How We Do It: Oct. 1999, Selling Design Work at Greenleaf Landscapes

One of the greatest challenges to a residential design/build firm or, in our case, a landscape division of a retail garden center, is to sell and install a sufficient volume of work to compensate designers adequately and operate profitably. This is especially true if your firm is not large enough to support separate designers, salespeople and drafters.

Even if you don’t try to “niche” your business to larger, upscale projects, you can make money on smaller jobs. But you have to develop a system that allows you to sell the job during the first visit to the site and install the job in one or two days. Unless you’re willing to turn down prospects, you need to make sure you make a profit on every single project.

The very nature of this type of work, generating a high number of small projects rather than a few large projects, demands a streamlined process without added support staff. The first area to focus on is the design/sales process, although your materials handling and installation operations must also be structured.

THE SALES FORCE. We operate in an area dominated by modest homes, valued between $75,000 and $125,000. These clients usually cannot afford to spend more than $2,000 to $5,000 on any single phase of landscaping their homes. Our firm is able to generate $1.5 million in landscape sales with three salesmen: the owner, the landscape manager and a landscape architect. That means each salesperson must generate $500,000 annually. Since our average project is $2,500, each salesperson must sell 200 jobs annually. With a 64 percent closing ratio, each salesperson must produce and present 300 designs and estimates. Therefore, it is imperative that we close as many proposals as possible in a single visit and streamline the design, sales and installation processes.

Every landscape designer is taught a multiple-step design process. This traditional system must be fundamentally altered if small jobs are to be a profitable market for a professional landscape firm.

CARBONLESS DRAFTING & ESTIMATING FORMS. A landscape designer must always produce a sketch, showing the existing elements of the landscape and the basics of the design. Usually, this sketch is either transferred by the landscape designer to a blueprint or given to a draftsman.

If the sketch can be sufficient to provide the basis for a blueprint or for a draftsman to interpret, why couldn’t a sketch be sufficient for communicating directly with the clients?

As long as the sketch is clear enough to present the essential information in a manner that is understandable to the client, there is no reason why a sketch could not serve as the final design for a small job.

This challenge led to our development of a single three-part NCR (no carbon required) form that is used exclusively for all sales – from the planting of a single tree to a complex $35,000 project.

The form is 8½ inches by 14 inches with minimal space taken up by our firm name and logo. Most of the area is for the design sketch and the estimate, and a light green grid in the background provides the designer with an appropriate scale. An average scale for residential properties is a 2-foot per grid block.

The bottom left corner of the form contains a series of contract terms and a line for the client’s signature, indicating his or her acceptance of the proposal. Since a long, detailed contract is not necessary for the low amount of risk involved by both parties, only the essential terms are listed, which include: payment terms of 1/3 down, balance on completion, that the unauthorized use of the proposal is prohibited and that the client should keep a copy for his or her records.

The cost of each form is 25 cents. The top copy (original) is the working drawing, the second copy is for the client and the third copy is for our files. We are considering adding a fourth copy for use in the yard for loading plants and materials.

Our system is not perfect, but it has allowed us to meet the needs of our marketplace, expand our business and operate at a profit.

The author is president of Greenleaf Landscapes, Marietta, Ohio.

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