Jack Jostes:
Could you imagine running a tree and landscape company with over $47 million in annual revenue? It's something many people dream about, but also makes them uncomfortable thinking about how would you maintain quality? How would you manage communication? How would you continue doing the things well that got you to your first 20 million? Well, in today's episode, I'm excited to interview one of the branch managers from Southern Botanical, a $47 million plus tree and landscape company from Texas.
In today's episode, one of Southern Botanical's branch managers, Brad Blair, shares the agenda of his weekly huddles at his branches, how they do their annual and quarterly planning, how to get buy-in from your sales teams when you're creating sales goals and some of the essential elements of their sales process and communication that he attributes to their extremely high retention rate and overall high quality.
Hey, it's Jack Jostes and welcome to the Landscaper's Guide, where we share inspiring stories about sales, marketing, and leadership in the snow and landscape industry. Today I'm super excited to interview Southern Botanical, and if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to our podcast at landscapersguide.com/podcast so you never miss an episode. All right, everyone, welcome back to the Landscaper's Guide. Today I'm excited to interview Brad Blair. He's one of the branch managers at Southern Botanical, which is a landscape maintenance and tree care company in Texas that does over $47 million in revenue with 350 employees. They've been in business for 28 years. And Brad, tell us a little bit about yourself and what else should we know about Southern Botanical?
2:03 About Brad
Brad Blair:
Hey, Jack, happy to be chatting here with you today. As far as me, I feel like I'm a pretty simple guy. I'm a father, I'm a husband, and just a really loyal guy here at Southern Botanical. I got my degree in Texas A&M in economics, and I was led on a weird path. I feel like a lot of people to the green industry and just couldn't be happier to be here. I'm a branch manager with actually our tree care division here at Southern Botanical. We're here in Dallas, Texas. We cover all of the north Texas market and we focus in residential and commercial landscape management. We do large installation, design build and tree care. Most of our clientele is typically your clients who are proud of the landscape, who want that attention to detail and that high touch communication as well.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, thanks for coming on. And so Southern Botanical has 12 salespeople total, right?
Brad Blair:
Yes, yes.
Jack Jostes:
So it's 12 people are doing $47 million in sales. Now, I'm sure some of that's account management, retaining existing accounts, but still $47 million. So I was curious, how would you describe the sales culture at Southern Botanical?
Brad Blair:
Well, it's really a fun story, kind of how we got here. When you look at our history, like you mentioned that 47 million is our target for 2023, but if you go back just five, six years ago, we were running sort of stagnant around that $25 million mark, and we really had not invested a ton of energy or resources into sales or marketing. We had really built our business model off of just focusing on doing a great job for clients and making the landscapes we touched look beautiful, and that word spreads around, but at some point you're going to hit that wall, you know?
When I think about that transformation of when we really had, we've made the decision of, hey, we want to continue to grow, we've started to look at, okay, where are we willing to invest resources at? And I think like most people, when you're at that dilemma, people often think about, okay, where does this start? Does it start at the top of the food chain or is this with our front frontline? And the answer is both. You got to really take a multi-pronged approach that has been really successful for us. When I think about the executive level, we've made a choice to be a little bit more particular about how we hire, train, and develop our sales teams. And then from a frontline perspective, we try to think about how do we manage that customer experience and make sure that everyone is getting that white glove treatment and training our folks to make sure that we can deliver on that.
Jack Jostes:
Well, and what are some of the ways that you're able to do that? Because when you're doing $47 million in revenue, you've got all these different customers, you've got all these different people who are communicating with them. What are some of maybe the key elements of the process that you make sure happen with each customer with the sales process so that way they do have that white glove experience and while also not being oversold? I think that's a risk when you're growing and growing too fast, is salespeople promising one thing and then that's not being delivered, and then the reputation that got you to 25 million can be tarnished. So what are some of the things that like, everyone who does sales there has to do? What are some of the, maybe the milestones along that sales process?
6:17 Southern Botanical’s Milestones
Brad Blair:
Yeah, yeah, man, you're spot on there. I mean, another thing that makes it challenging for us is we deal with a lot of different types of clientele. You know, you have your commercial clients who, as long as you're doing what you're supposed to be doing and delivering on that, it's more of a business transaction. And then on the residential side, there's a lot of emotion involved in that. So you have to tailor your process to those different types of clientele. And then you think about what are the services you're selling? Our goal as a company is to grow our reoccurring revenue. And so when you talk about that big $47 million, a lot of that is money that, is revenue that we get every year if we continue to keep those clients happy. So that's the account management piece of it. And so when I think about sales, it's not just those business developers that have a hand in this.
