Power Sweeping Best Practice

While at the National Pavement Expo in Memphis, TN, attendees were treated to Best Practice Roundtable discussions. NAPSA is pleased to share details on the topics presented.

In 2012, Grayson Carter with Bill’s Sweeping Service moderated “Leveraging the Power of the Web: Taking the Mystery out of Social Media.” Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, and Google, are all social media and information sites that can make the average sweeper cringe! Grayson Carter discussed the purpose and possibilities of these mediums. The key purpose of social media is to drive the market to your website for education and prospecting purposes. The use of search engines and Ad Words are the tools that drive that market. Organizations can stylize services from Google or Yahoo! such as pay-per-click to direct traffic to your site. This traffic can be monitored through services such as Google Analytics.

As many of the attendees of this session in 2012 left with a strong desire to learn more about how social media can enhance their marketing effort, Grayson Carter signed on to provide a 90-minute session at NPE in January 2013 on “Beyond the Website: Using Online Tools to Grow Your Offline Business.” In this session he covered the dark and scary Internet with its endless gurus and gimmicks that promise you the world, take your money, and deliver underwhelming results. He taught attendees how to drive qualified leads to your company utilizing web analytics and Search Engine Optimization. This session was wonderful for the avid marketer or the Internet “newbie”.

Mark Carter, also from Bill’s Sweeping Service moderated, “A Single Page Report about the State of Your Company.” How many times have you entered your office and wondered how things are progressing? Wouldn’t it be nice to have that information at your fingertips? Exactly what would that information look like? In this session, Mark Carter covered the highlights of the type of data that would give you that overall view and perspective of your organizations strengths.

Some of the areas that would be relevant for a daily review would include:

• Operations: Quickbooks and other dashboard type programs offer ease of financial data reporting.

• Customer Service and Retention: Who are your top 10 customers?

• Sales Pipeline: Customer Retention Management systems such as Pipeline Deals (www.pipelinedeals.com) offers contact management and lead tracking.

• GPS and Fleet Data: Keep track of your fleet location and maintenance with good communications.

Other reports may not need to be reviewed daily but you would certainly want to keep track of them on a weekly basis. These would include:

• Web analytics: Google or other analytics help to understand your market.

• Percent of perspective jobs you bid versus close.

• Track sales and leads generated from various sources.

Finally, another key component to a successful business is personal and staff development. Gallop Poll research shows that the number one reason people leave their jobs is due to ineffective management and supervisors. A frequent turn over in staff is counterproductive to organization growth and synergy. Here are some tips to improve these relationships:

• Provide long-term training for key employees. This promotes morale and offers a back up of staff that is able to run the company.

• Institute a rotation system whereby rank-and-file employees get face time with the boss. This should include topics other than work related topics.

• Personally improve yourself in the area of work and personal life. A better balanced personal life and continued learning will aid in balancing work life. “Who you are five years from now is a function of who you associate with and the books you read.”

Story by NAPSA

The North American Power Sweeping Association (NAPSA) is a nonprofit association made up of 300+ contract sweepers, service providers and sweeping equipment dealers, manufacturers and suppliers. NAPSA is dedicated to providing beneficial support to the membership and enhancing services to the sweeping industry.

NAPSA is committed to promoting and educating the power sweeping community while enhancing the environment. For more information on NAPSA membership, please visit www.powersweeping.org or call (888) 757-0130.