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How To Find Commercial Lawn Care Bids

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How Low Can I Bid Before I Lose Money

HOW To Bid A COMMERCIAL Client! Breaking Down The Numbers!

Winning a bid is often a matter of offering the lowest prices. But some victories are not worth it.

Take the scientific approach.

Measure the property yourself.

Note all of the irregularities that will slow you down or cause you problems.

If you cant win a bid without underpricing yourself, then its not worth it.

When: Frequency And Seasonal Services Start And End Dates

Your contract should detail the timing for season-specific services. For example, your property may require more frequent mowing during the summer, but not at all during the winter. Here are more examples to consider:

  • Winter: dormant pruning
  • Fall: blow leaves, cut back perennials, prune

Finally, your contract should also clearly state a start and end date, the process for renewal, and how maintenance services will be adjusted in the event of inclement weather.

What Does A Yellowstone Landscape Proposal Look Like

Now that weve given you an insiders look on some things you may see in the bidding process, let us tell you a little bit more about what Yellowstones proposal will look like when compared to others.

Well be upfront that we usually are a bit higher than a lot of the competition. But a huge differentiator from us and the high bid is that we can explain why were higher. Were not so far out of the ballpark that its impractical and its not because we didnt do our homework. Conversely, its because we know exactly what it will cost to get you the results that youre after.

Another key differentiator is that we are taking the time to explain not only our pricing, but everything that were doing on your property. Most of our clients tell us they walked away from that bidding process feeling confident in our ability to understand what they were looking for.

Along with that comes transparency. You can count on us to be fully transparent in all that were doing. Unlike the incomplete bid, where questions are left unanswered or sometimes a commercial landscaping contractor doesnt want to be upfront about cost, you can expect transparency from Yellowstone.

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Customize Your Bid Sheet With Your Business Logo

Including your landscaping logo is going to add professionalism to your proposal form. Distinguish your lawn mowing business by uploading your logo into your proposal template.

Above the address line, you will see an option, “Show Customization Options.” Click on the link and choose “Logo.” Upload your landscaping business logo by selecting “Browse.” Your logo will appear, giving your customers extra confidence that they are dealing with the right person.

Reference Your Landscaping Business Address And That Of Your Customer

Commercial Landscape Maintenance Contract Template Best Of ...

Be clear about your name and address on the template. Your customer should immediately recognize the origin of the landscape bid sheet to avoid the service contract bid being discarded. If your customer recognizes you by your first name, type in the name of your business with your name in brackets for easy recognition.

Add your customer’s details in the address field below. If you only communicate via email, it is fine to omit the full address and include an email and phone number. If the customer has multiple addresses, state which one the lawn care contract relates to on the bid template. Alternatively, you can make this clear in the “Notes” section later.

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Getting Your Mowing Crew Size Right

This sounds relatively simple but Bruce says youd be surprised how often the wrong crew sizes are matched up to jobs. This is a huge detriment to making sure your commercial mowing contracts are profitable.

Thats because Bruce says the more crew members you have in a truck, the more your windshield time goes up. Thats something that you want to avoid. Windshield time is one of those hidden profit killers. For one hour of travel time, with a six-man crew, youre paying for six hours of time that has just been spent in the truck, making zero profit.

Of course, your most profitable crew size is your one-man-crew but that cant be right for every job, Bruce says. The key is to get as small a crew as you can for the job while still being able to get the work done the right way.

Building crew size comes from experience, Bruce admits. But it also comes from staying on top of your jobs and ensuring that you dont have more crew members than you need going out to a site. If you have crew members that are sitting around with nothing to do, that is taking a cut out of your profitability. But the only way you can know this is to stay on top of your jobs.

Grow A Sustainable Landscaping Business With Skynova

Skynova helps landscaping companies grow with business support solutions. Using a bid template that converts to an invoice with one action saves precious time. As we all know, time is money needed for any growing business.

Save even more time by exploring other Skynova contract templates, like invoice templates or estimate templates, as well as our software products. Additional benefits include invoice and accounting options that help you to create financial and expense reports. Grow your lawn care business organically with Skynova.

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If You Are Interested In Expanding Into Commercial Lawn Care Or Landscape Maintenance This Video Provides Tips About Selling To Commercial Accounts And Large Commercial Properties

How do I get commercial properties when Im just getting started in the commercial business?

In this video, I talk about how to start selling to commercial customers.

This could be a scenario where you are just starting your lawn care business or it could be a scenario where youre predominantly residential maintenance and now you are expanding the company into the commercial market.

The commercial market is extremely competitive and there is a lot of price pressure. You will give a lot of proposals that you will not win and you will never win them for a million different reasons.

The commercial landscape maintenance market is completely different than residential lawn care.

In residential, your contract close percentage should be significantly higher than it will be when selling commercial contracts.

