New John Deere

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Originally Posted by Joe Mow Here's mine... a 4100 I got for chores around our small acreage. I'm going to be marketing cutting to acreage and lot owners, so this ought to come in handy. Nice tractor and since you have a loader, offer that service also. That tractor will do some amazing things as you are probably aware, a Landscape rake with guage wheels makes a driveway look like a million bucks, I recently bought a tiller after renting one last year and will offer this service also. Once you have a tractor that size it opens up a very exciting part of your business.

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Here's mine... a 4100 I got for chores around our small acreage. I'm going to be marketing cutting to acreage and lot owners, so this ought to come in handy. Very nice tractor! When you market these services, will you be including a photo of yourself on the tractor? What do you think is the best way to get across to the customer what your equipment looks like and what it can do? Or is that not so important?

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Originally Posted by Steve

Very nice tractor!

When you market these services, will you be including a photo of yourself on the tractor? What do you think is the best way to get across to the customer what your equipment looks like and what it can do? Or is that not so important?

90%+ of the time it's critical, people want to see what you have done in the past, when you show up and they see the size of the tractor they will think there is no way that will do the job.

These smaller tractors have a big tractor attitude, I have been running tractors for over 30 years now/all sizes, when I first saw my smaller one I thought for the twenty grand I was about to spend there is no way it's worth it as I doubt it will even plow my driveway, the salesman assured it would do whatever I asked and it did. In short it continues to shock me what they will do and it has never let me down.

Here is a suggestion on getting going, I suggested this to my son and his best friend last summer. Advertise on the local board's you are University students with your own summer business, explain what the equipment will do, when driving around and you see something you can do, stop and leave a note or do up a flyer if the people are outside talk to them and introduce yourself, once you get going word of mouth and neighbours of where you are working will keep you going. This worked and the guys had more work than they knew what to do with last summer.

This summer should be interesting, we have added a lot of attachments to expand what we can do and bigger equipment for the larger jobs, added the Organic Lawn Care side, it will be myself, son and two of his friends, both very experienced around heavy equipment, one friends dad bought him a truck and trailer to help him out, I am supplying the equipment and will take a percentage of every job he does.

I met with two septic tank pumping companies yesterday as I was thinking people have to get their tanks cleaned every 8 years or so and most homeowners, myself included, would rather hire a backhoe to remove the soil for the truck to get at the top of the tank, One meeting went very well and he said they have been trying to find someone with a smaller backhoe to do this as the larger machinery damages the customer lawns and we struck a deal which he will include in his advertising, the second meeting was luke warm, fellow just didn't seem to want to make any changes, just keep doing what he was doing and let the customer worry about the tops, wasn't interested in offering my card to do it for them, this is fine, can't win them all. We won't make a lot of money doing the tops, $50.00 per dig, 6 a day on average and no float fee however the goal here was to get the contact and I know most people will have other chores that need done so I consider it a marketing expense/cost of doing business.

For some of the others, I would hit up sprinkler installation companies, companies that install low voltage lighting, garden stores that sell trees etc. Push the fact you are a value added resource for their company.