Lawn Care Tips – Watering Your Lawn

March 19th, 2010

Watering Your Lawn

After you have spent lots of money making sure your lawn looks as great as you want it to, you don’t want to let the whole thing go to waist by neglecting the proper maintenance on your lawn and allowing it to die out. Watering your lawn is very important, especially if you live in a dry climate where rain is very sporadic. It’s also extra important during the summer when the sun is beating down upon your plants and grass all day. The sun, while healthy for your plants, drys up the water in the ground faster.

One of the best ways to water your lawn is an automatic underground system. These systems, when properly maintained, will automatically insure that your lawn is watered everyday, that way you don’t have to think about it and you aren’t taking the chance at forgetting to water your lawn. Automatic systems can be set for the day and time, and amount of water that needs to be put on your lawn.

If you have plants in your lawn then they will need more or less water depending on what plants you have. The systems also can help you out with the area you can cover at one time. If you are using a water hose or an above ground sprinkler, then it could take hours and hours to water a large lawn, whereas the underground systems will get it done for you so that you are wasting hours of valuable time standing out in the hot sun.

Of course, if you have a small lawn then watering by hand is just fine. Make sure that your hoses don’t leak and cause water to pool up in certain areas of your yard. Too much water in once place can kill the grass and cause more problems. You can also set up an above ground sprinkler for small lawns and just keep an eye on it so you don’t over water anything.

Bidding Lawn Maintenance Jobs For Newbies

January 29th, 2010

A question that gets posed to me all the time by beginning lawn care business owners is “how much should I charge for lawn maintenance.” This is a topic we cover a lot in the free lawn business course but let me explain a few important concepts.

You need to decide how much or how little you are willing to make per hour of profit. One of the biggest mistakes new lawn guys make is not factoring in expenses in doing a job. You have gas for your equipment, employees, gas for your truck to travel to the job and often there are other odds and ends you don’t think about.

So if you are looking to take home at least $25 an hour after expenses you need to charge enough to cover your expenses and make your money. For example, if you are bidding a job that you know is going to take you about 1 hour then you would need to start out with your $25 and then add in expenses. Perhaps you are paying an employee $10 an hour and let’s figure in you have about $5 in other expenses. So you would charge the person $25+$10+$5 or $40 to do the job.

You can adjust the price as you feel necessary to make more or less money depending on what you think is fair. You could probably get away with charging a little more for a job that is going to take an hour.

This is a very general idea on how to bid on a job but hopefully will give you a little more confidence when you are giving bids out to new customers.

Meeting The Needs Of Lawn Care Customers

January 14th, 2010

Lately I have been thinking a lot about what gets me to buy something. Or better yet, what gets me to choose one company over another when making a purchase.

For example, a couple of months ago I decided to buy a hot tub to put outside my house. I went to what I dubbed as “spa alley” where literally 4 spa companies are within 1/2 mile of each other.

The first store I went into the kind of assumed I was looking for a cheaper spa than I really was and to be honest I didn’t know what I wanted yet so he showed me around and I left knowing I wasn’t going to make a decision after one stop.

The second store I went into the salesman was energetic and very knowledgeable. I learned more than I ever wanted to know about spas from this guy but I didn’t mind because his energy was contagious. He took the time to show me each spa and explained all of the features and differences of each.

In doing this he hit one of my needs that I didn’t even realize was possible to be met. See the house next to mine is a two story house and I worried about privacy issues. Without knowing my worry the spa salesman showed me a spa cover that folds up and forms a wall for privacy.

I left there feeling great about buying a spa from them.

The final store I went to the salesman (which is a misnomer, I should say “guy working in the store”) had no energy and seemed like he had no desire to speak to me. As I was the only person in the store I expected for him to take a greater interest in what I was looking for.

I had to ask lots of questions to get any information out of him. When he finally showed me his hot tubs I found one that was the most like what I was looking for, and about $1000 cheaper than store 2.

So who do you think I bought from?

You guessed it. Store 2.

What can we learn from this experience? When you are running a business whether it be a lawn care business a hair salon or whatever, if you want to be successful you need to do 2 things.

1. Be enthusiastic about what you do. Your energy and passion or lack thereof will be contagious. If you go give a bid on a job be confident in your ability to do the job and let the customer know how great their yard will look when you’re done. Remember people buy from people, not from businesses.

2. Find out and fill the needs of your customers. If your customers main concern is that there lawn always looks like it has been freshly cut, then instead of saying “Sure I do weekly, bi-weekly and monthly lawn maintenance” you need to say “We’ll make sure to come every week so that your lawn always looks like it has been freshly cut.”

Meet the needs of your customers and they will sign up with you and stay with you forever.

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