Fishing for Sales Success: The Patience Required for Scaling, Building Strong Teams, and Growing Revenue with special guest Steve Wheatcroft

Speaker A: Welcome to the sales Talk show, a podcast dedicated to supporting both seasoned sales professionals and the next generation of up and coming talent in the service industry. Hosted by sales leaders Bill Butz from Outdoor Pride Landscape and Snow Management and David Lammers from Garden Grove Landscape and Snow Management. Each episode features in depth discussions, experiences and advice straight from the heart of the industry. The show is brought to you by metal, always copied, never duplicated.

Speaker B: Hello, everybody. Welcome, um, to the sales Talk Show. Hey, David, Billy.

Speaker C: Good afternoon, man.

Speaker B: What's going on up in there in Canada, on the, uh, northern part of the continent?

Speaker C: Uh, here it's all blue skies. It's all sunny. It's spring. We're having a great spring and enjoying, uh, the weather. And, uh, I'll also put in there that, uh, the Leafs won last night again. So what can you say, right? It's all blue.

Speaker B: Go blue. Oh, man, I knew that was coming. I knew that. You can't have a Canadian U. S. Uh, podcast at this time of year without talking some hockey. So we'll give our guests a chance to rep his, his, uh, province. We'll see how that goes. Yeah, yeah, it's great. I mean, same here. You know, it's interesting. We talk on the, on the phone frequently and it's amazing how similar the weather is and, and almost like, like the day before you're getting the rain and we're getting the rain the next day or, or vice versa. You know, it's interesting the weather patterns that come because it comes, you know, west to east. Right. So you're, you're technically west of when you look at the, the map. Right. So you guys are, uh. Well, explain it to the, to the listeners because I'm gonna screw it up and I probably already have.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, yeah, you're right. I mean, we're Toronto. Right? So west western shores of Lake Ontario. Toronto is just a little above, you know, the western shores.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, but when we look at where we are in relation to Boston, right. We're, we're a good, we're a good, uh, you know, nine hour drive by west. Uh, anyways, you know, by car, anyway, you know, that's the best way to say it. Right.

Speaker B: But, uh, no way. No way.

Speaker C: Yeah, we do share a lot of similar weather patterns.

Speaker B: Yeah. Uh, that's great. And then you just had, you just were in the States where you just traveled with the family. I heard. Right.

Speaker C: Yeah. You know, when we look to, you know, we love the, we love what we do with the show because it's a It's a direct, um, correlation to our passions. Right. Of giving back to the next generation. We were just recently in New York City. Ah. With the kids and, and their orchestra from the local youth. Uh, orchestra here. It's a high school, High school orchestra, symphony. Uh, and so they were performing at Carnegie hall in New York, down in Manhattan there. And. And uh, I was in. So I was closer to you. Uh, during that time we were, you know, just seeing orchestra. Symphony orchestras from California, Michigan, New York and other parts of the US And Europe as well. There was, there was a few from Europe. And it was really neat to see the youth engaged, learning, right. And growing. And the caliber of ability was phenomenal. You know, we see a lot with extracurriculars for the kids, you know, and music is just such a powerful one. And of course there's sports and art and the arts. Uh, and we see. And uh, of course I'm on the music side of things with the kids. It's wonderful.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think that's. Let's, you know, unless you're in the arts or in the music, you don't probably realize the depth and the vastness of it and the talent, like you said, the youth that are competing on fields every day, you know, to get to the next level, there's the same group of similar kids competing and, and improving their skills in the arts and music and uh. That's awesome. Good for you. That's. That must have been a great trip.

Speaker C: Uh, well, and for you too, right? You, you've done so much with the youth. Right, in sponsoring, you know, you, you of course got the Billy Butts scholarship. Yeah, it's neat. You recently had had a candidate too that. Yeah, with a success.

Speaker B: Yeah, it was uh, it was, it was a fun, uh, kind of full circle moment. Um, yeah, we have a, we have a small scholarship that uh, I sit on the board of directors of a tech agricultural and technical high school. And um, because of that I feel, you know, very passionate about, you know, I see the students, I know the students, and I decided, ah, a few years back to fund a scholarship for a couple of students each graduating class. And um, a few years ago this young lady, uh, she was the recipient of one of the scholarships. We connected, we had a nice conversation at senior night. I don't really know. That's not up to me to choose the candidate. It's up to the professors, uh, the instructors, so that she was one of the recipients. We had a nice conversation, we connected on email. She thanked me, all the good Stuff, and then we kind of went our separate ways. So that was May, June, uh, July. The summer went by, and I went back for my fall board meeting, and the instructor said to me, oh, yeah, Anaya really loves working for Outdoor Pride. And I said, um, I'm sure she does. I had no idea that she actually found a way to come work for us. She had been working for another firm, and she made her way to come work for us, and she didn't even use my name. And she was, you know, it was really, really cool the way it kind of unfolded. And then full circle, uh, she comes to work for us. She does really, really well. And then this fall, we had a open seat on the advisory committee on one of the groups that she. The class that she actually took.

Speaker C: So.

Speaker B: So now she's, uh, she's on the advisory committee of a school that she graduated three years ago. So she's now advising the instructors what the students should be learning out in the field. So it's just a great program. It really connects the dots to, you know, what we're all about, what we're trying to do. And especially, like you said, this show is to help the next generation, whether it's a sales professional or it's someone, you know, that's just out in the field. I mean, we're helping our teams every day grow, but this is just an external opportunity, so it's great.

Speaker C: Well, I love seeing how, you know, you giving back to her and supporting her that way. Now she's giving back, you know, and how everything just can. How the cycle continues. Right. And, uh, you didn't even know that she had joined Outdoor Pride and found out through another channel, which is really cool, as well. Right. You didn't influence that direct action either. Right. Which is really cool.

