NOW SERVING 2 LOCATIONS!
OPEN YEAR-ROUND • • • • • • • • • • • • •
Mulch Topsoil Limestone Grass Seed SWEET PEET Washed Gravel Sand & Boulders Organic Fertilizer Decorative Stone Natural Stone - Palletized Ground Rubber Mulch Bulk Salt De-icing Chemicals (Bag & Bulk)
New Location! BROOKPARK 11444 Brookpark Road Cleveland, OH 44130 866.666.7528
NORTH ROYALTON 11528 Royalton Road North Royalton, OH 44133 440.582.5200
W E B: W W W. ROYALTO N S U PPLY.CO M E M A I L : I N F O @ ROYALTO N S U PPLY.CO M
NUMBER TWO
NUMBER THREE
IGNORE YOUR NUMBERS
WORK ONLY IN THE BUSINESS, NOT ON IT
Undercutting is just one symptom of a larger problem: not understanding your costs at all. Dealers agree that financial acumen is the determining factor of a contractor’s success.
Of course, landscape contractors have to understand landscaping on a technical level. But owners can’t always be mired in details if they want to grow beyond the one-man crew mentality.
“A good landscape contractor really has a grip on what it takes financially to run his business, down to the penny,” Kaufhold says. “He understands what it costs to rent machinery, run trucks, win a customer, collect a bill – and consequently, the ones who don’t, fail. That’s the most glaring difference between winning and failing businesses.”
“The most successful contractors implement processes and structures within their company to free them up from the day-to-day operations, so they can spend more time working on their business than in it,” says Jason Lewinski, a former landscape contractor, now assistant field sales manager for Power Equipment Distributors in Richmond, Mich. “They’re focusing on the bigger picture, whether that’s implementing a new service or a strategy to increase sales and profitability of the overall business.”
Dale Fronheiser co-owns Passmore Service Center in Bechtelsville, Pa., where he sells, services and rents outdoor power equipment. Numbers come naturally to his most successful customers. “My best accounts have great mental math (skills),” Fronheiser says. “We’ll be working out the cost of a complicated purchase, and they’re a step ahead of me calculating payments and how it will make their business prosperous.”
Smart contractors build repeatable processes to create sales, perform work and get paid, while controlling schedules, expenses and resources. “The leading contractors create really good systems that they can consistently maintain and duplicate,” Kaufhold says. “That efficiency creates a profitable business.” continued on page 34 The Growing Concern | May 2018 | 33