Have a plan

No business should ever embark on any period of operational time without a legitimate and well thought out plan. Your fall operational plan should include at least two key factors.

• Sales Projections
• Production Projections

First, with sales projections it's very important you have a road map for where you want to be. In the fall you’re in the homestretch and you need to know what has to get done to call your year a success. Let’s say you’ve billed $850,000 so far this year and your goal is to break a million dollars by year-end. Take that $150,000 and put together a sales plan to get there. Set a goal, set an aggressive goal and push hard to make it happen.

However, keep in mind that you have a limited time to get this work billed. Take the remaining weeks of the year and divide that number into your sales goal to determine how much you will need to bill per week. If it’s doable, sell more. If it’s not, either hire some more help or reforecast your sales.

Focus on your key services: Time is a premium

Identify the services that you specialize in and focus on selling them like crazy. Fall is not the time to get experimental with things that your company isn’t accustomed to doing. If you are not sure if a service is profitable or if you are going to be able to effectively complete a job on time and under budget, do NOT offer this particular service. Fall is a time where your employees can be more productive than any other time of the year and you need to be able to capitalize on it.

Don’t ever allow down time. Ever!

Every truck and every body should be in operation at all times in the fall. Any dollar you don’t sell, any dime you don’t bill and any hour you pay somebody for “hanging around the shop” are dollars and hours that you won’t ever get back. You have to be productive and you have to be smart.

Set production contests and take advantage of every minute you have to sell, sell, sell.

Acknowledge supply and demand

We can easily get sucked into a situation where we are providing estimates that may be a little bit lower than they should be just to get the job. Sometimes we sell work simply to keep the employees on the road but in the fall, production time is limited so you have to be sure that you are charging a premium for your work. Knowing your numbers is key here. If you are projecting that your aeration and seeding trucks will have to be working awfully hard to get everything done on time there is no way you should ever sell another aeration and seeding for anything less than an absolute premium.

The more work you have, the more you can charge for additional work moving forward. (How awesome does that sound?) On the flip side if your irrigation winterization schedule is looking pretty open you are going to want to fill it up. Don’t be afraid to modify your pricing based on what you think you can sell and what your production schedule will allow.

Take advantage of your current customer base.

There is no better person to sell something to than somebody who is already doing business with you. Up-sells and added services are the absolute lifeblood of almost any business and there is a clear and obvious correlation between profitability and revenue per customer. Obviously your gross sales will increase with the more you provide to each customer but your net profit will soar if you can increase that average revenue per customer.

Begin the renewal process early

So many companies miss out on an influx of cash when they need it most by not offering a prepay discount to renew services for the following year at the conclusion of the current year. Just because the year comes to a conclusion in regards to servicing properties it doesn’t mean that your operations should come to a screeching halt. Every day is an opportunity to make sales and increase cash flow. Many of your customers truly appreciate the opportunity to be able to get scheduling for the following year squared away early. They also really enjoy the idea that they can save money by paying in advance for you services. Depending on how aggressive you want to be or how bad you need the cash flow, you can set a prepay discount as either low or high and contact each one of your customers to get on the books for next year.