Robert (00:03.136)
Awesome. Welcome back to another episode of the IAM Landscape Growth Podcast. I an amazing guest with us today, Ashly Paladino. Thank you so much for doing this.

Thanks for having me, Rob. I’m excited to be here.

sweet. Ashly runs an amazing landscape company in Omaha, Sun Valley landscaping. You’ve been with the company 14 years.

That’s correct, yep, 14 years and this is our 30th year in business.

Amazing. Okay, so as we have to start, just so the audience understands who they’re listening to from a perspective, how’d you get into the landscape industry? And then what are you guys focused on now in terms of core focus of the business and what you’re trying to grow?

Ashly (00:48.718)
So 14 years ago, out of college and things, really had no desire or want to go into the horticulture industry. didn’t even honestly know it was a career path back then. And I used to own a corporate event planning company. I met Paul Friend through a mutual connection. And at the time, I was actually looking to exit my company. I had small children. So for me,

evenings, weekends, the hours that I was putting in as a corporate event planner wasn’t really jiving with my schedule with my kids. And I was kind of just looking for something else. And I didn’t really know what that was. I knew I wanted to help or be a part of like a small business growth type situation. I had done that in a with another partnership years ago. And so I was really kind of looking to for the for the right fit, I guess. And so Paul and I met over coffee one day and

You know, I basically told him, I don’t know a lot about landscaping, but I think I can help you with your business. And, he, the next meeting after that, he had all of his P and L reports ready for me as balance sheet. And was like, here we go. What can you do for me? he was kind of at the point, you know, where he was that one owner bottleneck. was at about, you know, a million dollars in revenue really stuck. couldn’t do it by himself anymore. He wanted to grow. had this vision for the company and.

Here we are 14 years later. It’s been kind of a wild ride. You know, into a couple years into that partnership with him and I, we met Hugh Morton who owns Sun Valley Natural Stone, which is here in Omaha, about a five acre supply yard. So they specialized in design work and sold boulders, flagstone, bulk product, things like that to their contractors. And Paul was doing more maintenance side of things. So really it was just kind of a natural

partnership for the two of them. decided to merge those two businesses together in 2012 and create Sun Valley Landscaping, which is our brand now. And Sun Valley, the name is actually just a little area here in Omaha that’s known as Sun Valley. So we just stuck with that and it sticks with the area of town that we’re in. But yeah, 14 years later, I’m the COO now. I started out in business development for the company focusing on growing the business and marketing.

Ashly (03:11.79)
I transitioned to general manager about five years in did that for most of my time here. And then most recently in the last two years, we’ve, you know, reorganize the business. I’m now the COO focusing on general operations of the company and Sun Valley. Our core focus really is we’re really connecting with the commercial side of our community right now. So we’re really honed in.

on building new relationships or rekindling old partnerships that we used to have and really focusing on how to grow the commercial maintenance part of our business. And then our design build side is mostly residential. So we’re really just trying to get the right kind of leads and right kind of work and continue to scale that side of our business as well.

Awesome. And what size are you now and where are you trying to go to?

We’ll be at about 9.7 million. We wanted to be at 9.7 last year, but we had a rough year like most contractors in our industry. We really took a big miss on our project sales and started off a little slow this spring with that, but things are looking awesome right now. We’re projecting to do about 9.7 and we’re looking at about a 12 % growth year over year right now.

And you’re on your way to 20, I think is the goal for.

Ashly (04:44.332)
Our 10 year goal is 30. Yep. So we do have some big growth goals. And you know, one of the, sat down with our leadership team actually this last winter and our annual planning and we said, let’s pick a number that scares us. And we stuck to that 30 number. So we figured it was kind of good timing. It’s our 30th year in business. We’re going to go for 30 million in 10 years. do this.

Right, okay.

Robert (05:11.822)
Awesome. So you have some work to do. I love it though. Cause like you, you you, when you talk about, you know, you grow from one to 10, um, that like zero to one is really difficult. One to 10 is very difficult. Then the 30 is not going to be not, it’s not going to be easy. Um, but it’s definitely a cool path. And like, you know, I really appreciate you coming on to share your story because there’s, there’s not a lot of landscape companies that make it to 10. And so hearing, you know, the, stuff that you have had to

move through, learn from, know, fail at in order to get from one to 10 is pretty much essentially the whole point of the show. So thank you for doing this. Before we get into it though, you also are involved in the industry, not just from a business perspective, but also from like an association, volunteer, mentorship, like leadership, like what are you doing, stateside, national, to help people understand a little more about like how you’re involved in what’s happening.

