Well, I’ve been asked about a dozen times already this month, “Is it too early to get my lawn care business started for this year?”
No, No, No! Now IS the time to start.
I know of several businesses that are making their decision on the lawn care company they are going to use for lawn services this year in the next few days.
If you want to mow their grass, service their irrigation system, and spray their turf, you would need to bid NOW!
If you wait until March or April to try to get new lawn care clients you have already missed the boat. Now is the time.
Yes, I know there’s a lot of competition. So what. There’s a lot of competition in every industry.
The lawn care industry is no different.
Competition just makes us all better in my opinion. It makes you work, smarter and do a better job!
So what do you need to do to start the new lawn care season? Here’s 7 things…
1. Make a simple plan. Decide how many new residential lawn care customers and how many new commercial lawn care customers you are going to get in the next few weeks. Goal setting is powerful. It literally changed my life. If you try it, it will change yours too.
2. Create a Facebook page for your lawn care business. Post what the lawn care and landscaping work you are doing with pictures!
Offer coupons and special offers for spring lawn cleanups, discounts for putting out mulch or pine straw, offer a free lawn analysis, etc. Tell all of your friends on there about your business.
3. Partner with other similar businesses. You would not believe the work you can get when another similar business tells customers about you. Talk to lawn fertilization businesses, pressure washing businesses, and house cleaning (maid) services. All of these will have similar customers to what you are looking for. There is no better way to get a new, well qualified, lawn care customer than have someone a customers trusts recommend you!
4. Order full color door hangers and flyers, put them out in the areas you want to service. Don’t print black and white flyers for your lawn care business. There are tons of places you can order really professional lawn care and landscaping marketing materials really inexpensively. Don’t skimp on this. Trust me. This, by itself, will set you apart from 99% of the other lawn care businesses in your city.
5. Ride around and look for work. I know a guy in the pressure washing business who has work booked 3 weeks out every week of the year. How?? He simply rides around, looks for things that need cleaning and talks to people. I know, super complicated isn’t it?
So while people are broke, whining they can’t find any lawn care work and such, this guy is killing it all year long.
6. Make notes and follow up with people. I see more guy lose lawn care work because they didn’t follow up. I’ve even heard people say ” I was going to let John’s Lawn Care Company” put out new pine straw for me or plant new shrubs but they never called me back after they gave me a price. That’s ridiculous. You are giving away money when you do this.
7. Use lawn care software to automate and help you run a better lawn care business. You can get software that will automate billing, scheduling and more. You shouldn’t have to do anything more than click a button to complete a visit, add that visit to an invoice, etc.
I know guys who literally don’t spend an hour a week doing paperwork any more. They complete jobs as they leave a customer’s property, they send invoices automatically each month and their lawn care customers pay the invoices online with a credit card.
What pays more? Doing paperwork or being outside doing what you love doing lawn care and landscaping??
Exactly. Spend your time getting new lawn care clients not doing paperwork.
There is no excuse not to dominate your local market this year.