Speaker B: No, I think it shows her passion, too, to go find a company that she wanted to work for and improved, you know, kind of prove to the organization that she was worthy of the position without, you know, name dropping, which, you know, it's not bad. It's not a bad thing to do, but good on her to go out and get the job on her own.

Speaker C: You know, it's our job to give the tools to support the encouragement. Right. And help. Help show the path. Right. And sure. Uh, and that's really cool. I mean, you. You recently spoke, too, at a. At a conference or at an event doing the same. Similarly. Right. Giving back. And tell us a bit about that.

Speaker B: Yeah, so it was the, uh, New England Facilities Manager show. Pretty, uh, popular show, couple thousand Attendees maybe a little bit more. Now, uh, now the trade shows are sort of coming back and it's a lot of the keychain guys, it's a lot of the guys that are in the field kind of producing the work, technicians and such, probably less managers and more of the hands on crew. So we did a presentation, um, myself and my team on the economic and environmental benefits of liquid de icing. Uh, you know, liquid de icing has become a very, very popular. I think a lot of our listeners and followers might be familiar with it. As you drive down the highway they see the trucks dropping out the liquid and the lines on the road and it's just something to you know, give the surfaces the uh, you know the, the pre treatment or post treatment so they're safe as PA as, as. As quickly as possible. So that process or that that application has made its way into the commercial clients and we're, we're using it heavily at Outdoor Pride I think you guys using a little bit. So it was just nice to be able to tell the story, talk to the people in the room. There was you know, 70 or 80 people there and as a poll I think only a half a dozen people in the room had actually had any experience with it. So it's really good to share the message, get out there, uh, find a, find a way to kind of do what we're doing here. We're just pushing information out to people that may not otherwise know how to re. Find it.

Speaker C: So, so true.

Speaker B: Eh.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: You know we, we look to current events and what we're doing right now with the sales talk show. Of course we've got some things happening this year. Um, we're going to be at Saima coming up uh, in, in June of course on the 28th, the Simon. The 28th, uh, symposium. So June 17th, 20th we're excited about that. We're going to be doing a live episode of the, the sales talk show from, from Podcast Row at Simon. That's a nice new feature that we're going to hear from a lot of podsters.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we, and we can't thank uh, you know Saimar and the, the team at sima. Uh, they're, they're uh, alliance partners of this, of this show. They're, they're so supportive and they're great listeners. They want everything that you do to be better. They're, they're focused on continuous improvement. So just having, I think you sat on one of the committees to help guide some of the decisions this year, which is great. You know you're asking for feedback from attendees and longtime partners and members of the association. So just really cool stuff. Just a great forward thinking group and uh, we're excited to be there, excited to see some friends. I think I'm gonna look, it's out in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'm gonna lug my golf clubs out there for I don't know, one round, but we'll see.

Speaker C: Hey, I don't know, you probably, you're probably going to win. You might win something over there if we better watch it because you, I think just the other day you shot a minus four. I think you, you, you.

Speaker B: I mean, yeah, I couldn't believe it.

Speaker C: I can't, I can't. I'm. I'm pruning trees when I golf. So if you're shooting -4, it's uh,

Speaker B: it's all about handicaps.

Speaker C: They give you a lot me to hold your bags.

Speaker B: People that play on Sunday play without strokes. When I play in my tournaments I get strokes. So minus four is. Sounds good on Sunday but for me I got a lot of strokes to get to minus 4. So we had some fun. It was our opening tournament of the year. So I've got a great group of guys I play with. So we have a lot of laughs.

Speaker C: I'll carry your bag for you because you don't, I don't think you want to see how many. I don't think you want to see my plus signs. Um, but you know, with sima, we're excited. There's a lot of educational content related to sales this year. Um, yeah, so excited about that. There's always a lot for business management, business development, business leadership. Right. And then when you look to operational uh, management and then there's ah, a lot of elements this year to sales management which is really exciting and a special kickoff ah, event on the Tuesday as well that's going to focus on, on sales and estimating and closing deals. Uh, so don't miss that. And of course you and I will be speaking on, on sales that scale. We're excited about that. Right. For building and uh, prepare, build, you know, plan, prepare and execute I like to say. Right, Plan, prepare, execute. So we're going to talk a bit about that as well. And the sales at scale on a Friday morning.

Speaker B: That's great.

Speaker C: So that'll be a lot of fun. Well you know we, we've really enjoyed doing this show and, and last, last episode was you know, really interesting because we got an opportunity to hear from questions from our listeners, you know and things that matter to them, you know. And so today's episode with of course our guest, uh, Steve, we're excited to get to that in a moment and you're going to have questions as well from that. And so last episode was great because we were able to address a lot of questions through the Q A session.

Speaker B: Yeah, we took, we took some uh, some friends of, uh, the friends in the industry, personal friends of ours. They reached out, uh, I think two or three probably had six or eight really good questions. We could kind of blended them together and got some good answers out to the group. But you know, it was, it was a lot of um, you know, from, from what we could feel the questions were coming from a direction of. I think I do a pretty good job, but I'd always, I could always be better. And you know, how could I be just a little bit better? I don't think anybody was, you know, that the apple cart wasn't flipped over, they weren't looking to restart. They were looking to just get a little bit better. And I think that's what this industry is all about in sales and learning from each other is just what's that extra little, you know, nugget that you can use. And I think we shared some great nuggets about how to build trust, you know, how to really get in front of customers. And you know, we talked about qualifying, qualifying, um, opportunities and making sure we were investing the right amount of time. Time is one thing we don't have a lot of. We can't buy more time in the week. So we have to, whatever time we have do we have to use it really wisely. So I think those are the, you know, those are the kind of the, the bigger points that I, I think the listeners, um, and you can always listen to it on Apple itunes, uh, Spotify, uh, sales talk show is out there. Just uh, hit it up and uh, you'll be able to look at all the, all the episodes. We had a listener the other day, uh, follower, uh, Evan, uh, texted me and he said I just listened to episode, whatever it was while I was out for my walk. He said, your episodes are about a three mile walk. And I'm like, oh, that's good to know. I didn't really know the timing of it, but that's, that's what it felt fell for him. So that was great.

