Little Things You Do in Your Lawn Care Business Can Mean a Lot

Did you ever wonder how you can separate your lawn care business from all the others out there?
You’ve probably given it a lot of thought. Just think for a minute about your average customer. Now, you’ve got to try to understand it from their perspective. A lawn care customer wants to be treated like royalty. And, he’d really like to get the best deal for his hard earned money.
He needs to know that you’ll deliver the service you promise. He’s truly counting on you to do more than just care for his yard. He’s searching for an advisor for the exterior of his home. Naturally, a man’s home is his castle. He hopes to have a very attractive lawn and you’ll do that for him. He believes that if there are problems, you’ll resolve them. So, here’s a suggestion or two that might matter a lot.

First, you’ve got to have great communication with your lawn care customer. Make courtesy phone calls from time to time to see how things are going. Tell him you’ve been concerned and want to make sure things are going well out there. He’ll appreciate that a lot. He’ll also tell you if you’re calling too much. Tell him it’s only to make certain his lawn care service remains excellent. Take the time to send out monthly email or print newsletters to him.
Use this emails or newsletters to inform him about important issues that may affect his lawn. Offer him any incentives or discounts that you’ve got going on. Don’t forget face to face conversations. Sometimes, the old fashioned way of doing business is the best of all. There’s nothing quite like a confident handshake and a warm smile!
Second, don’t hurry when you’re providing lawn care service on his property! He’ll surely notice when you take your time and do an amazing job. Remind your customer that some competitors may try to hurry through a lawn. Tell him that you are committed to deliver high quality work, no matter how long it takes. Back up with lawn care work with an unconditional guarantee. Remind him that if there are any problems out there, you’ll come by and fix them for no added cost. Remember, when a problem does indeed happen, make sure to follow through with your promise! Tell your customer he can feel free to contact you when he has any concerns. Make yourself available by replying back to customers always within 24 hours.

Next, you’ve got to willing to go above and beyond in lawn care service! Try to do the extra things that your competitors may possibly overlook. When you go out to the customer’s property, politely knock at the door to greet him. Invite him to join you on a tour of the property to inspect the work to be done. Now, before begin any work, make sure to do the following. Carry his empty garbage cans from the curb back up to the garage. If you notice any toys or other objects in the yard, pick them up and set them neatly to the side of the house. Proceed with delivering the work scheduled for the day. Once you are finished with that, it’d be a great idea to clean any debris from sidewalks and the driveway. Also, if there is a deck or patio in the back yard, make sure that area is cleaned up as well. Upon completion of these things, now you may leave a personalized hand written note on your customer’s door. He will know that the whole lawn care service for the day went very smoothly. Leave a contact number so he may call if he has any follow up questions.

When you carefully follow all of the above steps, you’ll have a happy customer. Ask him what he liked the most about your lawn care service. He’ll be quick to tell you all about it. Now, don’t forget the most important part of all. You’ve got to ask him for a referral. Always ask if there is anyone he knows who could benefit from this service as well. You’d be surprised just how many new customers you’ll get this way. When all is complete, everything will go just fine. You’ll see how easy it is for little things to mean a lot in lawn care

3 Good Reasons to Leave Lawn Care to the Pros

Have you ever given thought to someone else caring for your yard? Well, here’s a good reason or two for allowing the pros to do your lawn care.

First, one of the most valuable possessions you’ve got is time. I’d rather be playing golf or watching a baseball game, wouldn’t you? Do you think you’d forget about going on an exciting fishing trip? You’d probably spend a whole Saturday afternoon doing yard work. And, you’d likely have to work many weekends in the summer. Why not spend a little extra money instead of spending time? Lawn care business professionals do very good work; just give them a chance.

