Finding Competitive Advantages

When starting a tree care company there needs to be an understanding how and where to compete against competitors. The baseline for competition is understanding where your company stands and which companies are comparable. Large national companies are not generally concerned with smaller operations. They are not competitors.  Most companies really only compete consistently with 5-10 companies. Newly forming or smaller companies aspiring to be a larger professional company, should look at companies that are a step ahead.  Successful companies can be a blueprint on how to develop and grow professionally and profitably.

How to Separate From Competition

Most upper tier tree care companies are going to have TCIA Accreditation, ISA Certified Arborists, professional marketing, good looking vehicles and will provide quality tree care. A newly forming company can’t really start there, but these should be future aspirations. However, none of these things are competitive advantages when competing against other “good” companies. When most companies will have the same credentials, they are not advantages.  Having these credentials is essentially just the baseline for competing.  So, what WILL set a company apart from competitors? The answer may come from analyzing a Competition Matrix. Local companies can often compete with a “family-feel” business that is quickly adaptable to situations. Smaller companies can compete against larger companies using better customer service and personal touch. For larger companies, I have found that procedures can often get in the way of truly good service. Larger companies need to find ways to still have a personal touch, while providing things that small companies cannot.  I have worked for two local companies and two national companies, and the experiences were as different as night and day. My ability to connect with clients on a personal level was far greater working for smaller companies. I often felt like my ability to interact with clients working for a national company was as warm and cuddly as hoarfrost (pictured). Even though the desire is there, culture dictates a different manner.  

Setting Up a Competition Matrix

When I started my own tree care company, I did two things immediately. The first thing I did was thoroughly assess the Top 10 competitors in my local area and put that information into a Competition Matrix.  This assessment should include anything regarding pricing, strengths, weaknesses, marketing, service differences and anything a company uses as an advantage to compete.

In The BIG Oak’s experience, two things stood out about my local market. Tree care companies did not want to provide planting as a service and really struggled offering shrub care. I also noticed that many landscaping companies were providing poor quality shrub and planting service, with minimal tree care. I used this information as a main competitive advantage to start a company to compete “somewhere in the middle of tree care and landscape care”. This allowed us to compete against landscape companies by providing higher-end tree planting and shrub care (competing on quality), while competing with tree companies with services they wouldn’t offer.  Having a background in both planting and high-end shrub care made this somewhat easy.

The second thing I did was make a list of 10 things I liked and disliked about the industry. I based my entire company on this list eliminating many things I did not like about the industry day one.  Not understanding where your company fits in the local market can make it difficult to navigate and create advantages over your competitors.