9 Smart Ways Top Lawn, Landscape, and Outdoor Living Businesses Prepare for the Next Season Now
—
The Content Team,
HALSTEAD.
Originally published on October 29, 2015. Updated on January 13, 2023.
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Prospects tend to take their time as they progress from the online research phase to finally purchasing that beautiful new outdoor living space. With the average buying cycle for landscape projects lasting almost 80 days, now is the time to strategize and start executing to ensure an efficient and profitable season ahead.
At the end of a busy season, it’s tempting to spend time and energy closing out the year and wrapping up open projects or trying to close projects that can be completed immediately. While this is necessary, successful lawn, landscape, and outdoor living businesses also use this time to look to the future. They optimize the slow season by finding ways to improve cash flow, increase efficiency, and prioritize planning. Here are nine actionable ways that top landscapers prepare for the next busy season now and how you can too.
1. Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Outdoor Living Business Marketing Efforts
In a digital world, lawn, landscape, and outdoor living businesses have access to more data than ever, helping to inform decision-making. Evaluate your marketing efforts by analyzing concrete data. Reflect on what went well over the past year and what didn’t.
Are your current marketing methods delivering the ROI you’re looking for? How much of your revenue is a direct result of your marketing efforts? Are you consistently filling your sales funnel with new leads? How many of your leads are converting into paying customers?
Evaluating the effectiveness of your business marketing efforts leads directly to the next step, which is setting your goals for the year ahead. Knowing your current numbers will help direct your plans for the future.
2. Set Your Goals as an Outdoor Living Business Owner
With the previous year’s numbers in hand, consider the current year’s trends in the industry. Use this data to set SMART goals, goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example, you may set a goal to increase revenue by 15% within the next year. You’ll then create an actionable plan stating that you will do x, y, and z to accomplish this SMART goal.
While lead generation and revenue are great primary goals, consider other areas where you want to improve. For example, you may want to increase your average project size or improve field productivity. Some outdoor living businesses focus on increasing the number of customers they get from referrals.
Ensure that whatever goals you choose align with everything else going on within your company. For example, if you want to reduce overhead costs but need to purchase three new trucks, make sure your overhead cost goals include these equipment needs. Use this time to evaluate which strategies are working for you.
3. Evaluate Home Show Participation as a Green Industry Business
Home shows can help a business, or they can be devastating. Not all home shows are created equal. Generally, each home show attracts a certain kind of buyer, but sometimes the target range is too broad, and you only leave with a handful of qualified leads that are hardly worth your $5,000+ fee for setting up a booth at the show.
After evaluating your past performance, the show’s target audience, and your ROI for participating in home shows versus your other marketing efforts, you may find that home shows are a poorer choice than you thought they were. Instead, focusing on your digital marketing efforts may be a smarter decision.
4. Update Your Outdoor Living Business Website
Your website functions as your sales rep. It’s the most important opportunity to drive qualified leads. When was the last time that you updated the design? If your website looks like a brochure, it’s past time to update it. There are key differences between a digital portfolio and a lead-generating website—most importantly, a website converts while a digital brochure-style website does not.
Successful businesses in the green industry know the importance of a well-designed website that prioritizes the user experience. Consider investing in a website that loads quickly, has an intuitive design and flow, and provides a seamless experience. Your website will become the central hub that houses all of your content that supports your inbound marketing efforts—including vibrant photos of your completed outdoor living projects and helpful blog posts that help establish your industry authority.
5. Invest in Professional Photography & Videography
Showcasing your best work is one of your most essential tools in attracting more top-notch work. The best way to market your previous work starts by hiring a professional photographer and videographer. While an iPhone can take great pictures, nothing compares to the artful and edited photos and videos a professional produces.
An investment in professional photos and videos goes a long way. You can use the images and videos throughout your website design, in your digital portfolio, blog posts, social posts, printed brochures, and ads. When paired with written content, you’ll have a winning combination.
6. Focus on Building Content
Consistent content brings traffic to your website and keeps people there. At HALSTEAD, we recommend adding new content to your website every week. One way to do this is through a regularly updated blog that serves to educate your prospects through each stage of the customer journey. When combined with strategic SEO and ad spend, your blog will attract high-quality leads that convert.
You can repurpose evergreen content and reuse it indefinitely, making the investment in content a valuable one. For example, blog posts can be shared on your social media channels, highlighted in your email newsletters, shared with customers during the sales process, and more.
