why didnt people use my coupons

spring 2009 I gave out 200 business cards and 300-400 door hanger and had a few poster around town but on everyone of the door hangers I had a $5 off coupon a few people said they got a doorhanger had me mow their lawn but they did not use the coupon and they never hired me after that I ask all my customers what they think of the lawn and they always say great in some form or another but they dont hire me again. Do coupons work and am I doing something wrong, or because it is for higher class people with a high income that it's tacky to use a coupon or "cheap"?

[CHEESE2009]

Lawn care business tips

Originally Posted by lawn mowering spring 2009 I gave out 200 business cards and 300-400 door hanger and had a few poster around town but on everyone of the door hangers I had a $5 off coupon a few people said they got a doorhanger had me mow their lawn but they did not use the coupon and they never hired me after that I ask all my customers what they think of the lawn and they always say great in some form or another but they dont hire me again. Do coupons work and am I doing something wrong, or because it is for higher class people with a high income that it's tacky to use a coupon or "cheap"? Don't offer "single time mows" if that's what you are doing. If customers know they can't hire you for just one cut, they'll either cough up the money to at least hire you for *X amount of times* or they can do it themselves. Which isn't a big problem. Say, "The minimum I can be hired for is 4 cuts, I do not do single time mows. For me to cut your lawn today, I will have to charge you in advance for the rest of the 3 cuts" basically, get all the business you can out of your customers before they decide to crawl under a rock & never hire you again. This keeps you there for 4 consecutive weeks, & you don't risk damaging your mower on overgrown grass. People hire you for single time mows; 1. They just can't do it themselves on this/that specific day (very rare) 2. They waited until they got a fine from the city, & now they want you to tame the jungle they have created. (usually the case, & it sucks) 3. They are cheap & will eventually stress you out by debating about how you should do even more for their lousy money. The customer will find use of that coupon, & will use it if they are entitle to hire you for an X amount of time.

[picframer]

Originally Posted by lawn mowering

spring 2009 I gave out 200 business cards and 300-400 door hanger and had a few poster around town but on everyone of the door hangers I had a $5 off coupon a few people said they got a doorhanger had me mow their lawn but they did not use the coupon and they never hired me after that I ask all my customers what they think of the lawn and they always say great in some form or another but they dont hire me again. Do coupons work and am I doing something wrong, or because it is for higher class people with a high income that it's tacky to use a coupon or "cheap"?

I think I would do up a question sheet, short and simple and offer a second mow to these customers for something less than you charged.

I would write an opening statement saying we appreciated the opportunity to provide lawn care services to you, our company is seeking repeat customers and would appreciate your input, it would be better to have their email address so that they could complete and email it to you, I suspect this would increase the response rate or put something on your website that they could fiill in.

The question sheet should be structured to give you the feedback you need:

Were you satisfied with the quality of our work? Did you find our pricing reasonable? Would you be interested in a no obligation quote for fertilizing your lawn? We are looking to grow our services, we have found the best way to do this is customer feedback, are there services you would suggest such as Pressure Washing, moss removal from walkways, tree trimming etc.

People make assumptions and sometimes expect us to read their minds, it could very well be that these new customers expected you to take off $x.xx from the first mow even though they did not present the coupon and when you didn't they decided to not pursue your service, this may sound silly but we deal with some interesting clients that make far to many assumptions.

I run into this or at least did in tree cutting/chipping and excavation when I quoted the job, we now quote per hour and you can stop us anytime, that cured the issue but I lost or barely broke even on a few of the first jobs as the client assumed we would .................. Examples I quoted a tree clean up job, we walked the area together, I quoted and we received it. Crew shows up and does what I instructed then the owner all of a sudden expands the area we walked as they assumed something beyond the quote. Same thing happened in the excavation side for a school principal, I told him in writing they would need a retaining wall built and steps down to the new area, I neglected to add and we will provide a quote at your request, he assumed we were going to just do it.

[The Cleaning Doctor]

I would do a % off instead of $5. That is really not a lot of money. 10% off looks like a lot more than $5 off. Just the way I look at it. Besides on a $45 mow job the discount would be $4.50 and you make an extra $.50. It all adds up in the end. People go shopping and they can not even calculate the sales tax in their heads and are surprised when they get to the register. Most of them won't figure out the total discount.

coupons and gimmicks don't work.
quality jobs generate more work.

[Steve]

I'd love to see the door hanger and/or coupon you used.

I don't remember hearing any other lawn care business owner on here having a problem only getting one time cuts from their marketing material. So maybe the door hanger would give us a better clue as to why this happened?

[ewr3000]

i have a lot of high end clients they most of them are wankers lol one thing you might think of is how you dress yourself not saying you dress bad dont realy know but when i started i wore plain get dirty clothes but last year my buisness realy grew after i added uniforms for me and my crew they wernt even expinsive ones i went to K mart and found a blue and white striped button down shirt with a pocket its very light and not hot to wear it at all the brand is basic editions at k mart the sell for 7.00 for small to 9.99 for a 4X or 5X k mart keeps them in stock all the time but i bought the whole rack for my crew and when ever they need one i only make them pay for the price i bought them for which is Cheep as far as pants go they were blue jeans or k mart also has a kaki cargo shorts that most my employes love to wear excet when there on weedeater duty lol but they all say that they dont feal so hot wearing the the shirt and shorts and it looks realy nice if you pull up with a yard crew dressed to empress 60% of my costomers are ppl that saw my crew working on other lawns and they liked to watch us knock out a large lawn in 20 mins or less even if your doing the your company all by your self this is still a great way to get new clients thios year i allready went to k mart and picked out another shirt im gonna mix it up they got a green and white striped shirt im gonna make it like mon wed fri green and tues thurs blue i bet mixing it up this year will even give me more clients and i will be able to hire my second crew allrealy bought the truck and stuff so now i bet we can knock more lawns that are on the same blocks a lot quicker last year i had so many ppl wanting me to do there lawns but did not have the extra crew we stayed backed up all summer long because everyday we gained at least 2 new clients i got to a pont where i had to turn down work.