It's literally everyone from those business developers, how we sell that customer experience and what we tell them is going to happen. We got to make sure that we're delivering on that at the same time. You've probably dealt with companies and seen this where you can sell, sell, sell, but if you don't have the staff to produce the work that you're selling or if you don't have the equipment or the trucks, all of that has to align. So I think you kind of have to scale back and look at your infrastructure and see are we able to support the sales that we're looking to go for? So for us, it's been incremental growth. And when I think about some of the key things for us, number one is communication.
One of the things that we have set ourselves apart with is regular communication, whether that is in the sales process or in the account management process, we send to our maintenance clients on the commercial and residential side of the business, we send weekly recaps every Friday, our clients are going to get updates as to what happened this last week and what are the priorities for the following week. We make sure that that communication aligns with their contract and then also with what the needs are of the property. So communication is a big piece of it.
Jack Jostes:
Absolutely, yeah. I love the weekly recap email. That's something that we actually do with Ramblin Jackson clients when we're building their website or working on a project and it's really simple and we send it via email and here's what we're working on, here's what we're working on next week, here's what we might need your feedback on, or if we're waiting for photos or something. And that, I think is a really important, especially in construction projects or design build projects that have a long time. Maybe you're in sales and your people are getting excited and now they're waiting for construction, could be, in some cases, months. So tell me... talk to me about that, and I think that's an area where many landscape companies or businesses in general, if there is a gap between the sale and the actual building of something, are your clients getting that weekly recap even during that time?
Brad Blair:
Yes. Yeah, and what I'd say is most key about that, that communication is consistency and transparency. Those customers get used to seeing those Friday recaps, and when I mentioned transparency, you got to be honest with where the status of the project is because that way you're managing those expectations along the way.
Jack Jostes:
With southern botanical clients, do they change points of contact? So does it go from a business developer to maybe a project manager and then to an account manager? What's the relationship like from potential client, to build, to this recurring revenue stage?
Brad Blair:
Yeah, it depends on the service line. When I look at it, let's give for instance, design build or tree care and tree care, if you're working with one of our certified arborists, they've got a very specific branch they want to cut, remove, or a particular shaping of a tree or particular trees on a property that we're removing or pruning, they're going to be very involved with the production side of it as well. And a lot of times they own that communication throughout that process.
On our design build, the same thing right? You've got your landscape designer who comes in and puts together these beautiful renderings of what that project is going to look like when it's all finished, and then you run into some reality when the job's actually happening and you find that plumbing line and something has to change. So it's key for our designers to be involved in that process.
On the maintenance side of things, whether it's commercial or residential, it's a little bit different. We have a process that we call handoff, and when the business developer sells a property and brings that client on as one of our partners, we then bring all of our key support members. Every one of our properties that we maintain are going to have an assigned account manager, and that account manager has a support team as well. So whether it's for agronomy, tree care, irrigation or enhancements, we bring literally all of those players to the table and we do a site walkthrough on properties before we ever actually start the maintenance.
11:57 Is everyone at your company using the same CRM or software?
Jack Jostes:
Is everyone using the same CRM or the same software? Because I know that sometimes when you've got multiple divisions from tree care to maintenance to design, build and construction, sometimes we have their own tools or they might need their own software. What software are you using or what are some of the things that you put in there so that way the communication between those three departments is clear?
Brad Blair:
That's a great question and man couldn't be more timely for us. In January 1, we actually went live with Aspire.
Jack Jostes:
Okay.
Brad Blair:
I'm not sure if you're familiar with Aspire.
Jack Jostes:
Absolutely.
Brad Blair:
Previously we were using tons of Excel spreadsheets and different softwares.
Jack Jostes:
Right, uh-huh.
Brad Blair:
Different branches, and that was a challenge for us for sure. Aspire had actually been really awesome as a partner and support team to help from an implementation standpoint, but with any new software, there's going to be their hiccups. We kind of feel like we're starting to get into that smooth sailing stage, which is nice as we're coming into spring.
Jack Jostes:
So all three departments are using Aspire?
Brad Blair:
Yes. Yeah, company-wide. We are fully on Aspire. We had the opportunity to network with some other companies prior to going live with Aspire, who also used that software and I'll steal a quote from one of the guys over at a company called Landscape Workshop, but what he said was, "You have to have one source of truth." And to us that is so important. We feel like we've really just sort of scratched the surface of what Aspire's real capability is, but we're doing well as far as keeping true to that one source. We're saying no, put that we're done with that spreadsheet and managing clients through that. We're trying to live true to that.
Jack Jostes:
And it can be hard, especially some of these spreadsheets you may have had for 10 or 15, 20 years and hey, spreadsheets can be pretty sweet, right? You know, you can really get a lot done but I like that having one source of truth. How is it going? So it's the end of April, so we've already been through February, March and April. How are the field crews adapting to it? How are people embracing it?
