Consulting and Coaching for Small Business Owners
Success Stories
Giroud Tree and Lawn, a family business, built from the ground up.
Giroud Tree and Lawn
We created a high performing multi-million-dollar family business. Giroud Tree started in my garage in 1974. We built it into a best in class performer in sales, production, marketing and management. We became the leader in a competitive market. The company earned a significant income for ourselves and our employees. As a result, we were able to attract a national buyer who purchased the company for an exceptionally high multiple. All of this was accomplished with the key leaders based 1,100 miles away and living the life we wanted.
Our company’s success wasn’t achieved by accident or luck.
Keys to Our Success
Strategic Planning
Every 1-3 years throughout most of our history, we brought our leadership team together to evaluate our current reality and develop a strategic plan. The plan included clear, measurable goals, specific implementation strategies and a timetable to achieve them. It was never set in stone. As the market and business conditions changed, we adjusted our goals and strategies. These plans were our roadmap to build the business and set it up for either the next generation to take over or make it attractive to an outside buyer.
Financial
We increased our net profit by 100% over 3 years. To do it, we set very specific financial goals and KPI’s. These included weekly billed sales, backlog in each service area, labor hours, gross volume, gross profit margin, net profit, cash flow and debt reduction. We monitored all of these KPI’s on a weekly basis so that we could make adjustments quickly if an area wasn’t trending in the right direction. Through our KPI’s we identified the service areas returning the highest margins. Based on our analysis, we focused most of our growth on these high performing areas. We also made a habit of doing detailed adjusted financials on a monthly basis rather than the traditional quarterly. This gave us a more accurate financial picture of exactly where we stood each month and allowed us to address issues before it was too late.
Operations
Our goal with operations was to build a strong culture and a team of individuals who were driven to complete the job on time, safely and to the customer’s satisfaction. We created incentive programs that supported these goals. The incentives also tied the crew in with the salesperson to get them both on the same page and have them operate as a team. In order to be eligible for bonuses, workers had to meet minimum attendance requirements. Equally important, we created a culture of safety producing one of the lowest experience modification rates in the industry. None of this would work unless we could attract and retain the right people. To do that, we developed a combination of compensation and benefits that far exceeded our competition.
Organizational Structure
Our #1 priority was to have a management team in place to run the day-to-day operation. This required production and inside operations managers as well as a sales team who could function independently with limited oversight. It also depended on having strong systems, procedures and performance incentives for each area of the business. Additionally, having this solid management structure in place also made us especially attractive to potential buyers.
Marketing
Our company was a marketing powerhouse that consistently produced leads and positioned us as the company that customers loved doing business with. Through post-job surveys and follow-up calls, we stayed on top of customer satisfaction and earned a 4.9 out of 5 rating on over 32,000 customer reviews. We developed a custom database to serve as our CRM. It provided us with key data on every customer and prospect. Having access to great data, we were able to keep in regular and personal contact on multiple levels with our customers as well as prospects throughout the year. Our marketing strategies included a team of lead generators with targeted call lists and messaging, personalized direct mail and email campaigns, referral programs, neighborhood campaigns and a powerful digital marketing strategy driven by a website that consistently put us at the top of the search engines.
Sales
In order for any business to be successful, you have to have a super sales engine. Our sales engine was driven by hiring the right people, providing a consistent pipeline of qualified leads and offering a win/win compensation package. We hired individuals who were natural born salespeople, had a strong desire to earn high incomes, and were committed to making the customer completely satisfied. Our team developed strong relationships with existing clients and prospects that produced repeat business year after year. Finally, we set up our compensation package to reward salespeople for the outcomes most important to us. Besides a base commission, commissions were also tied to gross profit margin and customer satisfaction on every sale.
