Invest In Software To Track Your Time
When talking to lawn care experts, one of the first things they advise new lawn care professionals is to invest in software to track time on the job.
Heres why: Lawn care specialists spend a lot of time on the road, driving around to different customer properties. All that time on the road can really add up – and unless youre tracking the time it takes to get to and from your customers homes, you could end up losing out on money.
Time-tracking software can help you accurately scope out your projects for the day, so you can plan the most optimal route to each job site.
Additionally, time-tracking software can come in handy if you have any employees who might be at other properties.
Finally, time-tracking software can help you accurately invoice your customers for time spent on their properties, especially if you charge an hourly rate.
Tips For Wrapping Lawn Care Vehicles
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Pay for a great professional design, even if that means using an outside graphic designer. Not all sign shops are great at this. Ask to see examples of their work.
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Be sure your logo is big enough to be seen when traveling down the street. Phone and website addresses are great, but theyre most likely going to do an internet search for your brand name.
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Be sure to also wrap the back of your trucks.
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Opt for new fleet vehicles with ample surface areas. Flatbed trucks may need additional panels for this prime lawn care advertising real estate.
Resources To Help Women In Business
There are many resources out there specifically for women entrepreneurs. Weve gathered necessary and useful information to help you succeed both professionally and personally:
- Funding
- Guides
- Support
If youre a woman looking for some guidance in entrepreneurship, check out this great new series Women in Business created by the women of our partner Startup Savant.
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Organise Your Schedule And Prepare Your Equipment For The Next Day
After a full day mowing, the last thing youll probably want to do is prepare your equipment for the next day. But think again, this is an important step in ensuring youre ready to hit the ground running in the morning. If you’re not ready to go in the morning and end up late to your first mow – it will throw off the rest of your day and irritate your customers. This is especially important in those first few encounters with a client – make them unhappy at the beginning and they’ll be lost forever.
Step : Define Your Brand
Your brand is what your company stands for, as well as how your business is perceived by the public. A strong brand will help your business stand out from competitors.
If you aren’t feeling confident about designing your small business logo, then check out our Design Guides for Beginners, we’ll give you helpful tips and advice for creating the best unique logo for your business.
Recommended: Get a logo using Truic’s free logo Generator no email or sign up required, or use a Premium Logo Maker.
If you already have a logo, you can also add it to a QR code with our Free QR Code Generator. Choose from 13 QR code types to create a code for your business cards and publications, or to help spread awareness for your new website.
How to promote & market a lawn care business
Promotional signage on the truck used for the business is important. If possible, when the truck is not in use, park it on a street with lots of traffic in a place that is highly visible. Using door-to-door distribution of discount promotional flyers to residences and business is also an effective way to advertise your business. Hand out your business cards to everyone you meet. If possible, put a promotional sign on all the lawns that you maintain that has your contact information on it. Make sure you have an attractive website that uses the best practices for search engine optimization to have a good rank on the search engine results page for local searches.
How to keep customers coming back
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Place Retargeting Or Display Ads
Ads that follow you around online are annoying and intrusive. Ive tried these in the past and also have had clients place them. The cost is minuscule but the results are even less. Id focus your lawn care lead generation efforts on something you can get a better lead conversion rate instead of 0.010% like youll see with retargeting ads. FYI, Ive been on some of your websites and your ads are following me around. I dont even live in the same state! Thats some great targeting there…
Step : Get Business Insurance
Just as with licenses and permits, your business needs insurance in order to operate safely and lawfully. Business Insurance protects your companys financial wellbeing in the event of a covered loss.
There are several types of insurance policies created for different types of businesses with different risks. If youre unsure of the types of risks that your business may face, begin with General Liability Insurance. This is the most common coverage that small businesses need, so its a great place to start for your business.
Learn more about General Liability Insurance.
Another notable insurance policy that many businesses need is Workers Compensation Insurance. If your business will have employees, its a good chance that your state will require you to carry Workers’ Compensation Coverage.
Recommended: Learn what business insurance for your Lawn Care Business will cost.
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Lawn Care Flyers: 7 Ways To Win Customers Fast
Flyers are an affordable marketing technique that grants high returns. Lawn care flyers help potential customers remember your business whenever they need any yard work done.
However, not all flyers are created equal. You need to send the right flyers to the right people if you dont want them thrown away as soon as they reach the potential lead. Read on to learn all about how to win over customers with lawn care flyers.