Yeah, well, I remember when I joined the industry 14 years ago, I was surprised at the lack of professionalism in the industry. It was way different than what it is now, to be honest. So one of my first things like I wanted to tackle, not just locally, yeah, nationally is just I wanted to connect with other business owners in our industry. I wanted to raise the level of professionalism. I wanted to raise

the level of how all of us landscaper look when we’re out there, how we present ourselves, how we price things. And so I quickly figured out the way to do that was to start getting involved in associations and connecting and networking with people. well, I actually started going to Louisville back in the day. I think it was NALP or maybe it was Planet. No, it was Planet back then. And then it became NALP. So, you know, we started going to some national conferences where there was education and

you know, opportunities to network with other people. And I quickly realized, wow, this industry is a lot bigger than what I had ever thought. So it just really motivated me. I am definitely just a natural leader. I’m like, if I can help people or if I can learn from people, I want to connect with others. so it just was a being involved at that level was just natural for me. I started volunteering on what was an education committee back then. So helping, you know,

Ashly (07:33.376)
suggest programming and different standards to the board of directors for NALP or what was planned back then. And then a couple years after that, there’s an opportunity for me to get involved here locally on our state association, which is very small in the state of Nebraska. But, and I’ve been on the board of directors since. And so I’ve, you know, helped

navigate a lot of changes for this, our local industry here from what can we offer to the membership. We have greatly improved the local education and the CEUs that, you know, architects and horticulturists have here locally. And most recently, one thing that we’ve brought at a state level, which I was inspired, you know, from going to NALP and knowing people in the association was bringing legislative content here locally because nobody was doing that.

for our industry here in Nebraska. So that’s one thing that we’ve really been working on in the last years and we’ve gotten great feedback on that. So, you know, those just a couple of ways that I’ve been involved. And then through those efforts, I’ve just been able to connect with so many people that has allowed me to just learn and take what I’ve learned and apply it to helping other businesses, whether I’m on the board of directors or participating in, you know, a committee or whatever it is.

Yeah, it’s awesome. And I’ve said this in a lot of other episodes, but it is fascinating the correlation of leadership at an association, whether it’s state or national, and success. Like, there is a very strong correlation to the people that grow the strongest, not necessarily the biggest, but the strongest, being exposed to those folks that are in leadership positions at state and national levels. So just think it’s another testament to modeling kind of what’s involved to make this happen.

And so if you’re listening and you’re not involved, maybe consider getting involved, even at committee level to start with. So the point of the show is to try to understand the primary growth constraint that’s holding entrepreneurs back in the green industry. Going from 1 million to 10 million is no small feat. What do you see as the thing holding people back?

Ashly (09:52.046)
Yeah, I like to tell myself that that one to 10 is going to be way harder than it is going 10 to 30. But I don’t know. So when people are like, how did you do that? How did you get to the 10 million? It’s like such a blur. It’s funny. So um, but when I really, really think about it, you know, some of the biggest challenges that we had initially, like I had mentioned before, Paul was doing all of it himself, right? So he was the bottleneck. Um, Hugh,

the partner that we merged with in 2012 was the bottleneck. He was doing all of the things too. So those initially were our biggest challenges as a two and a half million dollar business when we merged. And figuring out how to navigate that along with a lack of leadership pipeline and management pipeline. And I personally don’t know that for us that

hasn’t gone away that leadership pipeline potential problem, we’ve gotten better at it, but we need to work on that if we’re going to scale to 30. So I think one of the those are two like the biggest constraints. And I think for smaller businesses, anybody I talked to that’s, you know, below that $5 million mark, and if they’re struggling, typically, the conversation has to be the owner needs to have some

ability to look at themselves and realize that they, they probably are in the way of that growth. That is the growth constraint usually is the business owner. So, you know, but it’s, kind of a weird thing because it’s like the chicken or the egg, you have to be ready to invest in leadership too. You have to be able to invest in someone that’s going to help you remove those bottlenecks or remove you as a bottleneck. So,

That’s one thing we dealt with and we did a good job, think, of navigating that in the first few years of our business. And once we got through those hurdles and we had some honest conversations with ourselves, we were really able to grow fast. But I do think that’s, I think for small business owners, that’s one of the biggest growth constraints.

