Fall lawn care referral

He wrote “I always see people asking about advertising on your forum here and after many years of traditional advertising and this year combined with that, I can honestly say the best answer for you to tell those business owners would be word of mouth and give a % off for referal’s. The cherry on the top and best is DOOR TO DOOR ADVERTISING!!!! It takes a ton of time, but the return is MIND BLOWING if you tell people you will just give them a FREE no obligation estimate on the back of a business card. I filled my schedule and finished them all and just went out again and did more door to door and have almost filled all my available time again!”

What % do you suggest offering the customer for referrals? How do you advise promoting that you offer a referral %?

Where do you find the most referrals come from? From customers who are looking to get a % off or just natural referrals?

He responded “I usually take 10% off if they can tell me or show me something that I KNOW they wont know without being referred. Obviously I have records of every job I’ve ever done and I carry copies of those records with me when advertising and when I actually do jobs, so I just look up the name of who they said they heard of me from right there when I do the new customer’s estimate.

It’s not terribly complex as to how I advertise it but I just put on flyers and tell people when I go door to door estimating that I will not be under cut by anyone and if you find a better price, WRITTEN, say like an estimate and signed, I will match it or beat it (matching or beating it all depends on how cheap it is and how reliable the other company in question is).

Where the referals come from is about 50/50. ALMOST everytime I do a job, 3 out of 4 times…..people are so pleased with my work that they ask for business cards and give them to friends and family. I did one job 2 weekends ago and the woman asked me for 4 cards plus the one I gave here when she hired me and she handed them all out! 2 of them actually brought back customers and I treated them very well for using my services. The other half just comes from people who I give estimates to going door to door. In this cut-throat business knowing your competitions price is everything so people give up written documentation of other guys prices and I beat it and they get the 10% off that way.

This past season was the best I have had in one hell of a long time! and it reminded me why I love my job!”

Lawn care bid

He wrote “this is my first year in business however I have been in sales all my life so getting into doors is second nature for me. In the past 2 weeks I have hit every business, apartment complex, townhome community, HOA, property manager, etc… that I can possibly and physically do by myself. I get up at 6, I get to the office by 7 and plan out my day. By 8 I am hitting doors. In the past several weeks I have actually placed bids totaling $595,000 annually, and today I got a return call from a manager that wants a portfolio bid for 11 apartment complexes next week.

You ask what it takes?? Hard work and many hours per day. Right now is the time when most companies are reviewing and renewing contracts. So get the business cards printed and hit as many doors as you can. Property managers are notorious for not returning phone calls so going to their office is much more advantageous.

I have won 3 contracts this past week and currently have 14 pending. The portfolio bid of 11 properties will put me at over $1 million in proposed contracts I have submitted in the past 2 weeks. The key is to place as many bids as you can and estimate 20% of those that you will win. If it’s more than that, then you’re doing great.”

I think this is a great example of how the owner of a business really needs to be it’s chief salesperson.

When it comes to motivation like this in sales and desire to succeed, do you feel it flows from a certain personality trait certain people have or do you feel this is something one can learn and apply themselves?

“Anyone can do this. What has to be learned is to remove the fear of “NO”. It takes a lot of “NO’s” to get to a YES. So the main thing you have to learn is that everytime you get past a NO, you’re getting that much closer to the YES. Most people get frustrated when they run into obstacles and give up. If they had kept going, the next visit may have been their pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

What can be learned is the positive attitude it takes to keep going. When I approach a potential client, I don’t sell anything but the project I am there for. I get right to the point. I ask for the person in charge of the lawn maintenance. I don’t try to sell the receptionist. I don’t try and sell myself or my company. I walk in the door, ask for the person in charge of lawn maintenance and once in front of them, the first thing I say is that I am there to bid on their lawn care needs and I would like to give them a quote. After they start asking questions, I answer their questions. I don’t start rambling about “we do this and we do that”. Just answer their questions and get the bid. If they are not bidding on a project right now, take their card and find out when they will be bidding. Make sure to call them back a month before they are taking bids. Never forget a potential client and when you could possibly be doing business with them. Never!”

Great advice and great motivation from an entrepreneur who is out there every day pounding the pavement and bidding on properties.

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 long can be difficult. Most of the times we are just not in the mood to sit and think up creative ways to make more money.

How to get lawn care customers vol.3

Well thankfully I have been able to interview thousands of lawn care business owners over the years and ask them what’s worked and what hasn’t. The responses and the follow up questions have really uncovered a treasure trove of ideas that I compiled here to share with you.

Now you don’t have to get frustrated when trying to come up with new ideas. Just keep this book around as a reference. Some of these ideas might just work right off the shelf while others might need to be altered to fit your needs. Ultimately it’s always better to have ideas on stand by just in case.

This book is the third in a series of lawn care business marketing books I have published and contains lawn care marketing ideas cherry picked from previous content I have written as well as new unpublished material.

Dream it, Build It, Gopher It!

Order this book online here. Also available on amazon.com.

I have access to an email address address database. I currently work for a church with over 4,000 members 90 percent of which have e-mail addresses in our data base. How effective would this be and would it be worth the many many hours of work that it would take to build the potential customer database that would be required?

I wouldn’t use any of the database without permission. I actually spoke with the church administrator today and she told me that she could allow me to use the entire database for any business endeavors that I would like to try but she would want to review anything going to the members and eliminate a few of the members from the list before anything went out. Even more amazing is they have offered starting in December to allow me to place a 4″ wide by 2″ tall ad in the weekly newsletter as well as a half page flier that could be put out with other news on Wednesday nights during the Church Family Night Supper. Not only would I be allowed to do these things but have also got permission to use their copiers and such to print and cut the fliers for usage.

As far as the spam part of this. I would include an opt out link within the e-mails so that anyone that would not want to be a part of the list could unsubscribe immediately. To pull more potential customers in I am thinking of offering 25 dollars off the first monthly statement for anyone that signs a 1 year contract. 15 dollars off for a non contract. Or maybe a free gutter cleaning or something of that nature. I am not going to be sending out e-mails daily or even weekly. I am thinking possibly once monthly to try to attract business until I get to my 40 - 45 yard goal.

From what I understand it would not be considered spam if it is a legitimate offer from a legitimate company. What will get you in trouble for “spamming” is trying to deceive or tricking the person receiving the email. You must not filter out your isp. You can’t use subject lines like ‘Hey remember me’ or ‘I can’t believe you forgot my birthday’ or anything like that that could be misleading to any one. Two: you need to send it from your company name at your company’s website domain. Three: leave a real address and phone number that potential clients can truly contact you at that reassures most people that it is a legitimate offer and is not a spam. Never ask for any billing information to be sent by e-mail. Put in the e-mail that if you would like to receive a quote to contact the number listed.

Most of the people that I would be e-mailing would know me personally. From either being a person that has worked with a company that they do business with or from the church. I am not buying a unknown list of email addresses of people that are way out of my area or would not be tangible.”

What a fascinating topic and it brought up very different responses. One member said “it sounds like you are walking, or running into this with way faster than the normal guy would. Why wouldn’t you use those list’s to your advantage?

If you have permission to use those e-mail list’s, USE THEM. Basically free advertising, come up with a standard page and mass e-mail it, and see what happens.”

Another had an opposing view and shared “this may just be my pet peave but I refuse to give business to or any affiliated business that spams me. I am quite sure there are also legalities in using such a list. I have no doubt you are allowed to use them at work but if you take them to use for your business you are essentially stealing the addresses for your own gain which again is just bad business if you ask me. I would be honest and ask if you can use them at the least. If they say no then there is your answer.”

As we see, this topic can go either way when it comes to public opinion on it. Take these thoughts into consideration if you ever find yourself in a situation where you can reach out to a database of email contacts and know the results can vary widely.

I landed a few medium size commercial snow plow accounts for this winter and have some good leads on summer work. I will be pushing for residential lawn care very heavily at the beginning of next year. My feeling is that my company WILL be successful in both residential and commercial accounts.”

How do you feel you were able to land your initial snow plow accounts? Did you happen to know the decision makers or are did it come down to just being good at sales? Do you have any advice for others looking to land commercial snow plow accounts in their area? I am sure others would appreciate any insight you have.

“Landing the commercial accounts last year was just luck I guess. I am sure it had a lot to do with my approach and attitude for wanting to do the work. I did not know any of the decision makers when I first made contact. You need to spend a great deal of time to find who is really in charge. Sometimes I will spend hours making phone calls just to try and get some contact information and that is just the start or trying to land a commercial account. I have one here in the area that I have been working on for two years now and have not landed any business so far. I will keep trying however because I want the account.

As far as advice for landing commercial snow plowing accounts I would recommend that you try and find someone who knows someone connected with the facility you are trying to land. These guys and gals get so many phone calls for services that if they don’t know you chances are you will not get to first base with them. I find that having a referral is the best way to make contact. It gets your foot in the door and then the rest is up to you. Depending on the type of commercial account it is you might need to be available 24/7 during the winter months. There is a lot of prep work and a lot of behind the scene work that you need to do in order to perform a professional job.

