In the beginning of my green industry career a wise man told me that “Landscape Maintenance is all about minutes”. I had a hard time fully understanding what that meant as I was young and still green (sorry for the pun) in the industry and life. He went on to explain that every minute matters in this business… if you don’t jump on opportunities, somebody else will… if you don’t track your time, you will be lost… if you cannot be efficient, you’ll never survive. As he explained I started to understand but it would take me years and the startup of my own company to fully get the picture.

Opportunity knocks more than once… But only a few times.

Take the opportunities that come your way. Quote everything (within your scope) that passes over your desk. Follow all leads and return all calls quickly. There is something to say about that old adage “The early bird gets the worm”. Generally speaking, if you are the first contractor to provide a call back and quote, your chances of getting that job increase dramatically. And if you start turning down quotes, you may not get another chance.

Potential clients don’t like shopping around for shotty expertise so make sure to give them what they want from the start.

Do your timesheets!

Make sure to do a timesheet everyday to track your work. This is a very big part of tracking your business. Here are a couple of good examples of timesheets you can use.

Blank Timesheet (MS Excel file)

Blank Timesheet – Snow Removal (MS Excel File)

Remember to keep them simple yet detailed… Simply Detailed if you will (I believe we have an oxymoron in our midst). As you can see in the example sheet the columns you need are;

- Client/Property
- Description of Work Done
- Time IN / Time OUT
- Staff and Times
- Total times

***TIP:  To make entries quicker you can abbreviate, such as ‘Cut, Trim and Blow’ to CTB.

By doing daily timesheets it helps you with;

- Invoicing
- Tracking employee hours
- Apply hours to job costing

By knowing these numbers you can really see where your business is losing and gaining.

Know your route.

Use your timesheets and a detailed map to tighten up your route. Minutes are lost during drive time and is one of the biggest profit losses in the business.  You would be surprised on how much time is lost while your butt is in the seat.  Take this into consideration:

Service 30 Clients each day with 5 minutes of drive time between each one = 2.33hrs of driving per day or just under 12 hours per week.  That’s a whole days work for one person lost in the truck.  This equation doesn’t even include time it takes to get to your first client or the drive back to the shop… what about paid breaks?  You could be creeping up to 18 hours lost by the end of the week.  Now lets say that your hourly rate is $45.00 per hour, at the end of the mowing season (which is 26 weeks here in Ontario Canada) you could be sitting on a $21,060.000 loss of revenue.  How does your butt feel now?

Now there will always be drive time, but what can you do to tighten it up and lower your loss?  Here are some examples that I have found worked for me.

Bridge the gaps.

Knowing your point A to point B try to get clients in between by marketing.  This will cut down on drive time between each client and increase ‘Productivity’ narrowing the gap of the dreaded ‘Loss’.

Stay in one place.

Find communities where you can drive to and stay awhile.  Condos, gated communities large commercial properties are all great examples of zero drive time.  By doing this your productivity will go thru the roof.  I have one such gated community where I have 14 properties.  We park and are there for 3.25hrs or 6.5 man hrs.  Without the drive time we can Mow Trim and Blow 14 properties in just over 3hrs… solid productivity.

Reverse your route.

This may sound like a odd thing to do.  However try reversing your route and see how the times differ.  You may be surprised on what you find.  By reversing your route you may find a lot of different outcomes, such as;

-  You are at properties at different times of day.  This allows you to make yourself visible to potential clients that have never saw you before.

-  Avoiding traffic when the volume may be higher. There is nothing worse than sitting in traffic as break-lights turn into dwindling profits.

-  Finding shortcuts to tighten you route. Going the opposite way leads to new discoveries.

Paper Bag it and Pack your lunch

This one may sound a bit grade school, but not only does it save you time it also saves you money from your wallet.

I use to be a huge Convenience Store junkie. But by buying my lunches and water when we do our weekly groceries saved me about $75.00 per week and a lot of unnecessary stops for snacks, food and drinks.

Now of course there are many other ways to save minutes like ‘How to mow efficiently’ but I’ll be doing an article on that soon.  The point of this article was to get across the understanding that ‘Time’ really does equal ‘Profit’ in this industry.  So how are you tracking it?  What are you doing to become more efficient?  I would love to hear your tips and tricks.  Please comment below and if you like this article use the tweet button at the top and spread the word.

Cheers,

Richard Murphy
The Lawn Blog