How To Develop Your Company's Mission

We are a service-oriented landscape installation, maintenance, lawn care and irrigation services business providing absolute satisfaction to our clients. Through an energetic, dedicated and creative approach, we are inspired to provide our services with integrity while promoting a gainfully employed staff.

Here’s an example of a mission statement for a smaller lawn maintenance company:

As a company that is committed to a professional approach to our business, we provide hands-on care toward quality landscapes through individualized attention. Our knowledge and hands-on approach provides superior one-on-one attention with a personalized touch.

Dissect Your Business

Once your company’s mission statement is developed or re-evaluated, it’s important to take a serious look at the following areas: What is going well within your business? For example, maybe you have a good safety record, a good base of business or a well-established business. Be specific.

What isn’t going as well as you would like within your business? Examples may be communication, uniforms or teamwork. Again, be specific.

Who are your clients? You need to categorize your clients and understand who you work for. This could be architects, general contractors, property managers, private business owners and homeowners.

What is your client’s situation? Conduct a close examination of what you see your clients dealing with. For example, are they faced with tightening budgets, water shortages or more competition?

What external factors face your business? External factors facing your business might be the economy, weather, political, environment, etc.

Staff evaluation. You need to understand the pros and cons of your staff. Are they well-trained, committed, skilled, unskilled, complacent, energized, etc?

What opportunities are available to your business? This can be a fun area to explore. Try to determine if your company has a new niche it can explore such as golf course work, HOAs, estate homes, irrigation management, etc. At the same time, determine if you can further emphasize specific areas you currently service. As an example, do you service hotel properties within your market? If not, could you break into that business? If you service HOAs, could you place more focus on that segment?

Set Goals and Objectives

Once you and your key staff have fully dissected your business, establish your goals for the year by incorporating and committing to the items discussed above. Keep your goals well-targeted to three or five specific items.

For example, one goal might be to improve office efficiency, a second might be to improve staff development, and a third might be to explore growth opportunities. Arrive at your goals through consensus knowing that every opinion is important.

Once the goals are defined, it is important to apply specific objectives to each goal. In other words, what specific activities do you plan to do to accomplish the goals set forth within your strategic plan?

Once you complete this exercise, your strategic plan should be finished—complete with goals, objectives and specific activities to give your company a fresh start. Type it up and give it to your employees, or at least the key personnel who were part of the strategic planning meeting. And don’t be shy about posting goals throughout the facility. Additionally, make your mission statement visible to all staff, and make sure it’s posted in key meeting areas.

If you’re like most landscape contractors, you’re playing by a whole new set of rules these days. But with the new challenges you face come new opportunities. Embrace them, both the good and the bad, and bring your team together to help dissect your business, identify opportunities and navigate your company to a less vulnerable position.

How Do You Match Up?

- 59% of contractors expect to grow maintenance sales this year
- 51% of contractors expect to grow lawn care sales this year
- 45% of contractors expect to grow enhancement sales this year
- Only 7% of contractors provide green roof installation and/or maintenance, but 17% would like to expand into this area
- Half of contractors say retaining maintenance business is harder than usual
- A third of contractors say retaining lawn care business is harder than usual
- 17% of contractors plan on hiring additional salespeople this year
- 32% of contractors enjoy net profits in excess of 10%
- 30% of contractors enjoy net profits of less than 5%
- 8% of contractors lost money in 2010