Landscape Management, January 2019

Continued from page 14 Turfco George Kinkead president of Turfco says he enjoys visiting the LM Growth Summit because of the attendees Theyre people he enjoys talking to he says because they are all hungry to grow their businesses They took the time out of their week to come down here and talk to other professionals Kinkead says It helps separate the people who are too busy to think about how to grow their business from those who are growing their business Turfco was giving demos of its T3100 spreader sprayer to attendees and while Kinkead was presenting the machines various features his main talking point was that his company wants to help them grow their companies One of the biggest issues everybodys running into is they have the ability to outsell what they can produce Kinkead says If you go 15 20 years ago the primary problem was How can I sell more The people at this conference theyve already reached that point through sophisticated software or systems that answer the sales questions So now what theyre struggling with is How can I produce that efficiently One of Kinkeads solutions to increase efficiency is the ease of operation of the T3100 Theres an incredible unfortunate amount of turnover in our business Kinkead says If guys are running 10 trucks it isnt surprising to see two or three people turn over regularly So how fast can I get my new guys up and running and how fast can I be making money Even if a guy quits the lawn care professional needs this machine out there running the very next day Prime Source North Carolina based Prime Source is an entrepreneurial marketing company with a focus on developing manufacturing and marketing select post patent products unique technologies and specialty products Its goal for attending the LM Growth Summit was simple The team wanted to educate people about who they are and what products they have available Theres been a lot of guys here that didnt know that several products are off patent because their sales guys arent telling them because they cant tell them because thats corporate direction says Keith Montgomery chief business development officer for Prime Source Its been good for us to be able to educate and then come up with a plan afterward working through one of our distributors Prime Source has a broad portfolio of adjuvants seed treatments fungicides herbicides and insecticides and obviously the company doesnt want any of those products being kept secret from customers Some of the national distributors have contracts in place that are really loyalty driven and that are trying to block post patents Montgomery says So we want to make sure LCOs know there is a value added option out there LebanonTurf LebanonTurf produces fertilizers grass seed and biological products to help lawn care operators create and maintain healthy turf conditions Mike Bandy product manager and Jeremy Bigler landscape channel manager were discussing how the companys ProScape products can help LCOs overcome labor challenges by combining or even eliminating applications ProScape offers either fertilizer with pre and postemergent herbicides or fertilizer with preemergent and insecticides so those two groups are really focused on the value add what can you do with less time Bigler says Were focused on the labor issue theres just not as much time in the workday to get the work done Bigler says the event kept him on his toes as the attendees wanted to pursue different topics based on geography and the scope of their business Frankly I learned from everyone there were a lot of different viewpoints he says There were some products we were really focused on promoting but then the conversation would go a different direction based on the cues we were given PHOTO SETH JONES 16 LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET JANUARY 2019 Continued on page 21 COVER STORY PRIME TIME Jud Hudnut of Prime Source meets with Jason Kregel member owner of My Turf Byron Center Mich