Archive for November, 2009
Do you find it difficult to create an ad for your online classified advertising? A lot of times you will see a lawn care business post an ad with just very bland text, but thanks to a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, you can now download some free graphical templates to edit [...]
November 30th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Internet, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Marketing on Craigslist.com | No Comments
As a business owner, you have to deal with many issues as you juggle and try to keep them all from crashing around you. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We’ve all had bad days but what makes entrepreneurs different from others is we push through them. This story shared with us on the [...]
November 30th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business | No Comments
When things are slow and you are looking for an affordable way to drum up lawn care business, why not consider doing what this member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum did. He wrote us and said “don’t waste your time handing out flyers in mailboxes or all that other marketing junk we’ve talked [...]
November 29th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Residential Customers, door to door | No Comments
Finding which lawn care marketing strategy works seems to be a topic of never ending fascination. Everyone seems to be looking for that magic key. Is it flyers? Is it door hangers? If not those two, what else could it be? That is a topic raised at the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum when one [...]
November 28th, 2009 | Posted in Customer Retention, Door hanger, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Internet, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Truck & Trailer Signs, Lawn Care Website, Marketing, Newspaper Ads, Postcards, Referrals, door to door | No Comments
A lot of people are getting laid off now. Some are having thoughts that now is the time to get their business started they always wanted. But this is bringing more competition than ever before for work which leads me to the question at hand. With all these new lawn care businesses getting started, how [...]
November 27th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Start up, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
A new lawn care business owner brought up a very interesting question on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. He had recently gotten his business going and was contacted by another lawn care business to do some sub-contract mowing work. He wrote “another lawn care business asked if I would sub-contract for them. What percentage [...]
November 26th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business | No Comments
When you are out on a potential job site to perform an estimate, pointing out issues on a home owners property, do you find you are able to make more profit on the upsells either immediately or soon after, once you get the customer to sign up for what they initially called you for?
I would [...]
November 25th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Referrals, Seasonal Promotion Ideas, Tree Removal, Upsells | No Comments
There are many ways to give a customer an estimate for lawn service. Some lawn care business owners don’t want to be bothered with going out to visit a site before they bid, so in their minds they think giving a quote over the phone or through email is a real simple way to do [...]
November 24th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
Have you ever asked your new lawn care customers what their biggest complaint was with previous lawn care service providers? If you don’t you should and if you do, you need to make sure you don’t repeat them. Over time you will likely find your new customers have had similar problems. This information can be [...]
November 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Customer Retention, General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers | No Comments
Depending on how you present your snow plowing bid can have a direct result on if you get hired or not and what kinds of services your customer will sign up for. I asked a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum about his methods for estimating snow removal services and how he gets [...]
November 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Overhead Costs, Podcast, Pricing, Snow plowing | No Comments
A lot of start up businesses really have a hard time generating word of mouth advertising. To help us understand how to do this better, I asked a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum how he did it.
I asked him, did you find it tough to generate word of mouth initially when you [...]
November 23rd, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, Goodwill, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Referrals, Residential Customers, Start up, Word Of Mouth | No Comments
Are you just getting started offering snow plowing services this year but you are unsure of how to go about it? This situation was discussed on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum when a new member wrote “I’m going to be plowing this winter for the first time with my own truck. I don’t know [...]
November 22nd, 2009 | Posted in Estimate or Proposal Form, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Contract, Overhead Costs, Pricing, Snow plowing | No Comments
As a lawn care business owner, you are probably always looking for ways to make more money from your current customer base. There are many services you could offer and your customers could use, but plenty of times you just can’t think of them. In a discussion on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum the [...]
November 21st, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Tractor, lawn care equipment | No Comments
Finding work in the Fall and Winter can be more challenging at times than picking up mowing accounts during the Spring. Many lawn care business owners seem to struggle finding customers to service and end up having a rough time when the mowing season slows down. But this doesn’t have to be the case. In [...]
November 20th, 2009 | Posted in Fall Leaf Cleanups, General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Referrals, Word Of Mouth, door to door | No Comments
Getting the momentum of a new business going can be very difficult. It can feel like you are trying to move mountains. Sometimes an entrepreneur can become overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom when things don’t happen fast enough. But how does one get things going and potentially get them going fast? It takes [...]
November 19th, 2009 | Posted in Business Card, Cold Calling, General Business, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Start up, door to door | No Comments
The GopherHaul guide on how to get customers for your landscaping and lawn care business - Volume 3 is now available.
Anyone can start a landscaping or lawn care business but the tricky part is finding customers. This book will show you how.
Coming up with marketing and service ideas to keep busy and profitable all year [...]
