By David Crary  

A common misconception many businesses believe and follow is that you work Monday through Friday, 9 to 5.  Those of us who have worked in the field service industry know this isn’t true.  For one, we work anywhere from 5 am until it gets dark out, and even beyond that.  The second, lesser known fact is that you don’t need to work a typical 5 day work week to be a profitable and successful business.

By David Crary  

If you’ve talked to your marketing team or a consultant, you know that everyone is talking about social media. It’s the new shiny ball that everyone is chasing.  In fact, according to our Green Industry Benchmark Report, 70% of green industry businesses have at least some rudimentary social media presence. 

By David Crary  

My wife loves Pinterest and at first I didn’t understand why. I mean, really, it’s just a bunch of pictures, right?

Marketing plays an important role in building a successful business. You’ve got to craft your message perfectly so that it resonates with your audience. If you don’t, people won’t understand why they should choose your business and your sales will falter.

By David Crary  

Your employees are the lifeblood of your field service business. From the guys in the field delivering the service, to the office manager in the office making everything work, having an underperforming worker can harm your business. Especially if you operate a small business, it’s imperative that every employee performs up to their potential

By David Crary  

We’re in the middle of March Madness and I’ve been watching a lot of basketball lately. And there’s something I’ve learned: Teams with unique systems that are difficult to prepare for are very hard to beat in the tournament.

By David Crary  

If your field service company is anything like my irrigation business then over the course of several seasons you can accumulate a lot of leads that never amounted to sales. Instead of focusing all your efforts on digging up new leads, take a look at those you have in the file cabinet or in your field service CRM.

By David Crary  

One of the reasons I think HindSite’s field service software solution has been so successful is because we understand our buyer. We’ve traditionally sold our field service management software to the green industry – irrigation businesses, lawn care businesses, landscaping businesses, etc. I owned an irrigation business for two decades, so I was intimately familiar with the needs, wants, struggles and triumphs of a green industry business. I’d experienced the highs of a busy, productive startup season, and the lows of a long cold winter. I could relate to the green industry business owner.

But for many of you, you may not have a firm grasp of who your customer is, what they want from you and why they find your services valuable. To help better understand your customer, I highly recommend conducting an annual customer satisfaction survey.

By David Crary  

Earlier this week, we wrote a blog post with 5 tips for starting a green industry business culled from our recently released Green Industry Benchmark Report. Today, we’re going to look at 5 tips for marketing your green industry business suggested by respondents to that same survey. 

By David Crary  

It may seem counterintuitive to think about the quality of your workplace environment for your green industry business, mainly because unlike so many other businesses, most of your employees are out in the community 95% of their workday. This can present a real challenge when it comes to boosting employee morale. How do you let your workers know that their work is appreciated and that their concerns are being heard if you only have 15 minutes a day in the shop with them? I run into the same problem with my company, HindSite Software, because our schedules are all different and I am frequently out of town with customers.