Customers of Landscape Businesses

Building and maintaining a fiercely loyal customer service culture is essential in any business. One of the greatest sins that owners commit is not taking care of existing customers. Most companies put a ton of effort into attaining new customers, often at the expense of long-time customers. Keep in mind, current and former customers are great resources for new business. Finding and keeping the right customers, building relationships, managing expectations and anticipating needs are fundamental human and system touch points. To better understand your customers, The Harvesters will show you how to evaluate them and place them into three groups, so you will spend more time with those that are more valuable to you. Subsequently, you can focus on moving your customer relationships from “transactional” to “trusted adviser” to “partner.”

Bill Arman

worked for and helped grow one of the biggest landscape outfits in the country. He’s seen how the big boys do it, how their systems and structures work. So his know-how is rooted in recruiting, hiring, training and growing great people—that along with quality assurance. Bill, alone, has gone on 15,000 quality site visits in his career. Nobody else has that, not that we know of anyway. He received Lawn and Landscape/ Bayer Environmental Science's 2006 Leadership Award. Read Bill's full bio.

Ed Laflamme LIC

started his own business from scratch, built it up, sold it and then wrote a book about how he did it. So, he’s been there. He understands your frustrations, worries and concerns. Some of you may want to buy companies, while others may want to sell the one you own. You need expert assessment and guidance before you can move forward. Ed has experience in this area. He is recognized as a CLP: Certified Landscape Professional. Read Ed's full bio.

Jud Griggs

Jud has had the good fortune of working with some of the best design/build companies in the country over his long green industry career. Starting with Lied’s in Wisconsin, Jud worked with Tom Lied, one of the founding members of ALCA (Now N ALP). Next, Jud moved to Naples, Fla., to manage the operations of Smallwood Landscape – one of the preeminent design/build companies in Florida. From there, Jud joined Dallas-based Lambert’s to work with Paul Fields and manage first the business operations and then lead the company’s sales and marketing efforts. Recently, Jud worked with Scapes in Atlanta Each of these companies, with the exception of Scapes, were in the Lawn & Landscape Top 100 list during Jud’s tenure at each of the companies.