Speaker C: That's awesome. That's awesome. I like that, I like that you might do episodes and if you walk faster, hey, we really get people going, right? You know, I think, I think Today's episode is going to do that. We're excited to have Steve come on the show. As we talk about fishing for sales success, you know, when we look to the patience required for scaling and building strong teams and growing revenue, Steve is an expert in this. Having done it in his own organization, Steve has mastered the art of growing businesses and developing systems that scale really. And looking at knowing um, how the, you know, the critical importance and how to manage having operations, teams that not only are in sync with sales but are equipped to handle that growth that you're planning for your organization. Um, and so I think without further ado, let's dive right into it and have Steve join us.

Speaker D: Here I am. There you are,

Speaker B: Steve.

Speaker C: Welcome to the show, man. Captain Steve is with us today.

Speaker D: Thanks guys.

Speaker C: From Alberta, Canada.

Speaker D: I'm from Alberta, welcome live right by the foot of the Rocky Mountains. Beautiful out here.

Speaker C: Oh man, that's awesome.

Speaker B: I, I told David we first started the show. I, I'm not great at geography and he's helped me a little bit. So give me a, give me a geography lesson from where David is to where you are.

Speaker D: Uh, a long way away from Dave actually. But yeah, I mean I guess most of the, I know a lot of listeners from the U. S and uh, if you drove uh, five hours straight to the south, you'd end up in Great Falls, Montana. So if anybody's familiar with the show Yellowstone, they filmed that actually, uh, right over the border from where I live. And uh, some of the footage, footage was, was shot in Alberta. So uh. Yeah. So if you watch Yellowstone and you like that, that's where I kind of live.

Speaker B: That's beautiful.

Speaker D: I'm not going to take anybody to

Speaker B: the train station but what a crazy show. That show, that show has had some uh, that's going to be around for a long time I think, you know.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: You know Steve, it's fun fact of course for our kids who have grown up and everyone with kids out there who love dinosaurs. Right. We know that there, there's so much fossil records, so many fossil records of dinosaurs in Wyoming and, and, and then we look up into Alberta, not about two hours outside of Calgary. Brooks I think.

Speaker D: Right, there's Brooks Drumheller Heller. The biggest, one of the biggest, uh, kind of prehistoric museums in the world.

Speaker C: It's incredible.

Speaker D: It's insane there. It uh, it's a great place to go, especially have kids. They just love it. And very neat geography. The uh, hoodoos and different uh, geo. Geological formations there. It feels like you're on another planet actually.

Speaker C: It does, it does. You know what fascinated m me when we were there and the amount of fossil records is just, it's staggering how many, how many dinosaurs they have found in the ground there. Yeah, like fully like all like it's unbelievable the, the um, the archaeology and, and what's happened there. But even the micro climate that's there because Calgary is typically like Alberta being in the West. It's a colder climate, you know, but you've got microclimates. When I was in Drumheller, there's cactus growing in, in, in Drumheller. Yeah, cactus. I couldn't believe it. Diverse.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Climate is as well in Alberta. So um. Good, good, good, good. Ah, way of saying it though, you're ready in Wyoming. Steve, you're a seasoned entrepreneur. We're talking sales, we're talking growing revenue, we're talking building our teams. Tell us a little bit about your background before we get into this. Love to hear your story, man.

Speaker D: Uh, well I started uh, my company, it was called ULS in, in 1989 uh, when I was attending the University of Calgary. I went there on a full ride hockey scholarship, um, and played hockey there and that got my way through school. I had actually took a business degree there with a minor in psychology which was, I think it's a great mix because I think when you're running companies and dealing with people, psychology, uh, comes in handy for sure. So uh, in my third year there I took an MBA level course. I wrote a business plan with my good friend, uh, about kind of cleaning up the industry and white knighting it, having white trucks and this kind of big vision of you know, know, building this huge landscape company in Canada. And you know, we saw a lot of opportunity uh, in the industry at that time because a typical, you know, landscape crew was you know, a beat, beat up old truck, you know, AC DC blaring out of the window and people firing cigarettes out the window. So we thought we could clean it up and white night it. Not that I have anything against AC DC but you know, m. Uh, I cleaned it up and so we, we wrote this, this business plan and funny part is we got a B minus on it. Uh, probably the, it's probably the only business plan that came out of that school that actually amounted to anything. Which is very ironic but. And then we launched in 89 and quickly grew the company by uh, 20, uh 1720 and then to 2019. We, we ended up uh, around 31 million. Sold off, uh, the company to private equity. I had two Other companies at the time, one was an equipment sales company and another one which was a real estate company. We're building commercial condo spaces for small businesses. I left and then was quickly hired back as a CEO and we grew uh, the company across Canada. And I left the company roughly about a year and a half ago and we were roughly around 100 million in sales a year. Uh, and out of that probably, you know, 40 million in snow and the other 60 million came in from green services and other related services.

Speaker C: It's amazing what you've done and you tapped into an opportunity and of course the industry is so diverse and look at you. I mean Canada is such a huge country. Um, you know, and we're very longitudinal. Um, as a country. Our highway systems, our, our rail systems, everything, everything runs across the country through the provinces as opposed to the US where it's all nicely all intermingled. Right.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, but you did something unique. You know, you said, I want to take this thing and I want to, I want to, you know, stretch across the country. You were, you were into Toronto. You were, you're here. The ULS is here today.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker C: In Ontario. You know, you've done great in Ottawa.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker C: To our Kid nations capital. Very exciting what you've done with, with uls.

