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- [00:01]
Sponsor/Advertiser
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- [00:32]
Paul Jamison (Host Introduction)
Hello and welcome to the Green Industry Podcast, your go to guide for building a more profitable and thriving lawn care and landscaping business. Your host, Paul Jamison is the author of five best selling books including Cut that Grass and make that Cash and his latest Level up youp Money, all available on Amazon and Audible. Now get ready for more expert insights and practical strategies to boost your business and level up your life. Here's Paul Jameson.
- [01:09]
Paul Jamison (Host)
Welcome back to the Green Industry Podcast. I'm your host, Paul Jameson down here in sunny Florida. And today on the program we're going to talk about firing the bottlenecks, those customers that stress you out. They're always complaining, they're texting you late at night. They seem to always find something wrong with you and your company and honestly, why do we keep serving them? We're going to talk about how we get ourselves in these pickles today and most importantly, how to get out of those bad customer relationships and replace them with new, better customers. But it gets tricky because you can't, you can't mess it up to where then they give you a one star review and things of that nature. So this is a very, these are muddy waters, folks. And I, I, I feel like I got some pretty solid solutions for you if you're new to the program. I've actually been a small business owner myself since 2011. I started my first lawn business, cutting that grass, making that cash in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Ooh, those are the days. Hot summers in old Lawrenceville. And I quickly, quickly, quickly got a whole bunch of bad customers. And what happened was a real estate agent, I started working for them and they had, they were the number two real estate agent in Atlanta. So long story short, they had properties all over Atlanta. Now if you're not familiar with Atlanta, it's a big city. So I'm going from Lawrenceville all the way over there to Johns Creek and then why not do some yards in Duluth and Suwannee while I'm out there? And I come back to Lawrenceville and I'd be going out to Winder and I'm all around town and I was grabbing coffee with my friend Kenny at Panera, who's been around the industry for about 20 years. And, and I was just basically talking to him like, yeah, I started my new lawn business and I got all this business and, and he was just staring at me, shaking his head. He's like, kid. He's like, yeah, that's, that's not good business. I was like, no, no, I'm, I'm, you know, sunrise of sunset, I'm crushing it. He's like, you're driving all. He explained to me what windshield time is like, this is horrible. And he's like, you got to pick a neighborhood and just dominate that neighborhood. And so I quickly realized, oh, wow, this, this whole thing of working for this real estate agent. I mean, I don't work for, but she gave me, you know, real estate listing is usually all over the place, right? Like the actual geographical location, all different yards and all different neighborhoods all across metro Atlanta. And here I am thinking this new hot shot business, you know, lawn care business owner, not realizing I didn't even know who my ideal customer was and why I had so many bad customers. So, anyway, that's what we're going to talk about on today's program. The famous philosopher Jim Rohn shared a unique, I guess, insight into the Pareto principle, which the Pareto principle or the 8020 rule is, for example, you probably. Well, let me just share what Jim Rohn said and then I'll, I'll break it down. All right? So 80% of your headaches in your business are likely coming from only 20% of your customers. Think about it. Take inventory of your business right now. What customer is the bottleneck for you? What customer creates problems and challenges in your business? What customer? When, when you see them calling your phone, you're like, oh, man, here we go again. Do I answer it? I let it go to voicemail. You know, that, that decision you got to make in the moment. Who are those customers for you? So Jim Rohn is probably spot on. It's probably only a handful of our customers that are char. That are. That are causing us this problem. So let's identify who the bottlenecks are in our business. I have a few different ways I want you to think about your business here. So, so nightmare customer number one is the geographic nightmare. This is, this was a lot of my bottlenecks. I had to let them all go. It's the client who lives outside your core neighborhood, your, your, your core service area. Hopefully you've identified. This is my core neighborhood. I want to have as close to 100% of my business in this neighborhood. So if you're new to running a lawn care business, you'll hear the term all the time. Route density. Route density. Route density. And what that means is your route that you go on each day to serve your customers. Ideally, you want it to be as crunched together as possible. Shout outs