Offer Discounts And Referrals
Discounts and referrals are an effective way to earn business from new and existing customers. Referral incentives, new customer discounts, and seasonal promotions are three effective ways to secure more business.
Customer referrals are one of the best ways to steadily grow your customer base. When you deliver excellent service to your clients, you can ask them to refer their friends and family. You can offer discounted services for every referral they send your way.
To incentivize new customers, offer exclusive discounts for first-time clients. The lawn mowing business is ultra-competitive with several large companies dominating the market with low-cost service. Customers have plenty of options, so an attractive deal could sway them to your businessespecially if you dont have an established brand name. You could offer something like:
- First-time customers can buy one mowing service and get the next one free.
Seasonal promotions are another way to re-engage existing clients and entice new customers. As soon as winter ends, create an early-bird special for those who sign up before others. You can create urgency by limiting the offer to a certain number of people. Heres an example:
- Sign up before March 20 to receive 20% off your first five mows. Offer is limited to the first 15 customers.
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Learn How To Price Your Services
Theres no magic formula for how to price lawn care jobs. Bigger lawns cost more than small ones, of course but in general, aim for $30 to $80 per visit, including edging and blowing grass cuttings off sidewalks and driveways.
You can also charge a flat $50 per hour for other projects, like raking leaves in the fall. This is in line with national averages, so be ready to adjust up or down, depending on your area.
Other Ways To Get Lawn Care Customers
Targeting new markets can be daunting, especially when youre unsure of what your market is. However, there are other ways to gain customers without thinking of a specific target market. These include:
- Wear a uniform: Get some shirts made up that have your business name and phone number listed, and wear them when youre out and about on the job.
- Advertise to neighbors of your existing customers: theres no need to go door-to-door or be an aggressive salesman to your clienteles neighbors, but saying hello and casually offering your services to neighbors when you see them is a great way to gain more customers in areas youre already working.
- Work on weekends: Weekend work is a great way to advertise because everyone in the neighborhood can actively see you working! If youre making your clients lawn the best in the neighborhood on their schedule, chances are, some of their neighbors will also want your services.
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Fix The Way You Handle Leads
How you handle leads has a direct impact on how slowly orquickly your lawn mowing business grows. Therefore, it takes a thoughtful leadmanagement strategy to have a successful lawn care business.
You should focus on a system that allows you to respond toleads as quickly as possible, whether by notifying you or your salespeople viatext when a new lead enters the system or by sending an automated email to theclient thanking them for their message and asking if theyd like to schedule a freeon-site estimate. Youll have much greater luck if you reach out via phone
If you dont reach the lead the first time, try at least 4-6more times to increase your chance of landing a quote.
Step : Set Up Your Business Phone System
Getting a phone set up for your business is one of the best ways to help keep your personal life and business life separate and private. Thats not the only benefit it also helps you make your business more automated, gives your business legitimacy, and makes it easier for potential customers to find and contact you.
There are many services available to entrepreneurs who want to set up a business phone system. Weve reviewed the top companies and rated them based on price, features, and ease of use. Check out our review of the Best Business Phone Systems 2022 to find the best phone service for your small business.
Recommended Business Phone Service: Phone.com
Phone.com is our top choice for small business phone numbers because of all the features it offers for small businesses and it’s fair pricing.
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Where To Drop Lawn Care Flyers
Now that you know how to make the perfect lawn care flyers, its time to figure out where to put them. A good way to know where your flyers will be most effective is by simply surveying the neighborhoods yourself.
While postal service data might give you instant numbers, you wont know how many of them need lawn care or even have lawns until you drive through them.
How Can I Advertise Business Quality In My Lawn Care Marketing
Getting quality labor and supplies was a major concern for lawn care businesses, according to Lawn and Landscape’s 2018 State of the Business report.
Low-ball competitors were another concern for landscaping businesses and it’s hard for a service charging a minimum for lawn care to do much more than “mow and blow.” While low-priced competitors may get business in the short-run, if you offer quality service at a reasonable price, you will gain reliable, well-paying customers. Be ready with your lawn care marketing materials and word of mouth to pick up customers with damaged lawns resulting from poor-quality service from “low ball” lawn business competitors.
If you’re growing your lawn care business rapidly, getting quality employees is also a concern. You will want to have the right lawn care business insurance in place to protect your business, including employees. Make sure that customers know you have qualified employees, provide top-notch service, and offer quality, insured lawn care service.
