4 Tips to Create a Cohesive Brand

by | May 14, 2019 | Marketing | 0 comments

4 Tips to Create a Cohesive Brand

As a tree service owner, diving into the realm of branding can seem like a daunting task. For so many companies, it’s overwhelming or gets filed in the “I’ll do that later” folder. Your brand is your company’s entire image and the story that is being conveyed to customers and prospects, so it needs your attention.

Before a customer uses your services, they have interacted with your brand in some way. Whether they drove past a truck with your logo, walked their dog past a house with your sign in the yard, or saw your latest Instagram post, all of these seemingly small interactions are the building blocks of relationships with your audience and ultimately what defines your brand.

With a few tweaks and fine tuning, you can create a cohesive brand for your tree care company that attracts new customers.

Determine your brand identity: Your brand is so much more than your logo. It is the story your customers tell. The first place to start determining your brand identity is by defining your “why”. The “why” is so critical for many aspects of your business, but will essentially define your brand identity. We wrote an article recently all about this topic and can help you define your why: https://arboriskinsurance.com/2018/08/what-is-your-why/ Clearly outline your key services, the history of your company, your company’s values, and where you want to go in the future. Once it is determined, your brand identity will influence everything in your marketing plan from the words on your website to your social media posts.

Utilize a consistent color palette and fonts: Your logo is your company’s most identifiable aspect. Your brand colors should include those of your logo and complementing colors that align with the principles of design. From mailers to social media posts, utilize these colors in all artwork. Your fonts should remain consistent just as your colors. When choosing fonts, make sure they are easy to read and can be used for a variety of purposes. If you select a “fancy” font for headlines, make sure to pair it with another that is more ordinary. Here is a resource that helps pair complementary fonts: https://fontjoy.com

Create a professional website: Did you know it only takes 3 seconds for someone to make a decision whether to stay on your website or not? Your website is the first place prospective customers go to check out your business before they decide to use your services. With such a short time frame to make a great impression, having a professional website is a critical aspect of your business and your brand. If you are like most, website design isn’t included on your resume. Invest in a web designer and a professional photographer to create a site that helps your business stand out!

Use a recognizable voice: Whether you are doing all the writing yourself, or outsourced to another company, decide on a writing style that portrays the brand identity you have created. Start by choosing 3 words to define your brand’s personality and voice. From there, choose a style that appeals to your target audience and keep it consistent. Use the same tone and formality throughout your website pages, blog, direct mailers and social media posts.

With a clearly defined brand, you will attract the right kind of customers. Following the 4 tips outlined above you will begin to create a cohesive brand that will help your tree care company stand out from the crowd!

Do you need help with your company’s overall branding? ArboRisk’s exclusive Thrive program includes brand building initiative to help take tree services to new heights! Contact [email protected] today to learn more!

Written by: Amanda Eicher

Will You Watch Out for My Safety?

by | May 7, 2019 | Risk Management | 0 comments

Will You Watch Out For My Safety?

“You don’t have to tell me that, I know what I’m doing.”

How many times have you caught yourself saying that to someone who is just trying to help?

I know I have done that more often than I’d like to admit. Especially when you are in a leadership position, it can be challenging to accept advice from one of your subordinates. However, this is the exact opposite reaction you should have if you want to promote a culture of trust and open communication within your company.

At TCIA’s 2019 Winter Management Conference, John Drebinger spoke on how safety is a benefit for your employees and how the owner or crew leader’s attitude plays the largest factor in the success of building a safety culture. For a company to truly build a great culture, all employees must feel comfortable to speak up when they see something that doesn’t seem right. If the owner or crew leader shuts down an employee by saying that they know what they should be doing, the chances of that employee ever saying something again are slim. As soon as that communication breaks down, your culture of mutual respect within your company takes a major hit and preventable accidents may occur.

There are many reasons, why people don’t say something including:

They don’t think something will happen.
They are uncomfortable speaking up.
They do not know how to point out an unsafe situation.
So what is the best way to avoid this breakdown in communication? Train yourself and your team members on how to bring up a safety concern as well as how to accept safety criticism from anyone on the team.

