Find the Right CRM Software for Your Landscaping or Lawn Care Business
Even in the midst of a global pandemic and financial market uncertainty, the landscaping industry is growing. As of 2021, there are more than half a million landscaping services businesses in the U.S.
This is an increase of 1.6 percent over last year, which is remarkable in today’s economic environment. Very few industries are experiencing any type of positive growth right now, save online-focused ones.
All of this growth is exciting, but it still brings challenges. Landscaping businesses — and all field service industry companies for that matter — need to adopt Customer Relationship Management software (CRM) in order to keep up with the increasing demands on their businesses. In our article, we discuss whether choosing a non-industry-specific CRM is right for your landscaping business, and what you need to consider when making that choice.
Key Features of a Landscaping CRM
A landscaping CRM helps with client, inventory, and job management, as well as sales efforts, billing, relationship growth, and measuring additional revenue opportunities for your landscaping business. Plus, many CRMs provide data analytics and insights through reporting into your business software that would be quite difficult to extract elsewhere. The features essential for any landscaping CRM software include:
- Customer and lead management
- Scheduling and dispatching
- Estimating and invoicing
- Job management, time tracking, and route optimization
- Reporting and analytics
- Cloud-based and multi-device capabilities
In order to harness the growth in your industry, you need to be as organized as possible, allow remote access for all your workers and exploit every possibility to build your revenue. CRMs are the number one tool to propel you to success in every area of your business.
The right CRM will be a lifeline connecting your colleagues to your customers, allowing them to access the right information quickly in order to provide efficient and accurate service. Every department — technicians, accounting, sales, and even HR — will be on the same page and able to see what they need to see on demand.
Plus, a modern field service CRM allows for simple remote access from multiple devices in and out of the office, which is part of the new normal for today’s workplaces.
Selecting the Right Landscaping CRM is Key
You may have heard of various all-industry CRM solutions. Because these CRMs are generalized for any type of company, they take full advantage of marketing to everyone they can find. And because they are set up to be as generic as possible, many users need to spend a substantial amount of time and money to customize their application to work the way they need it to.
It’s sort of like shopping at a big box store where you don’t get many services, but you also may not need them.
Your other option is to consider a software solution for your field service CRM that is made to work with your lawn care or landscaping business right out of the box.
This is more like shopping in a specialized boutique with a personal consultant. To decide what type of CRM software to use, you should always consider your business needs and evaluate the CRM features and capabilities according to those needs.
There’s certainly an argument to be made for each method, so let’s take a deep dive into the pros and cons of general and industry-specific software.
Advantages of a Landscaping CRM
The most popular all-industry CRM solutions offer feature-rich platforms, but most of these features are so generic that you will never need or use them. And typically, field service companies do not have the time or resources to devote to customizing this kind of CRM to provide the kind of peak functionality they are looking for.
On the other hand, large enterprise businesses do retain the resources to customize their CRM applications. Corporations with their own IT or development departments, or those who can invest in outside consultants, are a great fit for non-industry-specific CRMs.
When you take a look at a landscaping-specific CRM — like RealGreen — the features that field services companies need are already baked in. It’s a plug-and-play decision for landscaping organizations.
The right CRM will integrate with your landcape management software seamlessly, allowing you to take advantage of these benefits:
- Increased efficiency in business processes and production capacity
- Improved customer satisfaction and retention
- Better business insights and decision making
- Increased profitability and growth
Considerations of CRM for Landscaping Businesses
Landscaping CRMs will appear to have fewer features than generalized CRMs; this is because they don’t waste time or space with functionality that landscaping companies will not need or use. If you do find there is a specific need for your company that no other company has ever asked for, it may be impossible for your CRM to build it in. However, it’s extremely unlikely that your company would require such hyper-specialized features.
All businesses are different, but in our experience, a software solution built for the landscaping industry — like RealGreen — will be a better fit for your business.
The Verdict: Industry or Non-Industry Specific CRM Software?
In every business, time is money. Productivity and efficiency are keys to consistent success.
Finding a plug-and-play software solution that’s intuitive and provides advantages for your employees will lead to faster adoption rates and richer data analysis. The more your team engages with your CRM, the more data you will have to make pivotal decisions in your business.
A company offering an industry-specific CRM probably understands your business and your goals better than a generalized software application group. Every industry is different; companies that develop field-specific solutions typically have immense knowledge about the industries they serve. When you buy that type of non-generalized CRM, you’re tapping into that knowledge base to your advantage.
For example, RealGreen’ expertise in landscaping operations extends beyond one software solution. We offer a full suite of marketing services, including:
- Local search and website optimization (SEO)
- Website development and content
- Paid online ads (PPC)
- Target marketing and reporting
- Marketing lists
- Effective and targeted direct mail campaigns
We can help you h the growth that your industry is experiencing and double-down on your marketing efforts while demand is expanding.
Additional Field Service CRM Applications
Landscaping business CRMs are also a great fit for other field service companies with similar needs like pest control, arbor care and landscaping.
We’ve done the research, the development, and the refining work to offer business leaders in field service industries a turnkey solution to managing their company’s data. We’ve found that it just makes more sense than using a CRM that isn’t designed for your industry’s needs.
Learn more about how RealGreen can help your business grow and thrive along with the market for your services. Capture data and insights that will lead to positive, healthy revenue expansion with our customized tools and reporting.
Contact us to learn about how RealGreen can help your business grow.
