Start A Lawn Care Business

Make money with a lawn care and landscaping business.

Posts Tagged bidding

2012 Lawn Mowing Contracts Are Coming Due

Jan 25

Posted by Lawn Care Business in contracts, landscaping, lawn care business, lawn care contracts | No Comments

Bidding Lawn Mowing Contracts for 2012

Lawn Care Contracts are Great Sources of Extra Money

How to Successfully Bid Lawn Care Contracts
http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com/order.html
As lawn care business owners, we are all looking for additional sources of income for our companies.
The approach of the 2012 lawn mowing season brings special opportunities for any lawn care business that is either brand new to the lawn care industry or is looking to increase an already thriving business structure. Lawn care contracts are often bid during the January through April time frame. Industrial plants, apartment complexes, retail establishments, and government agencies renew their lawn care and landscape maintenance contracts between now and the beginning of the new mowing season.

The problem with many lawn care company owners is that they do not know how to bid these contracts. Too many lawn care companies mistakenly try to win contracts by simply underpricing last year’s price. This is the wrong way to price a contract and many lawn care companies lose THOUSANDS of dollars each year following this strategy.

Developing a pricing strategy is only one of the problems lawn care companies face bidding on contracts. Procedural difficulties in bidding contracts also cause many lawn care companies to have their bids rejected. This results in downtime and lost revenue for those lawn care companies.

If you want to take your lawn care business to the next level this year, take the time RIGHT NOW to learn how to properly find, develop, and bid on larger-scale lawn care and landscape maintenance contracts. Our company has developed a professionally produced lawn care business guidebook and software package that includes a very detailed look at how to properly bid on lawn care contracts. The package is on sale right now for less than $50.

For more information and ordering instructions, visit our main website by clicking on the link below:





How to Successfully Bid Lawn Care Contracts
http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Lawn Care Estimating – How To Estimate (Bid) Lawn Care Work

Jun 11

Posted by Lawn Care Business in estimating, how much to charge, lawn business strategies, lawn care estimating, start a lawn care business | No Comments

by: StartALawnCareBusiness.com

Lawn Care Estimating

Our Lawn Care Business program is jam-packed with information about starting and operating a lawn care business. There is tons of information on business startup, how to advertise and acquire customers, how to bid larger jobs, how to purchase lawn mowers, weedeaters, hedge trimmers, & leaf blowers, and there is also information on how to strip lawns and give professional looking cuts.

As informative as all these sections are, one of the most important sections of the lawn care business course deals with knowing how much money to charge your customers. New lawn care entrepreneurs have difficult times telling their customers how much they are going to charge to cut their grass. We dealt with the estimation problem ourselves our first year in business. I still remember some of the first customers I estimated. I would tell them the price and they would almost always balk and say I was too high. Being new in the business and not wanting to lose customers, I would almost always drop my price immediately…sometimes as much as $10 per cut.

When I think back to those early days now, I left a ton of money on the table because I was too inexperienced to know how to give a good estimate and stand firm on my price. I probably lost thousands of dollars the first six month in business because I didn’t know how to give proper estimates.

If you are new to the business and you feel that you are just not making the money you know you should be making, I urge you to get our Lawn Care Business training coursebooks and training videos. The program includes a REALWORLD description teaching you how to price jobs and how to keep from having your customers turn away from reasonable estimates.

We have the lawn care business coursebooks, video training guides, estimating software, and business toolkit on sale right now through our main website. Learning how to estimate lawn care work properly might save you thousands of dollars of lost revenue this year in your lawn care & landscaping business.

You can order the lawn care business program through our main website: http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

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Bidding on Government Lawn Mowing Contracts

Mar 17

Posted by Lawn Care Business in bidding lawn care, contracts, lawn care videos, start a lawn care business | 4 Comments

March is already half over and if you are thinking about bidding on Government lawn mowing contracts you may have already missed the majority of the contracts that have been let for bid for the upcoming mowing season. Don’t fret because there are likely several contracts that have been delayed or are being rebid for one reason or another.