At your next safety meeting, start by asking individuals directly if they will look out for your safety. Speak directly at 3 or 4 of your team members to drive home the point that everyone should be looking out for each other. “John, will you look out for my safety? Bob, will you look out for my safety?”. And so on.

Giving your employees the authority to say something that could prevent an accident from happening will dramatically change the safety culture of your organization.

After you have given the authority to look out for everyone’s safety, provide your team with a few simple ways that employees can point out safety concerns comfortably.

“As you know” – One of the easiest ways for any team member to address another is to begin with this phrase. This technique doesn’t threaten the intelligence of the worker, but reminds them that they are working unsafely. Ex: As you know, you should be wearing your chaps, even for one small cut.

“I’m new, why are you doing it that way?” – Asking for advice is actually a great, innocent way of getting your point across to a veteran employee that their work practice is unsafe. It will stop them enough to realize they are setting a bad example and allow for a small moment of training between the two. Ex: Since I’m new to your crew, why did you set up the chipper in that manner?

“This one time, I…” – State how you had a close call by doing a similar unsafe act. Relating to your team member by stating that you have done the same unsafe act, but were lucky enough to not have an accident is a powerful way of helping that individual. Ex: This one time, I didn’t put on the chain break when bucking a log and my chain got caught in my chaps as I moved to the next limb.

After you have given a few examples of how to point out an unsafe act, you have to talk about the proper way to accept criticism regardless of who is giving it to you. Remember, the main reason you want a safe workplace is so everyone will make it home each night. Explain that checking your ego and saying thank you is much easier than taking an ambulance ride to the emergency room. Also, acknowledging that it may have been difficult for that team member to say something goes a long way to ensure they feel comfortable to say something again in the future.

Foster a culture of gratitude within your company by setting a great example for your team and training everyone on how to address and accept the advice instead of shutting it down.

For help building the best safety culture possible, contact the ArboRisk team today!

Written by: Eric Petersen

The Most Important Aspect of Hiring

by | Apr 30, 2019 | Safety | 0 comments

The Most Important Aspect of Hiring

As a business-owner, I’ve felt the hiring pressure that you feel. Your company is growing and you need more people to continue the momentum, however, you don’t know how to find that person.

In my opinion, the most important aspect to hiring is being prepared before you need to hire someone.

Many tree service owners struggle with bad hires because they are not prepared before they need a new person. Hiring someone just because you need more help usually causes more problems than it solves. You’re probably nodding your head in agreement right now, because we all have been there; the good news is that there’s hope to better hiring. This article outlines a few ideas for you to have in place to be better prepared before you hire your next employee.

Job Descriptions – Do you have written job descriptions for each position? If not, now is the time to create them. Having a written job description will help you understand the specific needs for your organization and thereby give you direction for hiring and recruiting of new employees.

Career Path – Create an easy to follow diagram to show employees how they can progress through your company. Creating levels or tier to certain positions (like Climber I and Climber II) can help a prospective employee see that there is a structured growth potential within your organization. To learn more about career paths, read this article: Are You in Danger of Losing Your Best Employee?

Hiring Strategy – Having a standard hiring process is a crucial part of a successful business. Create a list of all of the paperwork necessary for someone to apply for the job. Then formulate an interview process that will allow you to best qualify the potential employee. This can be a series of phone and in-person meetings. I suggest involving some of the potential employee’s team members as well to make sure their personalities fit well together.

Who Do You Want – Do you know what characteristics you want in an employee? What traits fit with your company’s culture and will help build everyone up around them. Are there physical requirements that you need the individual to possess?

Where Should You Be Recruiting – While finding new employees is difficult, having everything else in place before you go looking for them will help tremendously. It will also point you to the places (both in person and online) that your ideal employee is at. For a few of my favorite recruiting tips, check out this article: 5 Hiring Hotspots.

Being prepared to hire the best will be your surest way to actually hiring the best. Take some time to develop your hiring procedure, I promise you won’t regret it.

If you would like help creating a hiring and recruiting structure, contact ArboRisk to learn how to sign up for our Thrive services.

Written by: Eric Petersen

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