If you sell commercial landscaping, what do you do when you get a cancellation notice from a top client? Do you just let it go away? Do you cry? In today's episode, I interview the president of a multi-million dollar commercial landscape company who shares an absolutely stealthy one year sales follow up tactic that helps him renew accounts, plus three of the top mistakes that he's learned about sales along the way in his career. So if you offer commercial landscape maintenance or landscape maintenance in general, check out today's episode.
Hey everyone, Jack Jostes here, and welcome to the landscaper's guide. In today's episode, I interview Wade Martin, the president of Martin landscape Inc. in Beaufort, South Carolina Wade's team has grown to over 85 people in two offices with the vision of adding a third. And he certainly made his share of mistakes along the way to his success. Here's a clip from my conversation with Wade about what he's learned about sales and in particular for his commercial accounts. And if you enjoy this conversation and do commercial landscaping, you've got to join me at my virtual event, the landscaper's guide to commercial sales and marketing. We're going to be talking about new LinkedIn strategies to proactively fill your pipeline with outbound marketing on social media and proven sales and marketing tactics that are working for my commercial clients.
So check that out at landscapersguide.com/events. And now let's hop into the conversation with Wade, which is the second half of a podcast interview I did with him last year then, and right now we're picking up in the conversation about leadership, which spurred into this great conversation about sales.
So you're mostly working year round. You've got 75 day five employees. You've got two locations you're serving South Carolina and Georgia. Where are you headed? You're, what 17 years in, right? What is the vision of the company?
Wade:
Where we want to go, we'd like to have three branches. We've got two now. We'd like to have that third branch. And we'd really like to be around a 30 to 50 million a year company, but the growth is not huge for us. We were really want to look at our NOI, our net operating income because I feel like the larger companies look at that gross. I'd love to see if they had a top 100 of NOI companies, not their gross. Because I know what they make. And we're not going to work off five and 7% on an NOI. We shoot for 15 to 25%. We shoot for a higher number. I think our industry, we are underpaid in our industry. This is very labor intensive work, very detailed. I feel like we're underpaid. And as long as we have people not raising their pricing, things like that, it's going to be like that forever. We don't need that. We need to let people know and give them the knowledge of what we do. Let them understand what we do. Educate your clients.
In an Underpaid Industry, Educate your Clients
Jack:
Yeah. I recently interviewed one of my clients, Nate Fetig, who runs Alpine Gardens in Colorado. And he was having challenges recruiting, and he realized that he was about 35% under market on the salaries that he was offering. So he did something really bold. He increased the salary of his current staff by like, I think in some cases, 30 to 35%. Increased the job ads, and then for all new customers increased the rates. And all the new customers basically said, yeah, great. We'll work on that price. So I love that story. And I love hearing you say that because I think overall the industry could charge more, and it is hard work. It's dangerous work in some cases. It's very detailed, it's demanding, and it doesn't have to be underpaid.
Wade:
That's right. We got to raise our standards. We really do in our industry. And then going back to that, you said your client raised his prices. That goes to us. If you have a good relief relationship with your client, property managers, whoever that you're working for, you can go to them and have that conversation openly and say, listen, we're not making any money on this project. Basically I'm paying you to do the maintenance here or whatever. And you have a good relationship with them, you can build off of that. Our account managers have great relationships with all their clientele. And we can go to them and say, listen, we've got to raise the prices. And this is why. Nine times out of 10, they understand. You will have that client that doesn't understand and wants to be on price.
Well, that's when you go after your ideal client. Then that's a client that you really didn't want. We just lost a large contract due to low bid, but we've ridden by it. We took pictures. I encourage our landscape contractors out there that do a good job to do this. When you lose a contract and they give you a 30 day notice, ride through that thing before the other company takes over and take all the pictures. So a year later, when that thing goes out for bid, you've got those pictures of when you did it. Present it to that property manager, because nine times out of 10, it's not the same property manager. That way you can build that relationship. And you can say, hey, look, this is what we did. You're not bashing your fellow competitor. You're not bashing them. You're just showing them how much better you are. We've gotten really good about that, documenting everything.
