SMART BUSINESS: Cultivate Your Customer Base

Are you satisfied with your company’s sales numbers? Happy with the number of accounts you currently have? Could both be better? Sure, but expanding can mean either more cost or more headaches as a result of the time needed to plan accordingly. To have a successful year, put some real thought and effort into these tips for how you can grow your customer base today.

SET GOALS. First, you need some goals. Start small – just make an outline or write down a couple of phrases. Then fill in some of the blanks. Then a few more. Put them aside for a couple of days. Then bring them out and polish them a bit.

Well written goals describe the action to be taken as well as how you plan to measure progress. Start with a good description of the planned action and include some sort of way to track the outcome in a tangible way. For example, “Start up a tree care division; offer pruning, fertilization and removals,” should not stand alone. Add “Secure 30 new accounts, each bringing in a net profit of $400” to help you document and evaluate the success of the new venture.

LOOK ELSEWHERE. Very few ideas are original. Most are gleaned and adapted from someone else. One way to explore new ideas is to travel 500 miles away and visit some other companies like yours or, better yet, that provide the types of services that match up with your new goals and objectives. Most business owners in other markets won’t feel the need to keep important competitive details to themselves. In fact, you might be able to tell them about some ideas and techniques that have worked for you, and develop a relationship that provides a sounding board to listen to the merits of future projects. The visit might not provide any new ideas, but at least it should help refine your goals, making them more realistic or practical.

LOOK AT HOME. Start with a client review. Your current clients are probably your best leads for expanded work. You’ve already established a good relationship with them, they know you, you know them, etc. If you have several thousand clients, you’ll probably want to gather your staff and pare it down to a workable number. Call the client and schedule an appointment to appraise their lawn and landscape.

During the review, discuss and evaluate the success of each service that you have provided in the past few years. Anything you did for the client is fair game – lawn fertilization, installation of annuals, brick work, etc. Five outcomes are possible in the review:

1. Satisfaction of a job well done, happy customer, no new jobs wanted.
2. Satisfaction of a job well done, happy customer; new job requested; “You’ve done a great job with our landscape ... you know, I’ve always wanted to screen my view of the neighbor’s dog kennel. Can you help?”
3. Dissatisfaction, unhappy customer, “Why did you remind me how bad that project turned out? I’m calling another company.”
4. Dissatisfaction, understanding customer. “OK, so that didn’t work out exactly as we had planned, but with a few small changes, it’s going to be great in 2006. When can we get started on those?” 
5.  Satisfaction of a job well done, no new jobs wanted, but referral to a friend, neighbor, relative or work associate.

If you’re careful as a staff to contact only the clients with a track record of few or no complaints, outcomes 1, 2, 4 and 5 are likely to result. Of course, if outcome 3 occurs, embrace it as an opportunity to enhance your ability to calm a client down and re-focus their attention on the parts of your service that were positive.
      
CROSS SELL. Chances are, you don’t provide complete grounds maintenance services to each and every customer you have. Consider cross-selling to your existing clients. Grow your business by enlarging the service you provide to current customers. Some examples:

1. Market aeration to your lawn care accounts. The best procedure you can perform on a compacted lawn is aeration. Sell the aeration; then make an attempt at up-selling the aeration by offering double and triple pass, and/or spring and fall aeration. After all, how good is a single pass aeration anyway? Your customers hear that aeration is good so now is the time to cash in on it.

2. Market landscape maintenance to lawn care customers. Older neighborhoods have large trees and shrubs that need to be pruned and fertilized, as well as the leaves raked. Someone needs to mow the grass, and it might as well be your company, as long as you charge enough for it to make some profit. Every time you rip out a dying or diseased plant, your landscape designer should be trying to sell the client on a landscape appraisal and renovation.

