Archive for October, 2012
If you are looking for a way to learn a bit about the lawn care industry before you start up your own company, you might want to consider working for another lawn care company first. There are many positive and negative lessons you can learn from such an experience. Both will assist you in your [...]
October 31st, 2012 | Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments
Getting your own lawn care business up and rolling can take time and money. Sometimes you have both. Then there are also times when you don’t and you need more cash to help you through a slow time. But if you find yourself in such a situation, should you go back and work part time [...]
October 30th, 2012 | Posted in Growth, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Trials and Tribulations | No Comments
Getting lawn care customers to sign up with you for annual lawn care maintenance is good thing. You get steady pay from them all year round and can easily get them to continue having you service them into the next year. But if you find it is difficult to get a customer to actually want [...]
October 29th, 2012 | Posted in How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Irrigation, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Contract, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Pricing, Residential Customers, Sprinkler Head | No Comments
A friend of mine and was telling me how he feels like such a pessimist all the time. He says he see the glass as half empty. His wife says he acts this way because he runs his own business.
I think this brought up a great point. It seems like all too often, [...]
October 26th, 2012 | Posted in Business Failure, Growth, How to sell, Lawn Care Business, Trials and Tribulations | No Comments
A lot more lawn care business owners operate part time than full time. Some of those that operate part time are very happy with their part time status and wouldn’t want to change it. While others are looking for a way to figure out how to go full time. That is the question which was [...]
October 25th, 2012 | Posted in Growth, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Overhead Costs, Start up | No Comments
At one point in history there had been hundreds of cola soft drink manufacturers but now there are merely a handful. There used to be a very competitive collection of auto manufacturers too but now there are only a few as well. Could this happen in the lawn care industry? Could one giant service company [...]
October 24th, 2012 | Posted in Business Failure, Franchise, Growth, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
Finding lawn care customers can take up a lot of your time and money. Some business owners seem to really have a knack for striking up conversations and meeting new people where ever they are. Let’s check out a discussion, on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, on how this one part time lawn care [...]
October 19th, 2012 | Posted in Growth, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Marketing on Craigslist.com, Referrals, Residential Customers, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
If you are getting to the point where your lawn care business is bidding on commercial properties, you may want to see what others are doing when they put together their bids. Here is a great example of a 13 building town home complex lawn care bid from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Review [...]
October 18th, 2012 | Posted in Commercial Customers, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Pricing | No Comments
Getting lawn care customers and snow plow customers can be frustrating early on. It might seem that every potential customer you reach out to says no right away. But don’t let that stop you. It’s all a numbers game. The more you talk to, the more you can sell too and things get easier as [...]
October 16th, 2012 | Posted in How to get, Internet, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Marketing, Marketing on Craigslist.com, Residential Customers, Snow plow, Snow plowing, door to door, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Having a plan before you start your business is a great idea because it gets you thinking. It makes you realize you have expenses and you need to make a certain amount of money per hour to cover those expenses. Without having some kind of financial goal to hit, you can very easily underbid jobs [...]
October 15th, 2012 | Posted in Business Failure, Business Plan, Lawn Care Business, Pricing, Taxes | No Comments
There are many business strategies you can utilize when presented with high levels of competition. You can start a price war and see who can last. You can improve your quality and seek out customers who are willing to pay for higher quality. You can find a niche service others aren’t offering or one that [...]
October 8th, 2012 | Posted in Business Failure, Door hanger, Growth, How to get, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Overhead Costs, Pricing, Start up | No Comments
Newer lawn care business owners tend to come up with a lot of creative inducements to try and get customers to behave in one manner or another. As you are in business longer, you tend to scale that back as you don’t need freebies to attract and keep customers. But what should you do if [...]
October 4th, 2012 | Posted in How to get, How to sell, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Business Sales Letter, Lawn Care Contract, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
There are always going to be houses that sit on the market for quite some time before they are sold. During this time, many homes fall into disrepair and the first thing that seems to go is the property maintenance. What would you do if you were called by a realtor to mow an overgrown [...]
October 3rd, 2012 | Posted in Debt Collection, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Pricing | No Comments
Trying to start up a lawn care business in a new area can be tough because many of the variables you are used to, may be different. The mowing season may be shorter or longer. The socio-economic level may be different than you are used to as well. So what do you do when you [...]
October 2nd, 2012 | Posted in Business Card, Business Failure, Gutter Cleaning, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to get, How to sell, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Lawn Mowing, Marketing, Pressure Washing, Pricing, Referrals, Residential Customers, Start up, Upsells | No Comments
Starting a new lawn care business can be scary for many would be entrepreneurs. There are so many unknowns with a start up, it’s no wonder so many businesses fail within their first year. In this discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, we get to hear some questions and concerns one new business [...]
October 1st, 2012 | Posted in Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Pricing, Start up | No Comments