November 17th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, GopherHaul, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Business Book, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
Have you ever been in a situation where you were able to get a hold of a local organization’s email address database and wanted to send out email marketing material to their group? Would that be considered smart marketing or spamming? That is a great question brought up on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. [...]
November 16th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Internet, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing | No Comments
Have you had difficulties landing commercial snow plowing accounts? It can be difficult to break through a companies layer of insulation before you get to the person in charge of making such decisions. Persistance seems to be a big part of the key to success. Let’s look into this discussion that took place on the [...]
November 14th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, General Business, GopherHaul, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Podcast, Snow plowing | No Comments
The average lawn care business tends to find things slow down in the Fall and Winter but that doesn’t have to always be the case. You can go out and drum up business if you want it. Let’s look and see how a member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum did this. He wrote [...]
November 13th, 2009 | Posted in Fall, General Business, How to sell, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Referrals, Seasonal Promotion Ideas, Winter | No Comments
Partnerships can be very easy to get into and very tricky to get out of. They tend to start innocently enough. You have a friend interested in doing the same thing as you, so you figure two heads are better than one and you pool your resources together. Well as we will see in this [...]
November 12th, 2009 | Posted in General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Partnership, Start up | No Comments
Have you thought about going door to door in your area to meet new potential clients and promote your Fall & Winter services to them? Is so, you might be wondering what the best way to go about this is. Are there certain things you should do or shouldn’t do in order to improve your [...]
November 11th, 2009 | Posted in Door hanger, General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, door to door | No Comments
Giving your lawn care customers a Christmas gift may be a great way to show your appreciation of them and retain them for the next year’s mowing season. But is it really always a good idea? Also what about the type of gift you give? Should you send a holiday card instead? What works best?
That’s [...]
November 10th, 2009 | Posted in Christmas, Customer Retention, General Business, Goodwill, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Seasonal Promotion Ideas | No Comments
Running your lawn care business as a one man show has it’s advantages and disadvantages. When it’s only you performing the work and dealing with the customers, you know you are getting the job done and treating the customers the way you want them to be treated. But what about when you grow. When you [...]
November 9th, 2009 | Posted in Customer Retention, General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Employees, Your First Employee, training | No Comments
Every once in a while I like to ask on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum, what lawn care marketing ideas have you experimented with? What hasn’t worked and what has. It seems one of the things I have learned from asking this is every time I ask it, I will get different responses! So [...]
November 7th, 2009 | Posted in Direct Mail, General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Marketing, Parade | No Comments
To some lawn care business owners, the client has two jobs. One is to accept the bid and the other is to approve the finished project and make payment. Between those two points they may not want to hear anything from the client at all. But as we have seen on the Gopher Lawn Care [...]
November 6th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Customer Retention, General Business, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Residential Customers | No Comments
Do you ever wish you could ask what your competitors are doing with their marketing? What about business questions to help you find out what makes some businesses successful while others fail? A new member on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum shared with us some of his fascinating business insight. You see he is [...]
November 4th, 2009 | Posted in Commercial Customers, Customer Retention, Free Lawn Care Flyer Template, General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Residential Customers | No Comments
Trying to crack open customers that live within certain homeowner associations can be tough to do. Especially if the HOA is a gated community. One lawn care business owner figured out a way to get their foot in the door with a interesting marketing tip. They shared with us their lawn care marketing secret on [...]
November 3rd, 2009 | Posted in General Business, GopherHaul, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing, Newsletter, Podcast, Residential Customers | No Comments
Have you ever taken a look at your customer’s home and seen moss on their siding or on their deck? Did you ever stop to talk to the customer and ask them if they would like it removed? There is money to be made in offering such services. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care [...]
November 3rd, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to Estimate - Services To Offer, How to Estimate Jobs, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Pressure Washing, Pricing | No Comments
To discount or not to discount, that is the question. I have seen plenty of arguments going one side to the other on the importance of discounting a teaser service when you are marketing your lawn care business. On the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum I asked, how important do you feel it is to [...]
November 2nd, 2009 | Posted in General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Marketing | No Comments
When mowing season comes to an end, that doesn’t mean it’s time to relax. There is still plenty of work to be done for those who keep busy. One lawn care business owner on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum asked “well with mowing season is over, I want to drum up a lot more [...]
November 2nd, 2009 | Posted in Fall, General Business, How to get, Landscaping Business, Lawn Care Business, Lawn Care Customers, Lawn Care Marketing, Lawn Care Website, Marketing, Newspaper Ads, Seasonal Promotion Ideas, door to door | No Comments