Archive for November, 2008
The winter months can be a tough time for a lawn care business. More and more lawn care businesses are getting into offering outdoor holiday lighting and decoration services to help them get through the slow times. Those who have experimented with it seem to be pretty happy with the results but how do you [...]
November 28th, 2008 | Posted in Christmas, Commercial Customers, Door hanger, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Outdoor decoration, Postcards, Residential Customers, Seasonal Promotion Ideas, Winter, door to door | No Comments
Are we in a rough patch now with our economy? I would say so and it’s most likely going to get worse before it gets better. But you don’t have to be a puppet in someone else’s show. Now is a great time to start your own lawn care business. It’s something you can do [...]
November 27th, 2008 | Posted in Business Card, Edging, Free Lawn Care Flyer Template, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Mowing, Residential Customers, Start up | No Comments
Offering gutter cleaning, at first can appear to be a daunting challenge, but don’t let this stop you from making money on a service many others won’t do. This is a great way to bring in extra income during the fall that can help your lawn care business when your mowing services slow down. One [...]
November 26th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, Gutter Cleaning, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business | No Comments
I know there are a lot of teenagers who are avid readers of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum and I am sure they are constantly looking for inspiration. One of our forum members who is 15 years old has given us some great insight after ending his first full season running his lawn care [...]
November 25th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Lawn Care Uniform, Lawn Signs, Mower, Residential Customers, Start up, Trailer, Word Of Mouth, lawn care equipment | No Comments
A lot of areas won’t let you put out a yard sign on your property to promote your lawn care business, but what if you put a sign on your garbage cans to promote your lawn care business? This could be a great way to build out your routes around current customers.
You could also possibly [...]
November 25th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Signs, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
When you are trying to get a new potential lawn care client to sign up with an annual lawn care contract, sometimes you may want to offer some kind of inducement to get them to jump on it. That is exactly what was being discussed in a post at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. [...]
November 11th, 2008 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Contract, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
One of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum members recently made a trade with a local publisher. He offered to do lawn care in return for ad space. In this discussion we learn how creating a ’squeeze page’ on your website can help you collect potential customer contact information to allow you to market to [...]
November 11th, 2008 | Posted in Barter, General Business, GopherHaul, How to get, Internet, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Business School, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Website, Marketing | No Comments
Do you have a customer or customers that are telling you repeatedly that the check is in the mail? Maybe they have even go so far as to tell you they aren’t going to pay you. One of our Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum Members had to deal with this issue until she sent out [...]
November 11th, 2008 | Posted in Debt Collection, General Business, GopherHaul, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Podcast | No Comments
Jerry wrote the Gopher Lawn Care Business forum looking for insight into how many lawn care accounts he could possibly service as a one man show. Jerry asked “for the single person crew, how many lawn care contracts are needed to maintain a healthy income. I was thinking 40. My brother-in-law does good on 25 [...]
November 10th, 2008 | Posted in 1 Man Lawn Crew, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Mowing | No Comments
When you are trying to estimate a lawn care job, you need to know which equipment you will be using and how much it costs you to operate that equipment per hour. These calculations will give you a bare bones figure. You might also want to include the lifespan of each piece of equipment, by [...]
November 10th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business, Operational Costs, lawn care equipment | No Comments
With winter on it’s way, many new lawn care business owners are looking to add snow plowing to their list of winter services. Trying to come up with an idea on how to charge can be challenging, especially for new businesses.
A Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum member asked such a question regarding snow plow services. [...]
November 10th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business, Podcast, Snow plowing | No Comments
If you are like most lawn care business owners, you want to see your business grow over time. How are you going to do this though? Do you have a plan? What are your lawn care customer base goals? That is the amount of base customers you want to be servicing weekly.
I asked this question [...]
November 9th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Residential Customers, Uncategorized, Your First Employee | No Comments
One of our forum members shared with us his insight into the importance of job tracking. I think his insights will be very helpful and lead you on a proper path. If you would like to join in on this discussion further, visit this discussion at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.
It’s time to start [...]
November 9th, 2008 | Posted in Business Failure, General Business, Job Tracking, Lawn Care Business, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Are you finding yourself trying to compete with fly by night lawn care businesses that advertise they will cut a lawn for $15? Don’t try to compete with them. Any customer who hires such a lawn care business will quickly find out how unreliable they are. You don’t want these cheap customers anyway because they [...]
November 8th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing on Craigslist.com, Mowing, Pricing, Residential Customers, Start up, door to door | No Comments
When you are starting and running a lawn care business, you might think you have an idea what your customers want and what they don’t care about. From what I have read on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, it seems like the difference between what your lawn care customers want and what you think [...]
