ve found in five years is that I can’t work with people like that. I can only work with people like Schill Landscaping who will do all five or all six applications in a contract. Then, they can hold me accountable. I have to work with contractors who are trustworthy.

JS: I think a lot of it, too, has to do with the fact that we do what we do because we love doing it. My goal is to provide green, weed-free, wonderful-looking properties. There might be a lot of subcategories to get to that point – profitability’s huge – but if we can’t make a profit and provide the level of service we want to provide, there’s no point in doing it. Rob and I share the same compelling vision of what a property’s supposed to look like. There were times my company wanted too much, and Rob’s guys said, ‘Let’s settle down.’ Or they say, ‘We’re selling a complete tree and shrub program,’ and we say, ‘No, let’s do an IPM program.’ We’re out doing routine visits and actually looking at things together, instead of over-applying or putting products down for economic reasons rather than agronomic reasons. Those types of solutions are hugely beneficial when you sit down with a client. Rob’s guys are training us and we’re training them. It’s a powerful relationship.

RP: It’s a win-win, because again, we hold each other accountable. I’m an independent set of eyes, and he’s an independent set of eyes. If I’m doing something wrong, he’s going to let me know. If we see something on their property, we’re certainly going to let them know. It’s a competitive world and we can all work together. It’s better for all of us.

So why is it beneficial for you, Jerry, to follow through with the complete five- or six-application program in a contract?
RP: That’s a good question! I’d like to know the answer to that. [Laughs.]

JS: We’re simply delivering what we promised. There are contractors who will over-promise and under-deliver. We’ve built our reputation on providing great service. That’s the way we were brought up. We have properties where the applications are in excess $4,000 or $5,000 per application. When the economy gets tight, it’s easy to pull back $10,000 worth of application. It’s easy to pull that stuff out and get away with it. Unfortunately for Rob’s position, that would be bad because he has material and labor sitting around. Maybe he can get through it, but it’s not what we do. We’re just simply doing what we say we’re going to do. It’s a commitment I made to Rob. We sat down and worked out how this marriage was going to work, and he promised me super service and great solutions, both economic and agronomic, and we truly have a great partnership in doing what we both love to do. And, of course, there’s a wholesale relationship there when it comes to the economics of what we’re doing. Rob’s doing more than 1,000 acres for me and because I’ve committed that much work to him, he’s going to treat me better.

RP: One of the things in this relationship that I can offer is that I’m the largest non-national buyer in the state of Ohio. My costs reflect that and I can pass those over to him. I’d hope that someone wouldn’t have to raise their price to hire me. I’m hoping we can build some efficiency to hold the price in the neighborhood it needs to be and still be competitive.

JS: Rob does several hundred properties for us, and he knows they don’t need to be managed after they’re routed. His company knows that every so many weeks they’re going to do the property visits. I know that if I have a problem, I can simply pick up the phone and call. There’ve been efficiencies – he’s a great marketer for us and all the other companies he works for. Likewise, I’m a great marketer for him. I’m basically a free salesman. There are certain economic advantages, and there’s enough work in this market for everybody. You have to be comfortable in your own skin to do a relationship like this. I think our company and some of the other companies Rob works for are people that could sit down at a restaurant and eat dinner and be completely comfortable together.

RP: There has to be trust there. If there’s no trust, there’s no relationship. There are four or five major players in every market, and hundreds of smaller players. I’d like to work for all of them. I like to have salesmen all throughout the area who aren’t on my payroll.

JS: Well, and the nice thing about it is that Rob has minimum standards that he needs to enter into with a contractor. Say the top three of us are trading properties back and forth, which eventually happens. The client, our customer, understands the service levels we’re trying to provide. It actually, in some instances, makes life simpler: I trade properties with Brickman, Brickman trades properties with me, and then you’ve got the Yardmasters of the world. That’s life. The bigger players in the market understand that. We’re all big boys. We get it. And as long as things are done on a level playing field, no one has a problem with it.

