Landscape Sales Boom with Stay-at-Home Customers
How is your company adapting to the COVID crisis? It's had some surprising impacts to the landscape market:

1) Soaring Sales - Stay-at-Home customers are completing landscape improvements and deferred maintenance. Contractors specializing in residential work are "booked full" and service techs are working overtime. Permanent "work-from-home" and "retirement cocooning" will keep this trend soaring.

2)  Employees Available? - It's getting easier to find laborers as other industries experience cutbacks. Score candidates you're interviewing on values, skills and abilities to deliver results to make logical - not emotional - hiring decisions.  

3)  Remote Irrigation Management Takes Off  - As consumers and contractors get more familiar with app-based technology, the move to WiFi-based controls has accelerated. Now systems can be checked and reprogrammed without going to the customer's property. (See our special offer on a Hydrawise controller below.)

4) Paperless Technology Finally Embraced - Software that allows contractors to dispatch workers remotely, to schedule appointments without office staff and to collect touch-less payments is finally taking off as teams proactively adapt to social distancing.   
 
5) Offer Your Customers More - Contractors who offer a diverse menu of services are doing better than those who specialize. Add new products and services to "go deeper" in meeting all of your clients' needs.


The Team at Aqua-Flo Supply
The Most Important Measure of Productivity to Track This Year
How can contractors effectively measure efficiency with just one Key Performance Indicator (KPI)?

Track revenue per man-hour.   It's a simple and fast measure of productivity.  Check it weekly or monthly: simply look at total man-hours logged and revenue billed. 

This measure will quickly tell you whether you're performing to plan, or whether you need to investigate where inefficiencies are occurring.   If your team is working more hours and billing less for it, you need to find out what's going wrong FAST!  If your billings are improving, your correctly capturing value from the effort your team is putting forth. 

The number will vary based on weather, new personnel, equipment availability and more. But it's the ultimate gut check of where you stand. Start tracking it today!  
How Aqua-Flo is Managing Industry-Wide Product Shortages
While other distributors around the United States are posting signs about product shortages and stock-outs, Aqua-Flo continues to offer excellent fill rates to our customers during these uncertain times.
 
Here is what Aqua-Flo is doing to help.

  • Forecasting months in advance and ordering product ahead of time to keep our shelves full. We consistently carry a broader selection and more inventory to meet the special needs of the California market
  • Proactively reaching out to you about your upcoming projects if we foresee any potential product availability issues
  • Ordering in advance and holding materials until you are ready for delivery
  • Stocking alternative products from trusted brands
  • Fast and efficient product transfers between multiple Aqua-Flo locations
  • Ramping up contractor services like material take-offs and free local delivery on large orders

As we've done for over 50-years, we'll continue to put our customers first and find new ways of providing the highest level of customer service and technical support.

In the weeks ahead, we encourage you to:

  • Communicate your large project material requirements early and often to our team. This will enable us to special-source any materials.
  • Collaborate with us if you wish to substitute items on your order. We can provide data sheets you can submit to your client for alternate items.

In our 50+ year history, our company has seen many supply disruptions and has worked hard to minimize their impact on our customers.  Rest assured that we are working hard for you!   
Are You Ready? New State Law for Spray Heads Starts in October
State law will soon mandate the sale of only pressure-regulated spray bodies. (applies to all pop-up heights)

Beginning in October, spray bodies without pressure regulator will be sold only while current Aqua-Flo inventories last

Why is this change happening?
Adopting pressure-regulating sprays will make irrigation systems more water efficient. The on-board regulator corrects the pressure to that needed by the nozzle. This results in up to 25% water savings.

How you can prepare:
Transition your inventory to pressure-regulated spray bodies.

Educate customers about upgrades Just changing one sprinkler in a zone to pressure-regulating will not offer balanced output and water savings. Instead, when one sprinkler is upgraded, customers will want them all upgraded. Be sure you are ready to explain upgrading to customers.

Take the opportunity to sell your customers on a more efficient system!

Don't Forget to Offer a Water Feature
Aqua-Flo makes it easy for you to offer water features that add extra profit dollars to your landscape projects.   

Water features provide you with a unique and creative way to enhance your customer's outdoor living space. The right water feature can create a unique focal point and make your landscape proposal stand out. 
 
Savvy contractors are now offering water features on nearly every landscape project. Nearly every site has space for the addition of a small water feature. 
 
Installing small water features is quick, easy, and often can be done in a day or less. 
 
Choose from features like fountain basins with a variety of bubbling urns or columns, pond-free waterfalls or waterfall spillways integrated into a hardscape wall. Browse the many options .   
 
Ask us how to get started with selling and installing small water features as landscape enhancements. 
Marketing Strategy to Keep Your Sales Pipeline Full
Getting the phone to ring in the spring is easy. As we head into the fall, smart contractors are already planning to capture every sales opportunity in an uncertain year..
     
You need a MARKETING STRATEGY to generate a strong backlog.

Sell more to current customers . Mine your list for customers who could buy additional services from you.   For example, customers who bought landscape plantings may now be ready to add landscape lighting. 

Reactivate past customers . Have you lost touch with past clients? Make a list of the clients who haven't bought from you this season. Send them information and then reach out by phone. Offer them a sweetener to come back and work with you again.

Review your past service checklists / evaluations .  Remember those evaluation forms your technicians have been completing on every site visit?  They're filled with items either your technicians couldn't get to during in-season visits or where the customer said "I'll have that done later".  Later is now!  Follow-up and get the work scheduled.