3 Ways to Build a Landscaping Business

Growing your landscaping business means doing a whole lot more than just nurturing and cutting more green lawns in order to make your small business more profitable. Growing any small business is not easy but a landscaping business needs to be able to offer more services than just cutting lawns. Unlike many other small businesses, a landscaper has more competition than many other businesses because you will be competing against any household that has a lawn mower.

To grow your landscaping business you will do better if you differentiate your services from simply cutting lawns. Finding a product that will green-up a lawn to make it better than their neighbors will be as good a place to start as anywhere else and then getting the photos to put into a photo album that can act as a resume for your business. When you are asked for a written quote, be sure to add a photo (printed off your computer) of what you are capable of doing for them to the written quote. This will differentiate your business immediately because no one else is doing it.

Once a householder sees the potential of what your landscaping business can do for them they are much more likely to want your services. Many home owners are very proud of their homes and are always looking for something that will make their home better than their neighbors. People can be very competitive and you need to “sell” your business as a way of offering them 'kudos' and prestige.

Another way to grow your landscaping business will be to add more services into it. Offer a way that yard maintenance becomes a regular visit every week/fortnight/month so their lawn never gets too far from 'perfect'. This regular “ lawn maintenance without worry” is a service that many householders want because it's one worry and care they don't need to think about or do anything about. It simply happens for them. People like to be looked after and when they feel all their needs are being taken care of, they will tell their friends and neighbours. Word of mouth (WOM) advertising is advertising that simply can't be bought.

Another way to get more clients is to service the needs of builders, architects and property developers in your area.

Make an appointment to see the busiest architect in your town and offer a service to them to include a landscape plan for the proposed garden in their presentation to their clients. This will help the architect to sell his/her idea and give a broader view of the proposed new building to the client.

Once you undertake to grow your landscaping business, be sure not to grow too fast. If you say you can do something then be sure that you can deliver what you say you can. Too many small landscaping businesses have grown beyond their capabilities and lost clients in a tangle of uncompleted jobs.