RP: That’s why I’ve spent a lot of money branding. You see all these commercials now on television from pharmaceutical companies. Why are they advertising their product when they don’t sell direct? Because they’re trying to create a brand. I want the end-user to want me, whether it’s through Jerry or through someone else. Hopefully, the size of our organization and our buying power gives us the ability to offer some good pricing to them. I also hope that my advertising dollars spent, and their affiliation with us, might have some lure to the end-user as well. That’s my goal. If you ask me what my goal is someday, it’s that a customer would say, “Who do you use for fertilization? Weed Pro? OK, you’re on the list.” And I have certain contracts now where it’s like that.

JS:  If you do what you say you’re going to do, and you’re great at what you do – the one thing you’re great at is yours to lose. We’re so comfortable in our own skin that we market Weed Pro in our sales presentations, and we’ll bring a Weed Pro employee with us to our presentations. There are definitely advantages to that relationship if you truly believe in it. I’m not going to get rid of Rob for another contractor for a few extra cents per square foot because I know the quality of service that he’s providing me is parallel to the service I’m providing.

RP: And if profit’s the key, he sees a grub situation and lets me know, that way we can price it. If there’s something on a property that we see that we can recommend to him, then they can then upsell. Having our high-level guys and Jerry’s high-level guys on the same property is phenomenal. We don’t know anything about mowing, about maintenance, how to run that portion of the business or what the gross margins should be of a maintenance company. We would fail at that. But we can stick with what we do and have our guys who are specifically trained on, say, pine sawfly larvae. I’d guess the standard mow foreman, who knows everything about their mowers, their trucks, their trailers – they’re not going to know about pine sawfly larvae, or emerald ash borer, which is a hot ticket.

JS: I thought those were pine cones out there. [Laughter]

RP: That’s just the thing. I think we can help them upsell. And if we can help them sell, then we’re helping ourselves sell.

JS: It’s a solution-based relationship. The byproduct of all that is profitability. We don’t do it to be more profitable. We do it because it’s the best thing to do agronomically. The reward is the economic side of it, which is great. I sell for them. They sell for us. He does the same thing with his other contractors. That’s why I think the few bigger guys are successful in the marketplace is because they take that mentality to their clients.

Why aren’t there more partnerships like this?
JS: Egos. No sense in sugarcoating it. Guys are intimidated. They’re genuinely scared of a conflict. The nice thing I know about Rob is that if he would ever betray a trust with me, he loses four hundred-some thousand dollars worth of work [snaps] like that. There are people who will do it. There’s no doubt about it. I have to be able to know they’re out there doing their part without being babysat. I think a lot of guys are scared of the perception of things. Maybe they might not market it the right way, as a solution-based program. And he works for other companies, other contractors.

RP: I also have to trust that I’m going to get paid from him, too. That’s the second priority. First, I’ve got to work for customers who are going to let us do the right thing – but second, I’ve got to get paid. If I have to cut a landscaper off because I haven’t been paid, now I start to look bad and it’s going to fall back on me. We had a problem here recently, a pretty little place who had me work for another contractor. I got a letter from the association terminating my ability to go back on the property. My problem now is do I call them and say it’s not me, I never got paid? Well, yes and no. Do you step up and let them know? There are some grey areas and some difficulties in there. It’s not transparent.

JS: You know, you’ve got guys who are just pioneers in our industry. We’re trying to give back like those guys do. I’ll be in Akron, Ohio, tomorrow with a guy who’s starting his business. But there are a lot of entrepreneurs – the Wheelers, the George Hullmans – who truly give back because they want the industry as a whole to be better. I think as the people in the industry who truly want the industry to be better try to help other guys get better, you’re going to see the trend change. And the people who don’t adapt to the changes in the market and in the economy are probably the people who won’t be with us very long. There are a lot of people interested in being purchased right now. A lot.

RP: The money that’s in the market next year is going to be crazy, too.

JS: And then there’s talent that’s going to be associated with that, which is the more critical part of acquisition – people. But if you want to grow, there’s got to be a paradigm shift. “Good to Great” – before I read that book three years ago, I hated cutting grass.

RP: I watched what that book did to him.

JS: Five years ago, we were doing $200,000 in revenue. We’ll do almost $5 million next year. And we didn’t force it. “Good to Great,” Chapter Three: the hedgehog concept – I’ve read it about 500 times. Every time I have a crazy idea, I have to go back and read it. Stay focused, stay focused. It works.