Next, you’d probably like to know how good your fertilizer is. Lawn care professionals can always get better quality fertilizer. You’d probably ask yourself, why does this really matter? Sure, I can get my own lawn care products for less and I’ll probably save a buck or two.
Let me ask you this. Would you rather enjoy eating hamburger or a nice steak? I’d say you’re probably a person who works hard and deserves the best. You’d agree that your home is absolutely amazing, right? And your lawn is the exterior of your home that everyone sees, of course.
I’d like to say two important words about this: curb appeal, curb appeal, and curb appeal! You’ve already seen your neighbor’s yard down the street. I’d bet his lawn looks as beautiful as a resort in the tropics. Now you’re going to have an awesome looking lawn too!

Finally, do you know enough about lawn care? What happens if you run into troubles out there on your lawn? Are you going to call that 1-800 number on that bag a bargain fertilizer? You’d never imagine all that can go wrong with your lawn. There’s a long list of things like: water problems, insect worries, grass that won’t grow, just to name a few. Once these things happen, you’ve got to bring in the lawn professionals. They’ll take care of everything for you. This way, you can enjoy a sunny spring, summer and fall season. So, kick back, sit on your deck with ice cold lemonade and let a lawn care company make your yard amazing!

So how many lawns should your lawn care business be able to cut in a day?
Well, it’s going to vary according to the size of each lawn, how many people you are using to mow, and how long you spend driving to each property, but I can give you a rundown of what we can do.

On the average we can easily service 10 to 12 lawns in a day with a two-man crew (when I say “service” I’m talking about mowing, trimming, edging, and blow off grass clippings).
For an average half-acre to three-quarter-acre property with mowing, trimming and edging and stuff, you should be able to do 10 to 12, maybe 14, a day, on a good day using a two man crew.
I prefer to use a two man mowing crew because for the most part, for doing average lawns, I just think it’s the most time effective.

If you’re not getting that many, you may want to look at how your route is spaced out.
If you have properties all over town, then you’re obviously gonna be able to do less properties. You want to try to consolidate and have as many properties in a community as you can.
Ideally you want to get as many lawns, as close together as you can. We’ve even had one garden home community where we unload once and work there all day. You don’t make any money loading, unloading mowers and equipment or driving around.
You’re only making money while you are cutting grass!

Starting a lawn care business is relatively easy and inexpensive. Low start-up costs and the ability to quickly make a profit are two of the most exciting reasons to consider a lawn care business. Other reasons why you should start a lawn care business include:

*The freedom of being your own boss!
*Being able to have a flexible work schedule.
*Potential for high income earnings.
*A steady way to earn extra income as you grow your lawn business.
*Easy to grow.

The following are four areas to consider before you start a lawn care business.

Analyze your equipment needs
One mower and one trimmer are probably all you will need when you start a lawn care business. Even though you may be starting small, consider buying low-cost, durable commercial equipment rather than residential equipment. Residential equipment may not be able to handle the workload you require and you may end up buying another mower or trimmer sooner than you anticipated.

As you expand, you may buy an additional zero turn radius mower, an edger and a hand-held or backpack leaf blower. At that point you will want to consider setting up a lawn care trailer. The trailer can be enclosed or open, depending on how much equipment you have.

Create a business plan:
A lawn care business can be as simple as mowing lawns or as extensive as planting trees and shrubbery, maintaining irrigation systems, spraying fertilizers and more. Either way, it is important to have a business plan before starting a lawn care business. Your plan does not have to be lengthy, but you do need to write down anticipated revenue and expenses and set some goals. A business plan also includes the marketing aspect of your lawn care business. It doesn’t have to be a formal plan but the questions the business plan should address include:

*How are you going to reach potential customers? Will that involve advertising? Printing costs for flyers?
*How many lawn care customers will you need to be profitable?
*Do you anticipate expanding from mowing lawns to fertilizing and landscaping? If so, when and how much will that cost?
*Do you plan to hire other employees?

Take care of the legal stuff:
Before starting your business, find out what the regulations are for your area. Research licensing requirements and tax regulations. Determine the level of insurance needed for the services you will provide. It is also a good idea to talk with an attorney and an accountant; they will help you decide whether to structure your business as a sole proprietorship or corporation.

