The owners
Husband and wife co-owners, plus an operations lead
Client story · Landscaping · Regional Australia
“We currently have the leads. They are in a traffic jam.”
How a regional landscaping business found that its quoting backlog was really a leadership alignment problem.
Booked ahead
6 months
of work the co-owner could fill the schedule with. She just couldn't get this week's jobs finished.
Details that could identify the business have been left out.
The business
Maintenance, irrigation, tree work and landscape construction
Trading
17 years
What we built
Business Growth Audit, findings report, foundation plan
The diagnosis in numbers
Four numbers nobody in the business had put side by side.
3
Leaders, each holding a different picture of the business
75 to 82%
Estimated billable hours recovered, against a 93% target
40%
Of revenue sitting with a single client
1
Agreed set of facts, for the first time
The situation
Six months of work, and nobody to do it.
This business had the opposite of a lead problem. Quotes sat for weeks. Big tenders went in on extensions. The office stopped wanting to answer the phone, because nobody could tell a customer when they'd hear back.
Then, in a matter of weeks, the team shrank sharply and cash flow tightened for the first time in the business's history.
I've been running under the pump for 17 years, just firing fires.The co-owner
The diagnosis
What they thought the problem was, and what it actually was.
What they thought
A quoting bottleneck, and not enough staff to clear it.
What it actually was
Three people ran the business, and each held a different picture of it: different views on the main problem, where the revenue came from, and which jobs to chase. With no shared plan, every decision went to whoever picked up the phone. You can't triage a quote queue against priorities nobody has agreed.
What we did
Separate the voices, then align them.
Week 1
Separate conversations first
A group session, then the numbers alone with the co-owner, then the operations lead on his own. That's what surfaced the three different pictures.
Leadership & Business RhythmWeeks 1 to 3
Business Growth Audit
Lead flow, sales conversion and operations, with the financials checked line by line.
Commercial VisibilityWeek 3
Find the measurable leaks
Billable hours against quoted hours, unbilled work, and client concentration.
Margin & RecoveryWeek 4
Findings and foundation plan
One agreed picture of the business, then a 5, 3 and 1-year plan with values and decision rules, so the quote queue can be triaged against criteria everyone signed up to.
Foundation & StandardsThe result so far
This is a diagnosis story.
Implementation is just beginning, so there are no before-and-after numbers yet. What changed is that three people now share one set of facts.
After years of being let down by advisers, the co-owner said what earned her trust, and came back to start the next stage.
You actually read the reports that I sent you, and you've thought about them and given me some meaningful questions around them.The co-owner
What's next
Triage, tracking and a team leader.
A quote triage process with a one-to-four-day response, billable hours tracked against quoted hours, and a team leader to take daily crew management off the operations lead.
Sound familiar?
Got the work but can't get it out the door?
More staff might not be the answer. Start with a 15-minute call. We'll find out whether it's capacity or alignment.
Book a 15-minute Growth Audit15 minutes. No pitch deck. You'll leave knowing the one thing to fix first.- Quotes sit for weeks while the schedule overflows.
- Everyone in leadership has a different answer.
- Decisions go to whoever picks up the phone.
- You can't step away without the phone ringing.
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