Robert (12:04.846)
Yeah, it’s interesting. I always say that there’s no right answer to this one, but I think that’s the right answer. And it is fascinating how the folks at your size or maybe a little bit past or even a little bit less, but still close, all say the same. Like that, that is the same sentiment, whether it’s the same word or not, it’s a little bit different, but for the sake of argument, it’s all the same sentiment. So then why don’t we just walk us through this? us figure out how to do this. So like we got an audience of folks listening to this thing.

And they might be saying to themselves, that’s me, I’m the bottleneck. And so then what do I do? Like, you know, a lot of times people are like, I have to do everything, you know, like maybe don’t have the age old adage of if you want to do it right, do it yourself. Like that maybe is a bit extreme, but they’re like, I can’t find somebody who can take this off my plate. I feel like I have to do it all. So you start to look at this thing and you look at, you know, two businesses that came together, both bottlenecking, like the owners were both bottlenecking.

They had the privilege of finding someone like you to come in and start to look at the business a little bit differently. What did those earnest conversations sound like? What did Paul focus on? What did Hugh focus on? What did they take off their plates? How did it get started?

Yeah, so I think for a lot of business owners, this is your baby, right? So it becomes, in my opinion, a very emotional conversations at some point. So you have to somehow be able to remove the emotion out of it and the lack of trust and just kind of look at the facts of, you know, what are your strengths, Paul? What are your strengths, Hugh? Where should you focus? Where should you focus? What can I do to help the company grow and,

Remove roadblocks for others. So those were some of the initial conversations we had to have and they were really tough conversations. Like I think that’s why people either don’t do them, fail at them or avoid them. Right? Like it’s just a, it’s uncomfortable. Like I am a very straightforward person. So for me, I got really good at having those uncomfortable conversations because if I figured out very quickly that if the more I could do that and push and keep pushing,

Ashly (14:17.502)
the quicker results I would get. So I quickly learned that it’s okay to like keep pushing. So I think when you are as a small business owner, when you are looking at bringing in somebody that you’re going to really have to trust to right, you’re going to it is a trust thing. So I think if you can have open and honest conversations, that trust builds very quickly. And then as business owners, when you have to let go of things, or when you start, when you decide that you’re going to let go,

it becomes a lot easier because you’ve built that trust. You’ve had those hard conversations. know, one thing for us that was big in the beginning is like, all right, who’s accountable for what? Who’s gonna be accountable now? Now, I’ll tell you right now at this ISBR, we do have some accountability issues with different things, but you know, I think that back then we didn’t really know what accountability looked like and we worked really hard to decide what that was. And I think that that’s important. So yeah, I think

For me, it’s about building trust. have to, one, be able to afford somebody or not afford it. You actually need to invest in it and understand the value of investing in somebody who is going to be next level for you. And then you have to figure out how can I build trust with that person so that I’m comfortable with letting go of the things that I need to let go so that I can focus what I’m good at. And that might be sales, and that’s great. so then what are the other things that you’re touching as a business owner that

does not involve sales, it’s not in your lane. You need to figure that out and figure out who’s gonna be accountable for those things.

And so what was it in the case of Paul and Hugh and then, and with you as like essentially like the third leg of the stool, how did you decide to divide and conquer out of the gate when you were at that two and a half, when you guys first merged and you started having these conversations, like what was the path? Not to say other people need to take the exact one, but just to kind of illustrate how the group, the three of you did it.

Ashly (16:14.594)
Sure, yeah. And it’s also a little weird because usually you don’t have three people trying to be in different leadership positions in a small business. But Hugh is a designer. He loves landscape design. He also created the supplier here that we have on site. So that was kind of his child, I guess. And we decided that Hugh was going to focus on landscape design sales and mentoring other designers that we bring into the company.

And that has continued to be his role. You know, we have to be, he does put on the ownership hat, like, you know, he will still sit in on level 10 meetings. He’ll still come to planning meetings and things like that. We have separate ownership group meetings so that he can wear that ownership and have those conversations. But for 90 % of his life here at Sun Valley, he is selling, right? And designing work. So that left Paul and I to figure out where our strengths are for me.