Brad Blair:
We're not like a lot of the Northeastern states who have the different, we're shifting to snow, so we're pretty fairly consistent. December, January is a slower timeframe for us, so we purposely chose to go live in January, not only because it makes sense to have a clear calendar year that you're starting off with, but also because it's our slower [inaudible 00:14:52] end of the season. We had an awesome team we put together internally to help really manage the implementation and the build out of all of our contracts, and we spread this responsibility across several users within the company. So when we went live, we had a lot of people who were already really familiar with it.
We invested a lot of time into training, we brought our frontline in, we had screen casts that we put up on the TV of how to use their phones and clock in and clock out. I mean, I got to say, it's gone surprisingly well. I think our expectations were to have a little bit shakier of a start, so we've been pretty happy with all that so far.
15:37 How Are You Setting Sales Goals As A Company?
Jack Jostes:
Tell me a little bit, how are you, how are... Back to the topic of sales as a part of the culture and of the whole team selling, and a lot of it, like you said, comes back to account management, communication both with clients and then internally, and that creates the result of doing a good job and high client retention to build that recurring revenue. How are you setting sales goals as a company and communicating them and really getting buy-in from other people? So it's not just something that Brad made up and he thinks it's a goal. How is it becoming part of the culture there? How do you get people involved with your sales goals?
Brad Blair:
I think one of the key factors here is getting your team to buy it. So when we're making our, we're putting together our sales goals and our growth plans, we're talking with our business development team, we're talking with our operations managers who handle the account management team and we're really trying to see, okay, what can we bring on this next year? How many people can we hire for our recruiting staff? How many trucks will we need to buy? So we have a five-year plan that we put together, and it's a lengthy process to put that five-year plan together and that plan, we look at that as if you're taking a long distance trip across the country and when you press go on your GPS, it's going to give you a route, however you're going to hit delays, you're going to have wrecks and you're going to have flat tires and you got to make turns and you have to right the ship in a right direction to stay on path.
And so we rely heavily on our teams to help us pull together what those sales plans are. And then I think that the next piece that you mentioned on accountability, I think it's really important that you have transparency around goals and where you're at as well. So in our office, we have several different places across our interior of the office where we have our goals listed and we have these little dials on them, these thermometers that show where we're at year to date, where we're at with our recurring revenue goal sale or sales goals and our annual revenue goals. So having, talking with your teams about where you stand is really important.
Jack Jostes:
I agree. We have what we call our scorecard, and it is a robust Google spreadsheet, but we review it every Tuesday at our company meeting. And it includes things like leads generated, little parts of the sales process, revenue, upsells, retention rate. And I have found that being open with that and sharing it with people, one, if it's looked at quarterly or annually, people forget about it, but if it's every week we can see where we're at. And then also when things are way off track, it's less of a big announcement of more of like, hey, we saw this coming, we see this coming.
Talk to me about what I'm hearing you say is sometimes we set these goals and then we're going down the road and we get a flat tire or whatever. How often are you, without losing sight of the goal, how often are you maybe adapting them based on how the year's going, how the weather's going, how these things are going? Are they kind of set in stone at the beginning of the year or are you adjusting them along the way? How does that actually impact the goal that you're targeting?
Brad Blair:
Yeah, so I would answer that two different ways. I would answer from a company standpoint and then from a branch perspective. So from a company standpoint, you literally can't walk to a restroom without seeing the goals. So those are going to be right in your face. You're going to see those. We do quarterly town halls where we update our teams on where we literally bring in all management and salaried staff in the company, and we sit on our grandstand area that we have in the middle of our office and what do we talk about? Hey, where do we stand? What are our financial goals and our growth goals? And what are our biggest priorities? And what are our biggest challenges? So that's from a company standpoint.
Then when you look at a branch perspective, there's two additional things that are really important. One is going to be our weekly huddles that we host with our entire team, not just the business developers, but the entire production and sales staff. And in there we're talking about, Hey, where do we sit? And we're looking at things on a weekly basis from production. What are our production goals for this week and how are we pacing towards that? And then how does that align with our monthly goals? If we're doing great, well, how do we continue to smash those goals? And if we're doing bad, we got to determine, hey, what levers do we need to pull to get the ship back on track?
And then the next layer I would mention is we do weekly one-on-ones with every salaried staff in the company. So I do mine with our vice president of operations and I have a one-on-one with literally every person on my team every single week. And on that, we're diving into much more nitty gritty detail as to what opportunities are you working with and what are the status of those, what are the clear defined next steps of what's coming up with this client and the progression through that sales process.
