Lawn Care Estimating - The Driveway Moment
What do you think is the most important part of estimating lawn care jobs?
When I am consulting with new lawn care business owners I spend lots of time discussing the basics of giving proper lawn care business bids. Understanding the total costs of each particular job is paramount to knowing how much money to bid. Basic knowledge of your overhead is important as is knowing local pricing (what the market will bear). Our Lawn Care Business Guidebook contains an excellent bidding tutorial which teaches you the basic principles (as well as the finer points) of lawn care estimating.
All of this information is helpful to you in determining a basic price and the Lawn Care Estimating Calculator Software is a very handy business tool. However, all these “textbook estimating examples and calculators” don’t do you any good if you can’t actually SELL your services to your customers.
Let’s face it, presentation is highly important when you are giving lawn care estimates. If customers don’t believe you will do a good job, they will pass over your estimates and choose other lawn care companies. If you are not confident in your bids, customers will sense your weakness and will get you to lower your prices. If you are not prepared to offer additional services to your customers, you will miss crucial upsell opportunities. All of these things cost you money.
When giving lawn care estimates, I have always taken a couple of moments to sit in the driveway before exiting my truck. These “Driveway Moments” allow me time to prepare myself for each sales call. During this time I scan the house & the yard (and even the cars in the driveway) looking for clues that give me an indication of the price I can get for each job. I also look for additional services to offer the customer. No matter what the customer requests, I try to have 3 or 4 addtional services that the customer might need. Great presentation, understanding of your customers’ needs, and proper upselling can make your lawn care business thousands of dollars of additional income during the course of a year.
The driveway moment also gives me an opportunity to put myself in a proper frame of mind (psych myself up). It allows me to forget about that guy who cut me off in traffic as I was leaving my last lawn care job. It allows me to convince myself that I will not be talked down on my price. It allows me to approach the estimate with enthusiasm, confidence, and a positive attitude.
If you are new to the lawn care business and you feel that you don’t do a good enough job in presenting your lawn care estimates, give yourself a Driveway Moment before knocking on the door of your next potential customer. I have given thousands of estimates over the years and I still believe that the Driveway Moment is one of the most important parts of estimating lawn care jobs.
If you are a new lawn care business owner and you need help in your estimating process, our Lawn Care Business Guidebook and Software package is what you need to help you give better estimates. To learn more about this HUGE lawn care business guidebook, business toolkit, and estimating software, please visit our main webpage: