Fortunately for landscape contractors, as homeowners spent more time at home, they looked to professionals to improve and maintain exterior spaces and that trend has not yet slowed. However, the seasonal nature of landscape work has always made hiring the right people difficult, but the global pandemic has worsened labor shortages.
One benefit of the ongoing, incoming work is that—with an efficient operation—contractors can pay higher wages. Attracting the right talent will mean you have the best team to get the work done.
Use these three tactics to grow your business and increase efficiency.
Consider your equipment strategy. Which pieces of your fleet are providing the most value? Should anything be replaced or repaired to make operations run more efficiently? Be sure to ask your employees who use the equipment day in and day out. Strategically work to align your equipment with what's needed to achieve your goals.
Strengthen client relationships. Focus on building your relationship with current clients. Those that haven't scaled back services are an opportunity for growth. Do they know your full set of offerings? Do you have a vision for their exterior space? Even if they don't add on more services right away, you've established a relationship and opened the door for future growth.
Embrace technology. Obtain vital information using landscape management software to help drive profit. This technology helps pinpoint inefficiencies, provides ways to improve and frees up time for important tasks. Combining this data with business management software allows you to see what is actually profitable and make the best decisions for you and your business.
Overall, business management software can track your crews' whereabouts, drive behavior, productivity and schedules with the software and small tracking devices.
By optimizing your operations, you can spend your dollars in the most-needed places, like employees wages to attract great labor. Additionally, you can get more done with less labor by increasing productivity. Technology puts you a step above other contractors who aren't focused on efficiency.
