4 Right Steps = For Steps in the Right Direction

When you walk on to a potential clients property to put together a quote there are many things to pay attention to. The following is some of the areas I have learned to pay attention to. 1. Know how much to charge per square foot. You need to make sure that you are in fact making money. Walking onto a property and guessing the size and giving quotes without measuring is not a good idea. Take the time to measure the square footage of the maintenance area; lawn areas, bed areas. You will then know how much fertilizer to apply, exact pricing for overseeding, etc. Plus, it really adds a professional touch. 2. When quoting lawns, remember to take note of the trimming. You can have 2 identical lawns areas, but if one has 4 edged garden beds in it, they are going to take longer to maintain. Even if it only takes an average of an extra 5 minutes to do, over 28 cuts it can add up to 2.3 hours of work you are not getting paid for. Again if you do that on multiple properties it WILL add up. 3. Pay attention to lawn area access. Make sure your equipment can fit through gates, between houses and in tight spots. You don’t want to quote a property based on using larger equipment to find out you need to push mow. 4. Know your business costs. All too many times business owners just come up with prices out of the air. You need to know your general overhead, specific overhead, cost of good sold and competition pricing to find out what you are going to charge. Make sure to do monthly ‘Profit and Loss’ reports to stay on top of budgets. Finding out at the end of the year that something wasn’t right is the wrong time to find that out.

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

Hi Richard, Thank you so much for this insight. Originally Posted by [b Quote[/b] ]Know how much to charge per square foot. When you are creating a price for an estimate, do you find your cost per square foot changes depending on the equipment you need to use? How involved do you get in understanding these prices? How involved do you advice a business owner to get?

__________________
- Subscribe to my Lawn Care Marketing Blog Feed and get daily tips sent to you. Free!
Download your Free trial of Gopher Lawn Care Software.

Well to do it properly you need to know your productivity on each piece of equipment. Acres per hr, 1000sqft per hr, etc...

Well maintenance is a game of minutes, minutes that add up quickly. Knowing where you are winning and where you are loosing is very important.

Programs such as Gopher Billing and Scheduling Software help you out in this regard. The more info you put into the program the more accurate reports you can get out of it. Even running simple spreadsheets is very helpful.