Archive for the 'How to sell' Category
If you haven’t gotten the phone call yet, you will. Soon your phone will ring and on the other end will be a salesman telling you about the wonderful marketing opportunities to be had with their mail-pak style mailers. You will hear these grand figures, reach 10,000 families in your area. It will only cost [...]
February 8th, 2010 | Posted in Direct Mail, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Marketing, Newspaper Ads, Referrals, Residential Customers, Word Of Mouth, door to door | No Comments
We all like to know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to lawn care marketing. By reading such stories on the topic, we hope to cut out those marketing ideas that are ineffective. What amazes me about all the stories we see on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, it’s amazing how one [...]
February 7th, 2010 | Posted in Direct Mail, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Internet, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Newspaper Ads, Pricing, Referrals, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
There is nothing like the feeling of running your own business and being an entrepreneur. You are in charge! You are calling the shots! It’s up to you to make it work! But sometimes, the realities of it are that you get burnt out. You take on too many responsibilities. You don’t delegate enough to [...]
February 2nd, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Start up, buying customers | No Comments
Here is a great question that came up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Should you be looking to seal the deal everytime you go out for an estimate? One lawn care business owner initially seemed to be so focused on doing this at all costs, including his profits.
He wrote “I am going to [...]
February 1st, 2010 | Posted in Customer Retention, Direct Mail, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Pricing, Referrals, Residential Customers | No Comments
How do I get new lawn care customers? How can I find more success in the lawn care industry? These are two of the big questions we often see on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. What amazes me is that all too often, business owners are looking for some secret to doing this when [...]
January 26th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Lawn Care Uniform, Marketing, Referrals, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
When you first get your lawn care business started you tend to be more desperate for work. You also are unsure of your costs and what you should charge so you tend to waiver a lot on your prices.
Over time as your lawn care business is around longer, you build up more confidence because you [...]
January 19th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Pricing, Start up | No Comments
How often have you created a new landscape project or hardscape project and thoughts to yourself, ‘if only the neighbors could see this place, they’d all want me to do this for them.’ This thought may come up especially as the scale of the project increases as well as the amount of profits.
There are plenty [...]
January 14th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Hardscaping, How to get, How to sell, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Residential Customers, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
I love to showcase some of the landscape projects, members of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum share with us. They are great learning tools because you get a chance to see a before and after image along with the bid price and the amount of profit the job generated. From this you can compare [...]
January 8th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Internet, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Mulch Jobs, Residential Customers, Website, door to door | No Comments
Are you looking for more ways to improve your sales skills? A new member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us some of sales secrets. He wrote “I have 7 years of sales experience in retail and business. What got me to start my lawn care business is one day when I [...]
January 7th, 2010 | Posted in Business Card, Commercial Customers, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Marketing on Craigslist.com, Newspaper Ads, Residential Customers, door to door | No Comments
Is it a good idea to give a kick back to get a lawn care bid? It seems when you start to go down this path, it has a tendency to get messy and the end results may become undesirable. This is a situation that was brought up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. [...]
January 6th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
When you are bidding jobs for lawn care or landscaping projects, should you let your customer know how much you are charging them per hour or should this be something you keep to yourself and simply bid on the job as a whole? That is a question that was brought up on the Gopher Lawn [...]
January 4th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Podcast, Pricing | No Comments
All too often, accounts receivable, is over looked by new lawn care business owners. When a new lawn care business owner is just getting started, they figure they would rather be working than not working. So as long as they are working, they feel like it is money in the bank. But it is so [...]
December 26th, 2009 | Posted in Debt, Debt Collection, General Business, How to sell, Invoicing, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Prepay, Pricing, Start up | No Comments
As we have seen in many discussions on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, the better the network you have, the more you will sell. Getting started though can pose a very tricky problem. How do you develop up a network to sell too?
Well chances are, you already have a network in place, you just [...]
December 24th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Community Projects To Promote Your Business, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Referrals, Residential Customers, Snow plowing, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
When a business you have been competing with, stumbles or falls, you can do a lot to position yourself in such a way as to pick up some new customers. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum had this situation happen to him where a competitor who offered snow plowing, simply shut down [...]
December 23rd, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Snow plowing, Upsells | No Comments
A great way to really improve your lawn care business profit margins is to cater to wealthier neighborhoods. Although there will always be some wealthy clients that will nickle and dime you to death, the majority of them want top notch lawn care service and are willing to pay for it. But how do you [...]
