Business Courses
Course: Gross Margins-Getting Gross (5Lessons-15 Minutes)
Learn to master your Gross Margins by knowing and tracking your direct costs in order to make a fair profit. Determine: What is GM? Why is it important? How to make more!
Expected Outcome: Learn how to maximize your Gross Margins. Avoid the Gross Margin destroyers. Increase your gross margins by 3-5% in two seasons or less.
Tools Included:
- HAWs: Hourly Average Wage Calculation Sheet
- Targeted Gross Margin Ranges: by size and revenue types
- GROW Card: Gross Margin tracking tool
- Mini-Budget: by revenue stream and combined Gross Margin for the company
Course: Planning For Profit (5Lessons-50 Minutes)
Avoid those 72-hour weeks and save years of wasted time and “chart your course” with a plan. This lesson will help you understand why you should plan, what the key elements are and exactly how to do it.
Expected Outcomes: Create a plan so you and all in y our company will be on the same page and path. Your plan will help increase profits and offer a more rewarding place to work. Create a much more valuable company and much, much more.
Tools Included:
- Sample Strategic Planning Session Agenda
- Sample Landscape Company Game Plan
- Sample Plan for Growing and Operating through 2015
- Client Check-up Questions
- Employee Questionnaire
- Customer Satisfaction Survey
Course: Insurance Matters (5Lessons-15 Minutes)
Insurance can represent as much as 8% -10% of revenue! So it’s important to understand how to protect you and your business from a catastrophic loss.
Introduction: David Bloodgood VP with LCIS: Landscape Contractors Insurance Services and The Harvest Group Affiliate Partners
Tool: Ways to Control Your X-Mod
Sales Courses
Course: Nothing Happens Without A Sale (5 Lessons-34 Minutes)
Try building a business without sales! Learn how to build a sales campaign that will get the right customers under the right conditions.
Expected Outcome: How to select the right customers and leave the rest for the competition Learn and apply a step-by-step sales process that shows how to go from lead to sale.
Tools Included:
- Client Selection Criteria – When to say NO!
- Client Selection Criteria – Questionnaire
- Top 12 Sales Questions or Talking Points
- The Sales Touches
Course: The Power of Estimating (5 Lessons- 16 Minutes)
You can’t price it right if your estimate is wrong. Learn the core of getting to the right price. Learn the power of the 3 most important pieces of an estimate.
Expected Outcome: Get better more consistent pricing with accurate estimates. Maximize your opportunities for new sales. Awarded more jobs that make the right margin. Achieve higher profits.
Tools Included:
- Field Sheet Estimate
- Field Estimate
- Field Hours Verification
- Estimating Ft Method
- Simple Estimate Form
- Unit Pricing Sheet
- Field Estimating Program for Landscape Maintenance
Course: The Price is Right (5Lessons-15 Minutes)
Learn why pricing is a critical part of your customer’s decision process and vital to your business success. A thorough review of the pricing process to get to the right price.
Expected Outcome: Learn how to price right so you get the right jobs at the right price Right?
Tools Included:
- Targeted Gross Margin Ranges by Size of Job and by Departments
- Formula to Mark Up Direct Costs to arrive at the desired Sales Price
- Sample Unit Price Sheet
- Establishing your HAWs
- Sample Mini-Budget
Course: Writing Killer Proposals (5Lessons-33 Minutes)
Often your prospect will be judging you by your proposal. This lesson shows how to build a “Killer Proposal” that will help get the jobs you want.
Expected Outcome: This lesson will help you to understand exactly how to build a “killer proposal” and as a result, you will be able to close more of the sales you are after.
Tools Included:
- The 5 Parts of a Great Proposal
- Sample Proposal
- Proposal Writing: Asking For It
Marketing Courses
Course: Marketing Isn’t Magic (5Lessons-17 Minutes)
This will take the mystery out of marketing and teach you how to effectively create a marketing plan and marketing calendar for your company.
Expected Outcome: Have more consistent sales, even in the slower times of the season and more of the sales you want that creates the greatest profit.
Tools Included:
- Client Selection Criteria
- Competitor Profile
- Focus Group Questions
People Courses
Course: Recruiting to the Rescue (5 Lessons-47 Minutes)
In the Recruiting to the Rescue Lessons, you’ll learn the 10 steps to building your recruiting machine.
- Which Came First Retention or Recruiting?
- Got Culture? Build and Shape Your Culture
- Take Stock and Good Care of What You Have
- Identify the Needs and Target
- Get Your Tools Ready
- Practice the Recruiting “Best Practices”
- Go to the Source
- Screening and Interviewing
- Hiring and On-Boarding
Course: Human Resources 911: Basic Compliance – Part 1 (5 Lessons-64 Minutes)
Understand and minimize the potential impact of these Top 5 HR issues within your organization including employment laws and regulations.
Expected Outcome: Have a specific action plan to prevent your business from being hurt by HR violations.
Course: Human Resources 911: Basic Compliance – Part 2 (5Lessons-15 Minutes)
Understand and minimize the potential impact of these Top 5 HR issues within your organization including OSHA; fair labor standards and workers compensation.
Expected Outcome: Have a specific action plan to prevent your business from being hurt by HR violations.
Operations Courses
Course: Safety Counts (5Lessons-15 Minutes)
The safety and welfare of your people are at the very core of a successful company
Featuring; David Bloodgood OF LCIS Landscape Contractors Insurance Services
Course: The Profit Puzzle – Part 1 (5Lessons-15 Minutes)
Learn how to make more profit through proper crew dispatch, routing, job sequencing, and yard arrival.
Expected Outcome: Improve your Gross Margin by 3-5% within two years.
Course: The Profit Puzzle – Part 2 (5Lessons-15 Minutes)
Review several ways to make more profit with a number of ideas or pieces of the puzzle to help the operations run smoother and save time.
Expected Outcome: Improve your Gross Margin by 3-5% within two years.
Leadership Courses
Course: Leadership Trifecta
In this Leadership Course, you will learn to have a more broad-based awareness of leadership, the fundamentals that influence its effectiveness, and how to improve your leadership skill once you accept the fact that you must continually work on being a better leader.
Culture Courses
Course: Build and Shape a Great Culture
In this Culture Course you will learn:
- Understanding the importance of having a great culture
- Ways to build a great culture
- Keeping and building upon a great culture
- Achieving better success and achieving it more quickly
Customer Courses
Course: Let’s Get Social
In this Social Course, you will learn: Attraction, Engagement, and Conversion
Course: Build Fiercely Loyal Customers
Move your customers through a series of relationship levels to reach the highest level, Evangelist! or become Fiercely Loyal Customers. Evangelists not in a religious sense but these fans preach and devote themselves to their favorite products and services, hopefully, yours. They are really, really, really loyal customers, fiercely loyal!
The Harvest Way Tool Shed
Quick access to all the downloadable tools for The Harvest Way Academy courses. It is recommended to take the course before using the tools to ensure correct usage.