HindSite is headquartered in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota. It’s December. If you’ve ever been to St. Paul in December, you know there’s snow on the ground. That snow brings lots of activity for snow removal businesses in the area.
This year has been especially busy, with a few three to five inch snowfalls and numerous smaller one to two inch snowfalls. All that snowfall this December got me thinking about conversations I’ve had with some of our snow removal customers about what makes for a successful snow event, month and season. Here are five tips I’ve gleaned from those conversations:
You Need Staff (or Software) to Manage Your Subcontractors – Many of our customers use subcontractors in the winter. As their snow removal business grows, they find it’s easier and more cost-effective to hire subcontractors to do the work instead of adding full-time staff. But they fail to recognize that those subs still require oversight and management. So they stretch their existing office staff too thin so that they can’t handle all of the demands of communicating with subcontractors. Invariably, the work suffers and customers start to complain.
So make sure that if you’re adding more subcontractors this winter, you’re prepared for the increased demand on your full-time office staff. Another self-serving tip: Don’t be afraid to leverage the power of snow removal software to manage your growing list of subcontractors. For instance, with HindSite, you can arm your subs with an inexpensive Android device and send them their routes electronically. They’ll then time in and out of jobs and do all of their data collection (how much salt was applied, the amount of snow they encountered, etc.) on the device.
It’s easy to sell snow removal software (and even transfer the cost of the software) on them, because it enables you to pay them faster because all the data you need to do so is collected in real-time. Even better, you won’t be overburdening your office staff and likely will be able to manage significantly more subcontractors per office staff.
Take lawsuits seriously. This is a simple one, but worth keeping in mind. I was talking to a contractor the other day that was faced with a lawsuit. He assumed it was a frivolous one, but didn’t take the time to actually collect the data necessary to defend his business against the suit. Now, he’s worried that he might lose the case.
Snow removal software can help you spend less time reacting to lawsuits. Because software enables you to collect and retrieve data quickly and easily, you’ll be better armed with information that can help you prove the work you performed and when you performed it.
Create a Site Plan – We just finished putting together our quarterly plan for HindSite. We covered everything from development, to training and support, to sales and marketing, so everyone in our company has a clear goal for next quarter. Now, all we have to do is execute that plan.
Almost every snow removal contractor I have talked to has told me the importance of creating a site plan. Know where you’re going to put the snow, what sidewalks need to be salted, where the dumpsters are, what direction you’re going to move the snow, etc. before you arrive on the site when it’s snowing. Draw a map and deliver it to the employees responsible for the site and make sure they know the plan prior to the snow falling. It makes the job that much easier when you aren’t deciding what to do at 4 a.m. in the middle of a blizzard.
Communicate to your customers. If you’re running a green industry business in the summer and a snow removal one in the winter, you probably know that customers expectations can be much different. In the summer, you’re probably less likely to lose a customer if you are late for an appointment. But in the winter, your customers expect their parking lot or driveway to free of snow immediately. If you can’t tell them when their property will be free of snow, they may turn to a competitor who can. So you need to make sure you’re communicating every little detail with your customers.
Again, look to snow removal software to help. HindSite recently released a service business marketing add-on called HindSite Connect that enables you to send transactional emails directly from the software. Our snow removal customers have raved about its ability to automatically send an email – with a timestamp – that indicates when a snow removal work order has been completed. It’s a fully automated way to let your customer know when you’ve completed snow removal on their property.
Eliminate paperwork so you get paid faster. I always tell people that they aren’t getting paid for the work they do. They’re getting paid for the paperwork around the work they do. If they don’t do the paperwork, they won’t get paid. And if it takes 2 months to do the paperwork, they’re going to have cash flow problems.
One of our larger snow removal customers told us that, prior to installing HindSite, it could take upwards of a month to send out invoices after a major snow event. Once they instituted HindSite, they were sending out all their invoices the next day. Eliminating paperwork and capturing all their data in the field helped them get paid much faster.
Unlike most people, snow removal contractors love it when it snows, even if it means long nights of work. If you act on the five tips above, you’ll be able to sleep easy knowing your business is setup for success.
Need snow removal software for your business? Download our Snow Removal Software Buyer’s Guide for tips that will help you select the best software for your business.