to Chris Gentry, my service area. He's got an app that connects to your website or extension that connects to your website that as they're, they're filling out your, their information on your website, it will automatically qualify if they're in your service area or not. So once you've identified your service area, a bottleneck client is anyone who's outside of that service area. Like, oh, it's only 15 minutes away. 15 minutes away. That's 30 minutes round trip of windshield time. That's unbillable. If, if we're working, we need to be, we need to have the lawnmowers engaged. The, the blade spinning, baby, the, the weed eater string going. And, and you're edging someone's driveway and you're mowing someone's grass and you're blowing someone's debris and you're getting the yards cleaned up. That's income producing activity. That's making money. When you're just sitting in the truck driving out to Sweet Sue's house, that's a geographical nightmare. And I'm being very careful with my words here because I am very, very, very aware that almost everyone listening to the sound of my voice right now, you have some of these customers that are not in your core neighborhood or your service area. So step one is identify your core neighborhood and then step two is identify. And I'm going to talk about how to handle this situation here in a moment. But first I want us just identify who are those customers that are not in our service area because they probably need to go, they probably need to be replaced with someone in our core neighborhood. Number two, identifying the bottlenecks in our business is who are the chronic complainers? The person who's just hovering over your crew. They nitpick everything. They nitpick everything. And then, then the whole, hey, while you're here, can you real quick. It'll only take a minute. All righty. Hey, hey. Just, just real quick. But before you guys leave, right? Jason Carrell told me a story of one time he found himself inside, inside his customer's house because the husband was short. So the lady was like, hey, Jason, you're such a tall guy. Can you come in and hang a, hang a Picture, you know, hang a picture on the wall. My husband just too short. So something like that. Jason was telling me a story one day how next thing you know he's in some customer's house. So we got to be careful when customers are, are, are the complainer, I guess is the best word to explain to them. That's a bottleneck customer. That's a bottleneck customer. That's slowing down our business. I don't, I don't have time to hear you gripe and complain. Now if a customer is complaining about something that's legitimate, like you actually made a mistake, that's legit, then that, that, that, then you need to have the humility to, to listen to your customers feedback and say, wow, we, that will never happen again. Mrs. Smith, I am so sorry. That will never happen again. You know, but if they're just nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking, it's like no matter what you do, you can't get it right right Then, then you got to be careful about the chronic complainer. Now the other bottleneck is the slower late payer. And honestly in most cases it's your fault as the business owner if you just simply use jobber and you get the card on file. You shouldn't, there shouldn't be such thing as a late payer because if you run your business the way you should run your business, then up front when you onboard the customer, you're very clear, hey, we're going to charge your card each time we do your service. So, so just know the day that your yard gets cut, we're going to, immediately when we're done, everything looks nice, we're going to charge your card on file. So honestly, I don't, I don't have too much sympathy anymore for people who are, you know, telling me their sob stories about the late payer or the slow payer. But if, if they're being funny about that, then, then they're not, they're not an ideal customer. They're not an ideal customer. So what we're gonna do is after we hear a quick word from today's show sponsors, I have a solution to each of these situations. I have a solution for the late payer, I have a solution for the chronic complainer and I have the solution for somebody who is outside of your service area. I'm gonna give you real, like, real ways you can communicate to these customers and how you can replace them with better ones. So we're gonna, we're gonna have the solution coming right up after we hear a word from today's show sponsor. Real quick before we move on. If you're tired of buying equipment blind or running your crew the same way, hoping something changes, get yourself to Equip exposition this October in Louisville. Test drive the best equipment from every major manufacturer in one place. Come see me at the mortgage morning show. Check out Equips education sessions built for guys actually running crews. Use my code Paul registration to save 50 on your pass. The link is in today's show notes. If you want to earn more money in your business, it may be as simple as raising your prices. Braden, use our price increase letter. And what happened?
