Blog

Accountability in the workplace is vital to any healthy and successful landscaping business—but it is not something that just happens. Instead, business owners must be incredibly intentional about creating and also supporting leadership positions in which team members are held accountable.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. We recognize that leadership accountability can be time-consuming and even difficult to implement, which is why we turned to Jason New, executive coach, speaker, and peer group facilitator with McFarlin Stanford, a management coaching and recruiting firm based in Dallas in order to find out some of his best tips. McFarlin Stanford believes that accountability is a key aspect of leadership that all landscape business owners should be paying attention to.

Learning a new landscape business software program can be challenging, even for the seasoned user of technology. Whether you’ve already had a software program and you are switching to something new, or you’ve never had landscape business software before, there will undoubtedly be learning curves to overcome.

Chances are you've used QuickBooks for landscaping, at least at some point in your business. Most landscape contractors have. Actually, most small business owners in general, have—after all, it is not industry-specific software. QuickBooks can work just fine for many businesses in their early stages. But as your business grows, your software needs are most likely going to grow, too.

If you are not a snow-exclusive business and securing snow plowing contracts is not constantly on your mind, then you could fall into the trap of waiting until the last minute to start working on your snow sales. This happens to a lot of landscaping companies, so by no means are you alone. 

But that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with the ramifications.

The truth is, when you wait too long to plan for your snow season, you find yourself scrambling. You might not even be able to hire the right number of laborers or have all of the proper equipment lined up if you didn’t plan ahead. 

Fortunately, you can prevent a lot of headaches by starting the planning process now. 

As the CEO, it is your responsibility to oversee your landscaping company as a whole and make sure that it’s running as best that it possibly can. In order to ensure that, you’ve likely implemented various tools over the years, including potential software solutions. But how do you know when the tools you’ve implemented are no longer enough?

How do you know when it’s time for new landscape business management software?

Technology is part of our everyday lives—and becomes more so every day. From online shopping to using devices to remain informed or connect with others, technology is used daily and that’s no different for those age 50 and older. Over 90 percent of adults over 50 own a computer or laptop, 70 percent have a smartphone, and more than 40 percent own a tablet, according to a national study.

Data is so important when it comes to how you run your business. If you’re regularly looking at data through a landscape business report, then you’re likely making major decisions based on what you read.

But what you see is also so important. In fact, one might argue that seeing is understanding.

Scheduling landscaping work can be one of the most tedious and time-consuming aspects of running a business. It can also be an area where efficiency can be lost if smart decisions aren’t made.

Losing 10 minutes here or there might not sound like a big deal but it can really start to add up over the course of a week. And as you know, when it comes to the landscaping industry, time is money.

Getting paid in an efficient manner is important when it comes to maintaining a healthy cash flow at your landscaping business. After all, having multiple clients fall behind on payments can become quite detrimental when you have your own bills to pay.

Are you performing the right markup on landscape materials so that you are keeping jobs profitable? Or, on the flip side, are you marking materials up so dramatically that it’s making you lose sales?