This year has been very tough to break into commercial accounts. I had two large accounts that I have been working on for the past two years and I got the impression that I was in for this year. I got this feeling from conversations that I was having with the persons in charge. I spent three weeks trying to get a detailed quote together for one of them. They wanted the service quoted several different ways. Turned out that both told me they were staying with their current company. My felling is that with the economy as bad as it is this year you have people trying to land accounts just to try to survive. Most are under bidding and I would guess that most will fall flat on their face when the time comes to service the accounts. You can not do a large account with a small pickup truck and a 7 foot plow. One other piece of advice is that when I look at a possible account I try and decide how much I want to profit on the account before I put a bid together and stick by my guns. I will not take an account for little profit just to get the account.”

I think you are touching on a topic many readers don’t understand. Can you give us a little advice on how best to go about doing this? Do you just go to each customer and knock on the door and ask them if they need any help or what is the best way to do this?

He responded “No, not generally, this client had requested for me to book them in for a fall cleanup when I had trimmed their hedges this summer. I wanted to find out when they felt it would be a good time as our leaves here this fall have been late falling (some trees already bare and others still green … even if they are the same variety) which has made it difficult to determine when to schedule. While I was there we were talking about snow, I recalled them say that the wife had a tough time keeping the sidewalks clear last year, so I mentioned that I had a few openings for winter contracts and wanted to give them the opportunity to take advantage of one of the available spots before I filled it with someone else (creating a sense of urgency). I do make a point of at least once a month, talking to clients while I am on site working to see if there are other things that they would like to have taken care of. It gives me an opportunity to say ‘Oh, I do that or I know of someone that does that.’ It has opened many options for me this year.”

What other things have popped up over time by asking customers if they needed any other services?

When a customer brings up a service that you need to sub-contract out, how do you deal with a sub contractor? Do you take a fee or do you just let them handle it all on their own with no referral fee?

“It has varied as to what the need. Just recently I had a lady asking about trimming her large trees. I only have the equipment to handle hedges and smaller ornamental shrubs, so I recommended one guy in town that does large trees. Another customer asked about some stucco work repair. That one I didn’t know of anyone who offers that service, none the less, it opens the door. I did have one day, while chatting with a client, hear her comment about a latch that was seemingly broken on her screen door … I looked at it very briefly and it was not broken, just out of place and only required removing and adjusting the clasp and put back on. I told her to grab a screwdriver and I fixed it in a matter of minutes. Didn’t charge her either … figured she’ll stick with me forever that way. To me, having a good long term client is worth more than just the money at the time.

I haven’t charged any referral fees either.”

What % of added work do you feel comes from you pointing out a potential problem and what % comes from asking the customer if they have any issues you could help resolve?

“That is a good question. I really haven’t kept track, but I would estimate it would be about 5 to 10% … which is not a whole lot, but then again, I’ve been able to pick up seasonal contracts from such, which in the bigger picture means growth in business.”

5 to 10% added work is nothing to take lightly. Many business advisors would suggest a small business not grow more than 20% each year. So by asking your current customer base if they need help with anything else, you already could gain half the business growth you should be shooting for that year already taken care of! To be able to grow like that from your current customer base is fantastic. As we all know, it’s easier to sell more to your current customer base than it is to reach out and find new customers.

A new member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his experience with partnerships. He wrote “hello all. I just started my new business last year. Landed two large commercial snow plowing accounts with a partner. We all know how partnerships turn out. Anyway my wife and I started our own business now. I have learned a lot from this site and enjoy visiting when time allows.”

I’d love to hear some of your insight into the partnership experience. What advice you would have for others considering getting into one and if you could do it all over again, what you would do to resolve issues before they happen?

“About partnerships: I have a lot of considerations and opinions about partnerships. My first bit of advice would be that if you do not have to get into one, then don’t.

By this I mean unless it is totally necessary for you to have a partner I would recommend going it alone. Although having a partner can be a motivator for both parties, your best bet is to start your own company and hire some part time help if you need it. Get everything in writing up front and I mean everything. From who will handle the paperwork (sending quotes, billing, communications, etc…) to which accountant you will be hiring. Not having every aspect of the business in writing can only lead to misunderstandings and possible legal action in the future.

Until you have things in writting between the partners, do not do any work as a company. Make sure that you get a business agreement made up and signed before you start. Not doing so can cost you thousands of dollars.

Of course this is just basic advise and there is a lot more to it. I would just say be careful who your going into business with and think about if it is worth having a partner or not.”

When you were getting your partnership going, why do you feel you decided to go with a partnership at first? There must have been some sort of allure to attract you to that business model.

Are you happy you went through that experience because it brought you to where you are now or was it a dead end experience where you feel you wasted time?

“The partnership was started out of my desire to get into the business. My ex-partner had been doing it for about 6 years already. We were discussing how he wanted to expand but did not have the time to do so and I wanted to start into the business so it seemed like a great opportunity. The deal was that I would try to land commercial snow management accounts for the new partnership venture then we would start a new company to do snow management and lawn care. Well as luck would have it I managed to land two large commercial accounts within the first month of trying. The problem as I see it now was that the week after I landed the accounts it snowed and last year was a bad year weather wise here. We were out every other day for most of the winter. This left no time to get everything in writing. At the end of the snow season my partner stopped communicating with me. Would not return phone calls and such. I started hearing from people that he was like this and not the right type of person to get involved with.

Long story short, he stole one of the accounts off “our” company for his own and got us fired from the other account. So now I am starting over on my own. Do not need a partner nor would I get into another partnership again. This is why I said that everything has to be in the form of a business agreement just in case it does not work out.

I don’t feel the partnership was a waste of time, if anything it was a learning experience as is anything in life that you do. The one thing that bothers me the most about the way it turned out is that as most people in the industry know, landing a large commercial account is not the easiest thing to do but once you have them you can keep them for a very long time provided you are doing a professional job. And the amount of money you can generate for your company is great.

I have already landed a few medium size commercial accounts for this winter and have some good leads on summer work. Will be pushing for residential lawn care very heavily at the beginning of next year. My feeling is that this company WILL be successful in both residential and commercial accounts.”

Fascinating insights that I hope will stand as a warning of what to look out for should you decide to go down the path of a business partnership.

Another member shared his 11 rules with us and said “you could either get some door hangers and hang them without talking to someone or if you insist on talking to them (probably the best option) still take something along for them to look at.

Whatever your approach, follow some basic rules. These rules are not to poke fun at anyone or be funny. You would be surprised how little things are overlooked.

1. Brush your teeth. People will be distracted by your bad breath and will just be trying to get you out of there instead of really listening. If you are a smoker (I am) carry some mints. I wouldn’t recommend gum as someone smacking gum can become distracting as well. A mint can fit comfortably in your jaw without them even noticing that you have something in your mouth.

2. Since we are on smoking….This is a touchy subject for some. I am a smoker! I have rights! However, despite how ‘unfair’ it may be for someone to pass judgement on you for being a smoker, it is inevitable. I don’t smoke when doing business!

3. Keep noise down. I know when I am on my way to a potential sale, I like to pump myself up with some music. When you arrive at someones house however, have it turned down. Better yet, when you are in a neighborhood, don’t blare your music. This is most unprofessional.

4. Dress professionally. I understand, we cut grass. I’m not saying where a suit and tie to the door. That would appear ridiculous to people anyways. What I do recommend though is investing $20-$30 in a nice polo shirt with your company’s name and/or logo on it. Tuck it in. It looks much neater.

5. Don’t skip houses! This one hits a personal note with me. A buddy was with me passing out door hangers one day. I happened to look over at him and he was walking by a house without hanging one. When we got to the end of the block, I asked him why he didn’t hang a flyer there. He said “Well, their grass was well maintained, they probably have someone they are happy with already.” The next block he does the same thing and I notice. This time a lady happens to be walking out to sit on her porch as he is walking through her yard, passing her up. She is looking at us like “what the hell is going on out here?” I walked over and talked to her, giving her a flyer. That was the last door hanging he ever did with me. I think it makes you look unprofessional. I’m not saying the trailer in the middle of town with 15 cars on blocks that haven’t been mowed around in 5 years should be on your list to hit but don’t pass people by because their grass looks nice.
6. Once you knock on the door or ring the bell, take a step or two back. Don’t crowd the doorway so that you are in their face. Once they open the door, you can step closer with your hand out to shake hands as you introduce yourself. (if they don’t reach for the hand, I always liked to look at my hand as if there was something on it, wipe it on my pants and reextend, this usually gets a smile at least out of them)

7. Hand them something right away. If they are holding something of yours, they won’t be able to close the door in your face. Simply hand them a flier with a list of duties you can perform, after shaking their hand.

8. Name drop. Use your closest customers names in conversation. Example, you cut Julie Smith’s grass, she lives a block over. Say, we take care of Mrs. Smith’s lawn over here (and point in that direction) on Hemlock St or whatever street she lives on. When they see that their neighbors have already instilled their trust in you, they are more likely to do the same.

9. Practice. Practice your pitch in front of a mirror. It doesn’t have to be word for word and if you mess up the customer will never know because they don’t know your ’script’ in the first place.

10. Be natural. Don’t sound like you are reading a script. Just relax.

11. If they are rude. Be polite. Give them a card and say ‘thanks for your time, I would like for you to do me a favor. If you know someone who may need my services, please pass my card along.’ This shows professionalism.”