I’m definitely an operations person. I’m like an executor. I am very decisive. I’m process oriented. I can look at the bigger picture and see the lane and the path that we need to go. And Paul definitely, if you know him, he is way more visionary and way more up in the clouds. I tell him all the time, I’m like, dude, that’s not realistic. So we work really well together. I know that doesn’t sound like we would, but you almost need

that yin and yang because if we were both visionary people, if we were both led in that kind of way, I just don’t think we would ever get anything done. we both decided that that’s kind of how that would go. he also sales is also a strength of his. loves people. He’s very charismatic. He loves the of the business development side of things, the sales.

of things. So he does lead our account managers and our designers from a sales management perspective. And he also wears the hat of CEO. So he’s got that visionary, but he’s also sales focused. Again, like I said, one of our focuses is these new relationships and things like that. Paula’s really leading the charge on all of that.

Robert (18:32.78)
Yeah, that’s really cool. And there’s a couple of things you said there, though. I think they’re like really important to highlight. One of them, you mentioned the idea that like it’s not often where you see a small business with three leaders. But it sounds kind of like you invested in the base, like the foundational base of a organization to grow. So it might not be.

Typical timing for that size to have three leaders, but it almost sounds like it worked out really well because you were able to spread the load over three very capable people. And as you start to understand your lanes and they’re not overlapping very much, you can then build the base to grow a team.

Absolutely. It felt very crowded back then. I’m not going to lie. But yes, now that we’ve, like you said, now that we’ve built that foundation, we really have come into our own specialties. Like Hugh, as an example, does a really great job of mentoring our up and coming or younger designers that we’re hiring that maybe are just a few years out of school and have a lot to learn, right? Still in the industry. And he’s been, you know, I’m not going to.

agent but clearly he was the first person to start the 30 year business so he’s been in it for a while and he just got a lot of knowledge to share and so it’s something that he’s really good at and it’s something I think unique to us and it gives us a competitive advantage because that’s one way when we recruit designers we talk about that as a value add people know who he is in our community and they’re like excited to work under him.

Very cool. So then did having the three of you leading the organization at that size make it tough to be profitable when you were at two and a half million and you kind of had to grow to the next level in order for the profitability to be able to start coming back to, know, quote unquote normal.

Ashly (20:23.438)
Yes, yes, we have struggled with that the entirety of my 14 year career here. But we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. But yes, I’m not gonna lie, when you have three, you know, executive level people on payroll, that’s pretty difficult. Obviously, we have to absorb as much as we can. We have to be as efficient as we can in order to be able to

you know, turn a profit for the company. And so that has been, that has been a big challenge, but I looking back on it, had we not had the support through those early years, I’m not sure that we would have bet we might’ve been a little more profitable, but we wouldn’t have been able to build the systems that we needed to at the time to grow.

Yeah, well, it’s really interesting to say that too, because it’s almost like having a clear idea of what the vision is, even if it’s three years out or five years out, doesn’t necessarily be 10. I find sometimes with entrepreneurs, they have a hard time building the muscle to get to a 10 year goal. But not say it’s impossible by any stretch. But think that’s where it becomes an interesting factor. I, I, I’ve always struggled with this balance of like building for the future versus like building for today and like being like really profitable now versus building an infrastructure.

being more profitable later. But we’ve always run into this like bad habit of like continuing boring foundations to continually be for tomorrow. That’s like at some point we need to realize the fruits of our labor. Like how does that live out with you guys?

you know, well, just to be clear, we weren’t we weren’t paying ourselves very much in the beginning of our partnership, like Paul was taking very little, he was, you know, we were all just like, so at some point, I think it was like a few years in, we all decided like, all right, we need to make more money, we are working really hard at this business. And so we kind of did that without a good plan in place.

Ashly (22:25.568)
and which obviously then we didn’t make a lot of profit. but now we have a really good plan in place to what you’re saying, Rob is now we can see where the profits, where the profits, where the fruits of our labor are gonna come in, how we’re gonna get there. We’ve got, like you’re saying, we’ve got our three year plan. We know where we should be in five years. We’re laying the pipeline for future leadership. We’re already having these discussions for like, okay, what does it look like five years from now? Who can…

who can run, who’s gonna be our sales manager? Because it’s not gonna be Paul, you know, when we’re sitting at 18 million. having those plans in place and the leadership pipeline helps us plan for those expenses, right? Or those additional investments. And then we can kind of see where that profit’s gonna be finally, right? After all these years.