December 19th, 2009 | Posted in Cold Calling, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Marketing, Referrals, Residential Customers, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
Every lawn care business is different, just like every business owner is different. Some are out there doing the bare bones minimum and getting paid only a bare bones minimum price. But there are others who take their lawn care business to a new level. A very competitive and professional level. I am very happy [...]
December 11th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Free Lawn Care Flyer Template, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Mower, Referrals, Residential Customers, Welcoming Kit, Word Of Mouth, lawn care equipment | No Comments
You might read the title of this article and think to yourself, there is no way one can land a commercial lawn care account without having a mower, but this new lawn care business owner did. How did he do it? He knew the right people. But how did he meet the right people? That’s [...]
December 7th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Door hanger, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Logo, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Mowing, Marketing, Mowing, Residential Customers, Snow plowing, Start up, door to door | No Comments
There are those who really take to sales immediately. They tend to be outgoing people, extroverts and they love to talk. For the rest of us, we find sales to be difficult and akward. In order to help you improve your sales techniques a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us [...]
December 2nd, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Start up, Word Of Mouth, door to door | No Comments
When things are slow and you are looking for an affordable way to drum up lawn care business, why not consider doing what this member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum did. He wrote us and said “don’t waste your time handing out flyers in mailboxes or all that other marketing junk we’ve talked [...]
November 29th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Residential Customers, door to door | No Comments
Finding which lawn care marketing strategy works seems to be a topic of never ending fascination. Everyone seems to be looking for that magic key. Is it flyers? Is it door hangers? If not those two, what else could it be? That is a topic raised at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum when one [...]
November 28th, 2009 | Posted in Customer Retention, Door hanger, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Internet, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Lawn Care Website, Marketing, Newspaper Ads, Postcards, Referrals, door to door | No Comments
When you are out on a potential job site to perform an estimate, pointing out issues on a home owners property, do you find you are able to make more profit on the upsells either immediately or soon after, once you get the customer to sign up for what they initially called you for?
I would [...]
November 25th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Referrals, Seasonal Promotion Ideas, Tree Removal, Upsells | No Comments
There are many ways to give a customer an estimate for lawn service. Some lawn care business owners don’t want to be bothered with going out to visit a site before they bid, so in their minds they think giving a quote over the phone or through email is a real simple way to do [...]
November 24th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
Depending on how you present your snow plowing bid can have a direct result on if you get hired or not and what kinds of services your customer will sign up for. I asked a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum about his methods for estimating snow removal services and how he gets [...]
November 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Overhead Costs, Podcast, Pricing, Snow plowing | No Comments
A lot of start up businesses really have a hard time generating word of mouth advertising. To help us understand how to do this better, I asked a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum how he did it.
I asked him, did you find it tough to generate word of mouth initially when you [...]
November 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, Goodwill, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Referrals, Residential Customers, Start up, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
As a lawn care business owner, you are probably always looking for ways to make more money from your current customer base. There are many services you could offer and your customers could use, but plenty of times you just can’t think of them. In a discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum the [...]
November 21st, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Tractor, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Finding work in the Fall and Winter can be more challenging at times than picking up mowing accounts during the Spring. Many lawn care business owners seem to struggle finding customers to service and end up having a rough time when the mowing season slows down. But this doesn’t have to be the case. In [...]
November 20th, 2009 | Posted in Fall Leaf Cleanups, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Referrals, Word Of Mouth, door to door | No Comments
Getting the momentum of a new business going can be very difficult. It can feel like you are trying to move mountains. Sometimes an entrepreneur can become overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom when things don’t happen fast enough. But how does one get things going and potentially get them going fast? It takes [...]
November 19th, 2009 | Posted in Business Card, Cold Calling, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Start up, door to door | No Comments
The GopherHaul guide on how to get customers for your landscaping and lawn care business - Volume 3 is now available.
Anyone can start a landscaping or lawn care business but the tricky part is finding customers. This book will show you how.
Coming up with marketing and service ideas to keep busy and profitable all year [...]
November 17th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, GopherHaul, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Business Book, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
Have you had difficulties landing commercial snow plowing accounts? It can be difficult to break through a companies layer of insulation before you get to the person in charge of making such decisions. Persistance seems to be a big part of the key to success. Let’s look into this discussion that took place on the [...]
November 14th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Podcast, Snow plowing | No Comments
The average lawn care business tends to find things slow down in the Fall and Winter but that doesn’t have to always be the case. You can go out and drum up business if you want it. Let’s look and see how a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum did this. He wrote [...]
November 13th, 2009 | Posted in Fall, General Business, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Referrals, Seasonal Promotion Ideas, Winter | No Comments