Another member shared “handing something to the home owner when they open their door is critical and makes a world of difference. Although I generally don’t go door to door, I have a new employee that loves doing it and he closes sales on just about every call he visits. When I do this, I simply say good morning/afternoon, my company is in your area and I noticed……We offer this service along with a host of professional lawn care, may I leave you with my card, our estimates are free. We have references in your area if you wish. Just give it some thought as I am not here to obtain a reply today.

That last line is something I started about a month ago and it really works. It takes all the sales pressure off the prospect and for whatever reason gains a quick trust.”

That’s what a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum was interested in knowing when he asked “I have a question regarding giving out a Christmas Gift to my customers.

A company I used to work for would give out pointsettias as a Christmas gift to their customers. I thought what a great idea, but last year I ran out of money so I just sent Christmas cards instead. All of my customers returned the next year. I was thinking about doing it this year I have 20 customers and it would cost me about $200 to $300 dollars to do it. If everyone returned from last year is this and unnecessary expense? What do you guys do or think about it?”

One lawn care business owner suggested “I think that everyone has their limits … What one company feels would be a small amount to spend on a customer, another company might find that overkill. I think that showing your customers that you care about them is the most important thing to keep in mind.

I believe the real trick is that you KNOW your customers to have a successful campaign.

Lets say you like the idea of the pointsettias and send your customers one. Most customers might be very appreciative and sing your praises, but would you send one to a customer that doesn’t celebrate Christmas but rather some other faith’s traditions? That customer might not be so impressed that you sent them something at Christmas.

I’ve commented numerous times about taking a small amount of time and chatting to your customers and what I have gained from a quick chat (a referral, a snow blower, winter contract). I also have a very good sense as to many of my clients habits, beliefs, and even their dogs names just from quick short chats. If a customer of mine is a daily patron at the local coffee shop with their buddies, then maybe a gift card for a couple of cups is a great gift, not to mention that it would stir a bit of conversation when they brag to their buddies that the lawn guy paid for the coffee that day.”

Another suggested “A personalized Christmas card will suffice for most customers.

In some cases, you will find that large gifts are frowned upon by your customers. I used to send gift baskets to the purchasing managers of our larger commercial and government contract clients. The cost of these baskets ran about $75 each. After the second year of doing this, I learned that such gifts can be considered bribes for future work. This is improper for government contracts, especially, and can get your company barred from bidding in subsequent years.

So keep all of this in mind and give wisely.”

A third business owner shared “I know what we do around xmas time. My wife bakes of a bunch of cookies and such and we put them into a tin and give out to our regular clients and the rest of them get cards and a discount card for their next invoice.”

I posed this question to a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum who has multiple business operations going on in several states and he shared a lot of great insight I wanted to pass on to you.

I asked, a big issue we see with small businesses is when they try to make the jump from working on their own or working with a small crew, to branching out and trying to operate with a second crew.

You can only be in one place at a time so you can never know for sure if everyone is doing the best they can and representing the company in the best light.

How does a business owner rise above these issues and difficulties? How important is it for the business owner to go from working in their business to working on their business?

What’s the best way to make this transition from one man show to multiple employees and then manage it all?

He responded “The way that I try to combat the problem of not being able to be in two places at once is to make myself available to my customers as much as is possible. At the bottom of every page on my website is the following quote:

‘If our staff is on the telephone with another customer and you are having trouble getting through to them, or if you have a question and can’t find the answer elsewhere, please feel free to call me on my personal line, seven days a week, from Noon until midnight, EDT.

I own this company and your satisfaction is my number one priority.’

If you call our toll free number and listen to our automated PBX system’s greeting, you will hear that one of the extensions is directly to my cell phone. It states that I can be reached any day of the week, including weekends and holidays. There is also an extension for customers to leave messages regarding our website as well as our employees performance. You can never trust the employee to tell you the truth about their interactions with the customers. That sounds cold, but it’s true, like it or not.

If you have an employee who is not treating the customers as they should, give them one chance (maybe 2) and then get rid of them. They will do nothing but hurt your business and your businesses reputation in the long run. Keep in mind that NOBODY is irreplaceable. Don’t ever get the feeling that one of your employees is so knowledgeable about your business that you can’t get by without them. The worst that will happen when you shed your company of them is that you will have to spend the time to train a new employee. I assure you that will be less expensive than allowing an employee with a bad attitude to hang around. I speak from experience. I actually fired one of my step daughters because of poor job performance. As you can imagine, after that happened, everybody else straightened right up. I guess they all thought, “Damn…..he would fire his own daughter, what would he do to us?”

The fact is that I would not fire a person for something trivial, but regardless who the employee is, I have to look out for the welfare of the business FIRST. Without the business, neither I or the employees get paid.

As for making the transition from a one man show to a multi employee operation goes, just don’t get ahead of yourself. Only hire enough people to cover the contracts that you have. Don’t hire based on “expected” contracts. The hardest decision is whether to ramp up the advertising and then hire people, or to hire people to prepare for the ramped up advertising campaign. I always advertise first, and hire after I see the results of the advertising. You may miss out on a contract or two because you can’t get to the job as quickly as the customer would have liked, but that’s better than hiring a bunch of employees and then finding that the advertising isn’t going as well as you had expected, and now you still have to pay these new employees for their time.”

One said “We’ve gained lawn care business in pretty every marketing campaign we have taken, except for two. The first being our church bulletin.

We did not get a single call from being in it and it was pretty pricey. The second is a recent parade that we did. We also haven’t received any calls but I don’t regret the parade since I think it was good exposure.”

Another seemed to find interactions with his customer base to be a bad thing. He wrote “I have learned that befriending the customer is bad!

I get stuck on the phone talking about LIFE instead of the money they owe me. Eventually they start using me and saying things like they have already paid one of my workers money so they don’t owe me anything, when I’m the only friggen worker!

I’m almost happy I lost several customers due to grass barely growing, it makes my life less stressful, but for a price!
I hate speaking with customers, hate hate hate! Sometimes you give obvious hints that you need to GO, but they ignore them. Some I have tried:

1. I left my phone in the truck, I’m expecting a call (doesn’t work)
2. I have to get to a property in 5 minutes (doesn’t work)
3. I have a lot to do today, I really have to finish (doesn’t work)

This one customer I have is really slow or something. Once you get friendly, you are LOSING. Be blunt & aggressive ALWAYS. Next year I’m putting on my game face, no more smiling! I have customers calling me just to chat!”

A third shared “post card mail drops didn’t work at all for me, even though they were to a very specific area. I sent out 7,500 cards and did not get a single call.

Hiring a marketing company to design our post cards, total waste of money, I have since designed 7 for target services, I didn’t realize how easy it was and it only cost me my time, maybe an hour each.

Printing, I found a site on the web that is a fraction of what I paid the first time and the quality every bit as good or better. Shop around there are good prices to be had.

Focus on mowing only - this was the plan when I started getting ready in January. It would have been a disaster if I didn’t realize in April I would starve. Although I had already bought the gear, I quickly researched other jobs we could do, bought gear the small guys didn’t have and never looked back.

Deck construction - mainly it’s the same as mowing, seems every guy with a hammer and a trunk offers to build decks.

To be honest that’s about it. I went with a method I used for years in my other business where I ask clients for ideas of services they need. I write the idea down and ask clients if they would be interested in me performing them. If I get positive feedback I then advertise the service and then buy the equipment. So far this concept has been working perfect for me.”

One last lawn care business owner shared “my restaurant place mat ad hasn’t brought in one caller since they are out. I can’t figure out why,  maybe because their hiding the ad behind the napkin when you sit down? Also my phone tear off tabs ad flyers have a lot of tear offs gone off but I haven’t got any calls from them either. Maybe people lose that piece of paper/number?”

Consider these ideas when you are coming up with your next lawn care business marketing concepts. Knowing what has and hasn’t worked for others may help you save a lot of money on marketing campaigns that just don’t work.

Here is a great example of this, a member wrote “I did a drain job this week by myself as we are short staff, it was one of the worst yet as the clay content was, well like cement.

I had the rock dumped in the clients driveway while I transported it with the tractor, the client didn’t have access to their front stairs for a while but this customer wanted to get some coffee. I offer to give her a ride up to the back of the house on my tractor, as it was raining and the front bank is very steep, she loved it.

This is one of those jobs that could have gone south fast, due to it being so wet and the heavy clay. It made a major mess of their side and back yard, I involved them as much as possible and everything worked out and they understood. The staff finished sodding yesterday and they wrote saying they are very happy, have to drop down today for payment and see the job.”

That was a very creative and fun way to get the customer involved on the job site and to show that you care about your interaction with them. How do you feel this interaction effected their attitude towards you and the job?

“I am including a picture her husband took. He was sitting on the front porch. He is a retired military veteran with really bad knees. I was coming down front and she was trying to climb up the lawn and he was laughing, I yelled grab a camera and I will give her a ride. I told her to get on when I was down on the pavement and she jumped at the chance, which surprised me.

Lawn Tractor Ride

How did this change the client’s attitude? This was morning two. The back yard was a mess and she has quite a temper and use of the English language. It seemed after this she was really cool and even came out to help. I found things that I could get her to do and praised her work, in the end everyone was happy.

I went by today for payment and they offered me to stay for lunch which I did, everyone is pleased with the results.”

