How to Conduct an Honest Self-Evaluation of Your Lawn Care, Landscape, or Tree Care Business
If you own a lawn care, landscaping, or tree care business, you probably spend plenty of time evaluating other people. Are your technicians productive? Are your crews hitting their hours? Are managers following through? Are salespeople meeting their goals?
But how often do you evaluate yourself—and the business you are leading?
It is easy to confuse being busy with making progress. Trucks are rolling, phones are ringing, crews are working, and customers are being serviced. But activity doesn’t necessarily mean your company is becoming more profitable, more efficient, or less dependent on you.
That’s why every green industry business owner should periodically conduct an honest self-evaluation.
Start With the Numbers
Don’t begin with how you feel the business is doing. Begin with what the numbers tell you.
Review your key business metrics, including:
- Revenue growth
- Gross margin
- Net profit
- Labor efficiency
- Revenue per labor hour
- Customer retention
- Callback and rework rates
- Average customer value
- Sales closing percentage
- Employee turnover
For a lawn care company, that might mean evaluating route density, technician production, customer cancellations, and lawn-care callbacks.
For a landscape maintenance company, examine budgeted versus actual labor hours, enhancement sales, contract retention, and property-level profitability.
For a tree care business, look at crew utilization, revenue per crew day, equipment productivity, PHC opportunities, job margins, and sales backlog.
Numbers don’t tell the entire story—but they make it much harder to tell yourself the wrong story.
Revisit Your Goals
Pull out the goals you established at the beginning of the year.
What did you say you were going to accomplish?
Then ask three questions:
…Did we achieve it? …Why or why not? …What needs to change?
Avoid simply moving an unfinished goal into the next quarter or next year. Determine what prevented you from achieving it.
Was there no clear owner? Did daily emergencies take priority? Was the goal unrealistic? Did you fail to track progress?
Repeatedly missing the same goals is usually telling you something about your systems, leadership, or accountability.
Evaluate the Business Beyond the Financials
A profitable company can still have serious underlying problems.
Look honestly at your people, processes, customers, and leadership…
…Are you developing managers or continuing to make most of the decisions yourself?
…Are your standard operating procedures actually being followed?
…Do customers hear from you proactively—or primarily when there’s a problem?
…Can your lawn care, landscaping, or tree service company operate effectively when you aren’t there?
That last question may be one of the most important.
If every road still leads back to the owner, growth eventually becomes limited by the owner’s personal capacity.
Ask What Only You Should Be Doing
Now evaluate your own time.
Look at what you did during the past several weeks and divide your activities into four categories:
STOP — START — DELEGATE — KEEP
What should you stop doing?
What aren’t you doing that you should start?
What are you doing that someone else should own?
What high-value activities should remain your responsibility?
The objective isn’t simply to work fewer hours. It is to spend more of your time doing the work that creates the greatest value for the business.
Get an Outside Perspective
Self-evaluation has one obvious weakness: you are evaluating yourself.
A peer group, mentor, business consultant, or trusted advisor can challenge your assumptions and ask questions your employees may hesitate to ask.
Sometimes the most valuable question isn’t, “What should we do next?”
The most valuable question is:
“What am I doing—or failing to do—that is preventing this business from moving forward?”
Turn Evaluation Into Action
A self-evaluation without action is simply an interesting exercise.
Identify your three most important improvements for the next 90 days. Assign responsibility, establish measurable outcomes, and review progress regularly.
Your goal isn’t perfection… …It’s progress
The strongest lawn care, landscape, and tree care businesses don’t improve by accident. Their owners regularly evaluate the numbers, the team, the systems—and themselves.
So ask yourself:
Is my business getting better—or am I just getting busier?
Be Well, Do Good Work, and Keep In Touch.
Fred
To Learn More Contact Fred…
(619) 665-7854
