The lawn care industry offers so many opportunities for entrepreneurs during both good and bad economic times. But not all lawn business owners are successful at making a decent income. Some don't even survive past their first year.
Your success in the lawn care business, like any other industry is almost certainly going to be measured by how much money you are making. To make a good income you have to be generating healthy profits.
Success comes down to not only the need for lots of lawn mowing jobs but also the need to complete jobs efficiently. Marketing and productivity are the two areas that you need to focus on.
A lawn business owner who is a master of marketing but slow at mowing lawns (or currently employing staff who are slow at mowing lawns) will simply not make money. Likewise, you can be the fastest lawn mower in the world but fail in business due to the fact that you were unable to generate any customers.
Let’s look a little more at these two important buzz words; marketing and productivity. It is important to focus on both and not to become a master of one while neglecting the other.
All the other details about starting a lawn business such as getting licensed and insured are trivial really. If you can get these two things right your success will almost certainly be assured.
Marketing - Maximize Opportunities to Make Money
Firstly, you have to have a constant stream of income coming into your lawn business at all times. For lawn care business operators this means having healthy routes with a slowly increasing number of accounts. While some lawn business owners buy accounts, most depend on marketing to bring in the clients that they need.
Your marketing system will have to generate leads, convert these enquiries into new accounts and then encourage loyalty and referrals over the long term. Customer retention is just as important as customer acquisition so a high standard of customer service is required.
The starting point for marketing should be research so that you can understand who your customers are, what they want and what kind of promotions they are likely to respond to. You need to meet market needs by coming up with a brand that is appealing and services that are in demand.
Then you can test advertising strategies, offers and sales approaches until you hit on winning combinations that produce results. You also have to become good at doing business in a way that allows you to stand out from the competition.
Marketing can be a complex beast to work out. Just break it down into parts though and work on getting every step right. If you keep making changes and experimenting you will come across a system that works.
Productivity - Minimize Money and Resources Going Out While Still Providing a Quality Service
Secondly, you need to focus on daily operations and productivity. You need to be able to get tasks done efficiently in order to make money. You have to know how to make the most of the work that is available to you.
This is done in the office, out on the road and in the yards of your clients and will involve systems to manage and track the performance of every aspect of your business.
You need a reliable computer system and dedicated software that can handle accounting, scheduling, estimating and other important functions.
You will need to understand how to plan routes that are efficient and save on time and gasoline. Equipment like a mobile phone, GPS and route planning software can really help you to be more organized and keep control.
You will also need to ensure that your productivity out on the job is maximized. You need to have the right gear and you need to know how to maintain it and how to use it correctly. If you have employees then you will need to have systems in place to monitor their productivity.
The Right Balance - Slow Growth Is Best to Keep Things In Balance
Success in the lawn mowing business is all about becoming good at marketing and managing an efficient operation. You need to maximize cash flows coming into your business and you have to give your clients a high standard of service while minimizing the time and costs that are incurred in the process.
Your marketing and operating systems have to develop slowly together. If one gets ahead of the other then problems can occur. A sudden burts in new accounts can be a disaster if you can't handle them properly. Slow growth usually allows your operational activities to keep pace with your growing number of clients.
Some people tend to overcomplicate business and make everything seem more complicated than it has to be. Just remember two words; marketing and productivity and you'll be fine. If you focus on these two things you will be able to keep a clear head and remember what the fundamentals of your lawn care business are all about.