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5 Steps to Adult Learning

by | Apr 23, 2019 | Employee Management | 0 comments

5 Steps to Adult Learning

It’s true, we never stop learning. And as an owner of a tree care company, you have to make sure your employees continually learn. Think about how many different things your employees need to know to work safely. Ensuring your employees have a strong understanding of everything that goes into that, is one of the most important obligations you have as the owner.

But the thing is, not everyone learns the same way.

In early March, I attended the Certified Tree Safety Professional (CTSP) workshop in Lisle, IL. For those of you who have gone through this program, you know it doesn’t just hone in on the technical side of safety in the tree care world. In fact, the majority of the first day was spent on how employees learn so that we can get our messages/lessons across more efficiently.

As employers, you are responsible for many different types of learners. Some may prefer hands on, some may be visual, some may even prefer lecture. To make sure you cater to all types of learners, I’ve highlighted the Five Steps to Adult Learning below:

The Set-Up: This piece is where you introduce the purpose of the activity. I.e. laying out the ground rules. You’ll want to explain the “why” for what you are teaching, and give your employees a good understanding of the process that goes along with it.

Participation: Once you’ve explained to your employees why and how to do something, have them participate in the activity. If it is more on the mental side, such as “How to have a safety conscious mindset” be sure to use specific scenarios and ask open ended questions as you work through it. If it is something like chipper safety, demonstrate the activity, properly covering all the steps, then have your employee go through the same procedure with a supervisor watching over them.

Interpretation: 80% of the material we learn is forgotten within 24 hours. Addressing the main points of the activity and remembering each step will help reiterate the lesson. Below are some questions that can help employees review and relate what they just learned.

What were the key points of the activity?
What were the easiest/most difficult pieces?
Would you do anything differently?

Identify The Concept: By the age of 18-21, most will be able to identify their sense of “self”, ultimately recognizing how they learn best based on what has worked in the past. Relating the activity to past experiences will allow the lesson to piggyback on concepts your employee already understands. Here are some questions to help with that:

Where else have you seen these concepts?
Name another activity you can utilize the steps in.
Which steps were new? What did you already know?

Apply: It is important your employees understand why and when to apply what they’ve been taught. Re-visit the why, and ask some of the following questions to ensure your employees will utilize the concepts when they need to.

When will you use this approach in the field?
What are some scenarios that may make this approach more difficult? How will you prepare?
Explain the process to a team member(teaching helps the learning process)
One of my biggest takeaways from the class was the importance of asking open ended questions. Doing so gives your employees the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and express any concerns along the way. I know many of the safety meetings may come about after seeing something in the field, so choose a couple of questions that work for you, and utilize them when you see things pop up. And no matter how much experience an employee may have, critical steps in processes can often be overlooked or forgotten. Consider taking a seasoned vet vs a well trained newbie and comparing the differences. Could be an interesting outcome!

If you have any more questions or interest in getting help with your safety program/committee, feel free to reach out. Be safe!

Written by: Malcolm Jeffris, CTSP

The Most Important Customer Question for Tree Services to Ask

by | Apr 16, 2019 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

The Most Important Customer Question for Tree services to Ask

Last weekend I embarked on what is an annual springtime tradition in the Upper Midwest: the initial voyage outside my house into my yard after a long, cold winter. Like almost every one of your customers, I had to pick up some fallen twigs, rake some leaves, and look around to see the condition of the yard. I know this journey prompts a lot of phone calls to your office, however, what I never thought of before was the importance of this stroll.

As I was cleaning up my yard, I realized my thoughts were on what I really wanted to do with this space. How I would love to have an in-ground pool or bigger patio with built-in barbeque pit. How the corner of my yard, which was full of buckthorn and sumac a year ago, looks so much better all cleaned up and manicured. I thought to myself; why didn’t I do that sooner. And that’s when it hit me – the one singular, most important question for tree care companies to ask their customers…

What is your vision for your yard?

It is a simple question that carries tremendously powerful results. No matter what their response is, you have an answer that is based in emotion and we all know that emotion is truly what makes a sale. Additionally, an emotion-based sale allows you to provide a customer experience that they will rave about into the future to their friends and family members.

Getting people to talk about their vision for their yard opens up conversations well beyond the reason that they called you to come out. It gives you a chance to recommend a tree replacement that fits their vision, schedule regular pruning on other trees, or begin the discussion about how a PHC program would benefit their yard. Plus, seeing someone’s face light up when they start telling you about an idea they had for their yard makes every sales call more enjoyable.

Starting with this question when you first meet with the customer, can help your conversation flow naturally to their emotions. If they wonder why you asked them that, simply talk about how proper landscape planning needs to consider the largest plant first – the trees. Without planning with trees in mind, their vision certainly will not take shape.

Transform your sales appointments with this question and I promise you, your closing ratio will increase and you will have more smiles to talk about. Isn’t that really what we all want?

For additional help with objection handling and one-on-one sales training, check out ArboRisk’s Thrive Sales & Marketing Package! Our team of industry experts has the skills and knowledge to help you take your tree care company to new heights. Click here to learn more!

