Setting a company up for success while supporting your employees is a huge challenge for irrigation and landscape lighting professionals. It’s a balancing act that requires attention and care while constantly looking for ways to improve.
The Watch Us Grow: 2024 Industry Standouts contest celebrates business owners and service providers who have developed their teams and their revenues. For this year’s class, that’s meant a focus on education, certification and customer service. We hope these stories encourage your company’s further growth.
The Talent Seeker
As Alex Morgans, CIC, CIT, owner of Morgans Irrigation in Bayville, New Jersey, made his transition from high school to college, he worked with a small landscape company run by a friend and his uncle. “They’re both very hands-on and taught me a lot. I didn’t start with a large company, which I think helped me out in the long run. I learned a lot more because they were with me every day doing work,” he says.
He’s taken that approach to his work with his team. “That’s why I’m in the field,” he says. “I like to be hands-on with the guys. If I see something out of place, I like to correct it right away, and the guys appreciate that.”
His career also includes time in larger companies, where he was able to gain an understanding of how a business with more resources operates. One lesson that stuck with him especially was the importance of education and a presentation of professionalism.
Being able to provide a high level of service requires great employees, and that means needing to build a role and environment that is attractive to hard workers, he says.
“This is a demanding job. There’s a lot that goes into it,” says Morgans. “Having the right wages and a good culture, it helps the guys want to be here. Everyone works together for a common cause.”
This is a demanding job. There’s a lot that goes into it. Having the right wages and a good culture, it helps the guys want to be here. Everyone works together for a common cause.”
– Alex Morgans, CIC, CIT, Morgans Irrigation
On top of his regular pay for crew members, he provides a commission for attention to detail on repairs for clients.
“You have some guys who will overlook a broken head because they want to get home,” he says. “We don’t want that. We give them an incentive to actually want to make those repairs.”
That kind of drive can spur greater growth among the crew. When one of his employees got his certification, he started encouraging the others to join in on education as well, improving the entire team.
“As the head of a company, I want to reward that,” says Morgans. “In the long run, it’s going to make our company better and we’ll be able to bill more at the end of the day because they’re educated.” If it costs him a little more to support that growth, he sees that as a good investment.
Ongoing education makes a big difference for the team as well. Morgans is working toward making certification a bigger part of advancement in the company. But he already makes sure that rainy days are spent in classes and developing expertise. Keeping education at the forefront also helps the team do their best work for clients in efficient uses of water.
“I tell my guys all the time, we’re in the business of helping people save money as well as water,” he says. “If you’re on a city water meter, every gallon you waste is money running down the road.”
When hiring, Morgans looks for a personality that he thinks will fit with the team and someone who wants to be involved in the green industry and better themselves. After that, he looks at time spent in the field, even if that means he has to pay more for it.
“I’m always looking for experience,” he says. “You’re not going to get cheap guys that way. But don’t be cheap.” If you have to raise your prices to bring on the right team, it could also help curate a client list that’s willing to pay a little more for good service. “The biggest thing I’ve done is just to make sure I have a good group of people around me,” he says. “You’ll never do wrong that way.”
The Client Communicator
While Sari Ann Tyler pursued her degree in ornamental horticulture, she honed her expertise working with a large landscaping company. She had developed a love for the industry and wanted to go further, and she asked the company owner his opinion of the industry overall and what her future could look like.
It was very difficult to get established as a contractor, but for her specifically, “He did not think that a female could work with crews,” says Tyler. “So I took that as a challenge.”
She continued on to get her contractor’s license and expand her business, Front Range Landscape in Fort Collins, Colorado, through landscape design, growing into construction and commercial maintenance.
One of the major drivers of her company’s success is a focus on listening to what a client is looking for, rather than showing up with multiple planned projects or services, she says.
“If they’re calling for an estimate, they already have an idea of what they think is the problem,” she says. That’s different from a cold call in that the situation calls for a solution rather than sales. “People who are pursuing a landscaper for construction purposes usually have an idea in their head already. They may not know exactly what that is, but that’s why I’m here to guide them.”
