CLIP's Tips

In his newsletter this week, green industry consultant Marty Grunder wrote about their company orientation.  In order to start the season on the right foot, Grunder Landscaping takes one day in March to orient team members on the practices and details in their company.  The way Marty puts it is that he doesn’t want there to be any surprises.  Could your team use more preparation for the upcoming season?  Consider the following outline for Grunder Landscaping’s orientation day:

1. Intro by Marty – Discussion our Vision, Mission, and Core Values. (It all starts here, folks, if you don’t get this right, the rest is impossible.)

2. Sales

3. Administration

  a. Front office

  b. Time off

4. Walt, Production Manager, Lance, Senior Team Leader, Joe, Fleet & Facilities Manager

  a. PowerPoint presentation with job site photos, before & after

  b. Grunder procedures

     i. Uniforms

     ii. Safety first

     iii. Start time

     iv. Weather Delay

     v. Parking

     vi. Snacks

     vii. Time Clock

     viii. Check board for team assignment

     ix. Trucks

     x. Job site behavior

     xi. Lunch

     xii. Evenings

     xiii. Mechanical

     xiv. Workmanship

     xv. Benefits

5. Paul, Vice President of Operations

     a. Closing

Original Post:  SPRING COMES TO GRUNDER LANDSCAPING ON MARCH 9TH

What a thorough list!  I was inspired to implement an orientation day for CLIP Lawn Care.  I am sure that all of our teams could use some refreshing on much of this information.  This would also be a good day to distribute Employee Handbooks.

In the midst of your busyness right now, don’t forget to include time for creating important systems like this.

Do you have an orientation day?  How do you provide this information to your team?  Let us know in the comments!

In this video we will cover:

• Bill to other account
• Audit Trail (Who changed what when?)
• Additional Installments
• Create Coupons
• Attach many pictures to a customer file
• Add Customer as Outlook Contact

If you can’t see the video above, click here.

As always, comments and questions are welcome and appreciated.

In our next post, we will continue with the CLIP Features You Might Not Know About.

Below, you will find a copy of CLIP Lawn Care’s employee handbook.  As we have discussed before, systems are essential to a smoothly running business.  Documenting “the way we do things” for your team members is critical.  An employee handbook can be beneficial in this regard.

Click on the link below to download the employee handbook.

CLIP Lawn Care Employee Handbook

How do you document “the way you do things?”  Let us know in the comments.

In the next few posts, I will be sharing some of the commonly overlooked features in CLIP.  Feel free to post questions on any features you are curious about or any questions on the features I cover in the video.

To see the video, go here:  http://vimeo.com/9722712

In this video:

– Save typing time by setting up Function Keys

– Set Default Start, Stop and Break Times for Record Work

– Change your background image in CLIP.

– Adjust budgeted man hours based on new $ per hour goal.

– Re-number route numbers in order to space them out evenly.

I tend to get discouraged easily when it comes to goals that I set, especially at work.  Sometimes they can seem so difficult to attain, and it is easy to give up.

If you want to achieve your goals, learning the skill of self-motivation is absolutely necessary. 

In that light, I want to provide you with a helpful article about motivation.  The article is written by mega-successful personal growth blogger Leo Babauta.  The post contains 8 Ways to Motivate Yourself From the Beginning and 20 Ways to Sustain Motivation When You’re Struggling. 

Read it here: 

The Ultimate Guide to Motivation – How to Achieve Any Goal

Application Action:  The article is long.  I don’t necessarily recommend reading the whole thing right now, unless you feel like it.  This is what I want to encourage you to do:  Print and file or save this article somewhere where you will be able to find it .  Then, put a note on your calendar during the middle of each month on your 2010 calendar that says, “Read Motivation Article".”  Regularly reviewing something like this has the power to create unexpected motivation in the midst of the daily grind.

Here are some of the tricks that work best for me.

