Who Defines Your Business?

CANCUN, MEXICO – When is a landscape company not a landscape company? And who decides when a landscape company is supposed to be more than a landscape company?

Those are some of the questions posed to attendees at the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA) 2002 Executive Forum, held Feb. 7-10 in Cancun, Mexico. John Johnson, the event’s facilitator, opened this debate by claiming that landscape businesses are not in the landscape business at all, unless that’s what their customers dictate. Instead, Johnson told attendees that they should determine their customers’ needs and then tailor their businesses to fit these needs.

A number of contractors sat down together in Cancun and discussed this very topic.

“Before we talk about what our clients want us to focus on, I would argue that if our client’s perception of our business is bad, maybe we have the wrong customer,” offered Bill Schnetz, Schnetz Landscape, Escondido, Calif. “I think too many contractors spend too much time working with customers who aren’t the right customers for that business, but everyone is so focused on growing, that they don’t worry about what clients they take on.”

 “You have to have a focused niche,” agreed Bill Miller, All Seasons Landscape, Bellevue, Wash. “Otherwise you’re not going to make anyone happy.”

In pursuit of its niche market, Laura Miller of Wallace Landscape Associates, Kennett Square, Pa., explained that the company has a particular customer profile in mind. “We track where we get all of our customers from and how they find out about us,” she shared. “Then we target our marketing off that.”

However, some attendees rely on referrals to grow their businesses. John Catapano, Western Horticulture Services, Houston, said this approach works well to avoid price-shopping customers, but it can create a difficult situation where contractors end up feeling beholden to new customers’ demands if they don’t want to disappoint the new customer, as well as the current customer who provided the referral.

“The trouble is that we end up with the tail wagging the dog because you feel like you have to go where the customer wants you to go,” Catapano explained. “Or you get commercial accounts where the client packages all of its properties together and offers you an all-or-nothing deal. As a result, you’re working in areas you may not want to be in.”

Issues like this illustrate the importance of Johnson’s original question – do you know what your customer expects of you?

“I think we have to remember that we’re in a service industry,” related Catapano. “We need to be a dependable, reliable resource for our clients regardless of what particular work we do. They need to know that we’ll do the job quickly and quietly.”

Building trust through constant communication is also important when dealing with clients, the participants noted.

“Information is important,” noted Schnetz. “We have to make sure that our customers’ expectations are aligned with what we expect to do on the job and that this is communicated to our crews so we can do the job we were hired to do.”

Miller agreed, emphasizing that honesty is a key component to building trust with a customer.  “Just be honest,” he declared, “even if what you have to tell the client isn’t good news. That sort of trust is so important.”

The author is editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.