Lawn care marketing secrets

He introduced himself by saying “My name is David and I own a printing company located in Illinois.  I started in 1999 and have over 20 years of printing experience. Right now I do printing for over 30 landscaping businesses in my area. I design and print, flyers, doorhangers, forms, envelopes, letterheads, business cards also design logos for them.”

With all your printing experience, have you found landscapers or lawn care professionals tend to choose one marketing method over another? For instance, do they prefer, door hangers, flyers, postcards? Or what is your view which works best?

He replied “flyers with pictures seem to be the most popular item with lawn care businesses. You want to have a good looking flyer with coupons. Most of my landscapers use two color flyers because of the cheap price. ”

What advice do you have for new start up businesses? You have been in business now for many years and must have seen a lot. Where do you think that most tend to trip up and how can they avoid those problems?

“Most businesses fail because either they don’t attract a sufficient number of new customers, or they let their existing or current customers slip away. If you really want your business to be successful, you’ve got to make getting and keeping customers your number one priority.

Let me put it another way. When was the last time you heard of a company going out of business because they had too many happy, satisfied customers buying from them? My guess is, never!

On the other hand, you can probably name quite a few businesses that are no longer around because they didn’t have enough people buying from them, coming back for more and referring others to them.

And that’s where marketing comes in. Marketing is the ability to get your message to others about the goods and services you offer, in such a manner that it compels them… nearly forces them to do business with you. It is one of the most fundamental, yet misunderstood areas in business today. Also most businesses don’t look at marketing as an investment to grow their business and a tax write-off.

Effective marketing is critical to the success of any business. With ineffective marketing, your prospects may never find out about the products or services you offer.”

When it comes to keeping customers, what have you found that keeps them around? It would be fascinating to hear your insight on this topic because they might be able to be utilized in this industry as well.

Also do you find the marketing message trying to attract new customers is different from trying to keep current customers?

“CUSTOMER SERVICE!!!

Everyone is in the business of customer satisfaction. The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer. All business activities must be focused on this central purpose.

You keep customers by delivering on your promises, fulfilling your commitments and continually investing in the quality of your relationships. If your job is customer satisfaction, your real job title is problem-solver. Offer your customers a long-term relationship, then do everything possible to build and maintain it.”

Thank you so much for the great insight!

HOA lawn care jobs

Having customers in this neighborhood is definitely a plus. About 40% of the neighbors hire lawn care services. Hopefully, with word of mouth, the signs on our equipment (truck and trailer), examples of our work and the newsletter will help us take work away from the other guys.”

Can you tell us a little about this newsletter you are sponsoring and how it worked out?

They replied “sponsoring the newsletter runs about $35 for printing costs. Our 1/4 page ad is printed on the bottom front page. The newsletter is written by one of the Board of Directors, so I don’t have any impact on how often the letters are published. We did get one client (every other week lawn service) and another to begin in the Spring. So within a month of the first newsletter we sponsored we got 2 mowings and already the ad has paid for itself!”

That is a fantastic idea! If you can pay for the printing throughout the year and say it is a monthly newsletter, that would  $420 for the entire year. You could consider other ways to further promote your business in the newsletter by writing articles that talk about seasonal lawn care issues. You could also promote a monthly contest where you take photos of the nicest home with the best manicured property.

Lawn care business newsletter ad

All these ideas help create content the writers of the newsletters could desperately use! Another thing to keep in mind is if this works for one home owner’s association, you could consider covering the printing costs for others as well. This would be a great way for you to expand your lawn care business.

Pressure washing

He wrote “do you guys offer pressure washing? There are many homes in my area with vinyl siding that I have seen could use a cleaning. When it comes to purchasing new equipment, I have this rule of thumb whereby if I have 3 clients in a three week period ask for a service I do not currently offer, I buy the equipment.

We have a lot of soft and hardwoods here in my area and as such, vinyl siding and decks are prone to moss & mold.

Over the past few weeks I have been spraying an organic moss killer which works perfect however some customers wanted us to come back when the moss was dead (48 hours +/-) and pressure wash also. So I bought a commercial 4,000 psi, 8 hp engine unit. This thing is amazing. It came with a 50 and 100 foot hose and has 6 attachments for the head.

The moss killer I have been using works excellent however it’s expensive. This pressure washer however is a much faster way of doing it and a fraction of the cost yet I am charging the same. I have 6 more jobs to do next week, I wanted to do it myself today to find out what it was like, did I price it right, what to do and what not to do. I will tell the staff Monday when we have our staff meeting and explain the process and to inform current clients should they see a need while at their home.

Although the pressure washer was a bit on the expensive side at $1,290.00, I did enough homes this afternoon and evening to pay for it and have a few jobs yet to do, the thing must run on fumes as I ran it for 8 hours and it’s still half full.

One client gave me $100.00 to strip the paint of their deck floor so he could paint. There is one tip that is pretty extreme and it peeled the paint off in minutes. I think it took me 40 min to do a 16 X 24 deck.

This unit is on a very nice cart with wheels, it’s heavy at 225 pounds. I am going to add a second washer tomorrow. I did 7 jobs yesterday afternoon and evening. The first one was big $$$, the house is in the upper middle class, it was a 40 X 30 house two stories, took me almost two hours, I charged $465.00. Then the customer came out and asked me to do the decks, they were 12 X 16 each and I charged $125.00 each. One was a ground deck the second was on the 2nd floor. Then he wanted the driveway done, god I thought I would never get out of there. The driveway was a double, about 30 feet long, and I charged $100.00. Afterwards his neighbor came over and wanted his deck done 14 x 20 so I charged $175.00.

When I was finally done I left to do a deck covered in moss not far away and basically spent the rest of the day doing decks and siding on that street. It was a beautiful day, about 85 degrees so there were a lot of people out doing yard work, even I was impressed with the results. You would want a fairly nice day temp wise as you do get a bit wet, sure felt good though as it was hot for our area.

Anyhow, I am going to start advertising this service, you may want to consider it too.”

Another business owner asked “how do the shingles hold up to the pressure washing? On an older roof, could I end up with a repair bill?”

He responded “the unit I has has adjustable pressure and several nozzles, I would use a 25 degree nozzle at 2,000 p.s.i. So far there has been no damage. It’s amazing how it makes it look new again. Personally I would stay clear of the big box store units and yes I do have one, it’s good enough to clean the mowers, mower decks, ATV, cars etc however for the commercial side, but for these kind of jobs I would suggest you buy a commercial unit.”

A third lawn care business owner shared his insights and said “I have been doing pressure cleaning for years and it is a great money maker and easy to do. I have steady clientele who what me to pressure wash just about everything to do with their house and property. My prices vary depending on the job but mainly I do whole houses. For a house from 1k - 2k sq. ft. I charge $150 -200, 2k-3k $200-300. I also at times get requests while I’m there to do driveways and sidewalks. I charge $150-$250 due to the fact that it takes more time, believe it of not.
I buy pool chlorine in 2.5 gal. containers and dilute it with water to do pool enclosure that are white and I charge $100-200 per time. Once I give the enclosure a detailed cleaning I offer a quarterly service $75 - $125 to come back and maintained it so it stays looking good.

I get a lot of algae and mold on house and it comes off real easy. Sometimes a little elbow grease is needed.”

Should you include a discount

Here is an interesting insight from a lawn care business owner who said “discounts make the hair stand on the back of my neck most of the times. When I see a discount advertised, I wonder to myself, why did the company rip me off the first time???? No kidding….A few years ago I bought a set of tires for my car, I forgot what I paid, but they were top of the line. Around three weeks later I heard on the radio the company was having a sale, keep in mind this is a national company. I went in and priced the same tires, almost two hundred less than I paid! I handed them a receipt and asked about a partial refund, they said no.

This has happened to me at big box stores as well and it makes my blood boil. If someone is going out of business that is one thing and I have no issue with the big sales then but other than that it really makes me mad.

Anyhow my point is, my price is my price. I don’t move, never have and never will. If someone pushes too hard for a discount, I simply walk and I do not turn back. I have more than enough work and I don’t need problem customers. I have had clients call me back changing their mind after I bid their property because I wouldn’t give them a discount. That is fine, I can move on from them. I had this one call, where a guy called me a name because I would not take cash and give him a 25% discount because he ‘knew people.’ That simply pissed me off. I have never in my life had a customer have such an attitude and I suspect the job although small would have been trouble.

I visited a customer this morning who found my website based on a new search word I did three weeks ago. I know because I asked, it ended up in a two hour visit and ten grand in work. I have no idea how in the heck I will get all this work done before snow. I hired 6 school bus drivers to help part time and they will work for me between picking up the kids, then after their afternoon run they come back and work until dark. I hired two people through social services, a friend works there and I thought this would help some people in need. I have a friend there who knows me and how hard we work so he does the job screening. Last week in addition to this I had four temp staff from an agency.”

Very interesting, Ok so then maybe it is better to simply have a list of seasonal services you offer in your marketing material. Some of these services, a home owner may not even be considering at the moment but when they see it listed, it might spark something and then they might say, ‘hey that is something I should do.’

He replied “I think the short answer is simple, what can I offer?

As a home/yard/grass provider I think we tend to sell ourselves short. There are so many chores we can do and do well that the client doesn’t want to or can not do so why not offer it.

