What's the difference?

As a contractor, do you provide maintenance or management services? Here are just a few examples of what landscape managers do. They:

> Invest in their employees by providing training and education, a safe working environment, and listening and valuing their ideads and opinions.

> Create Relationships with clients and employees and identify their needs and goals.

> Plan for the future by anticipating clients' needs, for next week or next month, but also for the next several years.

> Treat clients as individuals by avoiding applying a "cookie cutter" approach to every client's property.

Landscape managers are also:

> Committed.
> Consistent.
> Interested.
> Responsive.
> Flexible.

If you already conduct business as described above and call yourself a maintenance contractor, then you are probably selling yourself short. If you don't do these things, then you are selling the industry short. We at Terracare Associates want our industry and our fellow contractors to be perceived now, more than ever, as professionals. Operating like a manager and providing "management" services go a long way toward that end!