Your skilled crews can lay pavers, spread mulch, prune bushes, and plant beds, but do they know why efficiency in these tasks contributes to the overall profitability of the business? Your sales professionals know how to make sales calls, but do they know how and why targeting and pursuing a profitable customer base results in greater overall revenue than indiscriminately selling to a large customer base? Your crew leaders can put together and deliver schedules and allocate resources, equipment, and hours, but do they know that top-down management of their crews can actually hinder rather than help productivity?

The green industry has significantly and dramatically changed over the last decade. These days, increasingly discriminating customers are demanding more sophisticated solutions for their landscaping needs. They want to know they are receiving the absolute best the industry has to offer for their hard-earned dollars. Gone are the days when a landscape firm’s good name was all it needed to sustain and grow it. In other words, traditional approaches to and ways of thinking about the green industry just won’t do anymore. Landscape contractors today have to continually position themselves ahead of the curve. They have to proactively anticipate customers’ ever-evolving needs and the market’s increasing demand for clear differentiation. This means adopting processes, procedures, tools, trends, and ways of thinking – best practices – that have not conventionally been used in landscaping, including technology. With the amount of tracking, mobilization, financial planning, accounting, training, and recruiting software available, it can be overwhelming to sift through it all to find technology solutions that deliver on their promised ROI, and that specifically cater to the needs of your business. However, there is one use of technology that you can count on to take your business farther than you ever dreamed possible – virtual learning, or e-learning. And it’s easier to implement than you might think.

More than just an education buzzword, e-learning (short for electronic learning, or learning done via a computer-based delivery platform) is more widely accepted these days than ever before. Reputable and highly-regarded educational institutions, from elementary and secondary schools to colleges and trade schools, are embracing e-learning because of the overwhelming benefits this relatively new educational delivery format has to offer: flexibility, ease of access, and limitless opportunities to structure and cater learning to different learning styles and learners’ specific needs. Not surprisingly, these benefits translate well to the corporate realm, where quality employee training and development programs are paramount to attracting and retaining top-notch talent. You likely know it already, but it bears mentioning anyway — employee turnover is expensive, and so is the cost to train new employees. Although a priority, time spent on employee training and development is time not spent serving your customers. In order to minimize the non-billable time spent training team members and maximize the billable time so critical to revenue generation, it’s essential to find an education solution that streamlines training and development without sacrificing quality. This is where e-learning comes in.

The e-learning solutions LandOpt provides move you and your team beyond the basics and challenge you to think about the industry in a whole new way. And, because of their ease of implementation and access, LandOpt’s e-learning offerings serve as cost-effective training and development tools that allow you and your teams to optimize the time spent on growing your business and providing your customers with the top-quality experience and services they expect. You know your business and you know the green industry. But are you ready to challenge yourself and your teams to move beyond what you know to discover your business’s untapped potential?

Founded in 2004, LandOpt is a service organization that helps a select group of regionally based landscape contractors dramatically improve their business performance. When contractors are Powered by LandOpt, they not only grow, they become more profitable and productive. Our goal is to help landscape contractors create a client-focused culture that results in measurable, sustainable growth. To learn more, visit: www.landopt.com.