I have to ask are you stuck in a rut, thinking only lawn service? If so, my experience is you are overlooking a lot of potential income. Look around the clients’ property. I know there are many things we all can offer, so offer it. Then focus next on the referrals. Forget offering the discounts as you won’t be able to keep up with all the work you will get.”

So keep in mind discounts may be an avenue to pursue when you are just getting started. Be forewarned that this kind of marketing may attract potential problem customers. As you grow, you may want to phase the discounts out.

One business owner suggested “here are a few things you can do:

fall lawn care marketing

• Drop off cards to homes that you see who could use your services.
• Drop off cards to homes that have a lot of hardwood trees for vacuum mulching service.
• Put an ad in a small community newspaper.
• Put cards on those outdoor mail boxes.

I have already started a month before, hand changing the key word on my website, for example for Fall I changed them in mid August. At the moment I am receiving two inquiries a day on average and they are right where I want them. The inquiries are coming in from the heart of the rich end of the city and the web hits are for leaf collection. I study key words, use a software to see how I rank against the competition then tweak it to get a higher ranking. It works perfect and doesn’t cost me anything other than my time.

At the moment we have 73 leaf jobs, I want 100+ but it’s still early.

When I visit I am picking up a lot of other services, pressure washing, gutter cleaning if it’s not too high, pruning, removing stumps, top dressing, and a lot of spraying. Work will generally not come to you, you have to go find it, I think this and a few other things we did this Summer made the company an amazing success this year.”

How big of a deal is changing key words on a website? I think this is something that is often over looked.
Would this be considered changing the theme of the website to potentially a Fall theme now? Should this be changed every season?

He responded “It’s very, very simple. You just change the meta tags on the site. Sometimes I will change the page description just a little, because my site now has over 7,800 hits since April, it get’s crawled every three or four days. I know this as I run software that emails me when a crawler has checked in on changes to my site.

I personally didn’t change the theme per say as I don’t have time but I have done that in the past with Fall and then changing it to a Christmas theme. I’m not sure if that made a difference on hits.

What I do know is with the changes, I stay ahead of on my website, make a major difference. Within 48 hours of receiving an email from the software that I have been crawled I start getting inquiries. When I check to see what the person may have been searching I see the new keywords have been updated in the search engine. Then I run another software that tells me where I rank in our area for that keyword. If I am fourth or fifth, I run the other sites to see what keywords they are using and how much that word is in their home page content. I then adjust accordingly and within a week I am number 1 or 2. All of this takes less than 30 min of actual time, it’s free.

In general I change a month ahead of a season. I follow along with most department store websites, to see where they are at with their promotions.”

Great advice! Simple, easy and cheap! You can’t beat that.

Used lawn mower

One business owner suggested to stay away from internet classified sites “Stay away from the online classified sites! Here is my view on buying a used mower vs buying a new one from a dealer.

New mower:
PROS: Great warranty, great dealer service, everything is fresh & it won’t have you guessing why it doesn’t work. If you buy used, you’ll have to check every single part of your mower wondering what the heck is the problem because it’s so old or OLDER.

CONS: It’s expensive, though you are getting your money’s worth, plus with a good warranty, you aren’t taking any serious risks. You might as well spend $1,500 & get something that will last.

Online internet classified sites are full of people selling pretty garbage. I’d only buy from such sites if I needed a backup mower, for $50.00… and maybe not even then. There is more work to be done on an old mower & it requires more maintenance. It’s a waste of time & serious money, in my view.”

Another business owner shared “I have been in business for quite some time now and all I do buy is used equipment. I do have two new Stihl FS90R trimmers and a new Stihl 550 blower, but all of the other stuff is used. Bought my truck used, trailer used, Deere M653 52″ zero used and my 36″ cub walk behind used, even bought a Stihl 600 blower just last fall for $150 and it still runs great. You have to shop around and be very, very careful. Try to stay local so you can check out the equipment before you buy.”

A third said “Online classified sites are not all bad, they are just not all good. You have to look at what you are buying. don’t buy anything site unseen. And always buy local. If it does not feel right, then don’t buy it.

This spring I purchased a brand new Great Dane Stander off of an internet classified site. A local dealer had them for sale. I saved 25% off list! I also see a lot of low hour demos for sale from time to time. I would not recommend buying used from a large landscape company. Most machines they sell are junk with a lot of hours and a lot of different people probably operated them.

I have picked up a couple 22″ commercial walk behind mowers for around $125.00 from private parties.
They’re 6.5 hp with bagger and mulching kits. I put new carbs on them and they are like new.

One thing to keep in mind is many new lawn care businesses purchase riders before they purchase their first ZTR. There is an upside to doing this but there is a downside to. I would guess one reason many newer businesses end up with riding mowers versus ZTR mowers is because riders are considerably cheaper than ZTRs. Around here you can buy a new cheap branded rider for around $1,000 or so (depending on the size, obviously), while some of the cheapest ZTRs are about 3 times that. To them it may look like the right option. And it may be the right choice for them at the time.

When I first started, I used a lawn tractor. It wasn’t long after when I bought my used ZTR. The difference that I have seen is that the lawn tractors are not built for commercial use and they were always breaking down. These are consumer mowers and they are built for consumer use. You get what you pay for. If I had my choice between a $1,000.00 new lawn tractor vs a $3,000.00 used ZTR, I would choose the ZTR.”

How to approach lawn care customers

One business owner shared “just recently I wanted to prove a point to an employee about finding new clients and since it’s leaf season and I have two commercial leaf vac units, we went to a street close to where we are working on to experiment with my marketing idea. We had three different postcards. One was for our commercial leaf clean up, one for tree chipping and one for driveway grading.

We walked a street and I did the first 9 or 10 houses. It was an amazing day. Everyone was home. Personally I picked up 9 leaf jobs and two chipping, not bad, almost two grand in work. Now I said to my employee, you take the lead and he did with zeal. We did 6 more houses and he got 4 leaf jobs and one chipping. I said ok that is enough because we will be here over a week and we are already full.

I love cold calling too. It’s all about your approach. Maybe it just comes natural but I find it desperate easy to find work. I look for it as it will not come to us very often. I think this is why many lawn care companies struggle. That’s just my observation.

The area we walked was just your average middle class burbs subdivision, no reason at all I picked this street. We were close to our work site so we agreed. Why not it could be fun! I bet the total time was three hours….then it was back to work.”

Another added “I find it very interesting how everyone can have different results from approaches. In my community, I have had more success from placing an ad in the local morning coffee paper rather than cold calling.

Now to address how to approach potential clients that already have someone doing their property. I don’t concern myself with what the other guys are doing or how they do it. I have always quoted what my service charge would be with a breakdown of what they get for that price. I believe that what I offer may be more expensive than most of my competition, but I go the extra mile when it comes to service. For example, after cutting the grass, I always blow off the sidewalks just to cleanup the property, (oddly most of my competition does not do that) my customers love it.

I also spend time with overseeding bare patches at no extra charge, it is all part of my pricing. Customers see the value in the extras and are willing to pay the extra. When it comes to clients that had someone maintaining their property, that have switched over to my company, I’d say I have had about a 90% success rate. I won’t approach someone that already has someone without them contacting me first as in this small community, I don’t want to get a reputation as someone that steals clients. A great reputation takes time to build but can be destroyed very easily in a small city.

This approach has worked well for me, but as I commented at the beginning, different communities react differently to different approaches.”

I then asked do you ever find yourself driving down a street and seeing someone out and then stop to talk to them? Or do you rather focus on some streets and just walk them, go door to door and see if you can talk to the homeowner and hand them a card?

A business owner responded “both and both work, I even stopped today and handed two ladies a leaf post card while they were walking their dog, they gave me their address on the spot and said call with a quote. I did and got both of them. To me it’s just fun but now I am getting over my head as we will have issues getting this all done plus excavation jobs are coming in every day…..and it’s only the end of October!”

Lawn care truck force muliplier

A lawn care business owner attached a business card holder to the side of his work truck and wrote about what happened next. He said “the card holder works for you when you are not around. At the jobsite, hardware store, buying groceries, the mall…it will hand out your business card for you 24/7, just as long as you keep it stocked up. I put 10 business cards in mine eight days ago now and refilled it up today…seven were missing, I am very pleased.

This product just keeps on working. This weekend I was away and I took my son out to the grocery store. On our way out with the weekly munchies there was a woman reading my truck signage and took a card. As I walked up to the truck she started asking me some prices on mulch. She said she took a card and will contact me on Monday.

About 15 minutes I received my first phone call from a potential customer that took my card while I was out shopping. I now think I need another one for the passenger side. Everyone that owns a business needs one of these.”

Take a lawn care business card

Another member shared his strategy for promoting his services when he’s not on the job site. He wrote “sometimes I leave a trailer on the street after dropping equipment off, especially the 18′ one as I only use it for the excavators and larger tractors, it’s a real pain in the butt to pull around, and grab a shorter trailer, in this case I do leave post cards in a holder on the trailer and some people take one.

If I leave an excavator or tractor at a clients I leave a few post cards and let the client know where they are in case someone drops by, this too has brought us in a few contracts.

Next year I have to get yard signs. It’s a fairly common request from clients, also need to get some 11 X 14 signs printed on a water proof foam core as there are various places around the city where we are allowed to post.

