BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES Seasoned Pro

Melisa Bell knows how plant rotations throughout the year can be beneficial. Bell, the landscape maintenance department manager at ILT Vignocchi in Wauconda, Ill., offers seasonal color to all of the company’s maintenance clients, and many of them are buying. Her company has been offering the year-round service for the past 17 years, and started focusing its efforts on promoting and improving the seasonal color program about five years ago.

ILT’s seasonal color service includes up to four visits per year to each site for beautification. As the name suggests, the idea is to add color to an area by planting greens and flowers that coordinate with that particular time of year. ILT Vignocchi workers plant tulips and other bulbs in the spring, various summer annuals, mums and pansies in the fall and green decorations for the winter months as customers request them.

When Bell joined the ILT Vignocchi team six years ago, she saw seasonal color as an add-on service with tremendous growth potential. “We realized this was a segment of the market that was growing and we wanted to be competitive,” she says. “It was also an area in which we could differentiate ourselves from our competition by planting unique, beautiful annual flowerbeds and doing things like winter greenery.”

GETTING STARTED. ILT Vignocchi’s annual revenue from seasonal color is $350,000 to $400,000 and the service is part of all work orders and site enhancements. That accounts for about 25 percent of the company’s maintenance service revenue.

To boost profits, she suggests proposing four rotations – one per season – to clients.
   
To successfully add seasonal color to their service menus, contractors need to consider logistics, Bell says. Will annual flowers be delivered to the site or yard, or will they need to be picked up from the grower and transported to the site? ILT Vignocchi generally has its annuals delivered because that option is available in the Chicago market.
   
Bell uses estimating software that calculates material and labor costs, which she adjusts based on indirect costs. “Say a property has 125 4.5-inch pots,” she says. “The system was built to provide an installed price per unit and we adjust the system each year according to market price increases.”

The price the company charges includes fertilization, and the pricing structure is different for high-end residential and commercial properties, Bell says.

When she first arrives on site, Bell measures and photographs the beds. She gives this information to her estimator to generate a proposal. The production staff uses the pictures with the forms Bell creates that specify what materials will be needed and where they will be planted. “There are times when I meet the crew on site, but usually they just work off of the forms,” she says.

SELLING SEASONAL. ILT Vignocchi became more aggressive in marketing seasonal color about five years ago. Looking back, Bell says, “There was not one specific reason for adding the service, but rather many good ones. The improved beautification of our customers’ properties leads to increased customer satisfaction, which leads to increased sales, referrals, etc. We weren’t marketing it before and I was sure it would be easier to sell once we got serious about it.”

About two-thirds of ILT Vignocchi’s client base is residential, while the rest is commercial. The company makes it a practice to send a newsletter to existing clients early in the year to introduce the seasonal color concept and showcase a few of its creations. This helps get customers thinking about expanding their services to include seasonal color.

Once customers are thinking about seasonal color, one of the biggest challenges is gaining their trust to give ILT room to showcase its artistic expertise. This is especially true on the residential end of business, Bell says. “Customers sometimes want to be an active part of the process, but they can get off track, as there are a lot of details,” she says, adding that she doesn’t recommend showing the customer a catalog of flowers during the sales process because the multitude of information can be overwhelming for the customer and the conversation could lose its focus.

Instead, Bell shows customers a portfolio with examples of the company’s seasonal color work. “When the customer sees the past work, it instills confidence and they see that you have good ideas,” she says, adding that this allows her to take charge and do her job. “You want to understand their vision, but you don’t want them to dictate the design process.”

Bell finds that it’s best to avoid discussing specific plant materials with clients during the initial consultation. “There are literally thousands of annuals to choose from,” she says. “You don’t want to bog someone down.”

A better way to introduce seasonal color, she says, is explaining it to customers in terms of colors and themes. This saves them the confusion that could result from introducing them to the multitude of plant species. Bell then gives the customers a few days to think it over before following up.

Bell provides customers a contract that includes four rotations – one for each season. She prices each rotation separately. Bell says even if customers choose not to take her up on all four rotations, they at least have the idea in front of them and many times are so pleased with the summer rotation that they will sign up for other rotations in the same or following season.

CHOOSE WISELY. There is a rhyme and reason to the placement of annuals that needs to be considered to impress and retain customers, Bell says. For example, annual flowers draw attention to areas, so she doesn’t recommend using them to try to hide unsightly places. For commercial sites, annual colors accent entrances and signage nicely, she says.

Consider existing elements at a site, such as perennials, and make sure the annuals complement, not compete, with them. Another way to prevent competing arrangements is to keep it simple. Bell generally doesn’t use more than three plant varieties in one bed.

Besides getting customers to trust her judgment, Bell says one of the most challenging parts of the service has been training the staff. Catching on to the proper way to fill out and follow the annual flowerbed form ILT uses has taken employees more time than expected, she says. But the system is worth the time it takes to learn, Bell adds. “There’s a good amount of work in the way of training and planning in the beginning,” she says, “but as the years go by, the amount of time it saves you is unbelievable.”