Landscaper2
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An starting a professional landscaping business and need help with some pricing of lawns And propert maintenance! Anyone that can help it would help me out greatly
An starting a professional landscaping business and need help with some pricing of lawns And property maintenance! Anyone that can help it would help me out greatly
I guess it all depends where you live, here in Northern CA residential yards are done for about $100 and can go all the way up to $500
Lawnranger said:The old "location, location, location" thing. I walk the property with the owner and discuss everything. Together we agree on exactly what will and will not be done. From there I estimate how long in minutes it will take to complete what the owner wants and start at one dollar a minute and go up from there.
Location has a lot to do with it. There are areas saturated with low ballers. You hve to know your area and what the rest of your competitors are charging. If you say you charge one dollar a minute and the next guy that comes can do the exact same job for .75 cents a minute chances are you will not get the job.
I dont encourage low balling to ensure jobs. You win some you lose some, you just have to pick your battles and hope that the client does appreciate your knowledge and is willing to pay more for that.
We are all trying to start up a business to make good money. If we wanted to make peanuts we would just go work for our previous employer.
I have found that the relationship I've built with my clients has protected my base by 95%. I have had a few people switch to the low baller but after seeing what the low baller did to their yard I realized that the customer really didn't care how his yard looked, he just wanted the lowest price and there will always be those kind of people but I gratefully thank my competition for taking those kind of clients as I'm not in this to loose money. If a client doesn't want to pay my price I simply move on. There are way too many prospects out there to have to deal with the cheapskates. I do get referrals on a somewhat regular basis and have all the work I want. If you give it some thought, you drive past more business than you have so if you lack work, time to do some form of cold calling/advertising/referral requests/etc.
In another thread I elaborated on some of the topics that set me above my competition, "raise the bar" if you will, and by doing this I build the relationship with my clients and they appreciate what I do for them. If you are losing clients to your competition you better do a check up from the neck up and figure out what is missing. Most people will say they want the lowest price but what they are really saying is they want value. The art of selling plays a large role and it turns out that most people in business aren't good salespeople. They don't plan to fail, they fail to plan. I've read some threads on this forum that talk about how people get started in this business and then grow to the point that they need more equipment, workers, space, etc. and they go out and get all that overhead not realizing (or planning) for what is ahead.
There are those who will disagree with my methods and your experience may differ but I'm not going to argue with success.