The final place that brings in more inquiries than any other is the outdoor post office boxes that have a roof over them, I have cards in at least 30. I get a lot of inquiries and quite a bit of work this way.”

Great things to consider when you are looking for a way to make your business appear larger than it is and work for you even when you are not working.

He wrote “It’s been a while, here’s an update! I invested in great new equipment this season. An new chainsaw, trimmer, hedge trimmer and blower.

Mow a neighbors lawn

I got an 8hp chipper/mulcher to reduce piles of sticks everywhere. A compressor and tools for removing mower blades. A bench grinder and a 2008 12′ x 6″ aluminum trailer!

See how successful I’ve become? OK, most of it was from a “business loan” from Grampa, but it sure looks like I’m successful! I just got a new account yesterday and did some tree work for her too. I still do 5 yards for realtors that have vacant homes they’re listing too.

This week’s focus: commercial accounts! My realtor buddy is working on some leads for me with properties he has connections with. I got a list of 130 apartment and condo association addresses and phone numbers I’ll be visiting / calling starting next week. It seems to me that it shouldn’t be much harder getting a commercial account than a residential right? Well, a little, but when you figure that one good commercial account could equal 100 residential accounts, its time well spent.

Another thing I’ve been doing is making it a point to talk to neighbors when I mow. Last week when I finished a yard, I mowed the neighbors too, and left a card. That new account I got yesterday? Yep, you guessed it, it’s from the free mow I did! Things are coming around, slowly but surely.”

That is fantastic! This could fall under the topic, barring risk there is no reward. If this works for one client, can you imagine if you promoted it to other neighbors of your customers? You could end up creating a very tight lawn care customer route. Good job in being so creative.

Lawn care worker

Now for those that have a crew, same questions. Is it worth the headache of having a crew? To me it seems that after you pay their salaries, extras, buy more equipment you are not making that much more than if you stayed solo. Am I way off?”

Another lawn care business owner responded “I do lawn maintenance solo for now, for other projects I hire a crew. The answer to your question is that it all depends on what time you start & want to finish. If you’re just starting new customers or have been working their property for a while.

The first week, all my customers had a mess of grass so the day lasted pretty long. Once the first cut was done, personally I like to start my first lawn at 8am, & finish the day before 2pm. With driving around, my route is pretty tight. I can manage about 10 lawns & still have time to relax & have the rest of the afternoon/evening off.

SOLO
Time: 6 hours
Lawns Cut: 10
Income: $30.00 per cut multiplied by 10 cuts = $300 per day

$300 per day x 5 days = $1,500 a week

$1,500 a week x 4 weeks = $6,000 a month

$6,000 a month x by 6 months (season) = $36,000.00 per season.

Your math may differ. It all comes down to how much you charge to mow your lawns, how many mowings you will do per season and what your overhead costs are. You can get a better idea of what your overhead costs are with the online lawn care estimate calculator.

2 MAN CREW
Time: 6 hours
Lawns Cut: 20+
Income: $30.00 per cut multiplied by 20 cuts = $600 per day

$600 per day x 5 days = $3,000 a week

$3,000 a week x 4 weeks = $12,000 a month

$12,000 a month x by 6 months (season) = $72,000.00 per season.
My goal is to have 150 clients & hire help.  We’d have to do 30 lawns a day 5 days a week. 9 hours a day.

When you get started you are better off building your business as a solo operation at first. Make sure you have some sort of back up plan in case you get injured or go on vacation. Have someone who can step in and cover your accounts. As you grow and offer other services such as cleanups you can hire a helper.”

Combine lawn care businesses

Anyway he said he is talking to the phone book salesperson in a few days and was asking if he listed lawn care in his ad if I would want to take the work as a subcontractor. Is this something you guys think I should mess with.

Does anyone have any experience doing subcontract work for other people.

Or do you think I should talk to my step dad about making our two companies into just one general service company. Any suggestions?”

At first glance, you might think it would be a great idea for him to partner up with his step dad and have a larger company, but look at what some of these other business owners had to say. One responded “well there is nothing wrong with being a sub-contractor or subbing out work yourself. However being family, what about if he just sent you the leads. If you are trying to get out for yourself. I wouldn’t combine companies. You may be asking for more headaches in the future by doing that.”

I agree. It is so much easier to keep them separate. This way you both can experiment and see what works best for each of you. Later you could always merge the two companies if you wanted. But you may find you like being captain of your own ship.

Another suggested “I agree, keep them separate. Over the past several months we have on several occasions discussed partnerships and it seems each time the partnerships tended to bring lots of problems. Now on the other hand, I believe that subbing work to each other should be a relatively safe venture. As a business owner, you have the responsibility to make sure you give your work to a honest and reputable contractor. I am guessing you trust your step dad well enough that you feel comfortable with that and if that is the case, stick with him. When subbing to other contractors both of you have the responsibility to make yourselves and each other look good. What you do reflects on yourself and his company and vice-versa.

Hopefully he can help you along with business tips (if needed) and perhaps the day will come where you will buy him out or whatever you all choose.”

A third lawn care business owner shared “keep it separate. I recently sold a business and went through this same sort of thing. I had a family member approach me and wanted to invest 200K into a local company and wanted my recommendation. I didn’t give one but eventually that family member said they wanted to invest it in me. My business was doing well and my ideas were money makers. I researched this in depth and after talking to many people and reading many resources I decided to turn down the investment.

Look at it this way. I am not saying you will do bad work but we all deal with nit picking people that want everything for nothing. Lets say you get some of these nit picking people subbed to you from your father. They called him for a service and he tossed it to you but they call and complain to him if they have a problem. I hate it when I buy something and have a problem and the store tells me to contact the manufacturer “No I gave you my money so you fix it, that’s how I see it.

Will it cause hard feels between your father and you if he gets his phone ringing day and night from a nit picking person? In the long run it may get you a little more work but its not worth the problems it can cause with family.”

In the end he came to a decision and said “I think we will just refer business to each other. I will do his lawn and landscape work and he do all my chemical work, for the time being.”

Estimating and invoicing snow plow customers

I asked him “what advice do you have when trying to come up with a way to charge for snow plowing? I think a lot of members get stuck on this.”

He repsonded “I tell ya I used your snow plow estimate calculator to find out my hardest bids then I would add about 10-15% to all of my accounts. For example I have a customer who has a 500 foot drive way, on top of a windy hill. I quoted them yesterday for per push rate of $55, and clean-up rate of $15. I got the job, and I also added a snow blowing rate in with the job. I do this because my winters are hard and I might need to use a skid steer and blower! So far I tend to find most of my 20 customers want per push rates, which is fine with me. I won’t have to pay them back at Spring time if I don’t get to go out 15 times. The other 5 customers wanted seasonal quotes so what I do and it seems to work for me is take 15 storms and my usual per push rate, and multiply that by 3. This way I don’t get screwed and if we don’t get the full 15 storms which is unlikely. I can refund them or discount their lawn accounts. In the event we get more than expected. The customer goes automatically to per push rate with a written notice!

ex. of written notice:

I.e. Just a reminder per your contract for snow removal. You were quoted 15 storm clean ups, we are now on 15. The date is 12-20-2009 and the winter is not over. You will now be billed per push rate as stated in you contract.

Thank you
John’s Landscape

When you get started I find that it is helpful to find someone in your state who has done this and ask them for their pricing. I used to work for a landscaper in my area and over time I figured out what his prices were, just by telling him on the radio that a non-customer asked to be plowed out and how much to charge. He would always reply that if the drive is bigger (wider) than two blades width, and longer than the truck, charge $25, if it was a tricky drive way to do (meaning long and narrow, or windy) add about $20 more. So that’s how I learned to charge. He would always no matter what, charge a minimum of $20-$25 bucks just to drop the snow plow!”

A lot of guys reading this are starting from the absolute beginning with this. Could you tell us what ‘per push’ means?

Also say it snows 1 ft throughout the day, how many times would you go back to a person’s house to plow it again? Is there any standard you work with to say every X amount of inches I will be back to plow again?

If you are at a house multiple times in a day, how do you bill them? Do you leave an invoice each time or do you bill at the end of the month?

He answered “well with my ‘per push’ rate I include one trip up and one back, So you make two passes in a drive that you have to back up in. I have one for instance say I make a pass to open the drive way underneath the mail box, and one behind the cars parked in it. That I count one push. Then if it stopped snowing an hour after I left and the town plows were still out. I would go back and clean the end of the driveway out again. If they moved the cars I would open the drive up more. I count it as a second time. Any snow that comes after 4pm say, the customer has to call me to go back out. If they do it’s a third time for me. I usually only go twice, depending on a storm.

With getting a foot of snow throughout the day, I start my mornings at 3 am, if it were to snow till 5pm with a foot total, I would plow once in the morning when I make my runs. Then at about 4pm go out to do it again. I wouldn’t go back a third time unless called. I would just wait till the next morning!

And the way I invoice for per push is, I have business cards made up with a date,time, and frequency area on them so I can leave them in a mail box to tell the customer how many times i was there.”

Here is an example of the cards you can download as a template in the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum Post.

