How could your business change for the better if you had a crystal ball handy? What would you do differently if you could get a good read on exactly where your company’s year stands at any given moment? While the idea of peering into a crystal ball to tell your company’s future seems silly, let’s be honest. Do you forecast your year based on good intentions and a fraction of the data you need to do so? Are you staring at your company’s financials and incomplete reports just hoping it will magically happen?
CEOs and leaders want frequent snapshots of where their landscaping company stands with sales to try and piece together their future. They want to know if they will have enough coming in to sustain business and ultimately be profitable. Lots of companies rely on asking sales teams what they have in the pipeline, pushing them with big goals, and hoping it just all goes well. But it's not uncommon to get to the end of a busy spring only to realize you're way behind or conversely, to assume you're good and find out later that you are in big trouble.
Although we can’t offer you a magical device that can foresee the future, we can offer the next best thing. The best thing that company leaders have to work with to determine the future is meaningful data. But the problem is, without a system in place to constantly be calculating that data, it’s useless. That’s where landscape sales and estimating software comes into play. It has the power to be like a crystal ball by analyzing data and helping you make the best decisions for your company based on that real time information.
The Magical Power of Landscape Sales and Estimating Software
There are a number of ways in which software can help you have a better grasp on your company’s future. For one, software can help you keep tabs on your salespeople, forecast sales, and monitor job costs for maximum profitability.
Here are some benefits which landscape sales and estimating software can provide in order to help you more specifically break down where things stand.
- Knowing the status of sales opportunities at any time
- Looking at each salesperson’s lead-to-sale closing ratio
- Understanding differences in closing percentages for specific department’s services
- Always knowing what the current production workload is as well as what the potential is to take on additional work should it be sold
- Knowing precisely when a job moves from the estimating phase to the stage where production takes over
- Having a strong idea of what’s in the pipeline to predict what will get sold
All of this information will help give sales managers or CEOs a good sense of what exactly their salespeople are doing. It will also allow you to make better decisions that are based on hard evidence (in the form of calculated data). Analyzed data can help you to develop a formula to make factual predictions for your business instead of guesses that are based off of a gut feeling. This data can also help identify areas where your sales team needs improvement.
Without the use of landscape sales and estimating software, there are many areas where the sales process can go awry. These are just a few.
- Forgetting to ask about a renewal contract for next year
- Estimating the job inaccurately without the most up-to-date numbers available
- Promising work in an unrealistic time frame
Any one of these issues could cause a problem in the sales process. For instance, how often do jobs get majorly slowed down once they reach the operations phase? Your salesperson may have given the client a timeline but once it got into the hands of your operations manager he said, “No way!” You didn’t actually have the material or the manpower required to get this job done in the timeframe the client was quoted. That can lead to customer dissatisfaction and potentially lose you the job.
If only there was a way for all departments to see into the future and to operate together (instead of not knowing what’s going on in another department). That’s where landscape sales and estimating software can truly help. The software will allow you to departmentally look at the current workload as well as the backlog. At any given time you can also get a sense of what’s in the pipeline and how many hours are forecasted. The main thing you’re selling in this industry is man hours so it only makes sense to have a good grasp on exactly how many man hours you’ll have available.
A Glimpse Into the Future With Better Forecasting
We recently talked to an Include Software client who uses our software to plan for the future and in turn ensure more profitability. By looking at everything proposed versus sold, as well as lead time versus acquisition, they generate a detailed report for purchasing to know exactly what will be needed to get their jobs done. Sometimes that means planning ahead, before a job is even on the books. That’s often a necessity in an industry like this where many materials are living things that need time to grow and mature.
For instance, the same client that runs in-depth reports tell us they typically provide 10,000 annuals to the same high-end customer each spring. These flowers must be a certain variety from a certain nursery and they take time to grow. Because this client of ours can project that they are highly likely to receive this project by looking at data from landscape estimating software, they can make sure they plan ahead. If they don’t—and they fail to grow all the flowers needed—they could actually lose that client.
Landscape sales and estimating software can also help make pricing adjustments as they’re needed. It’s prudent to be proactive when it comes to pricing in an industry where there are constant fluctuations in the market. For instance, say there is a shortage of a particular landscape material and it suddenly costs more. If you already quoted a job with the old price, it’s just an expense you’re going to have to eat. But going forward, it’s essential that there is an easy way to change items within the database to reflect changes in the economy.
On the flipside, say the cost of gasoline decreases by $2 per gallon and you don’t change that item in your sales estimates. Yes, you will make more money, but at the same time you could price yourself out of a job, losing it to a company that had already adjusted their pricing.
The old way of keep tracking of all this data was on paper or spreadsheets. But with landscape sales and estimating software, this data can be processed and shared in a way that truly makes it useable for all of your team. And as a business owner, you’ll be able to make better decisions, keep better track of jobs and pricing, and ensure that you aren’t falling behind.
The latter is important when it comes to cash flow. In this industry, most companies run on a cash basis. Accounting-wise it’s essential that they constantly know what their cash flow is—typically on a week-to-week basis. Landscape sales and estimating software will allow you to always be on top of that number. That’s absolutely huge in making sure that you don’t end up behind in the game.
Better Support of Your Salespeople Means More Sales
While we’ve mostly talked about how landscape sales and estimating software can help you keep tabs on your sales folks and ensure that jobs are moving along as they should, It’s also important to mention that landscape business software provides helpful support to your salespeople, allowing them to do a better job selling. Accurate estimates are more easily created using the real-time data in the system. With software improving the overall efficiency of your business operations as well as ensuring you always have the most current and up-to-date numbers, your sales team will have the support they need to sell more confidently.
Though it’s not exactly a crystal ball, utilizing analyzed data through landscape sales and estimating software is the closest you’re going to get to predicting the future. By truly knowing your numbers you’ll be able to ensure profitability and lead you toward the magical success you’re hoping for.
If you’d like to find out more about how Asset can improve your sales and estimating, get in touch with us for a free demo or call us at 800-475-0311 so we can answer your questions.
Image Courtesy of Level Green Landscaping