Mattingly's Message

The sap is rising and so are the clients’ expectations. Are you ready? This is the time when you need to get off on the right foot and set the stage to provide clients optimum quality and customer service. Make them ecstatic. Here are a couple of tips:

• Think about last year. Did you accomplish what you wanted? Do you need to reposition your company or departments to take advantage of the future? Think about how you ought to change. Then, develop a game plan with specific completion dates.
• Develop a schedule in your day timer and visit clients. Shake their hands and look them in the eye. With maintenance clients, ask them if they would like to walk the site. What a great time to fully understand their expectations for this season. And, do not go away without a proposal for “extra work.”
• Set the expectations for selling extras. You can provide every client an unsolicited proposal to enhance his or her landscaping once a month. Remember, the client hired you because you are the expert. The client expects you to recommend how to improve the appearance. Be proactive. Further, this should be your highest margin work. As a manager, I would also suggest you track and display the efforts by posting on the wall the number of proposals by each individual, each month. A little peer pressure never hurts. The more you propose the more you will sell.
• Visit the client each month. If this is not practical, then call and talk to the client monthly. You need to understand that this client receives calls from your competitors regularly. You need to be No. 1 on the client’s mind. Remember, out of sight, out of mind. You don’t want that to happen with your clients.
• Overtime. With the spring rush, it is easy to get trapped in to a habit of working overtime. You don’t want it to become a habit. You know how many hours of overtime are acceptable, if any. Be sure that you “don’t let the inmates run the prison” by not watching and regulating the overtime. As an owner, I would expect the office to provide me a list of employees and the amount of overtime they worked last week by Tuesday morning.

Jack Mattingly is a green industry consultant with Mattingly Consulting. He can be reached at 770/517-9476.