Commit publicly. None of us likes to look bad in front of others. We will go the extra mile to do something we’ve said publicly.  For example, when I wanted to run my first marathon, I started writing a column about it in my local daily newspaper. The entire island of Guam (pop. 160K) knew about my goal. I couldn’t back down, and even though my motivation came and went, I stuck with it and completed it. Now, you don’t have to commit to your goal in your daily newspaper, but you can do it with friends and family and co-workers, and you can do it on your blog if you have one. And hold yourself accountable — don’t just commit once, but commit to giving progress updates to everyone every week or so.

Just start. There are some days when you don’t feel like heading out the door for a run, or figuring out your budget, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do that day for your goal. Well, instead of thinking about how hard it is, and how long it will take, tell yourself that you just have to start. I have a rule that I just have to put on my running shoes and close the door behind me. After that, it all flows naturally. It’s when you’re sitting in your house, thinking about running and feeling tired, that it seems hard. Once you start, it is never as hard as you thought it would be. This tip works for me every time.

Read about it. When I lose motivation, I just read a book or blog about my goal. It inspires me and reinvigorates me. For some reason, reading helps motivate and focus you on whatever you’re reading about. So read about your goal every day, if you can, especially when you’re not feeling motivated.

Go for mini-goals. Sometimes large or longer-term goals can be overwhelming. After a couple weeks, we may lose motivation, because we still have several months or a year or more left to accomplish the goal. It’s hard to maintain motivation for a single goal for such a long time. Solution: have smaller goals along the way.

Photo Credit: Thorne Enterprises

I recently received a request from a reader asking about ideas for lawn care flyers.  I thought it would be helpful to share with everyone a few of the marketing materials that we use.

Nothing but our logo is copyrighted so feel free to use whatever you want.  Check out the bottom of the post for some recommendations on printing companies.  Feel free to post any questions in the comments.

Click on the thumbnail picture to open each file.

New for 2010 – $20/$30 Combo Flyer:

(You will notice that the grass image has a watermark on it.  If you want to purchase it, click here.)  On a side note, www.bigstockphoto.com is where I purchased the grass picture.  It is a good resource for low price stock photography.

Traditional $20 Special Flyer – This one set us apart from the competition in our early years:

$30 First Lawn Treatment Flyer:

Spring Cleanup Postcard (usually sent to existing customers):

Bill Insert about our other services:

We were here/recommended services flyer:

Recommended Printing Companies

www.vistaprint.com – Good value, online design tool allows you to design your materials on their website.

www.topvalueprinting.com – We have used this company to print our door hangers for years.  Give plenty of lead time for printing and shipping.

www.gotprint.com – Best pricing on many materials if you have your design created already.  Your designs and files need to be perfect before uploading.

If you have a a good relationship with a local company, that can be a great option too.

Do you have any great marketing ideas?  How about good printing companies?  Let us know in the comments!

Congratulations!

Congratulations to Catherine from Phoenix, Arizona!  She was randomly selected as the winner of our Winter Ideas Contest.  For commenting on what she is focusing on during this season, she wins complimentary copies of The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and Getting Things Done by David Allen.

To see her ideas as well as others, click here.

Workflow Mapping

Is your workflow documented?  Or does everyone just wing it?  Without a documented “way we do things,” your company systems will not live up to their potential.

A workflow map shows the start to finish of a process.  Creating a workflow map is useful for  documenting your business processes in an easy to follow format.

A workflow map does a few things for you:

1.  Provides instant direction for anyone beginning a new task.

2.  Serves as a checklist to ensure that every necessary step happens every time.

3.  Reveals weaknesses or gaps in your workflow.

To create a workflow map, take a business process and work your way from start to finish documenting every step.  Pay particular attention to points in the process where the next step has multiple options.  For example:

While we’ve been buried in snow here in Maryland, we’ve been working on some of our processes for CLIP Lawn Care.

To inspire and provide you with workflow map examples, here are two maps we created this week.  Click on the link below each item to open the larger map.  Once the image is open, click on the screen to zoom if necessary.

