The Edge July/August 2025

BOOSTING YOUR BUSINESS

The Keys to Maximizing Your CRM Usage

By Jill Odom

WHAT GETS MEASURED CAN BE MAXIMIZED. IF YOUR BUSINESS LACKS true visibility into your sales pipeline, it’s much harder to know where your team can improve. This is where customer relationship management (CRM) software comes in. This tool can help with streamlining your sales process, tracking customer communication and improving your overall efficiency.

could continue our growth and make sure every customer felt like they were our number one priority.” Jason Cromley, CEO of Hidden Creek Landscaping, Inc., based in Hilliard, Ohio, admits it was mainly ignorance that kept them from realizing the full potential of their CRM early on. “We were too intimidated to try to take on a new project, and that was a major failure on my part,” Cromley says. Johnson says the only thing keeping their team from fully utilizing their CRM was themselves. “Once we committed to the process and made it the standard, we moved forward quickly,” Johnson says. “The time to develop the process that worked best for our team took some time on the front end but was well worth our investment.” TRAINING YOUR TEAM Building buy-in and training your team how to use your CRM effectively should be used are the keys to enhancing its capabilities.

their landscape contractor. If we can make that process streamlined and easier for our team (as well as create accountability), and our client is able to receive the quality communication and customer service they want, then we all win.” HURDLES TO OPTIMIZATION Miracle Farms Landscaping, based in Moultonborough, New Hampshire, started using LMN four years ago but only started optimizing their usage last year. Andy DuBois, CFO of Miracle Farms, says setting aside the time was the primary challenge as they were growing quickly. “We were starting to miss a few things,” DuBois says. “Some leads were just not getting followed up with. So, we knew we needed to do something so that we

However, simply adding a CRM isn’t enough. You truly have to invest the time to tap into the full potential of your system. Tim Johnson, president of Tim John son Landscaping, based in Statesville, North Carolina, says his company has been using the CRM portion of Aspire since 2020. Over the past 15-18 months, they’ve been working extensively to maximize the efficiency of their process es by ensuring they’re using the system from beginning to end. “We have seen consistently that the better we leverage our CRM, the better we communicate with our clients, the happier they are,” Johnson says. “The number one feedback that we get when speaking with prospective clients is the desire for better communication with

Photos: Tim Johnson Landscaping

30 The Edge // July/August 2025