Are you concerned with building your talent bench for now and into the future? The state of the labor market, especially in the green industry, means we must change our thinking about recruiting for our industry.

Topics discussed will include:

• How to recruit and onboard your employees, promoting retention.
• Organization structure, development and social capital (culture).
• How to develop career paths and strategically plan for succession.
• Compensation: lead, match or lag.

Join Rob Sproule — co-owner and marketing director of Salisbury Greenhouse, a Top 100 Independent Garden Center, and owner of Dig Marketing — as he offers insight into how to move from a broad digital marketing strategy to the daily tactics across digital platforms that will entice your customers and increase sales.

It’s one thing to catch and another to keep — just because an employee was successfully hired and onboarded doesn’t guarantee tenure or long-term satisfaction with your company. Through positive efforts in professional development, incentives and company culture, your employee retention will improve, and you’ll see an increase in productivity, performance and morale.

Catalina Morales Vélez, director of digital marketing for Dig Marketing, offers help with the scary task of improving your garden center website. She spends extensive time training owners on how to understand and take control of their website performance, hosting, security, maintenance and results so that it doesn’t feel overwhelming.

You've worked hard to build a business, and much of your personal wealth and assets may be tied up in your business. But sustaining them over the long term requires strategic planning, whether transferring to a family successor or a third-party buyer. Get ahead of ownership and leadership changes — with the tsunami of exits already occurring in the industry, only the best will sell. If you want the value of your business to grow and remain intact for your successors or achieve a higher selling price, begin the planning process sooner rather than later. This session will examine preparation, planning options, value building and transitional strategies, especially in highly owner-centralized companies.

Rob Sproule — co-owner and marketing director of Salisbury Greenhouse, a Top 100 Independent Garden Center, and owner of Dig Marketing — focuses on how IGCs can use their greatest marketing asset — the lists they own — to create data-driven tactics that will engage millennial customers in a way that the “one size fits all” approach just doesn’t. In addition to emails, Rob will help you understand how SMS and loyalty programs can add additional value.