No, I mean, and I think it’s just really cool because you have important foundations for growth. it’s difficult to build something big on a weak foundation. And there was something else you said that I found really interesting. And it kind of, you referred to it through Hugh about the idea of like him being the lead designer and trainer and doing design sales. But he also has ownership path and joins the L10s and like the strategic planning sessions, whether quarterly or annual. And in

Just in the way that you described it, it sounds like something that a lot of people miss, which is the idea that as an owner, you are distinctly at least two roles. One is an owner, which is not operational by nature. And then there’s an operational role that you usually take over or run, but they’re different. a lot of people, don’t think separate them. took us a long time to realize that they are different. So can you just help?

Yeah.

Robert (24:17.708)
people understand like what is the difference and why is it important to maybe separate those two out a bit.

Yeah, well, for Hugh, when I took over as general manager years ago, one of the hardest things for him was to kind of step back more from the operations. You know, he was used to, for example, running his own crews. We, I put a kibosh on that very early on. I separated sales and production for many reasons. So that was a really challenging time for us and our relationship. And we butted heads a lot in that decision and how that rolled out. But,

That was really hard for him. And now where we’re at, I think he is really comfortable with that. And we’re able to have conversations that are more ownership focused. For example, you know, these are some of these conversations you just have to have with just owners. Like, let’s just say, you know, we needed to build a satellite location in the next three years, we’re not going to start talking about that with our team just quite yet until we have more information until we kind of have.

maybe some money aligned out of how we would even make this happen and things like that. So those are just conversations that you’re not gonna necessarily have with your leadership team yet. But we do a good job of separating those out, right? Like we have specific quarterly meetings just for Paul, Hugh and I to go out to breakfast offsite. We talk about these bigger picture things that were not quite there yet with our leadership team. We talk about

things that just affect the three of us and our relationship. And really it’s a time for us all to focus on our relationship. And then, you know, when Hugh comes into the level 10, he’s a part of the leadership team or, you know, he’s in our level 10 landscape division meetings. And so he’s putting on more of his salesy hat and he’s not acting like an owner. You know what I mean? Because he’s accountable to things just like everybody else is. sits in his sales meeting and he, you know, has to

Ashly (26:19.426)
say, hey, here’s where I didn’t hit my sales goal this month, or here’s where I did hit my sales goal. So he’s like everybody else in terms of that. And he’s held accountable to those same things that our other designers are.

Which is cool because then you’re almost, not almost, you are creating the organization as if that’s a role, not a human that’s running it, that as a functional role that someone will take over at some point and you know how to run the organization like that, that’s pretty cool.

Exactly. And he will tell you he wants to retire. So he’s very motivated by that.

So I’ve heard, I heard business partners say that in my experience, there was one time where someone was like, yeah, when you’re tired in 10 years and then like three years later, they’re like, yeah, 10 years and three years. Yeah. 10 years here. We’re, we’re a year nine anyway. You know, I don’t even know what I would do if I retired. I think I’d just do the same thing. Maybe a little bit less hours, but, um, okay. So the, the climate, the landscape industry has, has been through a lot, right? So you have.

Uh-huh.

Robert (27:19.438)
COVID 2021, 22, just gangbusters. 23 still strong, 24 a little bit weaker. 25 is like, ooh, it’s not bad. If the market’s decent, there’s been some indecision. We went from this really difficult to find people environment to we gotta get back to sales and marketing like legit. To the point where people started emailing quotes during COVID and then after COVID kept just emailing quotes. And those idea of in-person presentations kind of went to the wayside.

What is Sun Valley doing when it comes to customer acquisition? How are you guys going about whether it’s the residential construction jobs or the commercial maintenance jobs? Like what does Sun Valley do to acquire customers and grow?

Well, I tell people that 2025 is like I finally feel like I felt before COVID. It’s weird. Like, I can’t believe it’s taken me this long. I don’t even know what that even means. like you’re saying, we learned a really big lesson in 2024. Things were just coming easy. We didn’t really have to try hard. And we let things like go on autopilot from a marketing perspective. And then people just kind of stopped calling us our referral network.

was kind of tapped, right? We weren’t even networking. Like we weren’t even here. I mean, I used to be in different groups and involved with a different board, you know, board of directors and things like that. And it just like stopped doing that after COVID. And so what we changed, well, we changed our whole marketing strategy, which is great. But we

We basically said, sales team, like we got to get out back into our community. got to show our face again. We have to make new connections. We have to make new networks. and you know, I’m really proud because we’ve done a really good job of that over the last, you know, we started really hitting it hard last summer, but I saw somebody that I have known in the, just in the community for probably 20 years. And she came up to me she goes, do you know what? I see your people everywhere. I see a sun Valley employee at.