Essentially, you have to quote a ton of work in commercial to win a ton of work. There is just no way around it. Even the best companies, the best commercial sales guys, are quoting a lot of work. That is how it works.

There is a sales cycle to commercial thats far longer than residential and I will talk about the sales cycle of commercial lawn care in a different video. This video is solely about how to get started in commercial landscape and how to sell to commercial customers.

Im not going to give you every little trick in detail. That could be an entire course in and of itself. But let me give you some pointers.

Jumping around a bit here.

Size Scope And Frequency

How to bid COMMERCIAL LAWN MOWING

Before we get into the types of services offered in a commercial landscape maintenance contract, its crucial for us to mention the three most important factors that will determine the ultimate price of your bid: property size, project scope, and frequency of service. The size of your landscape is the surface area of all the greenspace on your property. The larger the property, the more your fuel, labor, and material costs will increase.

Unlike some providers of HOA, apartment, or corporate landscaping, the Schill team does not provide maintenance on a per service basis. Instead, we schedule work on a contract basis for the entire landscape maintenance season, which is 38 to 40 weeks long, and our crews can be scheduled to visit your property 28-32 times to mow during that period, with several additional visits scheduled for fertilizer, pruning, and landscape detailing. As you probably guessed, an increase in the frequency of service will lead to an increase in the cost of your landscape maintenance.

The scope of services in your contract is simply an outline of which services your landscape maintenance provider is performing. To make things simple, weve broken down these services into the following categories: general seasonal care, irrigation and sprinkler care, plant and horticultural care, and enhancements.

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Free Lawn Care Bid Template

To grow your lawn care business, you’ll need to attract customers, and one way of doing this is by submitting appealing bids. If you’ve been using Microsoft Excel or Word template file formats to draft bids from scratch, you’ve probably wasted a lot of time.

Skynova can help you take back time with our lawn care bid software, which you can send to your customer via a private link or as a printable PDF. Once the bid is accepted, Skynova will automatically convert it into an invoice template, streamlining most of the necessary paperwork.

Skynova enables rapid bid creation, automatic invoice conversion, and customization. And easy online editing, sending, and storing of customer details make tracing and problem-solving simple when you use Skynova.

What’s the result? You have more time to focus on maintaining your lawn care business with a bid sheet template that works for you. If you’re a lawn care professional, check out the template we’ve made below just for your business:

How To Estimate Landscaping Jobs In 7 Steps: A Simple Guide

  • Estimates
  • How to Estimate Landscaping Jobs in 7 Steps: A Simple Guide
  • Estimating landscaping jobs correctly is key to running a profitable business. Statistics show that most contractors only make a profit on three out of every five jobs. They lose money on one and break even on the other, according to Total Landscape Care.

    Learning to accurately bid on landscaping work will ensure youre making a profit on every job you do.

    Need a landscaping estimating template? Estimate smarter and faster with FreshBooks professional estimating software. Send estimates online in a flash and easily convert them to invoices when the jobs done.

    FreshBooks, from invoicing to payments and everything in between. Try It Free

    In this article, well cover:

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    Bidding On Government Lawn Mowing Contracts

    Before you bid on a Government lawn mowing contract you should be aware that Government contracts follow a different code of conduct than many other requests for proposals. Ive made a short video for you highlighting a few finer points of an example Code-of-Conduct manual. Understanding and agreeing to this manual is the first step in getting your lawn care company on a Governments bidding list.

    Proposal Forms: I want to highlight a few finer points of this contract bidding instruction booklet. The first point is the Proposal Forms. Most bidding packets come with a series of bidding forms. You must complete the bidding forms that come with the bidding packet. Do not fill in your own forms or simply write your prices on a sheet of paper. Your bids may be rejected if you fill them out on anything but the bidding forms that come with your bidding packet.

    Submittal of Bids: Bids must be presented in a special bidding envelope that comes with your bidding packet. The envelope will be time stamped by the Purchasing Agent as proof that your submittal was within time cut off of bid acceptance.

    Keeping Commercial Clients Happy

    Lawn Care Bid Handbook [Free Quote Template Included]

    Most commercial clients are considered easy clients because their property manager is the main point person in your relationship. They have few demands, and generally just want those boxes checked and their expectations met.

    The best way to win these types of clients is to show them that you care, that youre doing the job properly, and that youre not missing anything.

    That means that you need to keep track of the notes you make on their account, and ensure that your crew completes all the work they want.

    From the start you should make notes of the job requirements during the site walkthrough with the client.

    Using quoting software, like Jobber, helps you to add materials, services, and labor as you go so that you dont have to worry about remembering to add them later on.

    Your secret weapon in keeping your client happy will undoubtedly be your CRM and job checklist . That way, you never miss a step with each phone call, email, or site visit.

