Archive for the 'How to Estimate Jobs' Category
Performing lawn care for a trailer park can differ a little from mowing residential homes. The plots are usually a lot smaller but there is also a lot more trimming than mowing. What’s the best way to price a mobile home bid? Is it even worth it? That is what one member of the Gopher [...]
August 20th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Mowing | No Comments
Any time I hear about how a great story on how a lawn care business owner landed some commercial accounts, I like to share the story with everyone to help you see how others do it. We all need to hear stories and experiences from others in order to broaden our horizons. This story came [...]
July 29th, 2010 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
Lawn care business owners are in business to make money. It’s plain and simple. But are there ever times when it is alright to accept a lawn care or landscaping job when you know it won’t be profitable? Are there any upsides to doing this and if so, what are they? That is what one [...]
July 27th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Pricing | No Comments
Have you been asked by any of your lawn care customers to give them a bid on adding some topsoil to their property? Did you find you were at a loss as to how to estimate such a job? A lawn care business owner had this issue and asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business [...]
July 15th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Pricing | No Comments
Finding commercial lawn care bids is not as difficult as you may think. Most times it comes down to picking up the phone and finding who to talk to or simply visiting the establishment and asking a few questions. That is what a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum did when he found [...]
July 9th, 2010 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Fall Leaf Cleanups, General Business, Hedge Trimming, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Mulch Jobs, Parking Lot Cleanups | No Comments
A great service you can offer to perform when you can’t mow due to rain, is pressure washing. Getting started offering this service shouldn’t be that difficult and it can help your business expand outwards. One lawn care business owner was looking to get into power washing and had a few questions about getting started [...]
June 24th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Pressure Washing, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Every lawn care customer is different and each will have a different view on how well they want their lawn maintained. Some customers will want their lawn to look as nice as possible and require a weekly mowing while others will want a cheaper job and have the lawn cut every two weeks. How should [...]
June 17th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Mowing | No Comments
A great question came up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. It was on the topic of when should you offer lawn care customers, a discount. Should they be offered a discount if they pay in cash? Or what about a discount to seal the deal if they are on the fence?Do discounts help [...]
May 21st, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Prepay, Pricing | No Comments
Every lawn care business owner is always looking for more services to offer as upsells. There is plenty of money to be made out there and customers are willing to pay you if you are able to suggest to them a service they could use. How about this idea a member of the Gopher Lawn [...]
May 20th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Upsells | No Comments
Entrepreneurs are people and people sometimes just get burned. The get bored. They don’t find the results they were hoping to find or they simply want to try something new. There are many why business owners give up on their businesses. In this discussion from the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, one business owner shares [...]
May 18th, 2010 | Posted in Business Failure, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Start up | No Comments
How does bagging grass clippings or leaving them on the lawn effect the lawn’s health? Do most lawn care customers want their grass clippings bagged or do they not care? These are some of the issues you have to take into consideration when you are running a lawn care business and are trying to determine [...]
May 8th, 2010 | Posted in Dethatching, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Mowing | No Comments
Many lawn care business owners look to offer additional services to supplement their lawn service income. One of the many services they choose to offer is pressure or power washing. If you choose to offer such a service you may be wondering where to get the water. That is what one member of the Gopher [...]
May 5th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Pressure Washing, Pricing, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Coming up with a game plan and marketing strategy for your lawn care business can be tough. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his frustrations when trying to figure out a way to get his foot in the door with potential customers that live near him yet are serviced [...]
April 27th, 2010 | Posted in Business Plan, 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, Start up, Upsells | No Comments
It’s fascinating the lessons learned by new lawn care business owners who leave their full time jobs to go off on their own and start their own business. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us some of the issues he ran into when he got started. He wrote “It’s one [...]
April 26th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Newspaper Ads, Podcast, Start up | No Comments
There are many situations you will run into as a lawn care business owner where you may wonder if you should be charging extra for certain services. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum had an interesting question along these lines when he asked “if you are providing lawn care for a [...]
April 11th, 2010 | 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 Mowing, Pricing | No Comments
Most every new lawn care business owner is going to mess up on a few things. The way they handle mistakes can make the difference between being able to stay in business for the long haul or losing your customers too soon. One new lawn care business owner got on the Gopher Lawn Care Business [...]