Ashly (29:28.15)
a chamber events at BNI at CenterSphere. She’s like, you guys are everywhere. And I was like, that, that’s awesome. I love to hear that. So we’ve really doubled down on that. We give, you know, generous networking budgets to our sales team. We make sure they have nice clothes to wear. We make sure that they’re educated on how to network, go in with a purpose. You know, we asked them to bring business cards back, follow up, go to coffee, go to lunch. And it is proving already.

to really bring us business, to bring us those new relationships that we’re looking for. So that’s one strategy. The other strategy is we redid our website. Thank you, Rob. And it is killing it. It’s beautiful. We get so many compliments on it and it is performing very well for us so far. So I just am expecting and looking forward to those results even getting better as we go on since we just started that here this February.

Those are two major things that we’ve done. We did increase our marketing budget as a percentage of revenue, which we were just, we weren’t spending enough. weren’t, we weren’t spending the dollars in the right places, essentially. So we really changed. We had to take a hard look in the mirror this last year. So we learned a big lesson. Don’t, I don’t know. Yeah. When things are great, they’re not always going to be great. Right. So have a play.

This two shall pass. And also the flip side, when things are bad, this two shall pass, right? Like there’s a really cool video of Tom Hanks at a round table talking to a bunch of celebrities about how when it’s super high and super good, it’s like, you know, just staying humble because it’s not going to be this good forever. And when it’s totally shit, you know, hey, keep your eyes on the prize because it’s not going to stay like this forever.

One of the things that is, so there’s a follow up question, but I want to just come back to what you said there because some people forget this. And to the point where I’ve just felt I’ve built a roadmap for people to go from zero to a million growing around landscape business. I’m about to finish the one to $5 million roadmap. But, and a lot of people are like, you know, I have $5,000. What should I spend it on? You know, to invest in marketing and

Robert (31:43.63)
I’m like, do you have a golf membership? Like, like you want high end customers? Like, do you think can you swing a golf club and you have five grand like get a membership at your private golf club, go meet people that you want to do work with and hang out with them and join a committee and help, you know, it sounds dated, but it’s timeless. Zig Ziglar, right? He said, if people like you, they’ll listen to you. If they trust you, they’ll buy from you.

And I can’t find a better way to build trust in a community than to help, you know, to not only show up, but to get involved, you know, whether it’s a committee at the, you know, chamber of commerce or at your private golf club or a fundraising dinner or whatever it might be. Um, you know, we, and we saw this time and time again, and we grew intrigued to about three locally, uh, on the backs of essentially what you’re talking about being everywhere. We heard that comment. It’s crazy.

Even now to where we’re going, where we’re at now, five, six million, trying to do it through North America, we’re hearing the same thing. Like we’re starting to hear this feedback, you guys are everywhere. So it’s a little bit difficult logistically, it’s a little more expensive everywhere when it’s North America, but still the same thing is proven. Like getting involved and building those relationships that you’re talking about, it just seems like people need to be reminded how important it is

to successfully running the company. And the reason I say that is because, you know, we’ve had people work with us and they’re maybe too small or whatever. they’re like, why aren’t we, you know, growing like crazy? And one conversation I had like a month ago, was like, well, there’s lots of reasons, let’s go through whatever. was like, so what Netflix show are you like watching right now? It’s like Peaky Blinders, I’m just fully into it, which is a great show. And I was like, well,

If you’re worried about growing and you don’t have enough right now to make a good year for you, what else could you do during that time? You know? So I just really appreciate the reminder that you’re bringing to people about getting out in the community and building these relationships one handshake at a time.

Ashly (33:48.266)
Yeah, absolutely.

Ashly (33:59.598)
Well, I think it’s an opportunity to build credibility. Obviously, you’re there to build relationships and things like that and get opportunities. But what we tell people, it’s not just about what can you give me, it’s about what can I give you. So looking for opportunities to give to others, right? So to build that credibility is to build that trust that you’re talking about. And then the rest just comes naturally after you can do that.

