Compete on Price to Survive

I ran my landscape business during the boom of the 90's and I competed in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country: Chevy Chase Maryland and Upper Northwest DC, in and around the embassies.

When I did, I was a little guy with a beat up old 79 Ford F150, a 10 foot trailer, and one 36" ransom. A little guy could get work because the big guys were always "booked".

I competed based on the fact that I was available immediately. I quickly learned if you attempt to compete based on price, you're likely to get customers who want a low price even if you loose money.

If you solicit someone who already has a lawn service, why would she change from who they have to you? If the current contractor provided bad service you had a chance of getting your price. If you lowballed the price and they went for it, well they tended to turn out to be customers you didn't really want in the first place.

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So what I learned is to show up on someone's doorstep the week they moved in to a home they just bought. I searched the newspapers (this was before there was an internet) to find "homes bought in X". I wanted to be there right after they'd unpacked and before they'ed hired a contractor.

Well economic times have changed, wealthy people aren't as wealthy as they used to be. If you came across as a competent contractor that could do exactly what is currently being done and did for less... those wealthy people just might be looking to cut their expenses, you might have a shot.

Advertise Your Landscape Company Online

davidbrucejr@fredeickwebpromotions.com

Winter Time income opportunities

It's winter, for most of us in the landscape business it's off season. Unless of course you live down south where you might get a year round growing season, there isn't much work for us until the first thaw.

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There are some money making opportunities but a windy day can really mess up your employee overhead costs if you take a crew out and it's too windy to get any thing done. In the Mid Atlantic region we have clay, acidic clay for soil. Clay based soil means lime and here in Maryland you almost cant put down too much lime.

Lime alters the PH of the soil, clay tends to be acidic and lime lowers the ph. What that means to the lawn is this: the grass plant cant absorb all the nutrients you feed it if the ph factor is off. In other words you can put down all the fertilizer in the world and if the PH is off you are wasting your time and money.

Lime is inexpensive, so most of what you'll charge is labor (always a bonus).

When the ground freezes that's the best time to put down grass seed! Why?
Because if you distribute grass seed at any other time of the year most of the seed will get washed away or eaten by birds. If you seed on frozen ground the freezing and thawing of the earth will allow the seed to get worked into the soil without you doing anything labor intensive!

My best set up was to charge a flat fee for the year:
Two gutter cleanings, Two leaf removals (one early and one final) 22 to 26 mowings, Spring clean up (pull weeds and prune shrubs) lawn feeding, weed control and overseeding.

Any thing that let me kill two birds with one stone was good for my wallet.

Advertise Your Landscape Company Online

davidbrucejr@fredeickwebpromotions.com

Community Bulletin Board Advertising

Define where you are going to work, stake out a territory. If you're going to mow lawns at regular intervals eventually you're going to get behind schedule from excessive rain fall.

This is catch 22, if it rains you get work... but cutting wet grass is hard on your equipment.

If it rains for more than a few days the work scheduled for this week gets piled up on next weeks work (because it is now next week)

Leave your business card on every grocery store, hardware store, gas station and convenience store in your work area.

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Advertise Your Landscape Company Online

davidbrucejr@fredeickwebpromotions.com

Where do you want to find landscape customers?

Do you want new landscape customers?

Of course you do... next question is:
Where do you want your landscape customers?
Why are we asking ourselves that question?

You can't get all your work done if the customers are scattered out all the place!

Where your landscape or lawn care customers are located can make a big difference in how good your work is.

What if it rains a lot?

As a lawncare contractor, you know you're not going to be able to cut all your lawns quickly enough to keep all your clients happy if it rains, and rains, and rains.

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The rainfall is going to determine how tall the grass is, so unless you want to be out there cutting wet grass you'd better keep all your lawn care and landscape customers grouped close together.

So... how do you go about advertising with this in mind?

Some small, local hardware stores and package stores and almost every grocery store is likely to have a bulletin board for people to post advertisements.

One way to keep your clients close in proximity to each other is to post a schedule on a bulletin board. It can say something like:

"Joe Blow lawn care, serving Howard County Maryland on Tuesdays"

Rodriguez landscape contractors, serving North Beaufort County North Carolina every Wedensday, South Beaufort County every Friday

You want to give yourself a little leeway here.

What I used to do with scheduling is this:

My competition, the larger high dollar landscape contractors would only take a customer with a yearly contract. That contract demanded weekly lawn mowing.

My smaller competitors offered to cut the grass every two weeks.

I wanted to compete in the middle range, so I cut all my lawns every ten days, to split the difference.

Advertise Your Landscape Company Online

davidbrucejr@fredeickwebpromotions.com

This blog is under construction

I must have triggered Google's spam prevention bot...

I set up 3 blogs simultaneously and didn't fill out the usually settings I do when I set up a blog... it was late and I was tired (like I am right now)

My kidneys hurt from drinking too much coffee

will set up the rest of this blog soon.

I've got to research what I want to say here first

I've got 43 blogs on this one gmail acct, it's going to take me some time to research what will be effective for this highly competitive keyword phrase..

gimme a break, I just wanted to grab the subdomain before any one else grabbed it.

I've got real estate agents on facebook, twitter and activerain hammering me to finish this.

I can only work on a dozen blogs at a time, I'll set this one up ASAP

I know I cut n pasted this reply to the powers that be at google... I'm gettin to it:)