Lawn Care Franchise Ownership Tips - Spring-Green

Spring-Green Franchise Webinar Available on YouTube

If you've been following Spring-Green, you may have seen we held a webinar about the Spring-Green Lawn Care franchise opportunity last week. The webinar provided valuable information on a variety of topics for potential franchise owners interested in a lawn care franchise.

Russ Jacque, strategic business development manager at Spring-Green, talked about the state of the green industry and how existing green businesses can diversify by adding a Spring-Green franchise. He introduced John David Andrus, one of our successful franchise owners, who talked about his experience, the support a franchise offers and how Spring-Green has helped him grow his business. The marketing team wrapped up the webinar with insight on the industry-leading marketing and sales tools Spring-Green offers. The webinar ended with a question and answer session.

If you missed the webinar, you can watch it on our YouTube Channel. Be sure to stay on the lookout for an invite to the next one we host. 

Spring-Green Lawn Care Owners Utilize Business Planning

As the holidays approach, most of our Spring-Green Lawn Care franchise owners are in the middle of planning for 2013. The Spring-Green support center offers, and encourages, business and marketing planning sessions each year during the off-season. Most of the franchise system takes advantage of this program.

Business and marketing planning takes place over a day and a half, starting with a team breakfast for franchise owners. The marketing section—led by our top-notch marketing team—covers topics like acquisition, additional services, marketing tool review, campaign set up, direct mail, call center review, renewals, website review, web leads, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, home shows and other non-traditional marketing methods, loyalty and retention, customer surveys, net promoter scores and database maintenance and integrity.

Franchise owners have a one-on-one lunch with an executive team member before heading to their business planning meeting. Planning meetings focus on array of topics like operations analysis, revenue, sales and cancels, expenses, materials and labor, production breakdown, weekly performance comparison, marketing playbook review, past years’ performance, price charts, and online learning center course completion. The day ends with dinner with the owner’s business consultant and other team members.

Franchise owners can also use the session to focus on long-term plans and goals for 2013 and beyond. We encourage all owners to take advantage of business and marketing planning sessions because of the communication and support they provide. The owners who have participated in the past have had even more success than expected so we know the planning meetings are a great value add for our franchisees.

Franchise Buyers; There's No Such Thing as Free Money for a Business Start-Up

If you're seriously considering the idea of buying a franchise-type of business, there are several options when it comes to getting a small business loan. Getting a "free grant," isn't one of them.

Seriously. 

There are hawkers hawking them, though....

Ask These Questions Before Buying a Franchise Business

(This is a guest post from The Franchise King®, Joel Libava.)

In order to do this right, (buy a franchise) you need to ask the right questions of the right people. Your contact at the franchise's headquarters, (usually the director of franchise development) has the ability to teach you all about the specific concept itself, but isn't a franchisee. And that's ok. You're getting the "corporate view." You need that. But you also need to get some questions answered from the people who've actually made an investment in their future; the franchisees. 

What Do You Get With a Franchise?

(This is a guest post from The Franchise King®, Joel Libava) 

The business model of franchising is a special one. It's been called "the greatest business system ever invented," and for good reason;

It creates small businesses; small businesses are the largest job creators.

Check out the specific data on the SBA.gov website. 

Not only are there around 3,000 different franchises to choose from, some of the franchisors have different choices for the individual franchise owners. 

3 Tips For Prospective Franchise Buyers That Won't Ever Become Passé

(This is a guest post by The Franchise King®, Joel Libava.)

If you've read some of my past posts here, and on other franchise/small business blogs, you know that I write about small business technology, once in awhile. But, not this time... 

In this post, I'm going to take you back to a much simpler time in life...so that I may to give you 3 tips that will help you hone in on great franchises (like for instance, Spring-Green Lawn Care), and help you do this "franchise thing" right...OK?

Franchise Due Diligence Tip; Check Out Their Franchise Marketing

There are well over 10 years worth of articles readily available with a few clicks of your mouse on just about anything you can imagine. Going to your local library for information is pretty much a thing of the past. (But, lots of folks, including me, still enjoy it going there.)

The small business category is certainly a huge one, and it's pretty easy to get totally overloaded with information. 

Doing research on something as important as investing in a franchise of your own requires focus. Real focus. One must focus on a few critical things when searching for answers....

Spring-Green Franchisees Are Ramping Up For The Spring Season

 
If you live in the Northern half of the United States, you may not "feel" that Spring is on its way. But, it really is. 

But, if you're a franchise owner of Spring-Green Lawn Care Corporation, you know it is!

You've been busy since January...getting your customer lists together, and with the help of Spring-Green franchise headquarters, you've been targeting new ones. 

That's reason enough to be aligned with a franchise company that is so good at consumer marketing...

Franchise Buyers Need To Think of Succession

 

It's not that unusual for folks that are considering franchise ownership to forget about one very important thing; Succession planning.

98% of today's franchise buyers aren't thinking about their exit strategies. They're thinking about the start-up phase. That's completely normal.

However, it's quite important to think about the end game. Especially when there are other family members involved in the business. 

Even if no family members are part of the start-up phase of a franchise business, they may be when the franchise contract (usually a 10-year contract) expires.

You may not want to put off "thinking" about this part of your franchise ownership experience. But, you should...

Are You a Rule-Follower?

(This is a guest post from The Franchise King®, Joel Libava.)

 

This is one of the most important things that you need to know about yourself, as you start exploring the idea of buying a franchise business.

Over the years, have you been a , "I'm ok with almost all of the things that the organization I work for tells me to do," type of employee?

Or, have you been more of a "fighter?" You know; the one who stands up during meetings, and goes against the status quo?