Pushing through

Here’s a look back at how Custom Landscaping was handling this earlier this season.

April

Frank Leloia Jr. says he feels his business, Custom Landscaping and Lawn Care, in East Brunswick, N.J., is improving.

Since the team’s initial meeting with the Harvesters in December 2019, Leloia says they’ve already made a number of changes.

“The biggest factor that we’ve worked on so far has been HR-related issues,” he says. “Harvester Steve (Cesare) has been working with our operations manager, Syril, to make sure we are fully compliant.”

Leloia says the company has performed a full I-9 audit, looked into EPLI insurance and restructured the company handbook.

The business has also done some hiring recently, which will help streamline operations and allow the company to better delegate tasks.

“We hired an operations manager just for our residential lawn care,” Leloia says. “That went along with our strategy to organize more internally. We feel this will make us stronger. Our retention and our recruiting should increase.”

Before the new hire, three employees were contributing to heading up the department.

“Now, with the hire we are more streamlined. We’ve essentially decluttered our organization chart,” Leloia says.

Along with the behind-the-scenes upgrades, Custom Landscaping has been striving to grow its commercial customer base.

“We’re out there chasing commercial accounts,” he says. “We’re very proud to say that we just got our sixth new commercial account. I think we should increase revenue by half-a-million dollars contractually.

“We’ve talked a lot with (the Harvesters) about how we can have better sales presentations put together,” he adds, “so that when we’re meeting with commercial clients, we want to be able to wow them and set ourselves ahead of the competition.”

To improve their presentations, the company has been holding mock sales pitches.

“Now we’re quicker on our feet,” Leloia says. “We’ve also been preparing more and our no longer just giving estimates. We’re more transparent in our contracts and we’re looking into incorporating some unique, video presentations, too.”

One of the goals set by the Harvesters was for Custom to have a 50-50 blend of residential and commercial accounts by 2022.

“Obviously it takes work, but the main thing they taught us is to have a target and identify what we want. At that point, we were able to focus on what we wanted and go get it.”

Leloia says to get to the 50-50 split, Bill and Ed urged Custom Landscaping to review its residential accounts and eliminate those that aren’t profitable.

“They wanted us to cut back a little on our residential accounts,” he says. “We haven’t cut back as much as they have wanted us to, but we’ve trimmed the edges of our less dense areas in order to make our denser areas more profitable.”

Harvesters’ take.

Frank and his team are going after more commercial work and leveling off on their residential work as we have agreed upon from our original Harvester visit. This will require a significant change in their mindset and what has been done here over several decades…. Frank is all in.

In order to take advantage of this market it will require some tune ups, changes and key action items if they are to be successful, here are some key points:

• • Editing of Non-Desirable Residential Work: This will require a review and ranking of accounts coupled with some professional termination notices.

• • Keep the Keeper Residential: The primary focus here will be to keep a dense route location to best serve the customer and to be most efficient.

  • Learning How to Say No: Get a very clear selection criteria in place and know when to say no both with residential and commercial work.

  • Build Killer Proposals: Build a proposal format that is more relational and less transactional and deals with solving their pains vs. selling and telling them how great we are…

  • Estimating: Get a more formal estimating process in place using the Harvesters’ triangulation method: Crew Hours per Visit - Hours Per Task – Production Method – Compare to Similar Jobs

  • Hire and Commercial Business Developer: Keep on the hunt full time with a business developer that is committed full time for selling commercial work.

  It all starts with the leader in each organization. Frank is doing great and understands the importance of having a better balance of market types. Change is hard, especially if a business has been doing it one way for a long time. Frank has surrounded himself with good people and that is always a good start for the path of success.

  Next take, we want to share how Frank got a top flight CFO on board at a most reasonable cost.

   

  June

  Frank Leloia and the crew at Custom Landscaping and Lawn Care are pulling themselves out of the trenches.

  The coronavirus pandemic has hit the New Jersey-based business hard, with multiple employees contracting the virus.

  “It’s been really challenging,” Leloia says. “We have had 19 cases of the virus. Of those 19 people, only five had symptoms.”

  Leloia says that so many workers got sick despite the company adhering to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines.

  “We are making sure trucks, machines and equipment is sanitized on a daily basis. We staggered start times, we are wearing masks and gloves,” he says. “We started implementing taking temperatures; however, out of our 19 cases, nobody has had a fever.”

  Leloia estimates that around 75% of the company has been tested for COVID-19.

  Leloia says having so many employees out has made it difficult to keep up with the workload.

  “It presented a lot of challenges, but we were able to work through them,” he says. “We’ve been working seven days a week, and 80 hours weeks.”

  Even through it all, Leloia says Custom Landscaping and Lawn Care hasn’t had an increase in cancellations, but not a lot of new work either.

  “Maintenance is still thriving,” he says. “We’re not seeing the bigger, more expensive jobs coming through the way that we’d expect them to, but we’ve been managing to keep up.”

  Leloia and the Harvesters were also working to improve human resources.

  “All of our focus HR-wise has been tracking the virus, what to do if somebody doesn’t feel good, how long to keep them out and those type of things,” he says.

  Leloia says he hopes things will continue to improve.

  “We’re trying to figure it out as we go, like everybody else,” he says. “We’ve got to make sure the work is done and it’s as safe as possible for employees as well as our customers. I’d like to think, optimistically, that the worst is over.”

  Harvesters’ Take.

  As you can imagine (the COVID-19 cases) threw his operation into a tailspin. Not only did he lose the 12 crew members but those that worked with them. At one point, 40% of his operations were shut down. The result: All in his company rallied. They worked 12-hour shifts and seven days a week to care for their customers. In early May, those infected employees are returning to work. None were hospitalized and they are all well.

  Sales are up over last year. Larger enhancement sales are down, but all in all, financially they are having a good year.

  Frank reported that they received their PPP money but is leery if he will in fact be able to keep it.

  As for the future, the next 90 days look better and better every day. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any long-term effects going into the fall.

  Looks like customer lawn care is doing well despite their setbacks. As a matter of fact, they are looking for a business developer that can help grow their commercial department going forward.