Lawn care businesses cited insurance costs of all types as one of their small business challenges in Lawn and Landscape’s 2018 report. Getting the right lawn care business insurance that’s designed for your industry and needs will help you to move forward and grow your lawn care business.
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Create Your Business Plan
Suppose youre ready to transform your nebulous idea for a lawn care business into a glorious reality. In that case, youre going to need a business plan.
Youll use your plan as a detailed outline to get you where you are right now to where you want to be. Its a must for all business owners who want their company to thrive.
Having a business plan means youll accomplish your entrepreneurial objectives sooner rather than later. Itll help organize every detail of getting your business off the ground, exponentially increasing the chances that your lawn care business will be a smashing success.
If you dont need a bank loan, your business plan can be short, sweet, and to the point.
Just remember:
Your lawn care business plan should accommodate your needs, and not the other way around.
Have it be a reflection of you in all your wonderful uniqueness.
According to the Small Business Administration website, there are two categories of business plans:
- Traditional
- Lean startup
Traditional business plans are what most entrepreneurs use, and they require a ton of detail and work. They can get so convoluted and complicated, that they can be dozens of pages long.
Lean startup business plans are far less structured because they focus like a laser-guided missile on only the most essential facts.
They can be completed in sixty minutes or less, and are usually no longer than a single page. Heres an example of one.
Here are some of the sections you might want to include:
Successful Lawn Care Companies Always Do This
Theres a simple technique that lawn care business owners can borrow from other industries. Its a sales tactic that has proven to be effective and is backed by research studies on increasing sales.
Its your response time.
- Put your phone and email at the bottom of the flyer.
- BE SURE TO ANSWER VERY FAST when someone contacts you.
- Get a Google voice number so you can get a text the moment someone leaves a voicemail.
- Set up an email alert on your phone so you can see when someone reaches out to you by email.
- Your response time is critical Im talking minutes, not half a day or the next day.
- The #1 reason people lose sales for this type of service is that they dont respond in a timely manner.
- The people youre prospecting are busy so if you get back to them within 5 minutes, you increase your chances of reaching them and closing the sale by over 20 times.
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Use A Lawn Care Business Software
Using software like Connecteam lawn care business app will help you automate and grow your lawn care business. How so? It makes it easier to schedule recurring shifts, dispatch jobs, track working hours, enhance communication, make reports digital, and much more. Everything you need to manage daily operations is available at the click of a button on Connecteam:
- Time tracking is efficient as you usually pay your employees by the hour and when your team clocks in and out from their mobile phone, their GPS location is immediately tagged for a more efficient and accurate timesheet and payroll.
- Scheduling is easier to manage and is rich with information like all the job details, location, specific tasks, and even recurring jobs for customers who need their lawn being taken care of on a regular basis.
- Workflows are automated so reporting all the details about the job, including before and after photos can be done while on the go.
- Communication is more streamlined through updates, chat, surveys, and more which is super important when youre not right there with your team at every moment. You need to work as efficiently as possible while delivering amazing customer service, using lawn care business software keeps you on track.
Get The Right Lawn Care Equipment And Tools
To start a lawn mowing business, you need a lawn mower and a van or truck for transportation. With enough skill and expertise, one mower is all you need to offer high-quality mowing that brings you repeat business and referrals.
Here are the basic types of lawn mower you can choose from:
- A push mower is the best option for new lawn care professionals. Theyre cheap, easy to use and maintain, and they work great for smaller yards.
- A walk-behind mower or self-propelled mower can move on its own, cut through thicker grass, and cover more ground in less time. Theyre larger and more powerful than push mowers, so they cost quite a bit more than push mowers.
- A riding lawn mower lets you sit and drive with a steering wheel while you mow. These heavy-duty machines are ideal for large-scale jobs. You might also consider a lawn tractor, which usually has more power and can cut widths of up to 48 inches.
Consider buying a string trimmer to do more precise mowing. These trim the grass in tight spots where your lawn mower cant reach. You can also purchase an edger to sculpt the edges of lawns where they meet patios, curbs, and driveways.
When youre prepared to offer more lawn care and landscaping services, you can invest in:
- A leaf blower
READ MORE:How to price lawn care services
To profit enough from each job, youll need to use different pricing models for certain lawn care services. Here are the most common pricing models you can use:
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