November 8th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Employees, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Lawn Care Uniform, Marketing, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Each year you should consider dropping off a hand written thank you card to your lawn care customers. You don’t have to do them all at once. Just break down your lawn care customer list and do them step by step. This is a great way to build up your lawn care business referrals.
What should [...]
November 7th, 2008 | Posted in Business Card, Customer Retention, General Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customer Survey, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Referrals | No Comments
If you are looking to add on additional services to your lawn care business to help get you through the winter months why not consider offering snow plowing?
When you are looking for a snow plow there are many different options to consider. Here is some advice from the members at the Gopher Lawn Care Business [...]
November 7th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, Lawn Care Business, Snow plowing, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Having your lawn care customers on annual contracts can be very beneficial especially during the winter months. If you are not so good budgeting out your money and tend to spend what you have, then maybe having lawn care customers pay you an equal amount each month would be the way to go. The customer [...]
November 7th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, How to sell, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
A lot of times a new lawn care business owner will be working solo and wondering what kind of income can they potentially make? How many lawns can the average solo lawn care business owner service? To get some insight we asked our friend on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum to share with us [...]
November 6th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Mower, Mowing, Mulch Jobs, Residential Customers, Start up, lawn care equipment | No Comments
It seems like every year I hear a similar story in different variations. A new business is just getting itself stabilized with a hand full of customers when a large account seems to be calling them from up high atop a mountain of promised money. The call becomes so enticing that the entrepreneur can not [...]
November 6th, 2008 | Posted in Business Failure, Commercial Customers, Debt, General Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Business Book, Lawn Care Customers, Start up | No Comments
The lawn care and landscaping industry is a seasonal business. Each season brings about a change in the environment which effects what services you can or can’t offer. In the winter months, customers will also be looking to spend their money for holiday gifts. So with all this going on, how can you make sales [...]
November 5th, 2008 | Posted in Christmas, General Business, Gift or Discount Cards, How to get, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Prepay, Residential Customers, Seasonal Promotion Ideas, Winter | No Comments
When winter comes, the lawn care and landscaping industry jobs tend to slow down. Which leads me to this great question that was asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. “It’s winter time and work is becoming scarce. So when a customer calls me and I go out to give them a bid I’ve [...]
November 5th, 2008 | Posted in Business Failure, Commercial Customers, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Residential Customers | No Comments
Does your lawn care company mow a property and then roll your hot mowers back into an enclosed landscaping trailer only to be hauled to the next job site and never really get a chance to cool off? Have you considered using a synthetic oil to combat the negative effects of heat on your commercial [...]
November 4th, 2008 | Posted in General Business, Lawn Care Truck, Mower, lawn care equipment | No Comments
With the economy slowing, more and more homes are being foreclosed upon. As they sit there uninhabited, someone has to maintain them or they will fall into disrepair. Mowing foreclosed homes is easy work. There is no homeowner to complain about the job and it gives you a chance to make first contact with the [...]
November 3rd, 2008 | Posted in Door hanger, Foreclosed Homes, General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Signs, Marketing, Residential Customers, door to door | No Comments
When most landscapers start up their business, they tend to start with a truck only. Then later they may add an open trailer. At a certain point you may be asking yourself what’s better to have, an open or enclosed trailer and why?
That’s the question one of our new forum members asked and he quite [...]
November 3rd, 2008 | Posted in General Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Podcast, Trailer, lawn care equipment | No Comments
If there is one group of local business people I find are constantly hammering me with direct mail marketing material, it’s realtors. They really seem to have their act together when it comes to promoting their name and face out to the local community. So lucky me and lucky us when a new Gopher Lawn [...]
November 2nd, 2008 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Direct Mail, Free Lawn Care Flyer Template, General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Magnets, Marketing, Referrals, Residential Customers, Word Of Mouth, door to door | No Comments
When you are looking to gain new landscaping or lawn care customers, consider reaching out to your local garden centers. Purchase your supplies from them and see if you can get a business card display at their registers. Then ask the staff who sell lawn and garden supplies to refer your lawn care business for [...]
November 1st, 2008 | Posted in Business Card, Commercial Customers, Cross Promotion / Synergy, Door hanger, Free Lawn Care Flyer Template, General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Podcast, Referrals, Residential Customers, door to door | No Comments
Real estate agents are the first people to really make contact with new home owners in your area. The agent has already built up a bond with the new home owner and is in a great position to refer your services to them. Why not team up with one or many real estate agents in [...]
November 1st, 2008 | Posted in Cross Promotion / Synergy, General Business, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Podcast, Referrals, Residential Customers, Welcoming Kit | No Comments