You and every other landscaping company in town, and construction company for that matter, is hiring. But why should people choose to work for you over some other landscaping company in town? If you, the owner, don't know the answer to that and it's not abundantly clear in a way that your employees would actually care about, you're going to struggle in your recruiting.
Your UEP Is Just As Important As Your USP
You probably have a unique selling proposition, a USP, which is a reason why customers should choose to hire you over other landscape companies. But do you have a unique employment proposition, a UEP? If you don't, watch today's video for a sneak preview of the Landscaper's Modern Sales and Marketing Summit. It's coming up, you can get tickets at landscapersummit.com.
And in that summit, we're going to have a whole section on creating a unique employment proposition. We're going to send you a workbook to go through and I'm going to give you a sneak preview of that in today's episode.
If you're like most small business owners your path to becoming an employer may have been by accident. I know it was for me. I just started doing digital marketing. I was pretty good at sales and marketing and getting results for clients and I started building a team of freelancers and eventually employees. And I reached a point where I was really struggling to get people to even reply to my job ads. And when I look back at those ads, no wonder, they were terrible. They sounded like wanted ads of stuff I wanted people to do. And when I look through most landscaping websites and job offer letters, recruiting posts, they look the same way. They look like a list of hard stuff to do without answering, what's in it for me, the employee. And what's in it for me, the employee, is part of creating your unique employment proposition, your UEP.
And I'm showing right now a couple clients who are doing this well. One is Tex-Scapes Nursery down in Ennis, Texas. Another one is Blue River Tree Care in Longmont and Boulder, Colorado, and you can check out their video where they interview their staff. That video is amazing. I've worked with them, I've seen them. It hasn't solved the labor shortage, but it's definitely contributed to helping fill some key seats.
We'll Work On Your UEP At The Landscaper's Modern Sales and Marketing Summit
So, in the upcoming Landscaper's Modern Sales and Marketing Summit we're going to be working together on creating your unique employment position, your UEP. A lot of this was inspired by something that I learned from the book Traction by Gino Wickman. I went through an exercise where I listed out people who had been terminated from my company. And I thought about the attributes of those people that I didn't really like and I found commonalities. Then I did the same thing for the people who have been here for a long time, that I really enjoy, that are pushing the company forward. And that helped me actually create my core values.
If you look at landscapersguide.com/about, you'll see that our core values are a big part of what we do. We even have branded icons for them. They're part of how we interview, recruit and manage our team. And we even celebrate them every week with a beef jerky club.
So that sounds like a bunch of BS stuff. I know when I read about core values and vision and mission and culture and things, they sound like things that are like, "Oh, I've got real work to do." But what I found was that the real work to do as a leader, was to create those things.
So, some of your unique employment positions can go through defining what I call your, "Hell yes employee." I want you to think about what are the attributes of the people that you've had to fire? What are the attributes of the people that you've enjoyed working with that have been promoted at your company?
What Are the Special and Unique Things That People Like About Working For You?
I want you to think about it, and I'm not going to go through the whole UEP section of the workbook, you've got to come to the summit in order to get the workbook and do this with me. It'll be really fun. But what are the pains and problems, what are the common frustrations that people in your industry, employees in your industry commonly face? It could be low pay. It could be a lack of benefits. It could be no time off. It could be a lack of training. It could be a variety of things. If you really listen to your employees, you'll know what they are. And when you literally make a list of those things, and in the next column, if you start thinking about, what does your company actually do differently? How do you actually treat people differently, create an onboarding environment, celebrate your people, the things that people actually care about? That can help guide you towards creating the three reasons to work at your company.
Now, these three reasons to work at your company need to be rooted in what you actually do, how you actually treat people. And when you start putting out this message addressing the things that people don't like and how you treat them differently. And those three reasons are actually how you roll, that's how you then start getting word of mouth. You start teaching your managers to manage those three reasons to work there. You start listening for feedback from your people and that allows you to create recruiting advertisements that address the things besides pay that people actually care about.
Learn More at The 1st Annual Landscaper's Modern Sales and Marketing Summit!
I hope this was helpful to you. Let me know if it was and I'd love to see you at the Landscaper's Modern Sales and Marketing Summit. It's going to be about a half day workshop. We're going to send you a print workbook that'll go through all of these things.
We're going to also help you with things that are related to this like improving your close rate, helping you define the milestones of your sales process. We're going to share with you how to qualify. I even give you some scripting to use on the first phone call, which you can then teach your office person to use to disqualify people quickly so you can spend more time serving the right customers where you're actually enjoying working with them and creating profit. It's going to be a real blast. So check it out at landscapersummit.com.
We do have limited seats available because we are going to do private mastermind breakouts and things, and we're going to keep it kind of small so that way it can be intimate and cool. It's not going to be some lame webinar with a person talking to you through a computer screen. It's going to be interactive. You're going to have your webcam on. We're going to see you. You're going to see me. We're going to have a print workbook. Really excited about it. We're going to send you the do it yourself video kit. You guys got to check this out. You're going to get a tripod, all kinds of things.
So anyways, clarify your unique employment position and review it with your HR person. Review it with the person who is posting the ads on Indeed or Craigslist or wherever. And when you get all of these things in sync, you're going to fill those open positions faster and with better people.
Thanks so much for checking out this episode of the Landscaper's Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing. And again, hope to see you at the summit, landscapersummit.com.