Want to Grow Faster? Try These 3 Things


Growth Slowed to a Crawl?
Running a small or midsized business with employees out in the field isn’t easy. When growth slows, you can’t wait too long to turn things around. You need to figure out what’s holding you back and fix it fast. Get the ball rolling and start picking up momentum.
Here are three ways to kickstart growth without breaking the bank.
#1. Figure Out Your Biggest Time Wasters
Eighty percent of the time your business is probably humming along according to plan without too many issues. The other 20% of the time something is going sideways. Think about the types of things that cost you the most in terms of time, effort, and money. Fix them first.
Some examples from customers:
Lost/Stolen Tools or Equipment: When your team doesn’t have the right tools, jobs take longer.
Try This: Track tool usage and ensure everything is accounted for at the end of the day. Labeling or barcoding equipment and assigning it to a specific vehicle or crew provides some accountability and can minimize losses. Inexpensive trackers, like Toolies, can track critical tools and make sure they get to the right jobsite and aren’t left behind. Toolies have the added benefit of tracking usage which helps you stay on top of preventive maintenance and extend tool life by up to 50%.
Inefficient Routing: Not using the most direct and/or fastest route to job sites is wasting time and fuel.
Try This: Take a hard look at how you’re planning routes. Make sure you are batching jobs by area and adjusting schedules based on traffic patterns – this can save hours every week. Got GPS tracking? Use it to pinpoint problems and fix them fast. When dispatching emergency or same-day services, a live map shows who’s closest, so there is no need for time-wasting phone calls.
Accountability Gaps: When accountability isn’t clear, stuff falls through the cracks. For example, if no one is responsible for making sure preventive maintenance actually gets done, it’s not going to happen.
Try This: Make sure roles, responsibilities, and expectations are clearly defined and communicated on a regular basis. Write stuff down and post it. Have a 5 minute standup meeting at the start of the day to go over everything. If something falls short, address it immediately! That kind of stuff can snowball. If you have GPS, use it to monitor your crew’s locations in real-time for better job allocation and performance oversight.


#2. Cut Costs
Every unnecessary expense eats into your profits and gives you less money to reinvest into your people and business. Small things add up over days, weeks, and years. Some easy places to start are idling vehicles, unplanned maintenance, and overtime costs.
Idling: An hour of idling can burn a gallon of gas. If you have 10 trucks each idling an hour a day by the end of the year that’s over $10,000 literally burned up if gas is $4.00.
- Try This: Measure current idling to set a benchmark. You need a system that includes GPS tracking (sometimes referred to as telematics) – it is impossible to do manually. Look at what’s going on and set your idling policy. Here’s more details in another blog. Try sharing the savings with employees to encourage people to stop idling.
Unplanned Maintenance & Repairs: A big one – This throws a wrench into your schedule and can cause a domino effect that can last for days or weeks.
- Try This: Conduct regular vehicle inspections using either your own or standard intervals for things like oil changes, etc. Here’s a checklist. Use a spreadsheet, whiteboard, or automated Fleet Maintenance software to keep track of all the vehicle information and required preventive maintenance. Put someone in charge of that and make sure that they are evaluated on achieving a set of responsibilities for that role. Set up automated reminders and don’t let maintenance slide. It has to become part of your company’s culture to take care of the assets of the company, especially vehicles and tools!
Overtime: This is usually a function of poor scheduling unless you are wildly understaffed, it is your busy season, or both.
- Try This: First, set a realistic schedule that takes into account the time it really takes to go to a job and perform it satisfactorily. If you have a GPS system, use it to help optimize routing and automate capturing employee’s time on the job. Look for opportunities for improvement, track and trend the time it takes to do similar jobs and then sit down with your crews to understand why it takes them longer. There are many reasons, like the customer on a landscaping maintenance job is always asking for “a little favor” or the crew didn’t have the right tools, or something broke. It’s never just people being “lazy”.
Make sure you have a clear policy on overtime and consider incentives that reward employees for completing things on time rather than overtime. It is human nature to do the things they are incentivized to do. Be sure to review OT daily or weekly to spot trends, jobs, or people that always seem to be a problem and address those quickly.


#3. Automate Repetitive Tasks:
Your crew’s time is better spent doing the work that brings in revenue, rather than administrative tasks.
- Try This: Standardize and automate recurring tasks and processes—like dispatching, maintenance tracking, and customer notifications and follow-ups. Anything you can do to keep your people from having to do these low value (compared to working on a paying job) tasks is a step in the right direction. If you have a GPS system, then use it to send out customer notifications of when your crew will arrive. CRM systems can automate customer follow-ups and Fleet Maintenance programs can eliminate whiteboards and spreadsheets with automated tracking and reminders. Try to keep your employees working on the things that make money – not just overhead tasks. If you can, hire an admin who can organize all of the back office things. This keeps your crews out in the field and you focused on finding new business.


Look at a Slowdown as an Opportunity
Don’t wait to see if things will “turn around”. Slow periods are opportunities to look at what you are doing and figure out how to do it better. When you’re busy there is no time!