Written by: Eric Petersen

Outreach Opportunities for Tree Care Companies

by | Apr 3, 2019 | Marketing | 0 comments

Outreach Opportunities for Tree Care Companies

“I’m too busy to figure that out right now.”

“It seems like it would be difficult to do.”

“I don’t know where to start, or even what materials I would need.”

Community outreach, when combined with running a business, managing employees, and having any semblance of a personal life, seems like a daunting task. However, outreach is essential to developing and enhancing your company’s brand – and may be easier to tackle than you imagine.

When people think of your tree care business, what is the first thing you want them to consider? Obviously, your core values and mission should come to mind immediately, but you should also want them to think about how your business enhances the local community. There are many ways for your business to get involved with the local community, and the more time and effort you can put into it, the better your brand will look to current and future customers.

Partnering with a local charity

When you know a business is working with a charity, as opposed to one that does not, how much more likely are you to want to work with the business that is giving back? I’m not sure about you, but I know I am much more likely to want to work with a business that is giving back to the community. If you are not doing so already, I would highly encourage you to get involved with a charity within your community. Some great options include humane societies, nursing homes, veteran’s organizations, or even Habitat for Humanity!

Pro Tip: Use your equipment to show your support for a specific charity. If your charity utilizes a specific color, cover a piece of your equipment in that color. If they have a symbol, place that symbol on your equipment.

Participating in school career days

Career days are not only a great way to get your business out in the community, but an excellent way to promote an arboriculture career to future generations. Many schools offer career fairs that are very easy to get involved in. Having an activity at your booth, such as knot tying or tree leaf identification, is a great way to attract younger individuals and get them interested in arboriculture.

Another great way to connect with kids is going into each individual classroom and talking to them about being an arborist. ERIC is host to a multitude of Urban Forestry Laboratory Exercises for elementary, middle, and high schoolers. #Donotreinventthewheel These resources are available for you to utilize and can help strengthen your message for future generations of tree climbers. If you’re a Thrive member, we have them linked directly on our website for your use! (Let us know if you need your login and we’re happy to help with that, too!)

Hosting a kid’s climb

If there is one thing I know about kids, it is that majority of them LOVE to climb trees #Guilty Hosting a kid’s climb is an excellent way to promote your business and enjoy family fun. Your local ISA chapter may already have a format established to easily host a safe event. If not, partner with other tree care companies in your area to host the climb together. These opportunities are not about competition; it is about working together to enhance the industry and encourage future generations to get involved in arboriculture.

Branding yourself as a company that gives back to the community and participates in local events will help you gain more customers and will establish who you are. Customers want to work with businesses that support the areas around them.

Thrive clients have access to resources that can help develop your outreach efforts – logon to our website today to read more!

Written by: Katie Petersen

Stages of Business Growth

by | Apr 2, 2019 | Business Strategy | 0 comments

Stages of Business Growth

Written by Jim Skiera

Here’s an article ArboRisk published in the past that is a good refresher for business owners year after year. It helps answer the question: Is what we are working on today going to get us to the success we want in the future? Put simply, are we on course? With the challenges experienced the past few years, you may need to set a new direction for your business if growth is your goal. Understanding the stages of business growth will help you plan for the future business you want yours to become.

Whether you’re starting up a tree care business for the first time or growing the company you have been managing for years, understanding the stages of business growth can help you focus your planning for a profitable future.

This article presents a condensed overview of the Five Stages of Small Business Growth developed by Neil C. Churchill and Virginia Lewis for an article in the 1983 Harvard Business Review. The five stages are Existence, Survival, Success, Take-off, and Resource Maturity. Not all businesses go through every stage, but depending on your level of ambition it’s a quick read that may help you recognize where you are and how to get to the next level.

Existence

At this stage the business is an idea. The owner may or may not have a business plan at this stage, but it is a recommended first step. The owner is working hard to develop a product and or service that customers want. Success at this stage is measured by the development of a customer base that generates enough revenue to offset expenses. Consistent with the term existence, the business is likely doing just that existing. It may generate enough revenue to break even. The owner is experimenting with service offerings and pricing structure that will generate a profit. It is not uncommon in this stage for a business to run at a loss for a period of time. Keeping costs under control is paramount.

Customers at this point are your greatest asset. Customers that refer you to other customers are of even greater value. If you’re able to establish a client base that begins to get you past the break even point you may move on to the next stage; survival. If not, you likely will run out of capital and need to close the doors.

Survival

In this stage you have established a service a customer is willing to pay for and an adequate customer base to generate enough revenue to offset your expenses. Going forward the challenge will be to price your services appropriately and generate enough work to earn a profit, so revenue outpaces expenses. Businesses have good times and bad times. You’ll need to begin to develop a reserve during the good times to get you through the eventual bad times. You customer base and reputation has likely grown, and you may need to hire employees to keep up with the demands of a growing customer base.

