Hiring first company salesmen: need advice

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

called TCIA yesterday, and, as incredibly helpful as Tom Dunn is, even he was kind of stumped. We are hiring our first salesman in the company and I was curious if there was an average amount of sales that one salesman could be reasonably expected to sell and service. The last data that TCIA put out in their sample sales contract information was from the mid 90s. Back then, they stated that a reasonable expectation for one sales person was around $300,000-$350,000 in sales per year. We are in a very small rural market so our margins are much less then the larger metropolitan companies are but I'm still curious what a 2017 estimate would be. Any ideas? Also, we are going to go with a salary plus commission on gross compensation plan. Any ideas on compensation?

 

[Jason Douglas]

Hire an arborist with an outgoing personality. I shudder to think what kind of pruning job specs would be written by a salesman

 

[pdqdl]

Good luck. All of my attempts at hiring a salesman have ended in disaster.

Either they don't know the business well enough to properly sell work, they are greedy former tree workers that only want their commission. or they are slackers that are quite good at talking up their own talents while expending very little effort to make a profit for you.

I am pretty certain that the excellent tree salesmen are already working for the competition. The only way to win is to be better than the competition and hope that the good salesmen come to you looking for work.

 

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

Believe it or not, that is one of the most honest, and helpful, comment I've gotten in this process. You just did a great job of defining the three things that I have to worry about. I think it's all about The systems of checks and balances and the metrics that we lay out as an owner/manager in the company as a whole. I really liked what you said about being the best and having the good ones come to you. Problem is, There are none. I live 60 miles away from the nearest town that has more than 10,000 people in it. We do 85 to 90% of all the tree work that gets done in a 40 mile radius and anybody that has ever done anything in this industry already works for me. But, we are a truly rural tree service so the options are extremely limited there is no other tree service for me to poach a salesman off of, only other industries. Hence having to hire a salesman and train them in arboriculture. I didn't respond a couple posts ago but guys, if you think it is easier to learn sales then it is to learn arboriculture and how to write a pruning spec, your doomed! You have absolutely no idea what the sales process is. There are tens of thousands of books about sales, and they are producing more every day, As well as seminars, trainings, and gurus. Point is, if every owner/sales person approached the science of the sales process with the same intensity that we do arboriculture you would be amazed. If you are in a position where you have to meet with clients and offer them a service for money and you haven't read at least 20 top rated books on the scientific sales process your doing yourself and your company a disservice!

 

[pdqdl]

Sure there are lots of sales books & other literature. They were written by salesmen, hyped by salesmen, created for a buying public that consists of people anxious to learn new ways to get into the pockets of more and more people.

Find your best worker and hardest bright worker. Teach them tree work as it should be done by someone who likes the business. Make sure he is somewhat educated, especially about things like math, time, and money. If he has an honest nature and an earnest desire to help your customers get the work that they want and the employer to make a profit...they might be the best salesman you could train.

Good luck. I haven't found anyone yet to get past the first two steps.

 

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

Yeah, that's a pretty tough list LOL. But, you've got me seriously thinking about trying to fill this position from inside the company ranks.

 

[pdqdl]

I may be foolishly using my own experiences. All of the folks that came to me selling themselves as a tree salesman were the very worst I have tried out. Most of the guys I have had that were somewhat conscientious were either too ignorant to calculate 5 hours at $200/hr or they were clearly unfit for talking to customers. Get a decent, bright tree climber, teach him to sell, and now you have created your own competition.

You might consider hiring an undergraduate college student pursuing a degree in marketing. They would never become competition because they would probably be terrified to climb or actually do too much of the work. They would definitely be ambitious to expand your sales volume.

 

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

Excellent idea. I just contacted Purdue University (I'm in Indiana) last week to check out their Forestry Department to see if they had any upcoming graduates that were looking for jobs, but I never even thought of contacting anyone in the marketing fields. And, I would venture to say that your experiences are probably the exact same ones that most of us are all experiencing. The truth of it is, a salesman in this industry gets to see all of the nuts and bolts, in essence they hold the keys to the kingdom. So while we will have them sign a no compete clause, I still worry about how much power the frontline sales guy will have. With that in mind, honesty and strong ethics should probably be my top priorities, everything else can be learned.