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Guest
Well, we've actually been in business for 32 years now. My dad started it and then he handed the reins over to me. And in 32 years he'd never increased the prices ever. And I knew that we had to make a change. So we actually got your price increase letter, increased the price by 20%. And we were doing around a million gross, up that to 1.2. And we had eight cancellations through the entire thing. So we raised our prices through that letter. About 200 grand.
- [12:36]
Paul Jamison (Host)
Say that, say that one more time.
- [12:38]
Guest
$200,000 that was sitting on the table that we weren't getting access to just through a letter. So it, it helped us out big time.
- [12:46]
Paul Jamison (Host)
So do you think the price increase letter provided a ROI for you?
- [12:50]
Guest
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, beyond is probably the best investment we've made in 32 years.
- [12:56]
Paul Jamison (Host)
That is awesome. You can get the price increase letter@thegreenindustrypodcast.com it's a plug and play template. Just put in your information, insert date here, insert name here. And in the most straightforward, concise way, it explains to your customer of why you're raising their price. It made him 200 grand each year and then you're going to raise the price again next year.
- [13:13]
Guest
Exactly.
- [13:14]
Paul Jamison (Host)
Your lawn care business deserves to be seen. Footbridge Media crafts optimized, mobile ready websites to put you ahead. These guys are great. That's why they have so many five star reviews. They're simply the best. To get started with Footbridge Media and have them create you a banger of a website, visit today's show notes, click on that link and let Footbridge Media transform your online presence. Foreign. So hopefully you've identified who your bottleneck customers are. And again, the three categories that I think we can find them in are the geographic customer that is out of our core neighborhood or our core service area that's a bottleneck customer. We gotta deal with that, the chronic complainers, the, the person who's always nitpicking something you're doing, they're always asking you for extras. They're just a pain in the rear end. We gotta deal with that. And then the, the customer that you always seem like you're a debt collector. When, when you think about them, there's always a story of why they don't pay on time. I talk about that. So the dilemma here is you have to protect your reputation and the worst thing that can happen is you mismanage the breakup here and they pull off the old one star Google review, which is the challenge because they hold a lot of power as the customer. And that's a beautiful thing about the free market here is as we can with the reviews, excuse me, with the review systems out there, you know, it is powerful as a consumer to leave a one star review. And that's why we have to be completely professional and basically not act out of emotion when it's time to say goodbye to these bottleneck customers. So there's, there's three different categories that I've shared that I've gone through. I mean, I'm sure there's more. It's just, I, I can literally think of customers I had to let go because they're not in my service area. I've had customers that I've had to let go because they're just a chronic complainer. And there's customers that I've had to let go because they're just late payers and it's just, they're not, they're not on board with my system and they got to go. So how do I protect my reputation in the meantime? And also never burn a bridge in life in general. You just never, you never want to burn a bridge because you never, you never know how life's going to turn out. I, I shared this story a long time ago on the podcast and I'll share real briefly now. I'll get to the solution here. But on a cold day, I used to live in Atlanta. I went up to Ohio to go to a football game. Los Angeles Chargers versus Cleveland Browns. My customer, he was one of the coaches for the Los Angeles Chargers and he knew I liked Cleveland Brown. So he's like, hey, come to the game. I'll get you on the field. And you get to go down the field before the game and all this stuff. So I was like, okay. So I, I was flying from Atlanta to Cleveland, Ohio to go, to literally go to Cleveland Browns football game. And so My brother picks me up the airport, and I'm texting my friend, and he's like, hey, we just landed. We, we'll be over to the hotel, the Ritz Carlton, in a few minutes, so just, just meet me there and I'll give you your tickets. Because he had, he had the tickets on him. And so, like, okay. So I, I, I, I didn't bring a coat, so it was like 43 degrees. So cold for someone, you know, from the South. And I didn't have a coat because I, it was, it was not cold in Atlanta. So I get to Ohio, and it's all cold. So anyway, I get to the Ritz Carlton, and I walk in the lobby, and I. And I had my Los Angeles Chargers hat on and my Los Angeles Chargers T shirt on. And, and the security guy comes up to me. He's like, hey, sir, do you have a hotel room here? I was like, oh, no, sir. I'm just meeting my friend here. And he's like, you're gonna have to leave. And he was very, very mean to me. And I was like, just, my friend's literally coming, you know, coming any minute, and he's got tickets for me to go to the game. Well, for whatever reason, the security guard must have thought I was a football fan. I was just trying to be in there when the team came in there to get autographs or who knows what he thought? But he's like, you gotta leave. And I, I'm kind of like, no, I'm. I'm just gonna wait for my friend. He's gonna be here any minute. He's like, get out now. We're calling the police. So I, I'm like, you know, all right, call the police. I'm, I'm not leaving. