by: www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com
After our blog post last week warning of the tax day deadline on September 15, 2010, we received a couple comments from people who want to make more money for themselves in 2011. Like millions of other Americans, they had just finished their income tax estimating forms and were surprised how little money they made thus far in 2010. Each of them asked: “how can I make more money with my lawn care business in 2011?”
If you are like thousands of other lawn care business owners, you are probably wondering how you can become more profitable in your lawn care business next year over.
What is the secret of making more money for your lawn mowing business without significant expansion of your services and lawn equipment?
There does not have to be a complicated answer to this question. From our point-of-view, there are at least three ways to make more money with your lawn care business. We are going to briefly outline these three methods in the article below. But if you are truly interested in making more money with your lawn care business, we encourage you to get a copy of our lawn care business guidebooks, training guides, and estimating software available from our main website.
Here is a three point overview of how to make more money next year with a lawn care business without significantly adding equipment or spending significantly more time mowing grass:
1) Get More Lawn Care Customers: Getting more lawn care customers is the first and most obvious solution to making more money with your business. It’s true though; if you are currently cutting grass for 10 customers and you increase your customer count to 20 you should, effectively, make twice the amount of income as before. Actually, if you follow proper route scheduling and other business secrets outlined on our lawn care business startup guidebook, the amount of money you make with a doubling of customers should be more than double. Proper use of economies of scale, better lawn care equipment selection, efficient mowing patterns which will reduce your work time on each yard, and better route planning will combine to help you add more lawns into your already-packed schedule.
2) Make More Money from Each Lawn Care Customer: If you charge your customers only for basic mow-and-go services, you are likely missing an incredible amount of additional income you could make at each service time from each customer. Add-on selling is a great method of boosting your revenue from each customer. Customers who are paying for basic mowing services might not be aware of additional services your company offers. There is always more work to do in your clients’ lawns. Your job, as a business owner, is to advertise all your services to your customers. Keep your eyes open for all additional services you can offer your customers. If you have ladders and the capability to clean gutters mention the positive aspects of keeping gutters free from leaves and debris. Many shrubs need trimming 3 to 4 times each year. Flower beds should be mulched in the spring and fall. Leaf cleanup service is an important addition to most lawn care services during the months of September through November and again in the springtime. Addition of these services is easy and allows you to make extra money from each customer without the need to find new customers.
3) Get Better Lawn Care Customers: Too many times, a young entrepreneur buys a lawn mower and starts accepting anyone who wants their grass cut and is willing to pay any amount to have the work done. Before long, new lawn care business owners have rosters full of demanding customers unwilling to pay the going market price for grass cutting on their small lawns. These customers want to pay only minimal amounts of money to have their grass cut as short as possible every two weeks. While having a small percentage of “mow and go” customers is fine for most lawn service companies, better money can be made off clients who are serious about having their lawns professionally maintained. Weekly mowing, proper blade height adjustments, striping, and knowledge of lawn care problems all help landscaping companies successfully win contracts with better lawn care customers willing to pay a premium price to have professional maintenance of the lawns and landscapes.
Following these three ideas may sound simple but it’s far too easy to fall into the trap of accepting every customers that comes along and bidding the job low enough the make sure the customer doesn’t shake his head and find someone cheaper.
All of us here at StartALawnCareBusiness.com understand the difficulty of starting a lawn care business correctly, targeting the right customers, and pricing the jobs properly so you can afford to do excellent work for your customers and still make a decent profit for your business and yourself.
If you want to learn how to run a better lawn care business in 2011 we encourage you to purchase our lawn care business course. The program is designed to help you avoid the traps that many new lawn care business owners fall into. Instead, you will learn proven strategies for starting and running a successful lawn care business.
We’re keeping the low sale price on the program through the end of this month. Learn more on our main webpage:
www.StartALawnCareBusiness.com
Start A Lawn Care Business.com