Starting a landscaping business - Your Guarantee For Success

More landscaping businesses fail from not paying attention to "client satisfaction" than from not knowing how to perform landscaping duties. This is in no way suggesting that you can get away with "below par" landscaping or gardening skills. NO. This won't work, as you will soon find out that the most effective way of making your clients satisfied is by doing your job well.

Always keep this fact in your mind.

A satisfied client is the best sales person you can ever have.

So, make your clients satisfied and they'll be loyal to you. They'll also bring their family and friends to you.

The question now is

"How do you make Satisfied clients?"

We will start to answer them in the following 3 sections.

Know your job well.

Before thinking about starting a landscaping business, you need to know about gardening and landscaping. At the very least you should know more than the average person on the street. Sometimes just being interested is good enough at first but you need to be prepared to work because the learning curve is steep. I will assume that you already have a basic understanding of gardening and landscaping so I will not dwel on this for long.

However, If you need self improvement in this area, you should get a copy of Sunset's Western Garden Book. This book covers the basics of plantcare and gardening. It also conains an encyclopedia of various plants, flowers and shrubs with tips on planting and caring for each.

Another good book you could get is Lawn Care & Gardening: A Down-To-Earth Guide to the Business

Know Your Clients and Thier Landscaping Needs

In business, people will only pay you for solving their problems or meeting their needs. So in order to get paid you need to know and clearly outline the needs of your prospective clients. You also need to know your prospective client. The list of clients and their needs can be seen as your "target market". The longer it is, the wider the target market for your landscaping business, so don't restrict yourself- at least for now- just write as it comes to your mind. We will fine tune that list later.

Start by answering these questions

1.What landscaping or gardening jobs will my clients be hiring me to do?

2.Which clients will be hiring my landscaping outfit to do this job?

Some answers will be immediately apparent to you, while some will require some work (thinkng and asking already established landscapers and some prospective clients).

Now read through this list. It tells you the landscaping and gardening services you could provide to your clients and get paid for. And it will be what your business revolves around.

However, the biggest mistake you'll make will be to think you can start out doing everything for everyone. Success in the landscaping business comes with finding a niche and filling it. This is called specialization. This means you need to find out a group of closely related services and provide those services to the best of your ability to a defined group of clients. But How do you do that? You'll find out in the next section.

Finding Your Niche or Carving One for Yourself

Starting a landscping business successfully, comes easily when you find a niche you can fill or carve a a new one for yourself. For example, it's easier to establish yourself as the leader in residential landscaping OR in sports turf landscaping than by trying to be the leader in BOTH. There are many reasons for this. For starters, you will be dealing with two different sets of clients. Secondly, you'll have two different kinds of job descriptions... and divided attention. Choose one and channell all your efforts towards it and you're more likely to succeed.

So, get out your list and tick all the services you can do very well or at least above average (you could always improve by reading and practice). Tick it if you can answer yes to this question

Can I do ___(the service) as good as, or better than the present landscaping contractors?

When you finish ticking, pull out your client list and decide - based on your already ticked list - who you would be providing the services for. For example, if you are very good with interiorscaping, you'll be better off providing services to green houses and not golf courses.

To learn more about finding a niche, get a copy of this FREE e-book SERVICE SELLERS MASTERS COURSE The basic principles contained in this book work well when applied to the landscaping business.

Why Will A Client Hire You And Not Other Landscape Contractors?

Once you've decided on what to do and who to provide services for, the final and most important thing to do is to create your unique selling proposition(USP). This simply means you go the extra mile by improving on the present landscaping industry standard. This is what accelerates your rise to the top. To define your USP, ask yourself these questions.

How can I improve on the services presently offered by other landscaping contractors? - Free consultation, add-on services, prompt service, lower prices....

What advantages will my landscaping business have over my competitors? - Experience, proximity, better equipment, professional qualifications....

All these together make up your USP. And putting them in a sentence imediately tells your clients Why you are the person for the job

Clients will love to hire your landscaping outfit and hopefully, when you give them servive they can't find anywhere else, they'll keep coming back for more.

Remember...

In the landscaping business, client satisfaction is the key to success.

All the very best in your Landscaping business start-up!!!

Sugested Reading

SERVICE SELLERS MASTERS COURSE

Starting a Landscaping Business

Sunset's Western Garden Book

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