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm legitimately here to meet my friend to get tickets to the game. And so next thing I know, I see two. Two police charging to the, you know, to the hotel. I'm like, oh, what's going on? And then they're like, he's right here. I was like, what's going on? I thought they were coming for someone else. And so they're like, get out. You know, and so the, the Ritz Carlton is in a mall. Like, it's connected to the mall. So I, I walk out to the mall. They're like, the mall's closed. You got to go outside. So the, these two police officers escort me outside and, you know, basically open the door and kick me, kick me to the curb. And so I was like, oh, that was. That was rough. So now I'm standing outside, it's freezing cold, and I'm texting my friend, and he's like, we're about to be there. Are you in the lobby? And I was like, I'll just meet you out. Yeah, I'll meet you outside. All right. You know, so anyway, he. The buses pull up and. And the Philip Rivers. This is long Philip Rivers, the. The quarterback of the Chargers. So he gets off the bus, and then the running back who used to play at Wisconsin. What was his name? He's really, really good. He had long, long hair. I forget his name, top of my head. But he was a stark running back, one of the top running backs in the whole. In the whole NFL. He gets off the bus, and then there's. There's the coach. He gets off. He gets right off the bus, right behind these guys, and he sees him. He's. Hey, Paul, come here. He's like, let's go inside. I'll get. Get you the tickets inside. Because his assistant or whatever had him in there. Whatever, whatever. So I didn't. I didn't have the courage to explain to him, hey, they. They kicked me out. And so. So he's like, yes, come on in. So I'm standing next to him, walking, and Philip Rivers is right in front of us, literally just standing right there. And. And so then I just go walking right by those same police officers with the coach and. And with the team. Like, I. I was the police. They saw the whole thing because they were standing there, and. And they. The. As soon as they walked off the bus, the police officers were probably a little starstruck to see. To see these football stars, you know what I mean? And then. And then the coach is like, hey, Paul, come here. You know what's up? And so the police saw that my story was true the whole time, and they, you know, had a little bit of humble pie there. I kind of wanted to point at him and smile, you know what I mean? I didn't do anything like that. So then. So anyway, then I go back in, and I'm in the lobby, and he's waiting on the assistant who had all the tickets in the. To, like, get the tickets out, to give them to me. Well, then the police come back, the hotel's like, hey, he's back in here. And. And they're all talking on their walkie talkies. And the coach heard them. They, what's going on? What'd you do, Paul? I was like, I did Nothing. He's like, we better get out of here. And so, so finally they had tickets. He gave me the tickets. And then as I was leaving, I just, I just kind of said, you know, goodbye to the police officers, and I was like, I got tickets. Thanks, guys, or whatever. So it was completely, it was a funny story. But the reason I share all that is, is those police officers, they were very, very, very rude to me, but they, they didn't know who I was. And I, not to sound like I'm some big shot, but, but like, they didn't. It made them look really, really bad at the end of the day. And so you have to protect your reputation when you move on from a customer as, as, as, as careful as you can be. Don't burn the bridge, because what if your customer is best friends with a new customer you're going to have down the road? Or you just, you just never know how. Life, it's like a, I don't want to call it a spider web, but it's all interconnected. And so you really don't want to burn a bridge is my point. And you definitely don't want to get a one star Google review. So what you want to do is be completely professional and don't act out of emotion. So those police officers, they weren't professional. They. In the people, the, the rent a cop security guard at the, at the Ritz Carlton. And these are real Cleveland police officers. But the, the guy who worked for security at Ritz Carlton called the real police, like the Cleveland Police Department. But all of them collectively, they weren't professional. They were, they were very mean to me and, and they