Jack Jostes:
I like that. So you've got your quarterly town hall, you've got your weekly branch huddles, and then also weekly one-on-ones. What is the agenda of the weekly huddle and what format does this take place in? Is this online? Is this in-person? How many people are at a branch weekly huddle?
Brad Blair:
It varies from branch to branch, but I'll give you the rundown of the branch that I run, which is tree care. And when you look at a weekly huddle, every huddle we start off with are wins. We go literally around the table and we call it rapid fire, folks shout out their biggest win from this last week and then their biggest priority for the upcoming week. And just so that we're all aligned on what we're working on, and then we can see if anyone needs help and we can help support and shift resources around. From there, we try to talk about what's timely, what's happening in trees, what are services that our clients need right now, what does lead flow look like? What does our backlog look like?
When you think about sales, so much of it is related to me when I look at backlog. If I've got a six-week backlog in sales, there's not a lot of people who invite an arborist out to look at their trees and are comfortable with saying, "Hey, yeah, we love the price, let's move forward and you can do it in seven weeks from now." So when your backlog is really high, that's a determinant that, hey, we need to hire more production staff so that we can help assist these clients faster. And when your backlog is really low, we need to be focused on what sort of business development tactics can we take and what sort of lead generation tactics can we take to get the sales back up where we need to be.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, I really like that. And looking at that on a weekly basis, when the sales pipeline is low, when the backlog is low, pipeline is low, what are some of the go-to levers that you pull from a business development standpoint that can quickly fill that funnel back up?
Brad Blair:
Well, when you've been in business as long as we have, I think one of the fortunate things that you have is just a database. So utilizing things like there's a lot of different softwares you can use to whether it's constant contact or things of that nature where you can send out mass communications to clients. So that's one sort of easy button. It's not always as fruitful as you'd hope. But then you've got clients that, we look at tree pruning, you typically don't need to prune a tree but every two to three years. So we can look back and we can say, three years ago what clients did we work with? Send them a reminder email, see if we could stop by, take a look at it. So that low hanging fruit is those clients you've worked with in the past, and we have found that to be a very fruitful worth of time.
Jack Jostes:
I agree, and that's what I always tell my clients to do, and what I do too, is who in your database can you tap? And having your list segmented and having the data of when did we do the pruning last, makes it really easy to sort and prioritize who should we reach out to? Whereas if you don't have that stuff logged, then you're okay, we can set out a mass email, but now-
Brad Blair:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
... now they're like, "Hey, you just did this last year" kind of response can happen.
Brad Blair:
Yeah, we've made those mistakes too.
Jack Jostes:
For sure, for sure. And they're going to slip by and they happen, or sometimes you have multiple email addresses for the same person in your database or whatever.
Brad Blair:
Yeah.
Jack Jostes:
But I love that the email is always the go-to lever to pull that I recommend to clients.
25:20 What Is A Market Blitz?
Brad Blair:
Another approach that we take is something I learned back in my days with some of the big box stores is what we call a blitz, a market blitz where we literally bring together every business developer, we find a demographic that we're going after, mostly on the commercial side, in the commercial sector, and we go and we target, whether it's golf courses, nursing homes, higher end HOAs, and we literally in one day we'll go and blitz as many people as we can and just put a heavy focus on business development, true business development. We're boots on the ground, knocking on doors and you know, look, it's not as effective, but one thing it does is it drives a sense of urgency with your business development team. When they see that, hey, we're putting forth the resources for a full day or two days to go forward and drum up some conversations, I feel like it shifts the energy a little bit and aligns people on where our focus needs to be.
Jack Jostes:
Brad, I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing so much about all the things that are working, and I know that it took time and growth and hard times to figure these things out.
Brad Blair:
Sure.
Jack Jostes:
But you shared a lot of nuggets for people. So Brad Blair, branch manager from Southern Botanical, thanks for coming on the show. Where can people network with you if they want to have follow up questions or conversations with you?
26:47 Network with Brad
Brad Blair:
LinkedIn would be the best place to find me. Brad Blair with Southern Botanical. You can follow Southern Botanical on Instagram or LinkedIn as well. We try to keep our post up-to-date and showcase some of the cool properties we get the opportunity to partner with.
Jack Jostes:
Well, very good. Well, I'll put that information in the show notes and thanks again for coming on the Landscaper's Guide. All right, thanks so much, Brad and Southern Botanical for reaching out to be a guest on the show. It was really interesting to finally talk with you all here. And who else should I be talking to next? If you want to be a guest on the Landscaper's Guide or if you know someone who should be, send me a direct message on Instagram at Jack Jostes or fill out the form at landscapersguide.com/contact where you can submit your story ideas. I'm always looking for interesting people. My name's Jack Jostes. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Landscaper's Guide and I look forward to talking with you next week.