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Less than five years after starting their own company, Bob Grover, CLP, CLT, and Pacific Landscape Management partners Elias Godinez, CLT, and Ron Knesal, CLT, are generating more than $3 million in sales annually. They have done little marketing and have spent a limited budget on advertising. Instead, they have focused on creating brand awareness and providing exemplary service.

“Quality is important in this industry, but service is critical,” says Grover, who has spent virtually his entire life in the green industry. “We strongly believe that client retention is directly related to the level of service you provide. Provide good service and you will be rewarded; make a mistake and own up to it, and you will again be rewarded.”

Grover and his partners have been living up to this philosophy since they started Pacific Landscape Management in the spring of 2001. Located in Hillsboro, Oregon, the company employs 60 people and provides maintenance and renovation services to a broad commercial client base.  

“We love the commercial maintenance business,” says Grover, who spent 15 years with Northwest Landscape Industries and more than two years with the company after it was purchased by TruGreen LandCare. “I left the corporate world because I am a green guy. After all, I was the only 9-year-old in the neighborhood with a vegetable garden.  When you work for a big company in the capacity I was in, as regional manager, the daily routine is more about spreadsheets and conference calls and less about plants, landscaping, and people.”

Starting at the bottom

Grover and his copartners had little to work with other than training and experience. Since they had signed one-year, noncompete agreements, every customer would be new. “One of our goals early on was to create brand awareness for our business,” Grover explains. “Even though we started out with only three employees, our appearance, including our uniforms, our trucks, our equipment, and our performance at the job site was equal to that of our largest competitors. Even our newsletters and proposals looked very professional. In other words, we had to act like who we wanted to be. ”

He continues, “Wanting prospective customers to recognize us, to have no question in their minds about who these professionals were, we painted our trucks orange, purchased orange uniforms, and printed up orange business cards. We became the orange company.”

As Grover relates, the commercial maintenance market is very competitive and subject to creating contractor pricing casualties. Yet, it is also stable, provides good cash flow, its customers pay quickly, and it is not as capital intensive as some may think. Creating a professional demeanor early on helped distinguish his company from the competition to the extent, he adds, that if all things were equal, Pacific Landscape Management would be the customer’s choice.

 “If we had a marketing plan, that is it,” says Grover. “We wanted corporate campuses, office complexes, retail outlets and condominiums, and homeowner associations to see us as a choice. Our marketing was, ‘We are here when you are ready.’”

Keeping it, once you get it

Of the company’s annual revenue, 40 percent comes from renovation and small construction projects; the rest is generated from commercial maintenance. Nearly all of it emanates from its commercial maintenance customers. Instead of trying to improve efficiency through speed, Grover says the company concentrates on evaluating what it does. “We spend a lot of time in strategic discussions about what is appropriate for each property at each time of year.  We try to work smarter, not just faster.”

Once again, Grover points to what he thinks is axiomatic about landscape maintenance –– that quality is important but service is critical. Both elements, he adds, are dependent on having a good training program. Partner Elias Godinez spends 100 percent of his time as a trainer. The company conducts a half-hour training session at the beginning of each work week for all employees. Topics are seasonal in nature and are usually supplemented with a PowerPoint presentation. There is also training after work for employees who may be studying to receive their pesticide applicator’s license, learning to program irrigation controllers, or preparing for their Certified Landscape Technician (CLT) test. (Pacific Landscape Management has seven CLTs on staff and looks to add a few more by year’s end.) During the middle of each work day, Godinez spends his time training in the field with new employees and crews.    

More of the same

Grover says that he and his partners have achieved their original business goals but have no intention of staying put. “We believe that robust growth is important for several reasons,” he emphasizes. “Among them, growth helps keep a company vibrant, and it provides career opportunities for employees. Over the years, we have attracted some very talented people, and we want to keep them challenged.”

Where will the growth come from? “More of the same,” says Grover. Already the company has a satellite facility out of which four crews operate, and other facilities could be forthcoming soon. One day, Portland area residents may even find orange-uniformed people driving orange trucks from three branch locations.

08/05

by Rod Dickens, PLANET Contributing Writer