As your mowing schedule fills with regular lawn care customers and mowing contracts, rainy days and other delays will have you scrambling for extra time to get your mowing schedule back on track.
Though it’s a great problem to have, a schedule that is too full will wind up costing you money in the long run.
Why is a packed schedule a bad thing? There are inevitable delays in the lawn care business. Traffic delays, lawn care equipment breakdowns, and job-time misestimates are norm for the lawn care business. With these scheduling stressers the only thing you need is a rain delay to throw you completely off schedule. High quality lawn care customers are difficult to come by. If they feel you are neglecting their lawns (even due to a rain delay) they will drop you for other lawn care companies that are more attentive.
How can you handle rain delays? We have found many methods for effectively planning for rain delays.
The first method is to plan a realistic schedule for your lawn care customers. If you can reasonably mow 15-20 yards per day, don’t schedule 25 lawns per day. It is unrealistic that you can keep up with a 25% overrun of your maximum. It is understandable that you want to get as many customers as possible but one way to keep your schedule manageable is to cull out the less profitable lawns as you replace them with better customers.
Second; keep a mandetory minimum of 1/2 day per week for catch up work. Since Friday is a common day for people wanting their lawns cut, I have always scheduled the second half of Thursday as my make-up day. This is good for two reasons. Early week rain delays can be made up on Thursday. If rain is expected Friday, a quick call to Friday clients will allow me to move them up to Thursday and their lawns will still look good for the weekend.
The last method is to communicate with your customers. Lawn care clients do not want to guess when you will mow their lawns. When you first realize that you are behind schedule, call them on the phone to let them know when you expect to mow. Here is a GREAT tip that will make your customers feel better about the delay. Resist the urge to tell them that you are too busy and will get to their lawns “when you can.” Instead, explain that mowing wet grass damages the turf and it is better for the lawn to wait until it has dried. This simple statement will let them know that you have their best interests at heart and you are truly caring for the grass.
There are many stressors to running a lawn care business. However, if you take a calm, clear, proactive approach, your lawn care business can run as smoothly (and profitably) as possible.
We have been associated with the lawn care industry for 2 decades and we know what it takes to get a business up and running quickly and effectively. We have developed a lawn care business program (with estimating softwre) that will help you with your business.
For more information, visit this webpage: http://startalawncarebusiness.com/order.html