Getting your small business started is a really exciting first step! You’ve completed all of the necessary tasks to open and are finally getting clients! You may be inclined to take it easy now and dial back the hours, but now comes the most important part of the job – managing the business! Take a look at the four important tools below for managing your landscaping business.
The most important part of managing your small business is taking care of your team, managing good working relations with vendors, keeping good relations with clients, and managing the bills.
Let’s dive into each of these categories a little bit more in-depth, so you can learn how to utilize these tools to properly manage your business. Always remember, there is no perfect way to run a business. You’re going to have to try these methods out and work on them until you find what works for you and your landscaping business.
Taking Care of Your Team
The most important part of your business is your team. I would argue even more important than your clients, for without your team, you wouldn’t even have a business. So, take care of them. Make sure they are fairly compensated, and provide them with the proper health and dental insurance. If your business can afford it, treat them with a nice little holiday bonus when the business does well! It will build team morale and loyalty towards you and your business.
While all of these things are important in taking care of and managing your team – the most important is making sure they feel valued. Research shows that the number one thing that workers value in a job is feeling like their time and opinions are valued. Employees who feel a sense of value are a lot less likely to look for greener pastures and jump ship. So, make sure that you keep your employees happy and take good care of them.
Going back to employee pay, I know that you are just starting with your business and need to be careful with money. But properly paying good employees is probably one of the best investments you can make into your business. You can’t get the job done if you don’t have a good team onboard to do it. If feeling valued is important to employees, so is being paid properly. They can’t take care of themselves and their loved ones if the pay isn’t fair. So even if you have to start with a smaller team, make sure the members that you have are fairly compensated, they don’t stray elsewhere.
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Manage Good Relations with Vendors
Your vendors provide you with all of your supplies, so you don’t want to get on their bad side at any point. Always make sure that your working relationship is a mutually beneficial one and that both sides are happy. Always pay your dues on time, and don’t at any point try to back out of a supply order. A good relationship with your vendors can go a long way, and some vendors may even give you a better rate the longer you’ve been in business together.
It will also help to keep your business within a trusted few vendors, rather than constantly switching around and working with new ones. As I mentioned above, vendors may offer a better rate for those they’ve worked with longer, but you will also build up trust the longer you work together. So, make sure you always stay on good terms with all those you go into business with.
The vendors in your town all likely know each other or know of each other. So, if you win a bad reputation with one of them chances are word will travel to others that you are not a great client to work with. Depending on how bad your offense this may result in higher prices for you or simply with them refusing to provide you with supplies. Regardless, stay on good terms with everyone you work with. It will go a long way in helping your business succeed.
Maintaining Good Relations with Clients
This goes hand in hand with managing relations with vendors. Just like how it benefits you to maintain your relationships with your vendors, it likewise benefits you to maintain positive relations with your clients.
Not all clients will turn into repeat clients – and that is where your relationship management comes into play. The better your treatment is of your clients – before entering into a contract, during the contract, and after the contract ends – will all play a role in whether this client turns into a long-term client. There are a few things you can do to ensure this.
For one, make sure you are being upfront with the client on the services you can provide and the timeline you can complete it. This will ensure a good start to the working relationship and set the client up for what they can realistically expect from you.
Next, make sure you deliver on everything you promised during the initial stage, this will make or break whether a client trusts you and will enter into business with you again in the future.
Lastly, the interaction doesn’t end with the end of your contract. With your client’s permission to contact them, follow up in about two weeks to see how they are enjoying their new yard and all the landscaping work you did for them. This would also be a good time to see if there is any other landscaping work they are thinking of doing at the moment. If they are good for now, that is fine. But you have now opened the doorway for future interactions and can follow up with them again next spring to see what summer projects they have on their mind for the coming summer.
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Managing the Bills
Lastly, and perhaps the most important to your business’s survival – managing your bills. You need to make sure that your business is bringing in more money than it is putting out. If you do the math, and you have spent more money on your payroll, marketing, and supplies than you’ve brought in revenue it means your business is losing money.
Make sure you have a budget for all monthly expenses, so you can book jobs and list prices accordingly. Ensure that you always stay within budget, and if it looks like it’s a slower month and you won’t hit the required quota for jobs – have a plan in place of where you can cut back. Whether that is ordering fewer supplies the following month, cutting back on hours for employees, or something else – always make sure you have a plan in place for when business gets slow.
Likewise, always have a plan in place for when you go over budget. Do you have an emergency fund in case this happens? Can you cut back on your paycheck so you can pay your team? Is there something else you can do to balance this out? Always have a smart business plan, and account for everything you can beforehand so you don’t have to panic at the moment.
Using These Tools for Success
Like everything, starting a new business can be an exciting, but also scary experience. Sometimes you have to learn from trial and error before you find your footing. But it doesn’t have to be all that scary, as long as you have a plan in place before you get started. Read through this guide to help you understand what the important parts of managing a landscaping business are. Then make them fit with your own business. Once you have a business plan in place, you will be prepared to take on whatever may come! Good luck!
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Frequently Asked Questions
How do I prioritize what is most important?
That will depend on your business. You may want to put most of your resources into one thing or another depending on – how big your business is, how many vendors you have, how many clients you have etc. Just make sure that in your mission prioritize one over the other – you don’t leave anything out. Make sure you have a plan for executing each tool in a way that makes the most sense to your business.
Can I hire an assistant to watch over these things for me?
You can certainly hire an assistant, that is why the assistant manager position was created! But, that comes with a caveat. Even if you hire someone else to do the job, you still need to understand how to do each yourself and make sure you are overseeing how it’s done. At the end of the day, it is your business, not your assistant managers. You need to make sure that you not only pay attention to what is being done, but in the case your assistant was to quit, you need to be able to pick up and continue where they left off.
To learn more on how you can start your own landscaping business, check out my startup documents here.
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Meet Shawn Chun: Entrepreneur and Landscape Business Fan.
I’m a happy individual who happens to be an entrepreneur. I have owned several types of businesses in my life from a coffee shop to an import and export business to an online review business plus a few more and now I create online resources for those interested in starting new ventures. It’s demanding work but I love it. I do it for those passionate about their business and their goals. That’s why when I meet a landscape business owner at a job site, driving down the road or anywhere else I see myself. I know how hard the struggle is to retain clients, find good employees and keep the business growing all while trying to stay competitive.
That’s why I created Landscaping Business Boss: I want to help landscape business owners like you build a thriving business that brings you endless joy and supports your ideal lifestyle.