Groundwork Saves Red Oak 60+ Trips (120+ hours!!) By Avoiding Visits to Unqualified Project Sites
Red Oak Landscaping is a full-service lawn care and landscaping contractor based in Arnold, Missouri. They've been doing business for 28 years in the St. Louis region offering year-round residential and commercial landscape maintenance, design and install of landscape and hardscape projects, lighting, audio and snow removal services.
Red Oak Landscaping owner, Richard Stephens, had a desire to create sustainable landscape solutions for his clients. Their knowledge-based approach to the services they provide assures quality results that fit their client’s budgets and needs no matter what service they are providing.
Regardless of the service provided, their process is the key to their success. They learned a long time ago that following and training a strict process for all services ensures predictable outcomes and quality finishes that last. They have the people and systems in place to ensure the reliability expected when hiring a professional landscaping service. These qualities, along with taking care of their employees, has given them the reputation as one of the best landscape companies in their region.
Because Red Oak is driven to exceed customer expectations integrating Groundwork into their sales process was a no-brainer.They consistently offer a high-level of expertise, service, and reliability that sets them apart from the competition in both the residential and commercial landscaping projects, so having a top-notch sales process was next on the list.
It’s primarily just me and my other salesman. Sometimes the office will use it not only for lead qualification or project bidding purposes, but as a general communication platform to discuss an idea, question or concern. We also use it as another way of communicating in the office.
We are really busy, so when we are booked up with leads and projects on the calendar and can’t get to everyone quickly enough. We give our phone-in leads the option of using Groundwork as a way to get their projects in front of a salesperson to get a quote quicker than what they would otherwise by waiting to have an estimator come out to their home when our schedule is clear.
We are able to have budget discussions and send quick estimates to see if we’re on the same page with ideas and budget. We’ve even had some of the leads sign and become customers on our initial quote based on this interaction! Our leads like the speed in which we are able to assess the needs, put a solution to the needs and give them a price so they can quickly decide to get it done.
The leads will say things like “we trust you” simply based on this process. Some don’t like the bidding process and some don’t like a lot of contractors coming to their houses and having to block off all that time to get quotes. They like the convenience that we offer them. A lot of times, we’ll hear that we are the first one to respond, so it gives them the confidence to move forward quickly based on our process.
We really like Groundwork. The software helps us out when we just aren't sure if a particular customer is the right customer for us. Even if we do have the time, when we have a hunch that a customer may not be a good fit, we have them go through the video quote process and sometimes we find out that they aren’t really a good fit which saves us valuable time.
Since launching 10 months ago, of the 87 leads that have come through the software, we have signed 21. 60+ of those leads were unqualified. We’ve saved potentially 60+ trips out to project sites that weren’t a good fit for our team which is at least 120 hours.
When we say unqualified, a lot of times people don’t know how much landscaping costs. We will get leads that will contact us wanting to spend $500-1000 and that just isn't realistic with the level of service that we provide. We spend about half that just going out to the project site to provide an estimate.
Really, it’s the overall concept. The main function of the software allows me to sit at my desk, watch the video, listen to what the lead wants to do, talk to them about it, and then provide an educated estimate based on what we can see just from the lead submission.
Between Groundwork and Google Earth, I am able to compile pretty much everything I need to get an estimate out to the lead. I’ve been doing this a long time, but even my sales guy can use these two tools and get an estimate out pretty quickly.
The leads are impressed with the process. They think it’s really cool!
Sometimes our older leads/customers don’t want to mess with submitting project videos. That’s okay with us though. We cater to them on a case by case basis. The ones that do want to get their quotes quickly get the process and really like that they can get a response much faster than waiting two weeks for us to come out and give a bid.
We do get really busy though and sometimes it is hard to sit down and watch all of the videos. We get quite a few leads. I think next year we will be hiring someone just to handle Groundwork and virtual estimating because it is such a critical part of our processes now.
Want to learn more about Groundwork for your landscaping company? Schedule a demo with our team here.
Founder + CEO of Groundwork
Jeff is an expert on technology in the trades. In his career, he has spent time in commercial and residential contracting, small business consulting, and technology. He is a champion for innovation and is passionate about building technology to help contractors run better businesses. He has an Engineering degree from Purdue University and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Richmond. He is also the Founder and CEO of Groundwork, a video-based sales system for landscaping contractors and other residential trade businesses.
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