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    Your 1st Goal: Meet With The Decision Maker

    Right now, your 1st goal is to simply get your foot in the door.

    For small and medium lawn or landscaping companies, networking is the only reliable way to get a commercial lawn care contract.

    In other words, you have to approach them.

    One solid strategy is to craft an email or a letter for each business you want to bid.

    When you start sending these emails, try hanging them up in HOAs to get your name into the right hands and get them to respond to you.

    Another option is to head over to the right local networking events:

    • Local businesses: You’ll get to talk directly to the owner , which makes sales and upsells easier.
    • HOAs: Talk to HOAs and other Real Estate groups. You can find these by searching HOA or Real Estate Groups in .
    • BOMA: Set up a meeting with your citys Building Owners and Managers Association.
    • Chamber of Commerce Meetings, CEO Forums, and other networking events will help you meet potential clients, especially if your town has a commercial district or sector with above average commercial density.

    When all else fails

    it’s time for some cold, hard knocks.

    Drive around and look for properties that need fixing. When you see a business that could use your services, go knock on their door and introduce yourself. This one works very well if you are good at in-person sales.

    Livin’ Large: Commercial Accounts

    Tom Heaviland remembers “Black Friday” at his company.

    “It was like the stock market crashed,” he compared. “We had a big, commercial developer during the last recession who pulled all the funding on an industrial park, and we had to lay off 10 guys that afternoon.”

    The contract shrunk, leaving Heaviland Enterprises, San Diego, Calif., with only a few lot owners in the housing development, and they couldnt support the costs. Though the company reconstructed the maintenance agreement to cover the bear minimum, it suffered losses in both profit and morale. “At that time, we werent as large as we are today, so that was a huge blow,” Heaviland described.

    Now, his business employs 85 people and his account mix is more diverse, stirring up his 100-percent commercial maintenance company with both large and small clients. Heaviland knows firsthand that contractors put more on the line for large, commercial clients than a mow-and-go job. This includes investments in labor, time and materials, plus an extra flurry of paperwork, added Lance Schelhammer, president, Grass Roots, Lenexa, Kan.

    “Its kind of like moving from the $5 blackjack table to the $100 blackjack table,” he compared. This is not to say that commercial work is a game of chance. Contractors who book their schedules with a collection of large, commercial accounts and organize their businesses to cater to their different needs will find quite the contrary.

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    Review The Capabilities Of A Commercial Landscape Contractor

    What services does the landscape company provide? Does the firm have professionals on staff who are certified and trained to perform coconut tree pruning or irrigation repairs? Or, is the company a simple maintenance business that mows, blows and goes?

    The latter is fine if thats all you expect.

    But youll find that your Kauai commercial property needs more than a basic lawn mowing to maintain its luster. Fertilizer and weed/disease control is essential because of our climate.

    And pruning is a safety issueyou cant have brush hanging over walkways or blocking visibility in high-traffic areas. Contractors that employ talented professionals will charge more for their services than a simple lawn mowing operation.

    As one of our clients recently said, “Mowing alone just doesn’t cut it.”

    Ultimately, youll want to select the contractor that can meet your expectations. So find out what their capabilities are and whether they align with your propertys requirements.

    What’s Included In A Commercial Landscaping Contract

    How To Get On A Commercial Bid List – UA Lawncare

    Understanding commercial landscaping contracts can be difficult, whether youre looking for corporate landscaping, HOA landscape maintenance, or apartment landscaping. In fact, thats why our guide to Landscape Maintenance Pricing is our most popular free resource.

    Never ones to shy away from tough questions, we created an outline of all the services that can be potentially included in every contract so that property managers might understand them better.

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    The Right Way To Bid Your Next Commercial Lawn Care Contract

    Here’s the dark side of commercial lawn care…

    The commercial world is focused on the bottom line. They will try to skim you.

    Businesses only care about the price… unless you can sell them on better service.

    Your goal is to differentiate yourself. Look better than the other lawn care businesses bidding on the property.

    Here are some other strategies you can use to win a commercial contract:

    • Show them the value of a great-looking property. Be visual with your descriptions: What if your lawns were emerald green, and your sidewalks sparkled in the sun? Would this make your customers more likely to buy here?
    • Work with your clients, not for them. Get them to collaborate on a landscape design. Ask them what they think a perfect yard looks like.
    • Listen to your client. Listen to their problems, and their expectations. They will tell you what they want.
    • Teach them about the pitfalls of bad landscaping: inexperienced labor, bad work, and dead lawns will make anyone think twice. Explain why they should never allow uninsured workers near their land.
    • Walk in with a professional proposal. If you can hand a business owner a clean, well-formatted step-by-step proposal, you will make a great first impression.

    To win your next commercial lawn care contract, you will need a good deal of salesmanship.

    Books, YouTube videos, and other B2B sales resources will help you nail the sale.

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