Speaker D: Yeah, it's, it's, is not all me for sure. I mean, no, you know, we're assisted by, by private equity, which is a whole different story. We'll save for another day. But yes, um, and then just a great group of people. I mean you can't grow a company to that size without fantastic people and everybody working together. So, uh, it was very interesting ride lots ups and downs. But uh, I think I left my mark on the industry and had a lot of fun doing it and still very involved in the industry and I, I sure like the people. Um, like I said, you just don't find better people than in this industry. It's just, just top quality people, hard working people. Uh, and I love them all. It's, I've had a great time working with them.

Speaker B: I love the uh, I love the balance of the revenue you had, Steve. It's interesting as, as we listen to and talk to, you know, friends in the industry, everybody's looking for that right balance. How much green, how much white. Right. And, and what's the, uh, what's the, what's the best mix for a business to grow? And I think over time, I think it used to be there was a lot of companies that were doing sort of snow only you Know, really, really hard to do now with some of these, the climate changes that we've been having. But to have that 60% of recurring revenue and that kind of, that machine that's spinning, you could withstand a couple of leaner winters, right? You could withstand a lower winter. If you get a higher winter, then the flywheel gets going quicker. So I like to hear that the, uh, the green is kind of a little bit outpacing the white, um, for our listeners, because I think it's important for people to understand is these businesses are very volatile. You know, they're at the mercy of labor, weather and, you know, somewhat, I guess, probably a lot about the economy, you know. So if you got, you know, two of the three things working against you, you're struggling, you know, but that recurring revenue is always a good thing.

Speaker D: Yeah, I think a lot of people have a misconception about, you know, snow businesses. I think. I mean, they're very geographically, uh, based and you have to understand your market. And fortunately for me, you know, a lot of the epicenter of our growth of snow was in Calgary and Ottawa, and both those are great snow markets. Now a lot of people look at, you know, when I, I go to these events, everyone's like, well, they're always talking about how, how much, you know, what's the dap through how much accumulation do you get in your region, which really is just the wrong number to look at. Really. What you really should be looking at is how many events you have and how many type, how many times the weather changes from, you know, kind of a calm environment to this, to any type of event, whether it's like freezing rain or snow, really the amount doesn't matter. I mean, if you got 10 inches and every, you know, day for the whole winter, you know, an eighth of an inch of ice came down, you'd probably have the most prosperous snow and ice management company in the world. Uh, so really, I think people are looking at the wrong factors. Calgary is, uh, a excellent market. That's where we got a really good traction on snow. Just because we're up against the mountains, we have tons of events that happen, and this causes activity to happen that we have to have crews go out. So it was a very good way to drive revenue. There's some areas where, you know, maybe they only have two or three events a year, but they have, you know, 40 inches of snow. That to me is a, is a bad snow market. One that's a very hard to navigate and one that, you know, for me personally, I would have tried to avoid that snow market, so.

Speaker C: True. You know, today we're talking about, um, you know, the key, the, the strategies of course, behind fishing for sales success. Why don't we dive right into what does it take to grow revenue in competitive market? Steve, this is something that, you know, you've really doubled down on and tripled your revenue in your, in your business. Right. Over the years. Let's talk a bit about growing revenue in competitive markets and how you've done that.