A client might say that they’re looking for a low-maintenance yard, or that they want to enjoy their back yard more or develop an extension of their living room, she says. That helps her focus on specific suggestions, such as targeted drip irrigation where it can do the most good for plants.
“I don’t provide an estimate for a client to sell anything unnecessary,” Tyler says. “I go to a potential client to listen to their needs. When I’m listening to what a customer needs and wants, all I’m trying to do is fill that need with a practical solution.”
Once she has a grasp on what the customer is looking for, she can provide her expertise on the best way forward for construction, she says.
“You don’t need to upsell something that the client doesn’t need,” she says. “What you’re trying to do is make them happy in the long term.”
Sometimes that comes in the form of spending time on client education around landscape best practices and reliable options, she says. She’ll refine choices on which plants will or won’t grow in the region and discuss what kind of irrigation system will be required to maintain the installation. She’ll also make suggestions about what the client is asking for to reduce potential future pain points such as lighting placed where it will shine into a window instead of aimed at the pathway it’s meant to illuminate.
She’s able to rely on her background and past projects not just to track repeating trends but to find solutions that have worked for similar requests. Having that point of reference and knowing that it’s been a fit for another customer helps shape an idea and plan for a client, she says.
Tyler passes this directive on to her team through continued training and an understanding that their job isn’t just about mowing or installing, she says. On the job site, she’ll connect with the team to show them the larger vision for the project.
“We want them to understand how this fits in with the design and where this is coming from,” she says. “I’ll say, ‘This is what the client wanted, this is the design and the goal is to meet these needs.’ That way they’ll understand what the goal is, rather than just the plan and what needs to be done.”
That helps her team hone their expertise, but also shows them a possible answer when a future client brings up a similar goal, she says. It also builds buy-in and personal pride.
“When they’re done with that project, they’re not only satisfied with what they did, they can also see that whoever lives there can now enjoy what they asked for,” she says.
The Standard Setter
David J. Frank Landscape Contracting, Germantown, Wisconsin, recently passed its 65th year in business, and reached record-breaking growth in the past year. The company also collected multiple state and national awards for landscape construction and maintenance. Its irrigation department, managed by Erik Dyba, CLIA, CLT, CIT, has been a large contributor to that development.
Dyba worked in landscape construction and ran his own business while living in Colorado, giving him daily interaction with irrigation built around water conservation and building his expertise. When he made a move back to work with David J. Frank’s irrigation division, he knew it was time to reach for Irrigation Association certification.
“Just in doing that, I got the team involved in it,” says Dyba. “I had some good mentors, and everything I learned at the IA brought it back to what I learned and put it in a way that I could easily explain it to others.”
The thing about progress is that it catches on with the right group and the right encouragement, he says. In working with his team members to help them get their certification, they started studying as a group and working through concepts.
“We found that as a group, we really learned a lot from basic components all the way through how valves work and troubleshooting problems,” Dyba says.
The company is moving toward a more process-driven approach in recent years and going step by step through irrigation education provided a critical opportunity to develop best practices and processes for handling irrigation systems. It also allowed them to take into account scalability and standardization as larger concepts in their work, making it easier to source parts and handle inventory.
“We rewrote our standard operating procedures, highlighting a lot of the IA best practices there,” Dyba says. “We went through them and said, ‘This is how we’re going to do this. Everyone’s going to be doing the same thing.’”
That continued to include specific coursework surrounding the systems the company commonly used, with the manufacturer, to build overall best practices. Whenever a team member attended an education event, they shared what they learned with others.
“Everybody really enjoys learning,” Dyba says. “And the more you know, knowledge is power, right? It’s been a good journey.”
Everybody really enjoys learning. And the more you know, knowledge is power, right? It’s been a good journey.”
-Erik Dyba, CLIA, CLT, CIT, David J. Frank Landscape Contracting
The offseason provides a great opportunity for the company’s internal education program, DJF University. That’s helped keep some team members engaged even when fieldwork isn’t happening regularly, he says.
“We invest thousands of hours in training. That was really our founder’s concept of building the team,” he says. “That’s really what’s going to separate us from the competition.”
Building that education as a group has had an additional impact for Dyba by encouraging team member retention, he says. Over the past four years, the company’s irrigation department has held 100% retention.
