If you’re already in the lawn care game, you know: the lawn care business is a competitive one. But that doesn’t mean you stop mowing.
It means you double down on dominating the market. After all, you’re in the business of helping homeowners and businesses make their lawns look incredible. It’s these people that matter. Let’s listen to what they have to say.
Here are the top 5 things customers look for in any landscaping company. After you read this, you might want to trim some things and add some features, but hey … you’re a landscaping company. It’s what you do!
Don’t Forget About Continuous, Year-Round Improvement (Winter isn’t for snow angels anymore!)
Winter isn’t just for Netflix and snow angels anymore.
In fact, winter might be the best time to double down on offering more services.
This winter, ask yourself these essential questions:
- Would homeowners and business owners in your area benefit from winter landscaping services? (I’m talkin’ snow blowing, winter gardening, mulching, installing garden beds…)
- Take a look at your marketing. Is it shiny, or does it need a revamp? Now is the time to trim things up on your website and other marketing materials.
- Reflect. How did this past year go? Anything you can do differently for better results? Think back on patterns you saw in your happiest and least happy customers. What can you learn from this?
As you head into the winter months, these are great points to keep in mind so that you use your slower months to strengthen your business for 2021 and beyond! Winter is not just for Netflix and snow angels. It’s a time to develop your business and make it thrive like mint in an herb garden.
How to Understand Your Lawn Care Customers
You might think it’s just grass, but you’re in a personal business, fellow lawn care warriors.
So if you want to land more sales and be the top lawn dog, you need to know exactly WHY your happiest customers make the decisions they do.
Shape your business to accommodate those needs like a fancy sculpted bush.
One last thing…
Most articles in the landscaping industry talk about WHAT your customers want…
Without diving into HOW you can use this insight to cut more acres next year.
Let’s get trimmin’.
5 Things Every Landscaping Customer is Pin(e)ing 🌲For
Make sure these aspects of your business are strong, and customers will love you forever.
1. Strong communication
Communication is key. Here are three major areas in your landscaping and lawn care business where communication needs to be clear-cut:
Improve communication during the sales process.
It’s frustrating when a customer has been trying to reach you for days or even weeks.
They start wondering if they need a carrier pigeon or a spark signal, because apparently a phone doesn’t cut it.
This ain’t high school dating. Don’t make them chase you.
For excellent customer service, you need a fantastic response time. Even if you hire your nephew just to follow up with people, customers will trust you if they know what to expect.
Improve communication in your first meeting.
Communication is key with any business, but most especially when customers are trying to plan their schedules around you.
If you are meeting with a customer (especially for the first time), they want to know when you will be there and how long you need to make your assessment. Then let them know when to expect the next communication, whether that be design sketches or a simple quote.
Improve response time.
Nothing is more frustrating than when someone is trying to call you about a problem and they can’t get a hold of any human.
(Look, a super cool space age robot might be mowing the lawn, but a human really does have to answer the phone sometimes. And by sometimes I mean every day.)
2. A solid reputation
It takes work, but it’s worth it.
Communication and responsiveness go hand-in-hand with a good reputation. Building a good reputation takes work. It doesn’t come easy, but word of mouth leads are often the most profitable ones.
Do excellent work and make sure your lawns are the best lawns on the block. How to achieve the best green acres? Consider investing in an auto mower. (These little guys do a better job mowing the lawn, with more constant cuts and healthier mowing habits.)
Go Above and Beyond.
Customers remember companies that go above and beyond. Do your customers have pets? Carry dog treats in your pocket. Carry their newspaper up to the front door. It’s the little things, ya know.
Also, we might be biased, but you can stand apart from your competitors by employing the Husqvarna Automower 550… for achieving healthier lawns, more consistent cuts, and by giving yourself time to focus on finishing touches.
3. The right tools to get the job done
Look, you have an important job to do, and you can’t do it well without the right tools. You might want to dominate the neighborhood with the finest cut lawns, but you can’t do that with a crappy, unreliable push mower.
Furthermore, the quality of your equipment will dictate how much work you can get done and how many clients you can realistically take on.
Auto mowers can help landscaping companies scale their lawn care businesses by freeing up hands on the team. So your guys can focus on the details that matter most, while their robomow pal cuts the lawn. It’s a win-win.
4. Transparency and trust
Make your pricing transparent.
Nobody likes to feel like they are being taken advantage of. Be as transparent as you can.
If there’s a separate fee for one of your services, make sure your customer is aware so that they can make their own decision. Even if you can sneak in an arbitrary extra fee for the first few invoices, you will inevitably be caught. Tisk tisk.
Once you lose that trust, you will likely lose that customer and any other potential customers that you may have gained from a referral. It’s not worth it.
Make your contracts clear and easy to understand.
Nobody knows your business like you do. That’s why you’re the expert. Keep it simple!
Don’t use language in your contracts that your customers won’t understand. You don’t want them to feel like they need to pay a lawyer to decipher your landscaping jargon. Spell it out for them.
5. Eco-friendly Lawn Care is here to stay
Give them peace of mind.
Customers want to know that you’re not going to be harming their pets or their water supply. (Or giving them hives and annoying lawn-related allergies, right?)
Make sure your website and marketing materials include this eco-friendly lawn care messaging so that your customers don’t have to ask.
Oh, and by the way, if you’re looking for the halo effect of eco-friendliness in your lawn care practices, look no further than fortifying your business with an automatic lawnmower from Autmow (Like this industrial beauty that can mow 5 acres in one sitting). In fact, all auto mowers are better for the environment than traditional push mowers. Why? Because they don’t spew nasty emissions into the air.
But a good electric, autonomous mower isn’t going to be the only eco-friendly tool to investigate. Check out eco-friendly leaf blowers, weed whackers, trimmers, and chainsaws here.
We hope these suggestions gave you something to mow about, and that you’ll be able to get a better sense of what your customers are looking for in a landscaping company in 2021. Whether you scale your business with auto mowers or decide to stick with a traditional push mower, knowing what your customers need will take your lawn care business a “Lawn-way.”
