Marketing & Sales Insight for the Lawn & Landscape Industry

Boy, I really dated myself with this article's title. And, thankfully for you, have made many, many mistakes related to pricing lawn and landscaping services over these 25 years for you to learn from.

You're welcome :)

I tried to group these insights into three buckets for easier consumption.

First, my biggest insight: While pricing is the most important factor related to your company's profitability, price is not the most important factor when it comes to making a sale. That should be good news.

Here are 24 more...

In the past 20+ years that I’ve been in the lawn and landscape industry, I’ve noticed a growing trend in which many lawn care companies and even some landscapers are adding pest control services to their offerings.

After all, if you are already maintaining your customer’s property as a trusted partner, why not offer them more ways you can help them while growing your lawn care or landscape business with a highly-profitable new service line?

Personally, I worked at a full-service firm that added, inside-out pest control services. It was so successful that it grew to about $1.2 million in annual revenue in just about seven years. It was also one of our most profitable departments with the lowest cancellation rates.

What does it take to find a great lawn care salesperson? Well, that's a loaded question...

Seriously though, how do you build a great lawn care sales team? If you have all of the organizational pieces in place, where do you find these people?

Luckily for you, I know a guy...

Adam Zellner is the VP of Sales for Oasis Turf & Tree, an $8M lawn care company in the Cincinnati area which services over 13,000 customers! 

Adam and I often have great, candid conversations about how to sell lawn care. Today, he shares some of his sales recruiting tips to help you find salespeople to grow your lawn care business.

Stay tuned...

Have you ever won a large landscape maintenance bid, or landed a huge design/build project, and your immediate thought was, “Oh shit…”?

“Oh shit… did I estimate this accurately?”

“Oh shit… now we have to hire more people.”

“Oh shit… how will we fit this in our production schedule?”

I know the feeling. When I operated my landscape design firm years ago I loved selling the “big idea” (and collecting the deposit check) but dreaded what came after. That’s when all the second-guessing began.

With this in mind – and assuming I’m not the only landscape professional to have felt this way – I want to discuss the subject of “client concentration” and offer a practical framework which I think can keep many of you from potential and unnecessary financial stress. And, maybe more importantly, personal stress.

Marketing problems at your lawn or landscaping company...they are plenty...

Lack of brand awareness...

Advertising/marketing campaigns that fall flat on their face.

Frustrating relationships with marketing agencies...

Unqualified leads...

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Now before you spiral into depression, take solace in one reality.

Let's just assume you DO get landscaping and lawn care leads but those leads don't equal landscaping or lawn care sales. That sucks.

In the past 20+ years I've been in the lawn and landscape industry, I've seen this happen from 7 common reasons. Today, I'm going to talk about these lawn and landscaping sales problems and give you tips to close more business.

Stay tuned...

Let's talk candidly about this global pandemic and what it could mean to your business.

Difficult times are ahead for many of our lawn and landscape industry brethren as they will struggle to regain a foothold in the – hopefully near – post-pandemic economy. Let's face it, there's a "new normal" waiting around the corner.

All of us owners of businesses will face stiff challenges. Like being a small business owner doesn't have enough challenges already, right?!?!

But, that's the reality we're all facing.