7. Consolidate Management Tools & Implement New Technology
Top lawn, landscape, and outdoor living firms Implement the right software and technology to improve efficiency, focusing on integrating and consolidating management tools. Thoroughly look at your software and tools and eliminate any that require time to sync with others.
This task can be a long process, from evaluating your current needs to shopping for the right tools, not to mention the learning curve for new tools. The slow season is the perfect time to begin this endeavor.
Finding a CRM tool that increases efficiency and automates processes is a top priority for many outdoor living businesses. With automation to keep past and potential customers engaged, no one will fall through the cracks. Research CRM tools such as Salesforce and Hubspot to find the one that will work best for your needs.
For example, CrewRecruiter is an excellent ATS (applicant tracking system) that streamlines the recruiting process and increases efficiency. The capability to analyze and filter applicants to remove any without the proper licenses or enough experience will help save time. You’ll have one tool for posting job openings across numerous platforms, communicating with applicants, scheduling, pre-employment screening, and sending digital offer letters. Ensuring you have top talent gets much more manageable with CrewRecruiter.
8. Replace Bad Talent With New Top Talent
It’s hard to find great talent during the prime season when you are focusing on selling and closing projects. At the beginning of the season, the competition for recruiting is at its peak. When you find yourself in either of these situations, you may put off replacing poor performers and get stuck in an endless cycle of working with crew members who don’t uphold your company standards. You’ll have no choice but to continue employing them because you need the team to complete your projects.
According to the Better Business Bureau’s analysis of landscape company customer reviews, the quality of work is the most critical factor to any business. With 50% of negative reviews mentioning unfinished work and 30% mentioning damage or messes at their property, both of these common complaints can likely be resolved with hardworking team members who take pride in their work.
However, 43% of lawn, landscape, and outdoor living businesses report that a quality labor shortage is their biggest challenge. Difficulty securing top talent leads to many problems that can affect your business. The Great Resignation has created an employee’s market, making finding and retaining high-quality team members challenging.
The most effective recruiters in the green industry are those who recruit all year long, not just during the busy season when employees are needed and not just during the slow season when they have a chance to breathe. By approaching recruiting like marketing, these businesses have turned to social recruiting for reaching and communicating with prospective employees. Often, this strategy involves showcasing company culture on social media posts, using photos and videos to share happy employees sharing their experience with the company.
9. Retain Good Talent With a Positive Company Culture
Nearly two-thirds of companies find retaining employees even harder than hiring them. Retaining top talent requires more effort than offering great pay, although compensation is a top candidate priority. Balance, flexibility, and upskilling are the other top candidate priorities. These priorities are a part of company culture, which influences retention rates, especially since employees who say their company culture is positive are 3.8x more likely to be engaged.
Company culture involves how you do certain things, including decision-making, and how yo communicate, and celebrate, reward, and recognize employees. In surveys, 70% of employees say that company culture is more important to the success of a business than strategy and operations, a stat that proves how vital company culture is to your organization.
With the increasing challenge of finding high-quality workers, creating a positive company culture is more important than ever. Millennials are beginning to purchase homes, accounting for more than half of all mortgage applications. Combined with the fact that industry trends indicate Millennials are 43% more likely than Boomers to upgrade their outdoor spaces so they can entertain and are 40% more likely to select traditional “indoor” features for their outdoor spaces, the demand for luxury outdoor living spaces will continue to grow.
Considering it costs 20%-40% of an employee’s annual wage to replace an employee, it makes good business sense to focus on creating a positive company culture. Employees deserve to be treated like people, not just numbers or bodies needed to complete a job.
The slow season is prime time to train employees. Whether you give them permission to study and obtain certifications, provide training on customer service, or focus on best practices for safety, including OSHA regulations and CPR skills, employees will appreciate the professional development, and your business will benefit, too.
Many outdoor living businesses host a team gathering during this time. They recognize employees for their achievements, present awards, and spend time as a group building camaraderie. These activities help employees create an emotional connection with coworkers, increasing retention rates.
You can also use this time to collaborate with your team. Ask your employees for their opinions and consider them. Create an atmosphere where open dialogue is encouraged and rewarded. Their insight can help you evaluate what’s working and what isn’t from an employee’s perspective.