SUCCESSFULLY COMPETING IN TODAY’S MARKET
FIND THE SOFT CENTER
How many times have you heard the expressions or even voiced it yourself, “We’re not the cheap- est, but we’re not the most expensive, either.” To be able to deliver on that promise once again requires getting a handle on your overhead. That’s just what Brad McCully, owner of Sports- man Lawn & Landscape in Tupelo, Mississippi, did long before the recession hit. His company currently employs 20 people who service both commercial and residential accounts, more employees than it ever had since it incorporated 20 years ago. “We were lean long before the recession,” McCully said. “That has enabled us to com- pete somewhat on price, but to also be able to provide excellent service. Over the years, we’ve gained several new customers simply because they weren’t getting the service they wanted. We service the heck out of our customers, which is the main reason our retention rate is well above 90 percent.”
Two Willamette Landscape Services crews are equipped with solar-powered charging stations so they can operate quieter equipment.
One may not be able to deliver on all three customer wants, i.e., price, service, and quality. But being lean allows McCully to deliver service and quality, not at the lowest price, but certainly not the highest, either. His other com- petitive edge, he said, is being a one-stop shop.
THE WAITING GAME “Our market is commercial maintenance and it has always been competitive, but when new construction stopped with the recession, companies that were focused on instal- lation quickly became new competitors in the maintenance arena. They were desperate to maintain a revenue stream and the result was to undermine our market,” explained Darryl Orr, owner of Pacific Landscapes, Inc. in Sebastopol, California.
“Our strategy was to wait them out, per-
“ Competition in the maintenance market for us hasn’t changed as dramatically as it has in installation,” said Yellowstone Landscape’s Joseph Barnes.
18 THE LANDSCAPE PROFESSIONAL > MARCH/APRIL 2016
form excellent work to retain our existing clients, and allow them to go through the learning curve of the maintenance business. The service expectation of a maintenance client is different from the expectations of a developer. Maintenance requires more intensive management per revenue dollar than installation. Once the newcomers start- ed adding account managers to the payroll their overhead went up and the low-balling faded.” Orr, whose company has 13 maintenance crews and three installation crews, along with four irrigation techs and two spray techs, had another option, one, he empha- sized that was less attractive. “We could cut prices, but participating in that game would just feed the fire and in- crease the downward spiral. For us, growth for the sake of growth didn’t make sense; we wanted to maintain a reasonable bottom
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