 

[Jason Douglas]

Yes plant science is harder than selling tree work. Significantly.

 

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

Absolutely agree! And yet, I find that 95% of the tree problems and subsequent solutions that our clients call in for can be boiled down to about 15– 20 basic tree problems that can eisily be identified by a marginally intelligent person with two or three days of hands-on training. Sure there is always the five or 10% of problems that require a lot more training and experience to diagnose (that's why God created BCMA's), and the more experienced and hire credentialed owner should get referred to those, either by the salesman, or front office staff that answers the phones. My ladies in the office are actually fairly well trained and have cheat-sheets on their desk for the most common questions (how hard is it to figure out a pelimanary diagnosis of rhizosphera needle cast on a Colorado blue spruce over the phone).

 

[pdqdl]

Virtually impossible.

I don't know about your customers, but I cannot count on my customers to know a juniper from a hemlock. Everything around here is a "pine". Over the phone diagnosis depends on knowing what kind of tree it is.

Me​

" Does your tree have needles or scales"

Customer​

I don't know. What is a needle?
​

(After a lesson): "how long are the needles"

"pretty long. How would I tell if they are scales?"
​

"Are they stiff & pointy, or are they soft"

"They are falling off"
​

"Can you tell if they are dying from the tips of the branches"

"Yes, the branches are dying all over"
​

2 minutes later I give up, never to return to that method of diagnosis. This could be a white pine with annual needle drop, a juniper with bagworns, an austrian pine with Diplodia, or almost anything else, including your rhizosphaera needle cast. Some borrowed diagnostic tips that clearly show how unlikely an accurate phone diagnosis are:

What kind of diseases affect blue spruce trees?
There are three principle types of diseases that affect blue spruce trees: needlecasts, tip blights and canker diseases. All of these diseases are caused by fungal pathogens and each produce specific symptoms that can be useful in diagnosing the problem.​

1. Needlecasts. As the name implies, trees with needlecast diseases shed needles. Needlecast fungi often infect needles on the current year’s shoots. As the disease progresses, the needles die, usually the year following the infection. As a result, trees affected by needlecasts often have an outer “shell” of live needles on current shoots and dead needles on older shoots (Photo 3). The two most common needlecasts we find in spruce are caused by the fungal pathogens Rhizosphaera and Stigmina/Mycosphaerella.​

2. Tip blights. Tip blights are fungal diseases that typically cause dieback to new, emerging shoots (Photo 4). Tip blights are most common on pines, especially Austrian pines, but can also occur on spruces.​

3. Canker diseases. Canker diseases are caused by fungi that infect branches or the main stem of trees. Typical symptoms of cankers are sunken areas along a stem that may ooze resin (Photo 5). Trees may produce ridges of wound tissue around older canker infections as the tree attempts to restrict the fungus’ growth. As cankers develop, they can interfere with the branch’s ability to transport water and nutrients, resulting in the death of individual branches often referred to as “flagging.”

What kinds of insects affect blue spruce trees?
Numerous insect pests can impact spruces in Michigan’s landscape, but the two most common are gall adelgids and spruce spider mites. In both cases, the insect pests are tiny and you may need a hand lens to see them. Often times, people are more likely to see the damage as opposed to the insect pests themselves.

1. Gall adelgids. Adelgids are small insects that feed on shoots by sucking plant sap. As they do so, they cause the shoots to deform and produce galls that resemble cones (Photo 6). Damage from gall adelgids is mainly aesthetic.