Speaker D: Well, I think people don't really strategically plan on revenue. They kind of just, they look out into the field and they, you know, they see all these apple trees and they just randomly start running around in the orchard grabbing apples from every tree they can as fast they can. But you know, I, when I look at revenue growth and adding revenue into a company, there's kind of a playbook I use and I'll quickly go through it and I'm going to, I'm going to do this quicker than I usually would, uh, just because I know we have limited time. But you know, the very first thing you need when you're adding revenue onto your company is first of all, make sure your pricing's good. I see a lot of companies that they don't have their pricing down and they're trying to add revenue on. And really the easiest way to add revenue is just to increase prices. And if you increase your prices 10% and you're a million dollar company, that a hundred thousand dollars of extra revenue goes right to the bottom once. So that's the number one thing you need to do. And once your pricing's right, really the second thing you should do is look to increase the, the amount of money you're getting out of your client's wallet. So if you think your client has a wallet and it has 10100 bills, a thousand dollars in it, and he's giving you two every month, you need to find ways to get, you know, three, four, five or six of the hundred dollar bills. And that can be by doing enhancements or, you know, offering other services to your same clients. And a lot of, you know, people move off of these great clients they have before they've really captured as much of the money out of their wallet as possible. Um, again, I think it's a failure on that because then they end up losing these clients that they had because they're not giving them services and they have to, they have a high turnover rate of clients. Number three, I say, okay, so now you've got the pricing right and now You've got a bigger share of the world. M. Wall would get more of the same clients. Like a lot of people got their pricing right, they're making lots of money off their clients and then they just turn away from this, this, you know, segment they have and they go off and they look at trying to do new things and it's, it. I don't understand it because they've got a formula that works and really, that's where you can really control your gross margin and you understand how to make money. So once you kind of do that, number four would be now you look at related markets. Maybe you're doing, you know, you know, commercial HOAs, and now you start to do commercial, more like commercial properties. Um, and you can kind of use the same equipment and processes to do that, and that can really increase revenue. Number five, I always say to look for pivot markets, and pivot markets are, you know, when I looked at our company, I said, what do we really do? Like, really what we do is we find great people, we train them, we put them in a truck, we go mobile to a site and we perform a service. Now if you kind of squint your eyes and kind of pretend you're looking through a shower door, you know, that's what you're doing. And now what else could you do? So you start to look for different contracts that actually match up with what you're doing as you're at your base level. So you might use your trucks to do waste removal stuff, or you might work for Calgary Transit. We work for Calgary Transit doing some neat stuff. Um, just because we had the people in the trucks and training processes and that can be kind of really a neat way to add on revenue. Number six is going elephant hunting. So once you went through the first five and you're kind of maybe doing this, you know, you're bringing in revenue that way. Now you want to look for really big contracts in the areas that you're good at. So let's say you were cutting a soccer field for the city of, uh, you know, Cincinnati, Ohio, maybe you say, look, I'm going to cut every, every soccer field in the state of Ohio. And that would be elephant hunting. And then when you do that, you kind of have to really be sticky and you have to work hard at these contracts and they might take three or four years to get them. And every time you have a failure, you learn how to pivot and, and get these. And eventually when you land them, you know, your salespeople have to become community representative Customer service agents as opposed to sales. And everybody really needs to default operations to land these and get them done. And then number seven, um, is to look at acquisitions. And a lot of people don't really understand how acquisitions work. Um, you know, a company that's 5 million, buying a 5 million dollar company doesn't really make sense because you're not getting a lift on the multiple. Also if you're a five million dollar company, you buy another five million dollar company, you push them together. Now you're a ten million dollar company and you don't have a clue how to run a 5, 10 million dollar company. And they get a lot of problems there. So really when you look at acquisitions, bigger fish eat smaller fish and uh, you need to make sure that if you're, if you're looking at acquisitions that you can digest the fish that you're trying to eat in nature. You don't ever see a small fish trying to eat a big fish. That just doesn't work that way. So that's kind of in. And that's a quick summary. I've, I've done bigger talks on, on those seven things and they, they each have their own nuances, but that is kind of a playbook to, to really grow companies to, to have big revenue.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. I love the topic of uh, the market vertical discussion. I think um, there's a lot of companies out there that have a tremendous amount of success and you know, one or two areas of their business market vertical, customer type and they, they just start randomly finding their way to these other opportunities. And uh, maybe it's just because they, they, you know, someone gave them a lead or they threw a number at it and they won that business and they started to struggle at that. So that struggle on their corner, that corner of their business is pulling the rest of their business. They're doing really well down the business developers getting frustrated because the ops guys aren't delivering or you know, there's all kinds of, you know, um, outside influences that cause your business to go under stress. When you, if you just stayed out of that market vertically, if it's not yours, I mean, just stay away from it. Go do more of what you're doing really well. I love that recommendation. And then pricing, you know, understanding your pricing I think is really probably a challenge for a lot of the people that are selling in our industry is, we're, you know, hardcore typically salespeople. Salespeople, you know, generally aren't uh, you know, tech and spec estimators. Right. If your Software is not up to speed and you're being asked to, you know, estimate a job and you have limited experience, you better be engaging your ops team on helping you with that estimate so you can get it right. So we spend a lot of time with our operations guys, including them in the estimating process as often as we can. So it's nice to hear you talk about estimating and having it be, you know, top one or two of your, your themes to grow revenue. Because I think it's really, really important. There's a lot of software out there that will do it for you, but if you're not putting the right metrics into the software, it's like garbage in, garbage out. Right? So, um, I love that little seven, seven step process. That's great.

Speaker C: Yeah, I agree. I, I like these key strategies, Steve, that you've shared that you know what, what you've used. Right. As a way of outperforming your competition. Right. And succeeding. Right. In, in our seasonal industry. Right. Um, you know, you've been able to scale the business through strategic planning, effective execution. Right. Um, you know, that leads me to the next point of discussion that we want to focus on today, which is about building a strong operations team. You know, and this is something that, you know, you were just sharing up front. Right. This was not you. Right? It was, it wasn't you only. Right. It was about building a strong operations team and the important right of having that well aligned operations team that supports sales growth. Let's talk a bit about this and dive into identifying and filling gaps in our operations that may hinder expansion.

Speaker D: So, you know, kind of when I talk to people about their businesses and I'm working with them, I, uh, and, and this is by no means to undermine salespeople because I'm a extrovert, I'm a sales guy, always was kind of the face of the business and I understand the importance of sales teams, but I always told everybody in my company, everybody defaults to operations. So if you cannot deliver services, it sets a bad mark for your company. So people, you know, your sales guys don't sell something, it doesn't get performed properly. Eventually you just can't get jobs because you're not operating properly, you're not delivering them, you're not making profit. So when you're building your company, you have to understand that your best sales tool and your best marketing tool, uh, is your truck sitting beside a site that looks beautiful, it's appealing to the eye and it's done properly and in a safe manner. If you're doing that, the work almost sells itself. We never really had a real tough time doing sales. It was really more of a negotiating contracts to get to make sure that every, it was a win win situation. So I always find a lot of company owners, uh, especially in the landscaping space. They're very sales oriented. And I know the show's about sales and they're always talking about sales and sell, sell, sell. But really if you cannot deliver on a, on a contract and you can't do it on a consistent basis, then there's no need to sell anymore. You, sometimes you have to let your ass catch up to your head because you know, if you're not, if you're not a, a complete entity moving together as one, you will fall apart. And so like I said, you know, there's a million different things you can do to build a strong operations team. But the biggest mistake I say I see is it should be your number one concern, not number three and not number two and not number five. But your number one concern in your company is to have an operations team that consistently delivers excellent work. After that, you'll be amazed how quickly everything else falls into place.

Speaker C: Correct?

