3 Things To Do During the Off Season to Boost Your Bottom Line

In my line of work I often work with people in landscaping and construction. These trades often have very distinct busy and slow or on and off seasons. March-October is primarily when business seems to be thriving with projects in every direction. Then things tend to slow down significantly during the months of November-February.

During the slow season, people in this line of work often try to busy themselves with more work to make ends meet. This is a natural, understandable approach because their income can take a big hit during this time. Whether or not they have savings to last them, they may need to look at other options. Here are some things to do during the off season that will guarantee you a more profitable bottom line.

Honorable mentions:

• Inventory audits, large maintenance if you can swing it.
• Prepping for tax season and meeting with your financial advisor, CPA, or bookkeeper.

1. Conduct Contract Audits

The first thing I recommend during the off season is conducting contract audits between you and each of your clients.

A contract audit is the process of going through a contract line by line, section by section, to ensure that all parties involved understand, appreciate and are compliant with the terms of that contract. Contract compliance ranges from meeting service deadlines to payment terms such as late fees. Reviewing contract compliance is as simple as confirming that you understand what you agreed to.

Contract audits can be short or long. Depending on who drafted the contract -  whether it was an attorney or non-attorney drafter - you may need to consult an attorney to help understand the terms. Depending on the amount of contracts you have, conducting thorough contract audits can take up to two weeks for the average business.

2. Strategic Planning

Your contract audit will undoubtedly bring to your attention to gaps in your workflow, project execution, pricing methods, or something else if not all of the above. You may notice annual contracts that don’t adjust for inflation. If so, make a note to update your price when the time comes for contract renewal. 

You may find that you need an entire day to review your client, service, and price lists, update spreadsheets, and draft emails saying, “Hello, starting Jan 1, March 1, your pricing will be updated to X amount of dollars.”

3. Conducting Evaluations

If you’re not already doing them, I strongly recommend conducting annual evaluations during your landscaping or construction off season.

Annual evaluations are hit or miss for businesses, especially in this industry. Nevertheless, annual evaluations between employees, contractors, vendors and management are vital to every industry. Annual evaluations determine whether those you surround your business with are acting in accordance with the standards you’ve set.

To do an annual evaluation, it’s best to have a written company policy. Business attorneys create them all the time from simply noting how many times you’re okay with someone being late to work to processes for employee dismissal to key performance indicators to determine whether someone has earned a raise. Having a written company policy keeps everyone on the same page — literally.

Mistakes and slip ups decrease your profitability. And they happen all the time. Nevertheless, people get busy and they don’t address mistakes in a timely, effective manner. Eventually they forget and the core issue isn’t addressed. The employee may be doing the same violations or mistakes during the slow season, but it may not feel as pronounced during the slow season because there’s not so much at stake. The cycle of profit loss continues.

As the business leader and employer, your job is to use the off season to strategically plan. In this case, that means using the off season to schedule time to suggest changes and train employees according to your standard. That means scheduling time to address employee, contractor, management and vendor feedback. The result is that, in your busy season, your operations are smoother, you experience less mistakes and slip ups, and your profit margins increase.