Use simple, easy to edit forms and contracts:
Create a standard cover letter and proposal that can be customized to each client. Have a service contract already prepared so that you don’t have to waste time creating one after talking with a client. Doing the paperwork ahead of time allows you to be more efficient and frees you up to concentrate on providing good service to your clients.
Several lawn care software programs have the ability to let you even do this while you are at the customers home.

Do you keep track of your time in your lawn care business?
Time mowing, time eating, time sitting at the gas station, etc, etc.

Have you ever even thought about it?

All of us have the same 24 hours in a day.
The better use we make of it, the more money we can make, and the
more time we can have to do what we want.

If you save 10 minutes here and 10 minutes there it can really add
up in a week’s time.

We do 3 things that have made a huge difference in our
lawn business:

1. I have a sheet we use to note the start time and end time on
each property and the travel time in between.
We try and make the time better and better each visit.

2. We try to make our route each day so we have properties that are
closest to each other in one route.
(the time you spend driving in between each client doesn’t pay your
business or ours anything, in fact it actually costs us money)

3. In areas where we only have 1 property to mow we market heavily
in that area to get more customers.
We like to have tons of properties in one small area.
Some neighborhoods we even have several houses in a row.
This means we don’t even have to load the equipment to go to the
next property!

Not only is tracking your time very useful in your business,
it’s actually become like a game to us.
See if you can keep making your times better and better.

Have a great day,
Patrick

There are lots of ways to market your lawn care business. some are working great! Some are becoming outdated (sorry yellow page companies).

Two of my favorite ways for getting new customers for your lawn care business is by using full color door hangers and postcards.

In case you don’t know, you can’t put postcards in mailboxes. (That’s illegal.)
What you can do is put out door hangers in areas where you know people pay to have their lawn work done. You can buy very high quality, glossy, full color door hangers for almost next to nothing when you buy them in volume. The best way I’ve found is to have a few different door hangers…One for mowing, one for low voltage lighting, one to tell about our fertilization services, etc. I can pay high school kids or local college students to put out the door hangers for me. When we spend money marketing this way, it’s pretty easy to know if it is effective. You can measure your results by tracking how many phone calls you get / jobs you get from the areas you put out the door hangers.

Along these same lines are postcards. With postcards I can buy a small mailing list of a neighborhood, homes in a certain zip code, or all of the houses withing a certain radius of any given address. Both post cards and door hangers seem to work equally as well for our lawn care business.

If you think about what a customer is worth to you over the course of a year , easily hundreds of dollars and in some case thousands, marketing with really nice full color marketing materials like these is really a bargain!

I hope this has given you some ideas and gets you thinking about using postcards and door hangers for your lawn care or landscaping business.

No matter if you are getting started or have been in business for a while. Having a plan for your lawn care business is a must. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Watch below then read the rest of the article on having a plan for your lawn care business…

 
 
Click here to read the rest of the lawn care business plan article.
 
 

Craig just sent me another video. Links are of the most important things for getting your lawn care businesses website to the top of Google. Craig has over 100 places you can get links and he’ll share them with you. He says this is super super easy.

Stay tuned. He’s supposed to send me more in the next few days….

Check out this video. This is flippin unbelievable.
Craig is the best I’ve ever seen at getting websites to the top of Google.

Not only can he do this, he can even show you how to do it.

Stay tuned. He is sending me more videos I’ll post in the next couple of days….

Patrick

When your customer approaches you with questions about
growing a hedge as opposed to building a fence in their landscape,
the following are some of the annual’s that you could
recommend.  This is a general list, so check for your specific area,
or growing zone first.

Amaranthus                       Amaranthus spp.
Snowcup                              Anoda cristata
Prickly poppy                    Argemone spp.
Sweet wormwood             Artemsia annua
Spider flower                     Cleome hasslerana
Angel’s trumpet                Datura metel
Sunflower                             Helianthus annus
Summer cypress               Kochia scoparia
Tree mallow                        Lavatera trimestris
Castor bean                         Ricinus communis
Marigold                               T agetes spp.
Mexican sunflower           Tithonia rotundifolia