Archive for the 'How to sell' Category
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
As we have seen from many discussions on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, you can’t sit back and wait for lawn care customers to find you. You need to actively go out and seek them. A newer lawn care business owner was warming to this concept when he wrote and asked “ok we have [...]
October 30th, 2009 | Posted in Door hanger, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Postcards, door to door | No Comments
Have you ever been out mowing your customer’s property and looked over at the neighbors to see the lawn could use a cut too? Did you ever decide to cut their lawn? Well a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum told us a little story about what he has been up to and [...]
October 28th, 2009 | Posted in Business Card, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
It’s one of the most frustrating things to have to deal with as an owner of a small lawn care business, when you spend money on marketing and nothing is working. It can make you feel like you are in a ship that is sinking and no matter what you do to bail the water [...]
October 26th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to get, How to sell, Internet, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Marketing on Craigslist.com, Residential Customers, Word Of Mouth, door to door | No Comments
As we have seen in the Gopher Lawn Care Busines Forum, there is quite a bit of money to be made when you offer your clients irrigation system winterization services. But it seems a lot of lawn care business owner just don’t offer it because they don’t know how to do it. Well thank to [...]
October 19th, 2009 | Posted in Fall, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Irrigation, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Seasonal Promotion Ideas, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
In a discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, we talked about how breaking landscape projects down into sections can really help you sell larger projects. If the customer knows that at anytime they can say ok this is enough. Or if they feel their budget is shrinking to pay for the landscape project, [...]
October 17th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees | No Comments
Why travel around so much when you can sell more staying put at the same location. You may not think you are missing out on potential upsells until you read this. One of our Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum members shared with us his view on staying put and making more on upsells. He wrote [...]
October 17th, 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, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
Here is the follow up conversation I had with a property manager on the Gopher Lawn Care Business forum. He shared with me some really important insights you must know as a lawn care business owner if you want to win him or others in the industry over and get them to accept your bid.
I [...]
October 16th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Uniform | No Comments
This is a very interesting topic. Lawn care business owners are always looking for ways to land commercial lawn care bids. But what’s the best way to do it? There are many ways to go about getting close with property managers to win bids but there is nothing like hearing the inside scoop straight from [...]
October 11th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, GopherHaul, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Podcast, Residential Customers | No Comments
With many small lawn care businesses, the owners tend to feel there is more money when you get in and get out fast. However as we will see in this discussion, offering more services than simply lawn mowing can help you be on the job site longer. The longer you are on the job site, [...]
October 7th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, GopherHaul, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Podcast, Referrals, Residential Customers, Word Of Mouth | No Comments