“We try to tutor guys, we pay them well and we engage in other team-building exercises on the side,” Dyba says. The connections built during those study sessions and learning together created more chances for developing relationships and community among colleagues. The team’s top performers travel to go to industry shows and continue both learning and getting to know each other.
“I think it’s been a really big advantage for us,” says Dyba. “I know ‘team building’ can be a corporate buzzword, but when you actually do it, it has a real benefit to it.”
The Infrastructure Builder
Taylor Campbell, president and co-founder of Campbell Lawn & Irrigation in Sterling, Virginia, started learning the basics of business from a young age, alongside his brother Colby, vice president and co-founder.
“We just come from an entrepreneurial family,” he says. “My mom and dad both had their own businesses, so we grew up seeing that from the kitchen table. We always knew that was the next step for us.”
When he and his brother branched out from a larger company to develop their own business, it was a natural fit, moving from installation to a focus on landscape and irrigation. As they’ve continued to pivot toward maintenance, it’s provided an opportunity for them to lean on technology and be creative in offering options for customer interaction.
“We want to mirror our operations similar to the way our target market likes to operate,” says Campbell. Some like to receive automatic invoices or get monthly service notifications. “We really market ourselves as ‘Take back your time. Let us do the yard work.’”
Building strong customer response skills started with efforts to create a healthy company culture, he says. “We’re all one team, trying to create a better life for everyone,” he says. “In terms of our culture, from the guy weeding the garden all the way up to the general manager, we’ve got the same kinds of guidelines and expectations set. We’re looking for people to be respectful, have the right attitude, do the right thing.”
They plan seasonal events for the team, such as attending a soccer game in the spring or a summer barbecue. “We work hard and we set the expectations high, but let’s have a good time doing and get to know each other and grow as a team,” Campbell says.
One of the biggest drives in his company’s growth has been an investment in developing the back office, he says.
“I just saw a trend when I was more in the field, going out and meeting clients,” says Campbell. “I always heard from them, ‘We can never get anyone to call us back,’ or ‘You guys owe us a call back.’” He had multiple crews in the field that outweighed the support that could be provided by the team back at the office, creating an unbalanced flow of business.
For Campbell, it felt as though that sentiment was directed at the larger industry. “There was just a lack of professionalism, just in terms of ‘Oh, you’re a landscaper,’ like anyone with a pickup truck and a mower. I thought, ‘No. It can be different.’”
They set their goals: The phones would be answered. Clients would get a response in 24 hours. Best practices around customer connections would be developed. “We were trying to have more hands on deck when we needed them. Setting the standard that we’re going to answer our phones, call people back,” he says. “We wanted to change that dynamic that the green industry had in my opinion when we first started.”
Building a strong office team has made a difference for the company. “It’s been huge for us,” he says. “I wanted to develop the team so everyone has their own lane, so they can really grow. But it’s also developed so we’ve overlapped to support each other.”
The push in customer service support also created a structure that has made it easier for the company to grow and to sustain that growth comfortably, he says. “If you don’t have the back-end support, you won’t grow out in the field no matter how good your quality is,” he says. “Especially in my market, people want answers, they want to talk to somebody. They want a relationship. That’s our angle. We want to get to know you, beyond just cutting your grass. That’s been big for us.”
While it’s easier to build a formula for how many technicians will be needed around the amount of work coming in, it’s tougher to find the right number of employees to staff the office, he says. He looks at past interaction and tries to plan for the times of year when the company is likely to receive heavier call volume. But technology plays a big part in maintaining that communication as well, in updating the company website with frequently asked questions and information about services. The customer relationship management platform they use also automates some functions to streamline those office needs.
“Let’s get away from pen and paper,” he says. “Let’s get digital to be able to grow and scale and still be able to provide the level of service that clients have grown to expect.”
But there’s still no replacement for the basics of customer service, he says. He’ll try to look through interaction with the company from the eyes of a customer and find where the pain points are, or what he’d prefer when connecting. “That’s what I want my clients to feel,” he says. “We really try to go the extra step of trying to make people feel special.”