That’s the one thing we always try to keep in front is like, well, let’s always look for opportunities. Like if we have an opportunity to do business with a client, let’s do that. How can we do that? We know so many service contractors and we’re connected to so many businesses and humans within our community. There’s always ways to look for connections. So we’re constantly having conversations of who knows this person or who knows this building? How are they connected to us? Who do we know that owns this business?

anybody else connected to them. we’re constantly having those types of conversations. We want to be those connectors for those people that we have those relationships with because I just think it’s a, after that it’s easy, right?

Yeah, well, you’re making bigger pies. You’re making everybody, you know, it’s the rising tide raises all ships. Sure. Which is a beautiful, it’s a beautiful thing. So you talked a little bit about the idea of like, okay, you website and that you appreciate the shadow. but like networking, networking, budget, teaching your team, training them how to go networks. They’re not just saying, Hey, do you need any landscape services when they show up at a lunch? So that’s all customer acquisition, front door, but then you get into, okay, maybe you, opportunity shows up, you qualify somebody, you have a meeting, an estimate, whatever design.

and then you’re getting into like presentation and close. What does your team do to get the deal done?

Ashly (35:44.718)
So that is a process that we are currently not consistent with. That, it’s on our one of our rocks this quarter for Paul, but we’re truly going through this whole what does that process look like? I will tell you out of the four new salespeople that we have, they are all doing it a little differently. In general though, like our process is that closed process

Our biggest problem is the timeframe, right? People are waiting too long to get their design and their estimate in their hands. And so our sales experience for them is just a little too long and we’re trying to shorten that. We’re also trying to make it very consistent. So we’re seeing some inconsistencies with how people are.

Do you hear that? Yeah. It was like the Alexa. The kids are home from school. They gotta go do their work. sure.

sure, yeah, yep.

Sorry.

Ashly (36:50.734)
But yeah, so our sales process is.

Consistent and the close time is a little bit different. So is there anything that you’ve done, learned, seen to help with that stuff or that you’re working on currently that you could share with the audience?

Yes, so I have a friend, Nate Moses, who has a really stellar process that he has refined. it really, the accountability is like a card, right? It’s like this, I don’t even know, five by seven card that the salesperson takes to the consultation, that first meeting with the customer. And it has like these upfront commitments that the salesperson and the client are gonna commit to.

And one of those things is when am I going to get this presentation to you? Right. And they write that down. And what is your budget? Let’s write that down. And what are the things you want to focus on? Okay, front yard, we’re going to backyard later. That’s phase two. Okay, let’s write that down. So it’s essentially like this card that’s like three sections and there’s commitments. There’s the next step in the process. And then like, what is the deliverable and we’re looking at something like that.

To me, people that I have seen that have a successful sales process have something similar. There’s some sort of commitments that you’re doing in person at that initial meeting that you’re saying, hey, upfront, I’m here face to face and this is what I’m going to deliver for you and when I’m going to deliver it. And I think it does two things. It obviously builds major trust with the client right then and there because probably not everybody’s doing that, right? Not everybody’s.

Ashly (38:28.65)
writing these things down and saying on this day or this week of I’m going to have this to you. And then two, for the employee or sorry, our salesperson, it’s holding them accountable. It’s like, wow, I have to commit to this. And so therefore, I really need to make sure that I’m realistic with this and I’m being upfront and transparent with what they can expect.

Yeah, that’s super cool. And so then when you do the, like when I’ll get the plan or the presentation back to you, are you sending this people? Are you sending it over Zoom? Are you doing it in person? How do you guys do that?

Typically it’s in person, yeah. I mean, if it’s smaller stuff, the designer might decide to send it off in an email if it’s pretty straightforward. But anything that requires design work and efforts, larger projects are always, we always present in person at their home. Or if we can get them here, sometimes we want to walk them around our supplier to look at different materials. Sometimes we want to pull up plans here and just maybe we want to wow the customer and so we want to bring them to our facility to do that.

Again, this is where I’m saying like we kind of need to make some decisions of like, when do you do that and when do you not do that? And we don’t right now. Right now it’s like up to this young person on how they handle those situations.

Very interesting that you say that. Before COVID happened, we measured close rates by in-office invitations versus on-site presentations. Okay. And in-office was like 85 % and on-site was like 60%. That might not be the same for you because you’re like B to C in most cases, not all cases, but in some cases.

Ashly (39:59.874)
Wow.

