Jeff Juchnowicz, the owner of Terra Garden Solutions, works mainly with commercial clients — property managers and lawn companies. As much as it takes such a big risk to deal with large-scale projects and work on big communities, Jeff has found the system that works for his company so that they can accommodate both residential and commercial routes.
In this podcast, we focus mainly on the “how” of things when it comes to dealing with commercial clients. How that kind of system operates, how the employees are situated, how to find these accounts, and how to deal with the risks and disadvantages of this business, among many other topics.
We also touch on some topics about how he balances these large-scale projects with residential jobs like service calls and residential work.
These are what we talked about:
2:15 Business of Terra Garden Solutions
What is Terra Garden Solutions
What exactly is Terra Garden Solutions doing
3:35 What or who Terra Garden Solutions works with
4:24 Background of the business
How the business started
How Jeff acquired the business
How it started expanding
6:45 How Commercial Work Operates
How Jeff’s commercial clients grew
How he targets people and expands the business
8:38 How the company is divided: commercial clients vs. residential clients
9:46 Where Terra Garden Solutions operates
What areas and places the company covers
10:34 Competitors
How many competitors operate in the same area
How they differ in terms of their market
11:35 Operations
Why Jeff prefers residential work
Risks & disadvantages of big commercial work
14:00 Problems with commercial work
How Jeff handles employees to maintain the company’s quality of work
15:40 Dealing with property managers
How to achieve the balance where both sides are considered
Adapting to change
16:29 Risks of the industry that deals with a large company or a large community
How to adapt to change and the criticisms
How Jeff handles the lines of communication of his company and responds with quick action
18:14 Handling mistakes and mishaps
An example of his company’s latest miscommunication problem within the team
How he handled the mistake
Steps to handling mistakes
Dealing with internal employees and positive communication with clients
20:48 Contracts
How an ongoing contract works
21:21 How to get commercial accounts
Acquiring accounts when you have a finite amount of property managers
The hustle of acquiring clients
How to show to people that you know how to do the job
Choosing people to work for
Building short-term and long-term relationships
How to show the value that your company can provide for potential clients
24:58 Efforted marketing techniques to get clients
Using Facebook
Connecting with mutual friends
Making a list of people you’re targeting
26:41 Relationship marketing
How to spread the word about your company to people who have no idea about it, don’t know that they need it, or already have a man doing the service for them
Staying in touch with potential market
Approaching the target market
How to show what you can do without putting down competitors
29:16 Residential clients
How the large community projects affect the residential clients
How the company is divided between residential routes and commercial routes
Delegating the 2 kinds of work to his crew and team
31:01 How the residential work is like a different company on its own
The system for letting another person handle residential routes
32:12 The system of letting the other person handle the residential accounts
Handling the clients when you handle different types of grass
34:35 Route optimization systems
Systems to increase efficiency without using external applications
Clustered work
36:31 Advice for working with a constant client
Tips for a company that’ss considering working with a company or a constant client
How to make the numbers work — negotiating
Things to tackle when negotiating
38:23 Summary of the steps to take for a better negotiation