2. Spruce spider mites. Spruce spider mites cause needle discoloration and eventually kill needles, which can be mistaken for a needlecast disease (Photo 7).​

 

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

Really good stuff! You just made my next staff training really easy! And, I was on a property yesterday that had all of those problems and a few more (including, always a crowd favorite, Cedar Apple Rust so I have pictures to go along with the training). Point is, for a reasonably intelligent person, who does nothing but walk around peoples yards for 10 hours a day looking at their trees. Positive diagnosis of the most common 15 to 20 diseases in a general location would not be that difficult to learn in two weeks. I understand that it would be easy to misdiagnose with so little training but as long as you are aware and didn't get too overconfident, and had an experienced BCMA to fall back on, I hope a sales person, with no background in the industry, Will be able to learn how to write smaller PHC bids within a month. After all, like you, I spent 10 hours a day teaching my clients/staff. Most successful owner/operators are good communicators and have a teaching heart anyways. I had an intern two years ago who shadowed me for a month. After three weeks this 20-year-old kid was writing down his own bids and his own diagnostics report and I'll be darned if he wasn't almost right on after we got back in the truck and were moving on to the next bid . Truthfully, I spent very little time talking to him about arboriculture because that's not his field, and he had no real interest in our industry, he was a business major. But, we did spend most of that 160 hours talking about the sales process, advanced personality profiling, human engagement protocols, interactive psychology, and the actual art/science of relationship building sales. Somewhere along the way, he accidentally picked up enough diagnostic arboriculture and our our hourly pricing structure and was pegging the disease diagnosis and the price almost every time (he was even better at removal/pruning specs and prices. Point is, I don't think the basic arborcultural training is the hardest part of this equation. I think, like pdqdl said, the hardest part of this is finding the kind of person who has enough drive and integrity to make a great salesman but isn't going to just go out and start his own company two years later despite a non-compete.

 

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

BTW,
Are you near your spruce tree right now? Yes, I own a cell phone.

Is it a bottom up die-back pattern? Yes, it is more dead on the bottom that it is on the top.

Are the inner Pine needles towards the bottom of the limbs a distinct purple-ish color? Well I'll be darned, they kind of are.

You might have a fungal disease called rizosphera needle cast that is affecting 90% of the Colorado blue spruce in our area, it can be fatal for your tree, but we have a recommended spray program for it, we will send a diagnostic salesman out to confirm it and take a look at everything else in your landscape, what would be a good time for you?

Scripts are easy, And even if it isn't whatever the ladies in the office said (it is 95% of the time), you still set yourself up as the experts from the first instance they called you. If you can do a preliminary diagnosis over the phone and assure them that you can fix it, then follow it up with a confident informative sales call, then provide excellent service, with a fair and easy billing system. It's over, you got them for life.

 

[pdqdl]

I guess that gets you in the door with a confidant response, but you still don't know if you even have a spruce tree. I will concede that most of the time when a customer calls me and says that their spruce tree is turning brown, they are right about what kind of tree it is. It's when they call it a "pine" or "evergreen" that we have an ID problem.

By the way: does your PHC program really work for the spruce trees? I don't have enough tree spraying customers to justify trying to sell it. The treatments are necessary on a multiple times per season plan, required each year, and the majority of my customers cannot justify spending that kind of money.

My biggest customer with hundreds of ash trees has already declined to treat for ash borers, and they are dying all over the place. EAB hasn't even moved in yet; these are the more common strains like the red-headed.



This is a pic I sent them yesterday. I was advising them to treat for borers at least 3 years ago.

 

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

I'm pretty deep into a busy day right now, but I've got some thoughts on that, I'll try to get back to it later this evening and respond.

 

[Jason Douglas]

Yes you too can sell a lifetime of chlorothalonil applications that cover the world in a nasty fungicide. Just three applications a year folks...

 

[Jason Douglas]

I guess that gets you in the door with a confidant response, but you still don't know if you even have a spruce tree. I will concede that most of the time when a customer calls me and says that their spruce tree is turning brown, they are right about what kind of tree it is. It's when they call it a "pine" or "evergreen" that we have an ID problem.

By the way: does your PHC program really work for the spruce trees? I don't have enough tree spraying customers to justify trying to sell it. The treatments are necessary on a multiple times per season plan, required each year, and the majority of my customers cannot justify spending that kind of money.

My biggest customer with hundreds of ash trees has already declined to treat for ash borers, and they are dying all over the place. EAB hasn't even moved in yet; these are the more common strains like the red-headed.

View attachment 579218

This is a pic I sent them yesterday. I was advising them to treat for borers at least 3 years ago.