acted out of emotion and, and just, you know, treating me like I was not, not too important. And so if, if I would have, I could have done something. I didn't do anything. I was, I was just like, I, I'm cold. I'm gonna get my brother's car and go back, Go, Go home. Right, but the point is, just be professional because, you know, you don't want to come back to haunt you. All right, I could, I could draw more illustrations out of that story, but I want to get to what to actually do. So strategy number one for the, for the, the geographical nightmare. Here's what you say. All right? You can write this down. Hey, Susie, you know, insert your client's name. As we transition into our busy spring season, we are restructuring our routes to maintain efficiency. Unfortunately, your property falls outside of our new tightly focused area. Our last service day will be Friday or, you know, Fill in the data, whatever the date is. I highly recommend Joe, you know, Joe Schmo's lawn care for your future needs. If you actually know Joe services their area. If you don't have a competitor in the area that you can recommend and don't, don't recommend. So that's all, that's all you got to do is just say, hey, buddy, old pal, you know, whatever your customer's name is. We're transitioning to a really, really busy time of the year. We're restructuring our routes to maintain efficiency. Unfortunately, your property falls out of our new tightly focused area. Our last day is going to be. Let them know what the last day is like. Go give them one more service. Don't leave them high and dry. That's, that's part of what I'm talking about, of avoiding the emotion and avoiding the one star review. Go one more time, do the best job you can. And then that gives them ample time to line someone new up. That's the easy one. Here's the tough one, the chronic complainer. All right? And if somebody came to your mind as I've been talking about this, that's that chronic complainer, it's probably time to let them go. So here's, here's how you approach that one. There's, there's, actually, there's actually a couple different ways you could go about that one. You could just raise their price really high, and then that might scare them off. But I'd pro. I'd probably say something like this, hey, hey, Dave. As we enter the peak season here, you know, spring season, we're experiencing unprecedented demand, and we, we've reached our capacity. In order to maintain our quality standards, we're having to make the difficult decision to downsize our current client roster. Unfortunately, we will no longer be able to service your property after filling the date. Thank you for your past business and we wish you the best. I'm going to read that one more time because some of y' all need to write this down and send this email today. Hi. Now, Dave, it's a real, this is a real. When I said, hi, Dave, this is a real message, I said, so don't put Dave, but put, put your client name. But I'm, I'm sharing with you what I. These are real life. This is a real life example, all right? I'm not going to tell you his last name or address, but this, this, this really happened. Hi, Dave. All right, and maybe you're listening to this. It's not spring season, but this is Just this is a real example. Okay, so, so take, I'll just tell you, you could adjust it to, you know, fit your needs high. We'll say client name. All right, there you go. As we enter the peak spring season, we are experiencing unprecedented demand and have reached our maximum capacity. In order to maintain our quality standards, we are having to make the difficult decision to downsize our current client roster. Unfortunately, we will no longer be able to service your property after and fill in the date. Thank you for your past business and we wish you the best. Now what was tricky about that message that I had to send out is I had several other yards in that neighborhood actually as a matter of fact, several other yards on the exact street. So I had to be very careful. And he never left me a one star review and I saw him multiple times after that and his wife and you know, they were, they were as cordial as you could be. I know they didn't really like me, whatever, but I was professional about it and I got, I kept my good reputation in the neighborhood and I think, I think probably other people probably kind of knew, yeah, it's hard to make that guy happy no matter, no matter who you are. Now the other, the other thing you can do is the, just the high price. So, and you could do this for the late payer too, but you could basically just say, hey Susie, you know, we're trying to provide just a really quality service that you've come to expect. And so we're going to, you know, we're going to basically send the price increase letter, right? And basically just tell them, you know, we have all these rising costs, right. Our labor is going up, our insurance is going up, our equipment's going up, gas prices are going up. So we'd love to continue, you know, servicing your property, but here's your new rate and you jack that price up so high that they're probably going to be like that's ridiculous, you know, we can't afford