Snow plow invoice card

“Some of my customers want to know when i was there and all that jazz so i came up with a Mini invoice i call them. I use business card stock from office max and make my own. The one on the right I use for the customers that get billed monthly. It’s just away to let them know how many times I plowed or mowed.”

How many customers do you feel a one man snow plow operation could service?

“I have so far this season 22 snow plowing customers. It’s good for a beginner, but I would like to be at about 40 or so. I generally get more once the snow flies! Then if I can’t handle them all I have a friend that I can give some to. He will work for an hourly rate at the site and usually does about 15 or so! I also do a lot for a guy I do side work for. He has a lot more driveways and when one of his trucks breaks down, he calls me when he needs help so its a win win situation.”

Your friend has a snow plow on his truck? It sounds like it is really important to network with others in your area that have snow plows so if you get swamped, you can call others for help.

What % do you suggest paying your friend when you need him to help you?

Also, would you have him place the invoice cards in the mailbox or would you handle that still so he wouldn’t know how much you are charging?

Do you have to pay him that day or will he wait till you get paid?

“It is a great idea to get in touch with “friends” I’m not saying competition. Friends who just so happen to have a plow or tractor and blower. I will pay my buddy any where from 15-20 % depending on the drive way. I will always handle the invoices at a later time in the day. Right now I have a agreement that he signed that states, he has to be ready 24/7 during a set date till set stop date. He will be paid at the end of the month, as most of the time so do I. I will sometimes be able to give him $40 or so bucks for gas for the day. But I like to keep a tight schedule so that we can move on. If for some reason he is late getting out and I get a call from customers, I will deduct from his monthly pay. Which so far I haven’t had to do.”

Lawn Care Marketing

One lawn care business owner wrote “how often do you stop and talk to a customer who may have a lawn or other issue you could fix and explain how you could cure the problem for them? When you see another provider at a place and let’s say their quality doesn’t meet yours, do you ever talk to the home owner to see if they are satisfied? Very, very few people will come to you unless one of their friends have told them about you, you need to go to them.”

He responded “I don’t do any of that but it may not be a bad idea. I have thought about walking around and knocking on doors whose yard is in despair. I’m not sure I would feel right trying to steel a client away from someone ells by waiting until they leave and seeing if the customer is satisfied. Maybe it’s a last resort but I am not sure I feel good about that.”

I then asked if that is really stealing a customer or is that giving the customer a choice and a member suggested “take this for what it’s worth, I am in this to make money, if it was a neighbor who mowed a lawn across the street and I knew I would do a better job I would be across the street and I would get the account. This is business my friend, people are not going to track you down.

By dropping cards on properties that needed a service that we offered, I would estimate it generated me well over $200,000 in business this year, that is not pocket change.

Not being critical but step out of the box, up to the plate and hit a few home runs, the first few might be awkward but if you want the ship to come in, don’t wait go after it as it’s there waiting for you.”

Another business owner shared “Don’t limit yourself to problem yards (those in disrepair or the guy fighting with his lawn mower).

Target nice yards too. Prospective clients with nice lawns know how much work it takes to keep them nice. They are proud of their lawns and willing to pay a good price to keep them looking good.

Talk to them. If you’re just starting out, ask what their secrets are. If they do the work themselves, point out areas where you can be of service (pulling weeds, raking leaves). Once your foot is in the door, and you prove yourself, you can turn them into regular customers.

It’s a mistake to only target bad yards. Remember: Great customers beget great customers.”

I asked what is better though, targeting nice yards or messy ones and I got this opposing view “if you want to make money and get your name on the street fast, start with the lawn from hell and turn it into a golf course, I have done it many times which is why our growth is nuts this year.

I am not interested in a customer with a very nice looking lawn, a nice landscape or a very nice driveway. I feel it is wasting my time and theirs as I would be shocked if they would even talk to me and if it’s not broke they won’t fix it.

The reasons I have found most lawns are messy or need help is because the homeowner has not used the right products. They generally they do not overseed. They had grubs or cinch bugs at one point and didn’t take the time to find out how to bring it back. Poor quality lawn cutting can have a negative effect as well as there might be trees that have fallen, the customer had a quote but it was too expensive.

The target market for me is middle and upper middle class, generally speaking they just do not have time but they would like to to look nice.

If a yard is full of junk I would never stop, the only clean up jobs we do is leaves, branches and trees.”

Start up lawn care business

In this discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, I asked an entrepreneur who owns many landscape trailer outlet stores, what he thought were the biggest issues why new start up lawn care businesses fail. He is in a great position to meet and talk with many new lawn care business owners and he has seen quite a few fail. Here are six important issues he shared with me “I do interact with a great many start up businesses. The biggest reason that I normally see for start up business failures is the business owner trying to treat a start up business like an established multi-million dollar corporation. By that I mean that some owners think that they absolutely must have all the trappings of a corporate executive. They go out and rent or buy a building to locate their office in. They then buy a high dollar desk and enough electronics to run NASA just so that they look important when people visit. While all of that looks nice, it doesn’t contribute one dime to the bottom line. For my part of their spending, some will buy a completely decked out trailer and spend $15K to $30K on it when they could have gotten by just as well with a $4K trailer until their company was healthy enough for something bigger and flashier. Though I love the business, I don’t need the money badly enough to try to talk a customer into buying more trailer than they really need.

When I started my first business, I was on a shoe string budget. I never bought anything that I didn’t absolutely have to have for the business. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t scrimp to the point that the customers looked at the business and thought “This guy will just waste my time”, but I didn’t try to look like the CEO of Microsoft either.

The single biggest pitfall in my opinion is getting to the point that you hire people to take care of every aspect of your business. As they say, nobody will run your business like you will run your business. Nobody else, no matter how much you pay them, has the same amount of incentive to make your business flourish. Never let go of the reins. Always pay attention to the way that your company funds are being spent. Don’t trust your managers to do it all.

Customer service is another HUGE thing to keep up with……especially in the “good times”. People tend to be less customer service oriented in the “good times” because they get comfortable with the large amount of business that they are doing and think to themselves, “what the hell…..I don’t need to bother myself with this problem customer. He’s only one person. I don’t really even need his business.” That’s the WRONG ANSWER. You may not need his business today, but the “good times” will eventually go away and you’ll wish that you had that customer back. No matter how good the times are, EVERY BUSINESS experiences “bad times” too. Besides that, most people are the same when it comes to their customer experience. If you treat them well, they will probably tell a couple of people. If you treat them badly, they will tell a couple of thousand people. Do yourself a favor and treat your customers the way that you would want to be treated.

It seems that the guy buying the least expensive product will inevitably be the guy who causes you the most problems and has the most complaints. The guy who buys the $45K trailer from us will be thrilled with it and we will never hear from him again until he’s ready to buy another one. The guy who buys the $850 open deck utility trailer will complain about any and everything. He will demand that you give him this or that for free. He will stand upon your very last nerve. When this happens (and it will) just keep in mind that the guy who bought the $45K trailer obviously has enough money that he doesn’t worry so much about every dollar that he spends. The guy who bought the $850 trailer may have had to save for a year to buy that trailer. His dollar probably means a lot more to him than the guy who bought the $45K trailer. He will therefore be much more “picky” about every little thing. The little utility trailer that he just bought probably means infinitely more to him than the $45K trailer means to the other guy. Keep that in mind when you’re dealing with the guy who bought the cheap product and then proceeded to “pick it apart”. You never can tell……that guy may be the next Sam Walton and if you give his problems (whether real or perceived) the same importance as the guy who bought the $45K trailer’s issues, he may one day be your biggest customer. Even if he never buys another product from you, he will probably send other business your way because you cared about his problems and concerns.

NEVER NEVER NEVER try to push your customer into buying. People HATE the high pressure sales tactic. I forbid my employees from ever being “high pressure”. I also forbid them from hounding the customer. Call the customer back maybe once just so that they don’t think that you’re not interested in their business, but let that be all. Calling the customer every day and hounding them will hardly ever be of any benefit to your company. It will turn more customers away than it gets for you. People do not like to be harassed.

ADVERTISING………..You can have the greatest product or service in the history of man, but if nobody knows about it, they can’t buy it. Advertising is the key to business growth. My advertising budget is in the neighborhood of $10K to $15K per month and I wish that I could afford to spend more on it. I will eventually pour more into it, but that will require not only spending more on the advertising itself, but also on hiring more personnel. When you expand your advertising campaign, you must have the necessary personnel in place to handle the increased calls and work load. It’s always hard to let go of the money to pay for the advertising, especially when you’re a start up company with limited funds, but if you are careful about where you spend your advertising dollars it will repay you a thousand times over. Beofre you say it, I know that a start up company can’t spend $10K or $15K a month on advertising. I started out spending $50 or $100 per month on advertising. You need to start small and as the business picks up steam, then increase the advertising budget to match the business increases. Your hardest decision about advertising will come when those “hard times” that we talked about come (and they will). It’s almost a paradox……..business is down and you’re making less money, but you’re still spending the same anount on your advertising. You WILL want to slash your advertising budget. Try to avoid that if at all possible. As I said earlier, if nobody knows about your product or service, they can’t pay you to provide it to them. If your profits are down and you cut your advertising budget, then your profits are probably going to shrink even more because your company name isn’t getting to as many people who want your service. In times like this, we are forced to spend a great deal of time studying where our advertising dollars are going, and trying to formulate a more cost effective way to get our company name out to more people for the same dollar.