Before you bid on a Government lawn mowing contract you should be aware that Government contracts follow a different code of conduct than many other requests for proposals. I’ve made a short video for you highlighting a few finer points of an example Code-of-Conduct manual. Understanding and agreeing to this manual is the first step in getting your lawn care company on a Government’s bidding list.

Proposal Forms: I want to highlight a few finer points of this contract bidding instruction booklet. The first point is the Proposal Forms. Most bidding packets come with a series of bidding forms. You must complete the bidding forms that come with the bidding packet. Do not fill in your own forms or simply write your prices on a sheet of paper. Your bids may be rejected if you fill them out on anything but the bidding forms that come with your bidding packet.

Late Bids: Make sure you get your bids in on time. If you are late on a bid, the purchasing agent will, most likely, reject your bid. I have seen lawn care companies attempt to turn their bid packets in 2 minutes after the bid-closing times and the purchasing agents have rejected those bids. 9:00AM means 9:00AM and not 1 minute after 9:00. Acceptance of a bid is a violation of the request for proposal and could cause the job to be rebid. I like to submit time sensitive bids a couple days in advance. Rushing to get your bid in at the last minute will cause you to make mistakes. Taking your time with bid preparation allows you to calculate your prices with a clear head.

Submittal of Bids: Bids must be presented in a special bidding envelope that comes with your bidding packet. The envelope will be time stamped by the Purchasing Agent as proof that your submittal was within time cut off of bid acceptance.

Competency of Bidder: Purchasing agents can reject bids from lawn care companies that are deemed incompetent to complete the work. A company that does not posses proper equipment, skills sets, or manpower can be rejected from the bidding process if they are unable to demonstrate their ability to complete the job. Likewise, if a company does not have proper insurance or if they have defaulted on a previous contract, they might be deemed incompetent and their bid rejected even if they are the low bidder.

Performance Bond: A performance bond is a financial instrument stating that you will complete the work as stated in the contract. If you do not complete the work, you may lose your performance bond. A performance bond is designed to keep lawn care companies from bidding jobs that they do not have intention or capability of completing. Take a performance bond seriously. Also, a performance bond will cost you some money or it will tie up some of your financial resources. So, take the additional cost into consideration and work that into your contract.

Collusive Bidding: Bidders of many government contracts are not allowed to discuss their pricing or estimating strategies with other bidders of the same contract. Price setting is highly frowned upon by purchasing agents. Collusion can cause all bids to be rejected by the purchasing agent. Worse than having your bid rejected; collusion can have you banned from the bidding list and can bring even harsher penalties upon the collusive bidders.

This is just a brief overview of a Code-Of-Conduct example to get your companies name onto a bidding list. It can be nerve-wracking attempting to navigate the bidding process. If you are interested in bidding government contracts, we include an in-depth discussion of the bidding process in our lawn care business guidebooks. We have lots of experience bidding these type jobs and our bidding tutorial as well as our estimating calculators will help you give the best bids for these larger-scale contracts. Take a look at our website for more information on the Start A Lawn Care Business program

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Lawn Care Cleanup for Foreclosed Homes

Jul 4

Posted by Lawn Care Business in bidding lawn care, lawn business strategies, lawn care business | 1 Comment

As hurricane season begins, communities in heavy weather target areas struggle to place lawn care cleanup responsibility for foreclosed homes.

http://www.carolinalive.com/news/news_story.aspx?id=307652

This is good news for lawn care companies who have their businesses registered with their local code administrator and purchasing manager.
Irrespective of your location in the country (in hurricane zones or not) lawns need to be cleaned after severe weather.  If homes are in foreclosure or if vacant property is not cared for by registered property owners, responsibility of cleanup often falls to public works departments.
These departments often do not have available manpower after inclement weather since they are working hard clearing public streets and other prioritized locations.
If you are known to their purchasing managers and are on their list of available lawn care vendors you will often get calls to bid on clean up.  If job costs fall below purchase price thresholds you may be allowed to perform work without completing a bidding process.

The Start A Lawn Care Business guidebook and business toolkit describes how to properly get on local bidding lists and preferred vendor lists.  You can purchase the guidebook by visiting our home page at:

http://www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com

Feel free to contact us to order the business program or purchase it directly from our website.

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