Speaker B: Yeah, we just, uh, we had the opportunity. We operate at otopride with open, uh, book management, so our team is able to earn a bonus, um, each quarter. And we just had the, uh, we had one of our last open book check distributions. Uh, this morning we have a breakfast, nice little talk by the branch manager. We handed out checks to the guys and you know, they give me a chance to speak and the first thing I say is thank you. You know, without you guys, we're nothing. Salespeople are just a, you know, a hollow suit without an unbelievable operations team. And if you lose business, it makes it so hard to, to, to get new work. If we're not keeping the work that we have. That's, that's, that's a troubling point, as you said. So work hard to keep the work you have. Uh, everybody else wants your work because it's great work, it looks good, you know, it's in a good place. But you have to communicate well. You have to keep the customer, you know, all the customer needs fulfilled. So, yeah, operationally, uh, we always say, and I say, uh, we sell from the operations side of the table first. Uh, so that's a, that's a great point. Great follow through to, uh, to our listeners and uh, you know, our sales professionals out there. You know, we heard from Samantha a couple of, a, uh, couple of calls. Ago, uh, I think episode 11 that she talked about how she built a relationship with her director of operations because she wanted to know how they were able to do the work that she was out there promising. You know, so that's the other thing. If your sales guys are out there making promises, you know, they better spend a little, spend a little bit of time with their director of office and make sure they understand how it goes because the questions will come back to the salesperson for sure.

Speaker D: Yeah, I always, they m made sure that this, you know, if I was onboarding new salespeople, especially if they were from, uh, external industries. I mean, you don't get to even talk to a client unless you do it. You do a week working on crews and doing drive arounds. And I want, and I always said to the operations team, make sure that sales guy comes back and I want blood on his cheek or blood on his hands, like push them. I want you to make them understand how important you guys are when he goes out and sells. So you give it to him hard. And, uh, the operations team loved it. Sales guys, not so much. But they knew it was only a week tour of duty, but boy, we, we ran through their, uh, paces, that's for sure.

Speaker B: It's like military boot camp, right? You know?

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah,

Speaker C: it is. And you know, just to continue on this point of building strong operations teams, you know, Steve, I'm wondering, was there anything that you did, like, how did you identify and fill gaps in your operations that may have hindered expansion? Uh, were there things that you did? Were there particular things that. Or just systems and processes that you used to identify and fill gaps? Right, of course. The role to maintain a balance between plan growth and client satisfaction.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker C: Your point is well taken on the key function of operations.

Speaker D: Yeah. So when I looked at, you know, building the company and building a team, really, you know, most of your staff is going to come in as a frontline worker working in the field. So these team members come into the field. But we had kind of a document that was, it was called Take Steve's Job Away. So it showed you like, if you came in and you're like, let's say a university student and you're in year three university and you're coming to cut grass or work on a detail crew or a landscape construction crew, you know, how you could come into the company and over a course of, let's say, 10 to 15 to 20 years could actually take my job away. And every one of the. And so it was kind of like a Development pipeline. And it was built by a fellow that he kind of ran my corporate services as we called it. So he kind of did everything outside of operating operations. So I t hr, you know, but at a high level. And so he wire diagrammed this out and it's a simple process. And at every stage when you got to this, when you got went from one stage to the other, there was all these kind of courses that you'd have to do. And these courses were also connected to pay raises. So you know, and you guys talked about sima, great organization. So you use the CSP and the ASM program, program as development uh, components in the pipeline. And there was like journeyman gardeners, there was business classes, we use David Carnegie classes, whatever it was. And then if you went through all of this, you could actually end up uh, as the CEO of uls. Now when you were, when you brought in college kids or something to work for you, they always thought well this is just a summer job and then I'm going to be gone because I'm just cutting grass. No, this is a big business. I mean we ended up to be a hundred million dollar business. We had, you know, probably four or five CPAs working for us. We had three or uh, three MBAs. Like there was high business intelligence in an op on in a company that big. And when you actually show that to someone that starts in your company and they go home, they realize that you're not offering jobs anymore, you're actually offering a career path. And we had a lot of people in our company to meet. Very, very good money. Um, they had company vehicles, all different things. So this was kind of a, a calling show people that, you know, like I said, it's not a job, it's a career path. And I think that's very important because you have to get people excited at the grassroots level to be part of your organization and they might leave. And I always said my job is to make you a better person when you leave the company than when you started. So if they got halfway down the, the course load and they ended up moving somewhere else, that was fine. But I always kind of pushed people to continually get better and to push themselves to be a better person. And I think that's key, especially to build anyone in your company, whether it's operations based sales or somebody that's in safety or hr. There's, there's so many important roles, right? Mhm.

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. There's uh, the idea that you can create a career ladder I think is probably a missed opportunity for A lot of companies, I don't think we do a great job of it. I think we think that we, that everybody understands where they can go and how they can grow. But I think physically, you know, putting that path out there for someone and show them the courses and structure uh, that they'd have to follow to get to that next level, I think is, is really, really important. It's a great information, great, uh, great to share that. Um, to have people pause and think about what they do inside their companies, how they make the opportunity for the business developer. Uh, you know, I told, I told my business developer when I hired him, I said, you know, the goal for me is to train you so you can replace me. And however long that takes, you know, it might be five years, might be three years, might be 10 years. But I'm going to give you everything I got to see if you can replace me. And if you can, that's, that's great. And I'll have something else I'll do in the organization. So. Good for you to create that structure. I think that's really cool.

Speaker D: Yeah. Thank you.

Speaker C: Well, uh, and it comes to training, right? And, and that's, that's. It's showing the ladder and then training up. Right. Training and coaching up our people, showing them the path, but training them up so that they, you know, because they need to know what, how to get there too. Right. They need that coaching and so love that. Right. Training them up to success.

Speaker D: And you know, a lot of people, I don't understand it really because I was know it's just out in a big landscape, uh, conference out in Miami and everybody's like, oh, you know, training. We gotta. There's so many resources out there like that you can just like if you think you can build a better training program that what's already been built by somebody that spent three or four or five or ten years building it. You're crazy. Like uh, use what the resources that are out there. Like if you use Simon and if, like, you know, we use Greenius, but there's lots of different, different stuff out there and those programs are great to get, you know, you get you 75 of the way there. The other 25, it's stuff that you. Nobody's gonna be able to train people for. You got to take the time and you know, you got to give people hugs and you got to throw in some love and you got to be there for them when times are tough.

Speaker C: That's right. That's right.

Speaker D: And then that all kind of comes together. But people are trying to like, well, I'm gonna go make my own training program and I'm gonna make videos and stuff. Well, great. But it's already done. Why are you expecting that's not your job? You do. You weren't somebody like, if you want to go do that, go start another company that just builds training videos, you know, but. And it just. I just shake my head like, they have nothing and then they want to try to go to. To stage ten in one jump. Well, when they've already. Stage seven's built for you, just go do that. You know, and training so important, you

Speaker C: know, the thought comes to mind, train, training, train up your people. Right? Training, you know, give your people what they need because they're the ones who are taking care of the customer. Right. You know, so. So keep investing in our people. And when we look to. When we look to the patients needed for commercial sales. Right. When we look to this role that sales professionals play in our organizations. Let's talk a bit about that too. Right. Because I, I know that you have. One of your personal passions probably relates to this too, Steve, the analogy. But, uh, the patience needed for commercial sales. Let's talk a bit about these things. Right. And the role of persistence in. In refining your sales approach to closing big deals.

Speaker D: Yeah. And I think that was kind of when we got into that concept of elephant hunting. Right. And you know, I don't want to use the exact words I tell my sales team and my business development people because it wouldn't go over well on the show. We never stopped until they told us to put basically F off. Like, yeah, uh, you know, that's how persistent you have to be. But what people don't realize is they keep running at a wall, and then they keep running at the wall over and over again, but they never stop to say, is there another tool that I could use to get through this wall? So maybe instead of running at the wall, maybe I should walk up to it and use a jackhammer. Or maybe I should use an excavator. Or maybe I should use dynamite. So every time you hear, no, we're not interested right now, or you fail on a large bid, it's your opportunity to learn and readjust. And a lot of these big contracts really are finding the way that your company will plug into another organization. So if you look at the plug you have in your hand, you know, you've got the plug that you use when you're in North America, but you're actually in Italy trying to jam this plug into the wall and they use a different type of receptacle there. And so you have to build a plug that will plug in with them. And that's where you find success. And a lot of people don't understand how to figure it out, but really it's figured out when you fail and you ask them, well, why did I fail? Well, you didn't have your core safety, you didn't have compliance in this area. You know, your safety record was too low. Um, we require all the trucks to have, uh, the name and the phone number on it and blah, blah, blah. We can't have any trucks that are over five years old or you can't bed. So you, every time you get a chance to bid these bigger contracts and push forward on this stuff, you have to have a very good, what I call autopsy. At, uh, the end of the tender, sit down and say, why didn't we re. Why didn't we get this? And all. Most people default to, well, it was pricing and that's a cop out if you're. This is just my opinion and maybe in some markets I understand this won't work, but if it's a hundred percent pricing, I would never bid it. But I would send in a letter saying, we just want you to know that you're missing the opportunity of one of the best landscape companies in Canada, or let's say North America, bid your project. Because we will never ever entertain bidding, uh, a tender that's 100% price. So when you look to change your policies and your procedures and how your tenders go out, we'd be happy to re. Engage. And I would consistently say that. And it took four or five years. And then one day I got a call from a big municipality. He said, steve, we want to engage with you. How do we put out a tender that you'd be willing to plug into and engage with? And I said, well, I understand that price is important because you're using taxpayers dollars, but 50% of it has to be on requirements around all these different factors that I gave them. And you wouldn't believe it. But next year the tenders were all rewritten. 50, 50, 50 Price, 50 Performance and qualification standards. And then we started getting big contracts. But that took four or five years of understanding and working to change their perception. You know, I always find it, and I don't want to get overly passionate about this, but they have people in purchasing writing contracts about landscape and stone ice management. They know nothing about it and how it works. So you have to be patient and you have to understand that your job is to educate them and offer your services as a resource for them to write a proper tender. Because every time a tender is improperly written, you can just go and watch it fail. And you have to make sure that you bookmark that and show them why it failed.

Speaker B: That's great. That's good. Good intel. I love. Uh, we chatted a little bit, Steve, you and I, a few. A few weeks back, and you gave me the analogy of fishing.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you said, you know, uh, if people went out and fished and they caught a fish within 10 minutes, people would probably get kind of bored of it.

Speaker D: Right.

Speaker B: It'd be too. It'd be too much work reeling in fish, really. So, you know, and you got to choose the right spot, you got to choose the right tackle, you got to choose the right, you know, rod. You got to have the right captain getting you near the fish and in. In an exact way that's. That's sales. Right?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: You have to choose the right. You have to choose the right, ah, tackle. That means the right approach. Like you said, you have to choose the right, um, spot. You have to choose the right client that you want to work with. You know, So I think the fishing analogy is kind of cool, the way you, uh, the way you describe.

Speaker D: Well, I think what happens, see with. Here's what happens with fishing. So people figure out, oh, there's lots of fish in this lake, and they're easy to catch. Um, and maybe you go there and it's your secret spot. Oh, this is great. Steve gets to go fishing and catch all these fish. And then one day you look over now there's six boats on the lake with you, or a hundred people throwing hooks in from the shore. Because great fishing spots get over fished. People figure it out. Everybody wants to catch a fish, so they. They come to it. No different than business, right? A market gets hot, and everybody starts to bid and wants to be in that market. And then pretty soon, margins start to get pushed down and pricing gets pushed down. So I always. For me, I. The epitome of fishing now is to fish small streams where nobody else goes. And a lot of people say to me, steve, it's so hard to catch fish there. Like, it's hard to cast in the water, and it's narrow, and there's brush and there's grizzly bears and all that stuff. And I'm like, this makes it wickedly fun. And you get rewarded in a big way because, you know, last year I spent all day just. I knew this one fish where it was and kind of where it moved around in the river, and he got the best of me three or four times. But on this day, on this sunny Alberta morning, Steve caught him and nice, beautiful fish. And it was a great battle. And I never, ever keep a fish. So I just gave him a kiss on the head and let him go. And I said, I'll see you, I'll see you next year when you're bigger. And he, and he, I think he gave me a wink, but it was good. You know, like, if you go fishing where everybody else is fishing, pretty soon there's no fish. Um, so you gotta find new territory. You've got to be gritty, you gotta figure out what works. You got to be active, you got to move around, you got to be determined. You gotta get kicked in the junk, you get back up, right? So you just, uh, it is a good analogy for life. It's, it's, it's, it's beautiful.