Those are just a few of the literally hundreds of things that people need to think about when trying to get their company off the ground.”

Cheaper price on lawn care

One lawn care business owner wrote “the most recent time when I implemented this strategy was this private community that had a grub issue. I low balled the association president’s property. His place alone was about $8,000 in work. I quoted him $5,200. I then picked up all 6 homes plus a common area. Each property had their own issues and I made up for the low ball quote plus I picked up total property care for three years.

Having vehicles parked on site with a lot of gear was a marketing strategy I was counting on to work and it did. I now have four private communities on this same road, all within a 2 minute drive of each other.

We finished 800 feet of drain and regraded a 2,000 foot road yesterday for one customer. They have had 6 companies in four years try and fix their road. It had never been done properly. The customer sent an email to me last evening and said they have never seen such quality and detailed work and felt they now have the best looking road in the area.

Not only that, but this one new owner wants his lot cleared for a retirement home. The lot if 7 acres, we will clear a road into it, build the road then clear for the house. This job will run $30,000 to $40,000, it’s quite a spread in price however there are a lot of variables and the owner agreed, we will start some this winter if there is not too much snow and finish next April/May.

If we want our foot in the door sometimes there is a cost to pay, in any business. The door could be someone that we could make money off from referrals, could be an area we want into or it could be that business is slow and we want to simply show our stuff.

A one time mow, clean up or whatever can lead to a lot of possibilities, some will work out and some will not, for what’s it worth don’t get hung up on the one’s that don’t work out and don’t be afraid to do it again, we have to take certain chances. I was going to say risk but there is no risk in breaking even or losing a few bucks if you have a plan. A plan in this case would be having a chance to prove what you can do.

I understand some readers may be living hand to mouth due to a tough year, I have been there however I always tried hard to keep my chin up and do whatever it took to get the ball rolling.”

Another business owner shared “I think you have to really read the situation & feel out the potential for future business to make the decision on a case by case basis.

When I 1st started my lawn care business up, a real estate investor who had 30 some residential properties called me because he had them listed with a property management company to get them rented. He didn’t like the price he was paying or the quality he was getting from the lawn service vendor the management company used. He wanted someone else to do the work on just his homes (30+) whenever they were vacant, though the paper work would go through the property management company.

The price he was paying did seem a bit high, but he was also very concerned about the poor quality he had been getting. I gave him a site-unseen per property per cut price for one month, which gave me time to show him my quality & to see each property. It was a basic break even deal for 1 month but I figured it could lead to more work & it was better than driving around to estimate all those properties & possibly not getting any of them.

Well my initial rate was a bit low & the management company called me to let me know that they thought I was nuts & they didn’t want me to think I could win over all of their business. They said ‘we’ve been with our lawn guy for years & we are not changing just because your a little cheaper, so please don’t sell yourself short for this one investor.’ I said I am not & that’s fine, I can respect that & that I knew what I was doing.

At the end of that 1st month I rebid each property for the investor & retained the work at a fair price, by the end of 3 months the management company started calling me for odd jobs or overgrown lawns the other guy didn’t wanna touch. I stated I’ll clean em up if I get to maintain them for you. I wasn’t going to do the hard part so he could make the gravy. They agreed.

Inside of 6 months the companies realtors & property managers were all apparently talking about how much better the yards I maintained looked than the other guys work & my rates were better! I won over the whole account & maintain it still today. They have also referred countless new home owners, tenants, & a couple other property management companies to me. The money I didn’t make that 1st month seems laughable now doesn’t it?”

Chamber of Commerce

But why are new business owners not turning to this organization to learn about business and grow? There are probably a multitude of reasons but I think the biggie is price! Let me jump to a discussion I was having with a business owner from England who summed his view on such organizations when he wrote “I am looking at the local business link organizations, there are others but their fees are prohibitive for me at the moment. I also went along to a BNI meeting the other month and I’m still not sure what to make of them as I found them a bit clique and were more financial investment types who thought they were the muts nuts. Also think the joining price of £900 is a bit of a joke!”

I felt he hit on a topic that drives me nuts. We may have a few differences in our business organizations, in the U.S. as compared to England, but here the big one is the Chamber of Commerce. I think they charge hundreds of dollars to join even when you are just getting started.

I was looking around at different Chamber of Commerce group websites to see how much they charge and I couldn’t find one that offered a price until you filled out a form that included the number of employees you have. You know when they hide the price, it’s going to be high.

I finally found the U.S. Chamber of Commerce site and the cost for the basic membership is $300!!!

It’s ludicrous. This is why I think these groups fail. They need to make the group free for new members for 1 or 2 years if you are a start up. They need to open the doors and welcome the new entrepreneurs and get them started. Teach them, get them networking and help them succeed.

Very few start ups are going to see the value in spending hundreds of dollars to join and when they do join, they don’t find the group full of other start up business owners.

Ideally I think you want to join a group and feel like the members are your brothers in arms. You want to feel you are all united in this goal of ours to see if we can make this work. You want to be around others who are experiencing ups and downs so you can feel you relate to them. Then you can share your own ups and downs with them and not feel out of place.

Ultimately I think it’s this kind of frustration that leads to the creation of business forums such as the Gopher Forum. Where there is no fee to join and you can read and learn or simply vent.

It’s a shame too because the Chamber of Commerce turns it’s back on those it should be welcoming and ultimately makes itself irrelevant. When the world finds itself in a situation where the economy is in the dumps, it is the small business that has the power to turn things around. Ideally it should be the Chambers of Commerce that should nurture small business. I don’t think it has a chance to accomplish this goal with a $300 a year minimum fee. Thank god libraries  don’t charge a fee to join and get a library card or we would all be illiterate!

What’s your view on this? Let me know in this post on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

Lawn care business inspiration

So this entrepreneur wrote “I have been looking around on the internet about lawn care businesses and found the Gopher Forum. I am interested in starting a legitimate (taxes, insurance, etc.) lawn care business. It has interested me for a while now. With this website I will hopefully gain some valuable insight.

I’m interested in starting a lawn care business so that I can make my own way in this world. I’ve always had a hard time finding a job, and I enjoy mowing my grandparent’s lawn. Earlier today I went to the local SCORE office to talk to someone about what is involved with running a legitimate business. The only person in the office was a secretary, after a brief discussion with her she had me call a different gentleman. He informed me that I should work with a local lawn company first so that I can learn more about running a legitimate lawn business. I’ve tried applying to local lawn companies in the past with no success. He also informed me that the competition in the lawn business is fierce.”

On one side I think it is good advice to work with another business first, but sometimes you just want to go out and do it on your own. Sometimes you want to learn yourself and you don’t want others ruining your fun of learning by having them tell you what to do all the time. Sure you can find success a lot sooner if you would simply listen to someone who’s been there before you, but not everyone wants to do that. There are some of us that just like to explore for the sake of exploring and see what we come up with.

Sure the competition can be fierce but where isn’t it? How many other businesses can you get started doing with little money down and it not be fierce? That is one of the appealing qualities of a lawn care business, that you can get started with little initial investment and then as you grow you can find a better niche for yourself that has a higher barrier of entry.

What I mean by that is, there are businesses out there, that you can get into, that take a lot more money to get started and they keep some of the competition at bay because it’s tougher to start.

But ultimately so what? The best thing in the world any of us can do is to get something started and get it started today.

I never had the chance to talk with anyone from the SCORE group. I really like the concept of it and it’s amazing it exists. But what I’d like to see come from such interactions is some inspiration. Where you can go in there and ask, do you think I got what it takes to do this? And the SCORE member looks back at you and says hell ya! Now go out there and get it done!

Then you leave the office feeling pumped and ready to get started!

It’s an ideal that may never happen but at least we have the Gopher Forum to keep us all educated and inspired to grow.

When you got started, did you find others to really be lacking when it came to inspiration? I’d like to hear about your experiences. Share them in this post on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.

lawn care business estimate

A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us his experience on how he broke the first rule of running a lawn care business and he paid for it. He wrote “My number 1 rule is - Don’t ever quote over the phone. I did today and paid for it. I only had one job today until I received a call early this morning. A man wanted his lawn mowed for a reunion party Saturday. He told me the size, type of grass, when last mowed. The lot was 100′ x 120′.

This job was about 2 blocks from the other job I already was going to do today so I said I would do it for $60.00.

When I got there, the job was exactly as described. Except - the back yard was fenced in with a gate too small for my rider and it was a hill. There was no one home and there was an envelope on the door with my name on it. Inside was a check for the agreed $60.00.

What I thought would take an hour ended up taking 2 and a half!

I did the lawn and put one of my referral coupons and 2 magnetic business cards back in the envelope. Maybe I can get some referrals.

The point is - When you make rules, follow them!”

Another member shared “don’t be too hard on yourself, look at it another way. Sometimes we all have to lose to win. I have done it and still catch myself doing it at times, however the quote over the phone or email is something I flat refuse to do. Sometimes though I will lower a bid on a smaller project if I see it as a way to get my foot in the door and get more work from the customer. Trust me, this customer will remember you and something good will probably come your way for it.”

What are some rules you set up for yourself when running your business? Share them on this post at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum.