This piece was originally published in 2007.
I recently addressed an awesome group of landscapers in San Diego. I had one very successful landscaper come up to me during the break and ask me what my biggest regret was in my 20 some years of running a landscaping company. I’m asked that all the time, but for some reason, this time it really made me think. I responded by giving him the standard politically correct answer, “Oh, too many to mention.”
But flying back to Ohio, I really thought about this question and complied a few of the biggest mistakes I’ve made.
Not going to the green industry seminars until 1991. I have found that all landscapers pretty much have the same problems; they are just a little bit bigger or smaller. Don’t wait any longer to go to a seminar. Go to the next one you can and find other successful landscapers; ask them if you can take them to dinner. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn about sales and marketing for the cost of a steak.
Not realizing how important people are in the success of a business. It took me way too long to hire my first salesperson. I thought that I needed to do all the sales myself. After all, no one would care more about the deal than I, and there would be no way anyone would do it as well as I could, and they would just cause problems. It wasn’t until my eighth year in business that I hired a salesperson. That one didn’t last too long because I really had no clue how to find a good one, but I learned a lot and realized that others could effectively sell my company’s services. Remember, a good salesperson doesn’t cost you money, they bring you money.
Not realizing that I needed to be an expert at time management. No salesperson in our industry has a chance of reaching their full potential if they don’t use their time wisely. For the past 15 years, I have done a to-do list the night before, detailing what I was going to try and do the next day. My friend Ed Eppley says that successful people do the things that unsuccessful people don’t want to do. I would like to add that the difference between success and failure is often associated with doing the things that we need to do versus doing the things we’d like to do. Procrastination is the language of the poor. If you keep putting off important tasks, then expect to be poor.
Keeping people on my team because they were nice and tried hard. A great question I’d like you to ask yourself about each and every person on your team is this: Knowing what you now know about that person, would you hire them again? If the answer is no, then the obvious question is what are you waiting for? I fired one of my best friends in 1989 and he didn’t speak to me for a long time.
Until one day he saw me and told me that my doing that to him was one of the best things I could have done for him. Today, he’s a very successful sales professional. Don’t look at firing someone as a bad thing; look at it as what you need to do to be successful and what that person needs to be successful.
Please learn from my mistakes in a way that makes your company better. And to that nice man who asked the question in San Diego, I think I’ve answered your question.