Or more likely ash-lilac and banded clearwings. I'm so sick of ash bugs here

 

[pdqdl]

Oh yeah. I forgot about them. I did a tricky test question in arborist101 last year on those.

Next week I will be removing the tree that inspired that thread. Same customer as the pic I posted above, but about 1/4 mile to the west.

 

[Steve Pikes Tree Care]

Since this is the business management section I'll refrain from any comments about the ethics of fungicides and pesticides and just stick to business. We are actually on the downside of EAB around here. After this year, I doubt there will be a live Ash tree in the counties we service that we haven't treated. But, from a business perspective, the short term boost of all the removals was a real boon. The problem with the Colorado blue spruce is that every landscaper around here seems to want to plant a million of them, And they tend to make them the focal points of their landscape design. I agree on the hard-sell, but if the person has a $10,000 landscape and those four Spruce are the focal point of it they tend to be slightly desperate to save them. But, as with everything else, I always give them the choice to remove and replace (Most of the time this is what I recommend). But, just like EAB we didn't really plan this. It was a response to demand. We've used 160 gallon yard sprayers for years, we mounted them on 12 foot trailers (they are going to switch over to our Railroad ROW side). Just this spring we picked up an old used true green spray truck for $3500. It will be going out next week for our first round of fungicidal treatments. It's definitely harder to sell multiple application yearly sprays, but for us the overall profit and loss is just to good to not make it a focal point of a sales process. I will say that it is definitely way more administratively labor intensive, keeping track of all that makes my brain hurt. I wouldn't even attempt it if I didn't have a great office staff. I've always wondered how guys that don't have help administratively are doing it. If anybody is doing multiple sprays per year and has a slick piece of software to track it I sure would be interested!! OK, it's Mother's Day, and my wife just informed me that if I don't get off the computer and cook her sausages she's going to murder me.

 

[Jed1124]

Since this is the business management section I'll refrain from any comments about the ethics of fungicides and pesticides and just stick to business. We are actually on the downside of EAB around here. After this year, I doubt there will be a live Ash tree in the counties we service that we haven't treated. But, from a business perspective, the short term boost of all the removals was a real boon. The problem with the Colorado blue spruce is that every landscaper around here seems to want to plant a million of them, And they tend to make them the focal points of their landscape design. I agree on the hard-sell, but if the person has a $10,000 landscape and those four Spruce are the focal point of it they tend to be slightly desperate to save them. But, as with everything else, I always give them the choice to remove and replace (Most of the time this is what I recommend). But, just like EAB we didn't really plan this. It was a response to demand. We've used 160 gallon yard sprayers for years, we mounted them on 12 foot trailers (they are going to switch over to our Railroad ROW side). Just this spring we picked up an old used true green spray truck for $3500. It will be going out next week for our first round of fungicidal treatments. It's definitely harder to sell multiple application yearly sprays, but for us the overall profit and loss is just to good to not make it a focal point of a sales process. I will say that it is definitely way more administratively labor intensive, keeping track of all that makes my brain hurt. I wouldn't even attempt it if I didn't have a great office staff. I've always wondered how guys that don't have help administratively are doing it. If anybody is doing multiple sprays per year and has a slick piece of software to track it I sure would be interested!! OK, it's Mother's Day, and my wife just informed me that if I don't get off the computer and cook her sausages she's going to murder me.

The best tracking software for multiple phc sprays as far as I'm concerned is a large binder sectioned off for the types of applications you are doing. No computer can tell you or track when or what you should be spraying. Let me give you an example:
This week I would like to finish my HEM 1 apps as warm weather is coming in. Late Tick 1 apps need to be finished for late sign ups. I would love to start my Fun 1 apps to spruce as I am getting to around 3/4 inch candle extension, but Fruit 4 apps definitely have to go down with all the rain we've been getting. Oh, if it decides to rain all of that is going in the crapper and we will be doing ferts and systemic soil injections. Then I need to call the clients to see if the techs can be on there property next Saturday or Sunday so my timing doesn't get all messed up. No computer software can do that.
And the office wants to know why I can't put an accurate schedule together a week in advance......