Speaker B: Love it.

Speaker C: It's, it's true. You know, we're, we're always wanting to improve ourselves, right? We're even here right now on this show. I'm listening. I'm learning, right? And it's improving my, my game, right? What do I need to do to improve my game, right? And, and I love this about this because we are always learning.

Speaker B: If we're not learning, you know, if

Speaker C: we're not growing, we may as well be dead. So, you know, and, and it's just so important, Steve. You're so engaged in the industry. You're giving back so much right now. You know, I know we have to wrap up our time. It's, it's unfortunate. Um, but we've gotten so much out of this episode today. Um, tell us just some parting thoughts or anything that you want to share with our, with our listeners and, and just some, uh, some, some final comments.

Speaker D: Well, I just, you know, and I've kind of on my own adventure now doing a little bit of advisory work. I, uh, find it very rewarding to give back to the, to the industry. Um, was just down at the leanscaper event, Miami. Um, I'm not sure how many people follow Mark Bradley, but he's doing some amazing things. He, um, recently sold lmn and he's building a new operating system that's only for the landscape industry. Um, you can join up, uh, at leanscapers for free. And there's tons of information there. Sops, documents, score, scorecards, everything. Mark's just basically giving it all away for free. Uh, Mark's not a dumb guy. Obviously there's other things that he, that he's selling through leanscapers, but the base OS system is there for people to use and I think it's super exciting. Um, and just the only other thing I wanted to say is I know it's a busy time of the year for people and I just wanted to wish them well. I got up the other day and my wife said, what's it like not to have to worry about all this stuff in the spring other than my own yard? And I said, it feels wonderful. You know, 35 years of, of being, you know, out there running things and it, uh, it's a long journey, but it was very, uh, fulfilling for me and, but I, I know how hard it is right now for everybody and the struggles that they're going through with, you know, what's been going on with the political environment and everything. But, you know, good businesses always find a way and I just want people to stay positive, work hard, keep smiling and keep giving each other hugs.

Speaker C: Super important. Positive m. Love it. Positive energy. Hey, Billy.

Speaker B: Appreciate it.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's amazing. Steve, thanks for being on the show today, man, and we wish you all the best.

Speaker D: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Speaker C: We'll be sure to do lots of shout out on, on social media there and uh, excited, excited for seeing you coming, uh, up in the near future, man.

Speaker D: Yeah, we'll see you guys in Toronto first.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks Steve. Absolutely, we'll see you in Toronto. Thanks again. Yeah, well, he was great. Really, really good stuff. Definitely someone that's been there and done that. Seasoned professional has a great way about him. Um, I picked up on a couple times he was, uh, he's a people person. You know, give somebody a hug, uh, make sure they, they have, they have you when, when, when they need you. You know, be able to give yourself to somebody. So, um, you know, I'm, um, I'm very much like that. I know you are as well. And it's nice to hear that someone with m as much success as him has really taken that as one of his mantras is just, you know, be there for other people, be there for your team. Be, be around, be a resource, you know,

Speaker C: you know, I really. Exactly right. And, and Steve's a fun guy. He's a fun guy. He's a guy that you want to be around. And, and uh, it's true with the hugs, you know, Steve, you know, and it just makes, it makes it real. Right. Steve knows we all know how hard it is, right? And and uh, we really appreciate Steve taking the time today too to be on our guest on the show here and, and to help our listeners. You know, it's, it's exciting. Uh, Steve's gonna be speaking at um, Snowposium of course coming up in uh, uh, July, uh, the 22nd, 23rd. He's gonna be the keynote speaker. You're gonna be speaking there as well, Billy.

Speaker B: I'm coming to Toronto. I'm coming up there. Looking forward to it. I got up there last year for a little couple days. I really enjoyed my time. Looking forward to it this year. Spent some time together. But uh, yeah, I met, I met a bunch of great people. Um, Joe Salimi is, you know, just an outstanding individual. Runs a great organization in Landscape, Ontario. They're, they're a terrific uh, alliance partners of ours and you know the group over there was just very welcoming. They just wanted, they just wanted help, you know. And we had a couple of calls and turns out they're going to be having me talk about sales as well. So um, great to see the industry is leaning a little bit towards helping sales professionals. That's, that's exciting and happy to be a part of it.

Speaker C: Mhm, very much so. And we're going to do a segment there as well and spend some time at the show together. The friends of the sales talk show will be able to do something there

Speaker B: uh, that we're putting together with, with

Speaker C: the team from the symposium as well. So that's going to be a lot of fun. That's going to be a great event in Toronto.

Speaker B: Yeah, lots of listeners up there, a lot, a lot of followers. So we're excited to meet them in person. Sometimes that comes across in the uh, in the text threads or the LinkedIn messages. Love to get together with you, Love to meet you. So being able to you know, have a beer with someone or just uh, sit around and, and talk uh, about sales will be fun.

Speaker C: 100 well, we couldn't be more honored to have Metal plus as our title sponsor on the show and uh, supporter Landscape Ontario and sima of course, uh, to make it happen. It's been a great episode today.

Speaker B: That's a wrap. That's another one. Cheers.

Speaker D: David.

Speaker C: All the best,

Speaker D: Sam.