Jack:
Yeah. So that's for commercial primarily. Or do you do that for residential too? I mean, I don't think residential are going to put, put it out for bid. Right? So tell me more about that. So have you won back commercial clients that have hired another contractor for less, for lower price and you've come back a year later. Has this translated into some renewals for you?
How to Build a Relationship with your Clients
Wade:
Yes, it has. And that's a secret that I'm kind of letting out the bag here. So if anybody's in our market, please, I hope you're not listening, but yes it is. But it's not a secret. It's just, you have to take the time to do it. Our account managers are very well trained. We talk about this. We have a weekly meeting. We talk about things like this. This is one of the topics we have right now going on. I follow a large company on LinkedIn who's a mentor of mine. I reach out to him all the time, but it's called ghosting your client. When you get that RFP request for proposal, read through it. If they say that you're supposed to put 50 flats of flowers out and a thousand bales of pine straw twice a year, go to that client and ask if you can take that out of it and do that as an enhancement, because nine times out of 10, these larger companies, I don't want to bash the larger companies, but I know how they make their money.
They're not doing that. Instead of 50 flats like what's required, they're putting 30 in. Instead of a thousand bales of pine straw, they're putting 600. Instead of doing it twice a year, they'll do a little bit throughout the year to equal up to one application. Make sure you have that relationship built, speak to your clients upfront, follow up with those proposals. Don't just send a proposal out and just expect them to call you on it. Follow up with those proposals. We're very good at that. If you lose a proposal, find out why you lost it. Say why did we lose it? Was it price? Was it this? But we get a lot of that information up front and I will tell you, we say no a lot. Because we'll have clients call us and they'll tell you right on the phone, we're going for the lowest bid. We really don't care how it looks. Well, guess what? That's not our ideal client. We don't want anything to do with it.
Commercial Sales Process
Jack:
Yeah. So let's talk about commercial sales process because I think you're hitting on something really important here, which is getting clear on what I call your hell yes customer. You can call it an ideal customer. In our brand, we call it the hell yes customer, where when you get a lead, you get a referral, the phone rings, you see that person, you get an RFP and it's a hell yes, I can help you with that. And I'm going to be better than anyone at it. And then part of that is a hell no customer equally. And I think a lot of landscape companies, especially commercial, get stuck in this rut of bidding on everything. And sometimes that bid might take 20, 30 hours. So tell me a little bit about how do you manage your commercial sales process differently from your residential sales process?
Wade:
Sure. So like I told you, we are 100% commercial landscape maintenance. So if we're just talking about landscape maintenance here, I told you earlier, we go over the P and L. We know what we're good at. Martin landscape, we know that we're good with apartment complexes. We're good with HOAs. We do what we say we're going to do. We know what we're good at. So we know our ideal client. We know that we're not going to go to a commercial bid where they're going with the lowest bid. If it's a municipality bid, but it's not in there about the lowest bid, we will bid it. But if it's in there that hey, we have to take the lowest bid on this, we may take a jab on it, but we most of the time will not. And part of that, Jack, is we measure everything we do. We know like with our software, we know how many acres per hour our mower can cut with our people.
And we benchmark our guys. Every two months, I know that seems extreme. But every let's say two to three months, we get out there and all account managers have a sheet they fill out and we know how many linear foot of steel edging they can do, string trimming, cutting, pruning beds. So anybody in this company can bid one of those ideal clients and our numbers are going to be spot on. You may be off by a few dollars, but it's nothing. I've never seen anything like it, but our guys, I can send five of them out there and they come back and say it's $100,000 a year contract. I may have them from 96,000 to 101,000. It's very close. It's really dialed in to knowing how to measure it and what to charge.
How to Find the Right Customers for Your Company
Jack:
So one of the things you mentioned there was when it says that they are going to have to choose the lowest bid, how do you filter out that in your sales process? How do you know when that's the type of sale you're up against and when you're not?
