Earlier this year, Grunder Landscaping Co. got a Google review that was very lukewarm – it was clear that we had not exceeded expectations (always our goal) for this client.
We have a process in place for Google reviews. Here’s what it looks like: Emily, our marketing manager, receives notifications for all reviews. She replies to positive reviews and shares any feedback with our team over email. When we get a negative review, the first step is emailing Dawn, director of sales.
Typically Emily gets the facts straight in order to write a professional response while Dawn and the salesperson on the job reach out to the client to see if we can fix the issue. They’ll involve me if they feel like I can help smooth things over.
In this case, we had a summer patio and landscaping install and by fall the client reached out to the salesperson concerned about the way the plants looked.
The salesperson went out and looked at the plants, and felt that this was a situation where the summer installation just was working against us. The plants were all still alive, albeit needing a little extra water, they just had gotten straggly in the late summer heat. He was confident they’d recover by the spring just fine but was going to put in the warranty ticket so that the client felt like we were doing something about it.
When I reviewed the plan, I called the client. I asked her if I could come meet with her myself and walk her property with her. When I met with her, here’s what I did:
- I showed her how to water. This is something I see so many of our clients doing wrong: you can’t set a sprinkler over a bed or spray a plant with a hose for a few seconds and call it a day. I showed her how to set the hose at the right water volume, and gave her an idea of how long to leave the hose at the base of each plant.
- I pruned her astilbe. We weren’t maintaining this property, so spent blooms hadn’t been cut back. I pruned the plants myself and showed her how to do it so that the plants look a little neater through the end of the season.
- I marked up a few plants to move to new locations. A couple of plants were struggling where they were planted, mostly due to light requirements, and so I marked up a drawing for a crew to come back and relocate them to more suitable places.
- I explained the way newly planted landscapes grow: that plant material going into the ground in the summer struggles a little more from the heat, but what’s most important for the longevity of the landscape is that roots are getting stronger. All of her plants were warrantied for a year – if any don’t make it through the rest of summer, we’ll replace them at no cost to her – but if we replaced the plants (in August) the new plants would struggle even more because we’d be starting over on root development.
She was very nice and we were able to make her happy, and the biggest thing it took from us was our time. I think often in this fast-paced world, we have a tendency to look for the quick fix. In this case taking the time to listen to the clients concerns, share some horticulture knowledge, and have a crew come do small touch ups resulted in a happier client, better results on the property, and avoided a more expensive warranty ticket that likely wouldn’t have fixed anything.
It also highlighted a training opportunity that we're focusing on with our sales team this year. While we want to delight our clients, we also have to remember that we're the experts. If they're asking for something that we know isn't the best solution, it's up to our sales team to speak up. We're doing a lot of additional training with our sales team on professional ways to do this.
I'll be sharing secrets like these and more during our upcoming Landscape Pro's Sales Training on May 13-14. It's all held virtually so that more sales teams can attend. This is a brand new sales training: if you've taken our Virtual Sales Bootcamp or Virtual Sales Bootcamp 2.0 in the past, it's a great next step for you! We'll dive into the expert tips I teach my own sales team to use when we're out working toward our goals to set you and your team up for success this year, too. Attendees will walk away with the tools to have tricky conversations, qualify leads, shine when meeting with clients, and more.
Will I see you online?
Marty Grunder
Founder & CEO
The Grow Group & Grunder Landscaping Co.