April 9th, 2010 | 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, Pricing, Start up, Upsells | No Comments
How to price lawn mowing or a yard cleanup seems to be one of the more popular questions asked on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Many new lawn care business owners tend to be lost with this and understandably so, it can be very difficult to wrap your mind around proper bidding concepts.
To help [...]
April 4th, 2010 | Posted in Fall Leaf Cleanups, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Pricing | No Comments
Everyone who runs a business has customers. Sometimes those customers are a delight to work with while other times they can be nightmares. Everyone seems to do alright handling the happy customers but it can be a serious challenge to handle a difficult customer. Depending on the choices you make, such situations can be turned [...]
April 2nd, 2010 | Posted in General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Podcast, Residential Customers | No Comments
For a lawn care customer, it can be very difficult to envision how their property can be transformed from a bland empty area into a well landscaped masterpiece. That is where you come in. You would be surprised on how many more landscape sales you could make if only you took a moment to see [...]
March 25th, 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, Mowing, Mulch Jobs, Upsells | No Comments
Do you have customers who own properties in your area but live elsewhere? Do they require you to perform additional tasks local customers don’t need? Servicing out of town customers can be more challenging than servicing local customers. Here is a great story that came up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. If you [...]
March 24th, 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, Mowing | No Comments
There are many tricks of the trade you simply won’t pick up on until you have spent years experimenting. After much trial and error, you may come across some money and time saving tips but there is a good chance you won’t learn them all. That is why reading is so important. It’s always better [...]
March 22nd, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Tree Removal | No Comments
Trying to generate positive cash flow is very difficult for any new business early on. Offering many additional services can be a way to prime the pump and get all the gears of your business working. But there is a point that some believe you need to stop offering those additional services that are not [...]
March 20th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscape Project, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Start up, Upsells | No Comments
This was a very novel approach to estimating a commercial lawn care job. I don’t often see this happen but I guess it goes to show you, it never hurts to ask. This is especially true when you are talking to a new client that is switching lawn care service providers. If you take the [...]
March 18th, 2010 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Edging, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Mowing, Mowing, Operational Costs, Overhead Costs, Pricing, bed edging | No Comments
Have you ever sat back and wondered what it is that is keeping your lawn care business from growing? Do you find it difficult to talk with new people? Do you have a difficult time trying to sell yourself and your services? If you do, you are not alone. I had a discussion on the [...]
March 14th, 2010 | Posted in Bonus Pay, General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Lawn Mowing, Podcast, Upsells, training | No Comments
What do lawn care customers want? Their requirements can vary widely. Some may simply want the township off their back and not care how their lawn looks. Others will be very meticulous and want high quality lawn care service. What should you do when you service a customer with a smaller mower and then scale [...]
March 11th, 2010 | Posted in Business Card, 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, Lawn Mowing, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
Jumping from residential lawn care to offering commercial lawn care can be tough on a newer lawn care business owner because you just aren’t used to estimating larger properties. With no example to go by you may greatly underestimate the amount of time it would take you to mow and underestimate the amount you should [...]
March 6th, 2010 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Mowing, Mowing | No Comments
Coming up with the proper rate to charge your lawn care customers can be difficult, especially when you are just getting started. It seems that newer businesses tend to underestimate the amount of time a job will take and therefor underestimate the price the job should be bid at.
A member of the Gopher Lawn Care [...]
March 5th, 2010 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Mowing | No Comments
When I read this discussion I really thought it covered a pretty big issue that I think the lawn care business owner just didn’t see. Then it got me thinking, we all might be doing things that we may just not realize we could be doing differently and getting better results. In this situation a [...]
March 3rd, 2010 | Posted in General Business, Goodwill, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Mowing, Marketing, Referrals, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
You have probably been in this situation in the past where you are mowing a lawn care customer’s property and they come out to ask you how much it would cost to have you ——–. You eyeball the job and because you don’t know how much the materials are going to cost, you ballpark the [...]
February 22nd, 2010 | Posted in Business Failure, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Pricing | No Comments
When you take a moment to reflect on where you spend your time while servicing a lawn care customers you may find there are a lot of extra steps you are adding that are not necessary. If you find a way to optimize the time spent at each location the net result will be more [...]
February 21st, 2010 | Posted in Edging, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Line Trimmer, bed edger, lawn care equipment | No Comments