Wade:
Okay. So most of the time it's listed, but if it is not listed, don't be scared to ask. We will ask them, we'll say, are you going with the lowest bid? We qualify our candidates when they call in this office. Your first impression, we have a lady in the office and she's the first impression. She's the director of first impressions. She gets all this information up front so we're not chasing squirrels. We like to get as much information as upfront. From the email address to how they're choosing us, to if we're bidding against someone else. We're not scared to ask them. We'll ask up front, hey, what's your budget? If they call here and tell me they have a $200 a year budget, they're not our client. If they call here and say, well, our budget is $100,000 a year. We're paying a hundred, $105,000 a year now, but we want to cut some things. We can work with their budget. We're not scared to ask. We get that information. The more you get up front, the easier the whole job's going to be.
Jack:
And also, I think many people are reluctant to do that, but I believe that actually serves the customer best because if you don't have that conversation sooner, you're going to waste both of your time because maybe they do have a budget and you haven't uncovered it. And they need to stick within it. If you come in and bid over that, you've wasted their time, you've wasted your time. It really doesn't serve anyone not to talk about it in the beginning.
Wade:
Yep. That's correct. And that goes back to relationships. One of our core values, it's spot on. That's what it is. You got to have the relationship internally and externally, and you've got to talk to them. Don't be scared to talk to the client. Don't be scared to ask them, hey, what's your budget? They will tell you and they will tell you, what's the worst they can do? I'm not going to tell you my budget. Okay, no problem. We just want to make sure we're in the ballpark. We don't want to sell you a book of goods that you can't afford, or don't want to put in your budget. Budgets for our commercial clients have been coming out for next year.
We'll go to them and we will ask them, Jack. We'll say, hey, listen, we really want to do some so replacement in these areas. You've got a lot of foot traffic. We'd like to put a paper patio in this area. You've mentioned it. We'll make notes throughout the course of the year. We'll go to those clients in budget season and say, hey, can you put in $50,000 of enhancement work next year on this property? They'll say yes. They'll say, okay, well, no, I can't do $50,000, but I can do $25,000. You've got $25,000 of enhancements you just sold for next year.
Top Three Commercial Sales Mistakes
Jack:
What are some of the biggest mistakes that you've made in commercial sales that are now part of the process? So I'm sure you've mentioned some of them already, but tell me some horror stories or mistakes that you've made maybe personally, or somebody on your team that people listening are probably making right now.
No Qualifying Budget
Wade:
Yeah, man, Jack, we don't have enough time for that, but I'll go ahead and say it. Number one is what I just told you. Be honest with yourself. When you're making mistakes or you're not comfortable with it, your gut doesn't feel good. Go with your gut. But one of the biggest mistakes I've made in commercial lawn maintenance is driving my pickup truck through the property going, oh yeah, I think four guys can do this for four hours. Do the old guesstimate, put an hour mark on it and say, okay, well, 50 bucks an hour, $60 an hour, four guys, $240, 52 visits a year, doing some quick math, handed them off [inaudible 00:14:30]. We're going to bid it to this, throw it out there. I didn't measure anything. So not measuring your properties. I would tell it every fellow landscape professional measure everything you do.
I can't give you the numbers for that because I don't know what your team can produce. Your team may be a lot faster than our team. We have an average, we know what the benchmark is for our industry, but we have an average and I'm going to tell you, some things we do really well. Some things we do really bad. Those things that we do really bad, we got to continue to train on them. But that's one big mistake I've made is just riding in the pickup truck. And I know everybody does it. Oh yeah, we can do that in an hour. Don't do that. Measure it, know your numbers, because you can ride through a property that is huge, but it may just be a bunch of streets. It may not be the actual common areas that you're doing. So measure all of that. Don't be overwhelmed by that.
Jack:
So one is not qualifying budget. Two would be underestimating by not measuring. What would be maybe a third mistake that you've made in commercial landscape sales that you hopefully don't do anymore?
Measure Everything You Do
Wade:
Well, one big thing is don't be scared to bid properties that you think are too large for you or too small for you. Because if you qualify that candidate upfront, those small properties may turn into something a lot bigger. I had the tendency for a while as our company hit a certain amount of sales and I said, ah, that's kind of a small property. I wouldn't do it. We didn't get it. Let me tell you what that small property did. They revamped the entire neighborhood, put a brand new two wire irrigation system in, probably spent half a million dollars. Well, I was too good for that property and we didn't get it. So I would say if we would've had those procedures in place, we would've got that job because we would've qualified them up front. We weren't qualifying our leads as they came in the door. I learned from my mistake and I said, all right, I don't care what size it is.