Robert (40:08.59)
But it is something cool to measure for everybody’s business. And which is another thing I think is lacking in a lot of companies. You mentioned the idea 14 years ago, that professionalism wasn’t what you expected in the industry and how it’s changed a lot in landscaping. And man, is that ever true? Like I remember doing my first presentation in 2018 at Landscape Congress and asking who here has heard of Seth Godin or Simon Sinek or Jim Collins. And it was like crickets, like nobody. And then the last 12 months, it’s like 75 % of the room has been studied

at least exposed to these concepts, which is amazing. And so data and close rates and close rate by job type, close rate by team member, close rate by size of job. Like a lot of people don’t have that info. And that’s probably another episode on itself is like how to manage data properly. But there’s one last thing I want to mention is like, so we’ve been

The last 30 to 45 days for us has been really trying to help our clients make the most out of their leads. so, first of all, anybody listening to this, please listen to the fact that I actually did say in person. please listen to this, this is about me saying it, but it is really important because you can just, there’s so many reasons to do it in person, body language, rapport building, trust building, you name it. And well, one of the things I find really interesting is that when the presentation is done, there doesn’t seem to be like a,

Yes.

Robert (41:32.878)
next step on decision. So it’s like, cool, thank you, we’ll get back to you. And it’s like, great, bye.

Right.

Now what? And so we’ve been trying to encourage our clients to say like, hey, when would you like to have a decision made? Yes or no? Okay, three weeks. Okay, great. No problem. Either way is fine. I’m going to put a calendar reminder for a zoom call on this day, three weeks from now at what time works best for you. Okay, we can do evening or, you know, whatever you want.

and love.

Robert (42:09.678)
and then if you have any questions between now and then you find my info, if you say that you want to go forward, we can either use that time to get everything lined up or we can have a call sooner. and if you say you don’t want to move forward, we’ll just delete the event. No big deal. Does that work? and it’s been for the folks that have implemented, they say they’re, they’re closed rates, the lead time, the closed time is, is short. So they’re getting those more clearly. I don’t, I don’t think I have, we have data yet on closed rates going up.

from it, but getting the pipeline clean has been at least a good result.

Yeah, I mean, when we have our accountability meetings, one of the biggest things you’ll hear from a sales team, or at least our sales team for a while was, they haven’t gone back to me yet, or they kind of ghosted me, or I haven’t heard anything in three weeks. I sent them an email, I called them, I shot them a text or whatever. So here’s another fun little tactic, though, if you do get in those little predicaments and you are getting ghosted, one thing that we found that works is you just contact them for like the last time.

And you say, hey, I’m just closing this file. just wanted to let you know, please reach out to me if you need anything. And people have been very responsive to that. They’re like, wait, wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, don’t close the file. Not that even, that doesn’t even really mean anything, right? it sounds so official and it sounds so final, I think, that people are like, wait, sorry. Let’s get on a call. Let’s talk about this.

It’s

Robert (43:39.074)
Well, and the beautiful thing about that psychologically is you’re saying, I’m cool with us not doing this.

Yep. Yes, exactly. Yeah.

I know it’s tough for people to do that, so I’ll just do it.

They’re like, wait, no, no.

That’s not what I mean.

Robert (43:58.572)
Okay, we’re almost at time. I gotta ask one last question before we go. What’s a resource speaker, author, somebody that, you know, kind of has inspired you over the years that you’d want to share with the audience?

gosh. Well, one recent person that I have started, just started, well not started, I just finished one of her books. But the more I read about her, Mel Robbins, I really enjoy her. I just think she’s super down to earth. She’s very about like the psychology of humans and getting down to the nitty gritty. So I just finished the Let Them Theory book and then I just started looking her up and finding all these other things. So I’m gonna do,

her earlier book, I think was like the five second rule. It’s kind of like a decision making tool. So I actually have a couple of team members who have problems with that. So I might be recommending this book to them, but I just, don’t know if I really relate to her. She’s very easy. Like I’m a big audio book person cause I like to listen to books when I’m either walking or driving my kids everywhere for baseball games. So it just works for me, but she just is a great, I think she gets down to the psychology of humans and how they operate. And it’s really,

I’ve learned a lot from her.

Epic. Love that. And she had a podcast too, right? I’m not sure what it’s called, but I if you just search Mel Robbins podcast, you’d probably find some epic episodes. So thank you for that. And thank you for doing this. Really appreciate it, Ashly.

Ashly (45:14.594)
Yes.

Ashly (45:25.25)
Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it.