1.  What to do if we receive a signed contract.

• Signed Contract Workflow Map

2.  What to do with a new customer.

• New Customer Workflow Map

To do this, we used XMind mind mapping software.  You can use whatever you like to create a workflow map: a whiteboard, large paper, drawing software, mind mapping software, Microsoft Word, or any other tool you find helpful.

Application Action:  I encourage you to take some time this month to go through some of your processes in this manner.  I think you will be happy with the results.  If you come up with a map that you want to implement in your company, send it to me and I would be happy to give you feedback.

Bonus:  Our front doorway, hours before the storm was even over:  Click here for image.

During this time of the year, many of you are probably thinking about ways that you can improve your internet presence.  I wanted to point out a few resources that you might find helpful:

- CLIP Portal:  One of our newest features in CLIP, the CLIP Portal will allow customers to update their contact information, view their history, check their schedule and more.

• CLIP Portal Webinar
• CLIP Portal Manual

- Create a website using Microsoft Office Live Small Business tools.

• Example website Created using this tool: www.cliplawncare.com
• Webinar on creating websites

- Add online forms to your website.

• www.wufoo.com – I recently heard about a CLIP user who was very pleased using this tool to add a form to his website.

- Learn about social media (twitter, facebook, etc.) and its relation to your business.

• Tweet, tweet blog post

- Get your contracts signed over the internet.

• EchoSign

If you have more questions about how to improve your internet presence, let me know by posting a comment!

I was informed that the video does not work directly from the email. If you weren’t able to see the mind mapping video, click on the link below to view it:

Mind Mapping on YouTube

In our last post we discussed ubiquitous capture—being able to capture ideas you have wherever you are.  In this post I will teach you a method to get the most out of those good ideas.

What do you do with that new idea for a project that you wrote down last week?  How do you go about solving a complex personnel problem?  To think through projects, problems, or ideas I advocate using a mind map. 

A mind map is a diagram used to aid brainstorming and organizing information around a central topic.  Here is an example of a hand-drawn mind map from GTD Times:

Here is a video demonstrating how I recently used a mind map:

(you may want to click on the button to expand it to full screen)

Obviously, this mind map is not exhaustive.  It simply demonstrates the process and format for creating a mind map.  For those who are curious, the program I used to create the mind map is at www.xmind.net.

Why Mind Map?

- As opposed to linear note taking or outlining, mind mapping allows your mind to jump around freely among various topics which is the way your mind naturally functions.

- Mind mapping is quick.  Mind mapping has enabled me to discover more ideas per minute than any other method I have used.

- Because mind maps are so visual, you will be able to see easily where you have gaps in your planning, where the most important concepts are, etc.

- Mind maps also serve as a way to remember information, especially if you are a visual learner.  Often times, you will be able to remember the content of a mind map simply because you remember its shape.

Some ideas for when to use a mind map:

• Team brainstorming
• Problem solving
• Note-taking during a conference or meeting
• Summarizing information you learned in a book

Advanced Mind-Mapping Tips from Mindtools.com:

Use single words or simple phrases for information: Most words in normal writing are padding: They convey facts in the correct context, and in a format that is pleasant to read. In your own Mind Maps, single strong words and meaningful phrases can convey the same meaning more potently. Excess words just clutter the Mind Map.

Print words: Joined up or indistinct writing can be more difficult to read.

Use color to separate different ideas: This will help you to separate ideas where necessary. It also makes your Mind Map easier to remember. Color also helps to show the organization of the subject.

Use symbols and images: Where a symbol or picture means something to you, use it. Pictures can help you to remember information more effectively than words.

Using cross-linkages: Information in one part of the Mind Map may relate to another part. Here you can draw in lines to show the cross-linkages. This helps you to see how one part of the subject connects with another.

Application Action:  Mind map a problem or project that you have been thinking about recently.  Let me know how it goes in the comments.