that. And like I'm so sorry. So now it's kind of like their decision, right? Or if they say yes, then, then, then you, they probably going to be such a headache anymore because you're going to be making bank off that property. So that's one way to do that. And then most importantly, replace these customers with new customers in your service area. If you need any help with that. I mentioned my service area, my friend Chris Gentry, you can connect that extension to your current website and then when they fill out the form on your website with their address, if their Address is in your service area. It'll proceed. If it's not, it will send them a professional message just basically saying that, you know, they're outside of this. Excuse me, they're outside the service area. If you guys need a website, Footbridge Media, that's who I recommend for those. They'll actually build your website from scratch. Professionally, they are fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Footbridge Media, we have Chris Lonergan on the program a lot from Footbridge Media, but they'll build out your website. They, they are world class when it comes to marketing. And then CallRail, they can take care of your marketing in the sense of assigning a phone number for your website. So if somebody goes to your website and they'll see a phone number on your website and they'll call that number, CallRail can connect that to your, to your main phone line and then you'll know, oh wow, that customer came from our website. And then CallRail can give you a different phone number that will connect to your main phone for your Facebook page and a different number for your Google business listing and a different number that can go on your truck. So then, and it'll just all go to your main phone that will ring. But the, the point of the different phone numbers that CallRail will set you up with is to analyze where's your inbound flow coming from. Are they coming from your website or are they coming from your truck? You know, the phone number in your truck. Are they coming from your Google listing or are they coming from your Facebook page? Or where, where are they coming from? Some sign on the side, you know, corner of the road. CallRail can set all of that up. They can do way more than that. They also can do voice assist where you can feed them all the, all your custom, all your company's information. And then CallRail, you can set it up to answer your phones for you after hours or whenever you want them to answer your phones. And it will sound like a real human, but it's actually AI. But they'll take care of all your phone needs after hours so that you don't ever miss a call again. CallRail is absolutely fantastic. So anyway, we don't want to just fire customers only. We want to also replace them with better customers who will pay us a profitable price that are in our core neighborhood or core service area. So today's episode is not the funnest thing to talk about, but it's important. And these are unfortunately real life examples. And you know, real, or the, the messages I shared with you. You know, this this is real life. You know, I mean I've, I've gone through many, many, many, many of these and I've come out and I say this happily, I've come out without any damage. Well, what I mean by that is, is there was never a one star review. There was never a somebody trying to take down my reputation or I did everything with professionalism. And so that's the main thing. A lot of guys get emotional and they get hot headed and they get argumentative and they do something that then the other person gets. There's a way when you de escalate a situation when someone's real hot, they're really upset, they're really mad and you're cool as a cucumber and you're not, you, you don't match that energy. You don't, you don't, you don't fight back, if you will. It can de escalate a lot of situations. That's just a, that's just a tip in general. So just be very, very, very calculated and, and thoughtful and careful of how you fire these bottlenecks. But fire them if they're, if they're causing you stress, if they're not in your service area and if they're, if they're not paying you on time, we don't have time. If you're running a professional business that's legitimate, you don't have time to deal with any of the stress of those bottlenecks. You need to move on. And I hope, I hope that you can go back and re listen to episodes or the parts of this episode where I gave you the emails to send out or you know, the, the suggested emails to send out so that you can word it professionally and then, you know, hopefully there's not any ramifications other than that. And then you can replace them with better customers that are the right fit for you. So I hope this helps. Thanks for listening and we hope to catch you on next episode. Peace.
- [33:30]
Paul Jamison (Host Introduction)
Hey, it's Marty, producer of the Green Industry podcast. This episode is over, but check the episode notes for links to products and services that you heard about during the episode. And thanks for listening.
- [33:42]
Sponsor/Advertiser
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