Hilton Head Landscapes Increases Proposal Close Ratio by 50% with SingleOps
The Customer
Family owned and operated Hilton Head Landscapes has been serving Beaufort County for over a decade and has become its premier landscaping and landscape design company. Hilton Head Landscapes provides a full range of commercial, government, and residential landscaping services. The company aims to exceed client expectations and build long-term relationships by bringing each project to its fullest potential.
The Challenge
Hilton Head Landscapes was managing the business using a combination of QuickBooks for accounting and Google Calendar for scheduling. “Our area has grown so much, and we’ve been very busy. It can be difficult to keep track of the different intricacies of every property. We needed to get everything into one software,” explained Nick Welliver, Owner/Operator, Hilton Head Landscapes.
The Solution
“We took our time considering options. We found that some apps are focused on dispatch businesses, like HVAC and plumbing. We don’t do much dispatch work; most of our work is regularly scheduled on yearly or multi-year contracts. Other applications didn’t integrate with QuickBooks, which made them useless to us.
“Our Operations Manager mentioned SingleOps and I had also seen it in Landscape Management magazine and on social media. The SingleOps team did an excellent job demonstrating the app.” stated Nick.
Hilton Head Landscapes also considered the LMN but found that SingleOps did a better job in the sales process explaining the application and implementation process. With Aspire, it was incredibly expensive and didn’t present the same value that SingleOps.
The Results
Self-Paced Implementation
Hilton Head Landscapes chose to take the implementation process slowly, spreading it out by meeting with SingleOps first weekly, then biweekly to give the team a chance to work with what they learned.
Nick explains, “This worked out for the best. It helped to work throughout the implementation to see how things apply to our business. Ideas would come to us, such as how to write up subcontract expenses and get them to the client without revealing our markup. We had time to put our actual business into SingleOps and then think of questions for Alex, our SingleOps Implementation Specialist. We had some tough questions for him, but he was very good about responding and a huge reason for us understanding everything in SingleOps so quickly.”
Saving Hours Every Day Writing Proposals
“Previously we had a paper form that managers would fill out and submit to me, and I’d turn that into a QuickBooks estimate so we could run job costing on that. We had line items for services, types of materials, and our markup built out in QuickBooks, but writing up proposals was time-consuming and we had so many of them.”
“It has been very helpful to get proposals into SingleOps and have it integrated with QuickBooks. Our management team just needs to choose quantity versus entering all the verbiage. We’ve saved probably 3 hours a day just on the proposal side alone,” said Nick.
Delegating and Freeing Up Evenings
“As an owner, I was writing all proposals for the company as the quality check to make sure numbers were correct. I used to stay at the office at night, but now the whole management team can generate them and save me a ton of time. I can delegate responsibility much more easily now.“
Increased Close Ratio by 50%
“When clients want new plantings, for example, we can now attach pictures and a map to the proposal. That’s huge for landscape. We sell thousands of different types of plants and most clients don’t know what they all look like, so pictures go a long way. I think that has dramatically increased our close ratio.“
“In addition to having proposals that look great, SingleOps also has great email templates that allow us to follow up quickly. When we put out 30 to 50 proposals a week, it takes time to write personal emails, but using that auto follow up helps us close deals. We’re closing 50% more of our proposals than before, and currently closing nearly 80% of proposals,” said Nick.
Convenient Client Portal and Mobile Functionality
Hilton Head Landscapes can generate invoices and send them to clients all within SingleOps. Additionally, clients can accept proposals through an online portal powered by SingleOps. The company also plans to enable clients to pay through the portal in the future.
Hilton Head Landscapes outfitted the management team with tablets, enabling them to use the SingleOps mobile version for tasks such as pulling up client info.
Greater Business Insights
“Before SingleOps, we didn’t closely track our proposal close rate. The data was just on a spreadsheet or the back of a notebook. But now it’s nice to see it all in-your-face; not just active proposals, but also leads and active jobs. SingleOps automatically tracks metrics and percentages. We don’t have to spend time putting in data, and the reports are available at any time. We can view data per-manager, so everyone can look at their own performance. We can also filter through types of projects to view our construction division, and make labor calculations for hiring decisions,” stated Michael Roth.
Hilton Head Landscapes plans to further expand their use of SingleOps, including investing in tablets for every vehicle and rolling out to crew leaders to track employee timesheets.