New challenges come in the form of hiring, training and keeping employees, maintaining equipment, scheduling work, making payroll and managing cash flow. Businesses that eventually advance to the success stage develop systems to manage customer expectations and profitable production as the company grows. In addition, the business will need to find more customers to continue to grow revenue. If successful in this stage, the business begins to thrive, however, this is also where many businesses stall. Typically, the owner is very good at providing the service the customers want, but may not be good at managing a growing a business. Working harder may not be increasing profits, just the amount of time spent working. Moving past this requires the owner to develop business management skills or hire people who assist as needed with financial management, operations, hiring, legal issues, taxes and accounting, risk management, insurance, etc. to get to the next level; success.

Success

In this stage the business has begun to prosper. Systems and processes are in place that guide the business and the owner has been able to delegate control to qualified and trusted employees to run most of the day to day activities. This provides time for the owner to work on refining systems and processes to optimize business growth and profitability.

At this point the owner is receiving a good income from the business. They may choose to pour profits back into the growth of the company or allow the team in place to manage the business while the owner steps away to use profits for funding new ventures. Many entrepreneurs bring businesses to the success stage and then sell to start a new company.

Take-Off

If the goal is to reinvest profits back into the company, this stage opens the door to rapid growth. The success stage has allowed you to develop systems and processes that can be replicated to expand into new markets. The company can bring on and train additional team members and resources to grow the customer base profitably. At this point it is vital that the company has a well-defined business plan guiding growth. Strategies for growth will need to be monitored and refined as the company expands. What may have worked in the earlier stages, may not during rapid growth. Epic growth can become epic fail if it is not managed properly.

Systems may need to be decentralized as processes become more complex. The growth opportunities may require the company to find new funding sources such as venture capital partners or other forms of equity investment to keep up with demand. Your small business may begin to transform into a big company.

Resource Maturity

The expansion of the take off stage cannot last forever, eventually markets become saturated. The challenge here is to stabilize the company and remain profitable as growth slows. The energy of rapid growth will need to be replaced with new drivers to keep team members inspired. Customization of processes and systems will need to yet again be refined to meet the needs of this new stage for the company.

The company may begin to look at new services and or at purchasing new businesses to increase growth and revenues through different avenues. Departments may be formed to assist with budget development and management. The company will also need to keep fine tuning processes and products to keep up with changes in the industry and customer needs. As a large company you are always at risk from smaller nibbler companies like the one you were in during the success stage. One strategy is to purchase these companies to gain access to their innovations and manage competition.

The intent of the article is to inspire you to think about your current stage of growth and begin planning for your next. Recognizing the stage your business is in will help deal with the challenges and leverage opportunities that come with growth. For more help with developing your business, contact ArboRisk for more information on their Thrive Strategic Planning Package! With this package, ArboRisk can help you identify who you are as a company today, what you want to become, and what strategic milestones will be needed to achieve your goals.

Career Paths for Arborists

by | Mar 26, 2019 | Employee Management | 0 comments

Career Paths for Arborists

Written by Eric Petersen, CIC

I know you want to keep your best employees with your company for as long as possible, especially since you own a tree service and good team members are hard to come by. And you probably already know that one of the top reasons why talented employees quit is because they do not see a future with their employer. What is even more frustrating is that most of the time the advancement opportunities are there or could be created for those high performing employees, there was just a breakdown in communication and the employee went looking for a different job.

How do you easily inform your current and future employees of the advancement opportunities within your company? My simple answer is to build a career path! Construct an easy to follow diagram to show how an employee can progress through your company. Even if you are a small tree service and there are not be many positions available, set up different levels of their position based on skills and training so they have an idea how to develop their career.

To start creating your career path, ask yourself these four questions:

  • What are all of the different positions in your company today?
  • Will you be adding any new positions in the near future?
  • What is a logical career projection for an entry level employee?
  • What skills do you need at each position?

Use the answers to these questions to begin laying out the foundation of the career path.

When guiding some of my clients through this exercise, I’ve found it helpful to take a sheet of paper and turn it horizontally. Start with putting the entry level position on the far left side and move to the right adding the next level positions one at a time. In between each position draw a line to show the progression of the advancement. There may be a point where the employee could move into more than one position, like sales or plant health care; split the career path to show multiple ways for the employee to continue their career.

Pro Tip: Got job descriptions? Use those to develop your career paths! You probably already have your career path figured out within the different job descriptions for your company. These should list the skills required for each position.

Once you have the layout of the career path assembled, make notes based on what differentiates each level from the previous one. For instance, if you have a Climber I and Climber II positions, what training or skills must the Climber II employee possess? It could be a designation like the Certified Arborist or Aerial Lift Specialist or that they passed an in-house test to make the jump into the next level. Plotting these requirements out onto the diagram will quickly show any employee where they are in the career path and give them an easy visual of where they can go.

Your next step is to hand the piece of paper with your career path on it to someone in your office that can make the document look good. Making this document attractive and easy to understand is very important.

Lastly, communicate the career path with each individual on your team. Make it crystal clear to them that if they invest in themselves and their careers they will get rewarded by moving up in the organization.

If you’d like to see a sample career path that we created, click here to download our freebie of the month! If you need additional help with hiring and recruiting or leadership training, contact ArboRisk today! Our Hiring and Recruiting Thrive Package can help address pain points within your tree care company and take your hiring and recruiting practices to new heights!