Since 2002, I have walked a lot of turf grass with individuals, business owners, companies, farmers, and I’ve seen more than my fair share of interesting turf diseases. The one that seems the hardest to explain is often times the most obvious. Technicians.

A good tech is hard to find. Why? This is a not a hard one to figure out. The industry has changed since the “great recession” and is currently in a fragmenting stage of growth rather than a conglomeration. When businesses began shutting doors in 2009, the larger and more established companies were able to cut a good portion of their staff, take their money and begin to either buy or wait out thousands of small companies until the recession came to an end.

This mode of action created an army of out of work lawn guys looking to make a living. So what happens? Commiserating ex-employees get together, ex-managers begin talking to in-laws, and soon enough… a whole new generation of lawn care companies have sprung up. These guys are hungry and are committed to destroying their former employers. This is no joke, we hear this on a daily basis. In fact, there are quite a few of you reading this newsletter that fit into this category. Congratulations to you for going the distance. While I could go on and on about finding good people, this is not what we are going to be talking about today, you are going to make your guys experts.

There are three major factors in our business that contribute to lawns not properly responding;

1. Too much or too little, the effect on turf is poor.
2. Thatch build-up. While having grass means having thatch, we want it incorporated, not surface built and non-degrading (spoiler alert, next month’s topic!).
3. Tech error. My favorite, because it’s hard to admit or realize there is a problem.

Tech error is typically only one of two things: the inability to “Think Freely” about the application or property at hand or (2) good old fashioned “I don’t care about this job” attitude. Of course, there are other things that can happen, exploding equipment, interruption mid spray, texting while spraying… anything like this can cause an issue for your client and your company.

Without delving into how to coach or recognize a good employee, I am mainly focusing on “free thinking.” The guys we train are going to do 50% of what we teach them. Their main focus will be application of any product at the rates to which you are constantly reminding them. This is important to them because they want to make sure they are doing a good production job in your eyes. The thing that gets missed or is difficult to get techs to understand and embrace it this:  Sometimes a lawn needs more and other times it needs less.

This is so simple, but so different from the way things used to be. If a guy was spraying a pound and a half of urea per thousand feet and you told him the lawn looked like it could use more and to double it, what would happen? Immediate death of all plant life that got sprayed at that rate, that’s what. With our program, there is a general app rate for most turf types of 5 gallons per acre. This is a maintenance dose. If lawns look good, you should be at this rate or less, if they look weak, this rate or more.

Okay, so how do I calibrate my tanks for all these different lawns with different needs? Simple answer; it’s always the same. Huh? Yeah, walk slower or walk faster than the normal pace. It’s that simple. If you spray 14 ounces of product per thousand feet per minute, 90 seconds will yield 21 ounces or 7.5 gallons per acre. This is a good blast. If you’ve got pale lawns in some areas, and not in others, take a 75-90 second lap on the bad ones and a 45 second lap on the good ones. In the end, your usage is the same, on some lawns, less is more, on other lawns, more is more.

If a tech only takes this information away and begins to evaluate the individual lawn before making the same app rates he/she always has, your lawns will jump and become more consistent. This will enable a more “maintenance” program once all lawns are cruising together. Freely thinking rather than “label thinking” will give your company an edge all the way around. When you are training your guys or if we are training new guys with you, the focus should be on the overall view of the lawn’s condition and only what is needed, nothing more, nothing less.

Another big issue that I’ve come across with how techs are applying, diagnosing, or misdiagnosing, is fear. This doesn’t come from the tech. As I stated before, you are the one dictating the what, when, and where. They are the ones following your lead. Too often, a business owner or manager will jump the gun and whip out the chemical controls WAY too early. Case in point, you drive by a customer’s lawn every day, one day you see a few weeds, you call immediately into your techs and say, “Tank spray everything, there are weeds everywhere!” Bad choice. This will break the bank and is going to cause larger issues if not done properly. Your job is to see if things are isolated or widespread. One lawn out of one hundred is not a good sample. I’ve had too many calls about lawns looking bad all over the place and then come to find out that one route is under performing compared to the rest. This is not product related. This is purely tech related.

As an owner, you must not be the one causing the mistakes that your techs make. This is only one example. There are a thousand more possibilities that could be highlighted. At the end of the day, customer satisfaction is going to earn more profits than how many lawns are sprayed in a day. When I look at a cross section of lawns and clients, it’s often not the ones with the best looking lawns that are the happiest, it’s the ones that know they are getting their needs met. This becomes your job as Boss, trainer, owner, or manager, creating customer satisfaction is as simple as taking one step back and making decisions on a per client basis. Be an evaluator, contemplator, applicator, your techs and office staff will follow your lead.

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