If they're an ideal client and we qualify them we got to go after it, whether it's small or large. And then going on the ones, we weren't measuring. So we thought they were bigger than what they really were. One of the larger ones, I thought that it would take the guys a week, we ended up getting one of them. It took them three days and I'm like, why did we do this? Well, we went and we measured it and that's what it should take was three days. So don't be scared of that as well.
Jack:
So tell me a little bit about that last one, because I guess what's the criteria of your ideal client? Because doesn't size need to be part of it? And how do you kind of live this without biting off more than you can chew or wasting time? Because some projects could be too small. How do you work through that?
Wade:
So first of all, you got to start and say, okay, how, who is our ideal client? But you don't just train yourself and your account managers, you got to train your office staff. The biggest thing is when you get that lead, that lead comes in, the first people that get the cough in that lead is your office staff. If they're not trained it's not going to look good on you. So we'll sit down and we'll talk about, we know our areas that we work because location is a prime example. Our office staff is trained. So they know what areas, we know what our minimum size job is. Whether it's an enhancement, irrigation, we have certain numbers that we use for an enhancement.
And I'll share a number, but we don't go out for an enhancement that's less than $2,500, unless they are a current client or they're going to join and they want a price on our lawn maintenance, commercial lawn maintenance. So that's just a general number that we use because we know what it costs to bring a skid steer to a job and hauling a crew there and things like that. So just qualifying that client like that, telling them upfront, training your office staff. I mean training your office staff is huge. What's the whole point of us putting the numbers on our trucks and our shirts and all this advertisement? You got to have the person in the office that's going to take that call that knows what they're doing. Because that's the whole reason we're doing this, to drive these phone calls. So I think that's a big thing is training your office staff.
Jack:
So having that clear and training your office staff is critical, and it's really obvious. It's thinking like, okay, if somebody sees this advertisement, who are they going to talk to if they call the phone? Who is going to reply to this if it's a lead through the website? What information do they need to know and collect to move it along the sale? Well, hey, thanks so much for coming onto the show. And Wade, you mentioned, how can we connect with you? So you had mentioned sometimes you email people. Is that okay if people email you or should we connect with you on LinkedIn? For people listening, who, who are inspired by what you had to say that want to network with you, where can we connect?
Wade:
Absolutely link. My email stays full and I've got that 10 and two rule. So LinkedIn is the best way to get me. I'm very active on LinkedIn. They can connect with me, send me a message and I can kind of look at their profile as well. And I would love to do that. Instagram, our marketing director runs our Instagram page. Stay up to date with us. Facebook, look at our Facebook, Instagram, come to my LinkedIn, go to our company LinkedIn. Go to our company website as well and look around.
Jack:
You're doing a lot. That's great. And everyone check out Wade Martin on LinkedIn and martinlandscape.net. Thank you, Wade.
Wade:
Thank you Jack.
Jack:
All right, everyone. Thanks so much for checking this out. I love that tactic of taking photos of a job site that you're managing of a property that you're managing and going back a year later and saying, well, what is the new crew doing? Are they doing better work than me? I've got to up my game. Or maybe they're not doing as good of work and I can reactivate that old client. So Wade, thanks so much for coming on the show and sharing not only those great sales tips, but also some of the lessons you've learned.
And if you'd like to learn even more about commercial sales and marketing, what's working now specific to commercial because hey, let's face it. Most marketing companies, most website designers, they're positioning commercial landscapers just like they would a residential contractor and it often doesn't work. But in this webinar, I'm going to share with you what is working for my commercial clients. And I invite you to check it out at landscapersguide.com/events. And when you register, I'm going to send you a free copy of my ebook about commercial sales and marketing. My name's Jack Jostes, and thanks so much for checking out today's episode of the landscaper's guide. I look forward to talking to you next week.