3. Market lawn renovation to your irrigation customers. In many parts of the country, the fall and winter has been dry, with above average temperatures and below average rainfall or snowfall. Many lawns stand a good chance of being thin in the spring. Why is an irrigation customer a good target for a lawn renovation pitch? Generally, the biggest factor in the success of a renovation is if the homeowner is dedicated to watering correctly and for the time necessary to produce a good stand of turf. A client with an irrigation system has the equipment to do that. With a few instructions from your staff, lawn renovation can make your customer’s lawn the envy of the neighborhood.

4. Market irrigation installation or repair services to your lawn care accounts. Let’s face it, every one of your customer’s lawn sprinkler systems is broken. That may sound like a bold statement, but consider this –  they either have actual broken parts or the system in place doesn’t function at a reasonable rate of efficiency or distribution uniformity. The matter in doubt is the extent of malfunction. Just how bad is it? Recently, I was chatting with the owner of a lawn and landscape maintenance company who said he’s finding there is big money to be made in irrigation auditing, repair and maintenance. As your lawn applicators are putting down product, instruct them to look for low heads, wetter than normal areas, brown turf, etc. These are all signs of a lawn irrigation system that needs to be checked out and possibly repaired. Once you offer to repair the system, you have your foot in the door to upgrade the system or sell a related product.

GET FOCUSED. After you select your theme, get focused. Why? Most lawn care companies don’t have the resources to utilize every selling strategy, every advertising method and every marketing technique known to man. Narrowing your approach can be an efficient way of marketing your services. Try these:

1. Get focused with territory. Select a part of town and work it. Park your truck in a subdivision and have your workers do some door to door selling. By selecting one part of town, your sales message will be easier to deliver.

2. Get focused with mailings. Buy a mailing list for ONE zip code. Pick one with some of your best looking lawns in it, so that you can make it easy for prospective clients to buy from you. Make it easier by placing a small yard sign in these good lawns.

3. Get focused intentionally and strategically. Be right up front with prospective clients and tell them what strategies you are using. For example, you’ll be concentrating your trucks in a small area, which means that any extra product necessary is handy, and sharing expertise for diagnosis is convenient. The line would go something like, “Yes, sir, on that rare occasion that your lawn applicator isn’t sure why your lawn is suffering, another technician’s opinion is only two minutes away.”

4. Get focused with age and other demographics. Many demographic groups have a certain reasons to choose lawn care. Once you figure out those reasons, you can use them again without re-inventing the wheel. For example, widows may have relied on their spouse to tend the lawn while he/she was alive. Now that he/she is gone, they need you.

USE SALES THEMES. Whether the method is telemarketing, direct mail, door to door, radio, television or billboards, your approach should be simple and clear. Try to center your efforts around a central theme, using any legitimate reason or tactic for selling. These are some themes that grounds managers and lawn care operators have reported to work for business expansion:

1. Weather-related themes. Use the weather to provide an topic of conversation. The pitch might go something like “The recent dry weather has caused a short term drought. Your lawn is likely to have suffered some damage, so let our experts show it some extra care. We can inspect it for insect problems, root dieback, excessive thatch, etc.”

2. Lock in now at 2005/06 prices. If you can afford it, consider holding prices flat. Here’s your message to the customer: “I can’t think of too many other goods or services that won’t raise in price in a year’s time, can you? So, take advantage of this opportunity before we come to our senses, or talk to our accountant, whichever comes first.”

3. Couponing. Provide an added bonus for signing up. The customer can receive their first application free, receive a free irrigation audit, or even something non lawn related such as a car wash or steak dinner.

4. Brag on your success. Identify a property (preferably a nice looking one) near to the household that you are trying to sell to. Your message would be “Hey, have you seen Mr. Brown’s house across the street? We service his lawn, and we’re proud of the way it looks...”

PIGGYBACK. Try piggybacking your marketing efforts with another service company, either horticultural or general. Consider builders, nurseries, garden centers, cable installers, house cleaning, plumbers, irrigation installers, tree care, snow removal and dry cleaning. Join forces with someone else and work the client together. After the house cleaner services the client’s home, ask them to leave a card, or smoothly compliment the client on their landscape, pointing out that if they ever needed some more work done, they should call your company.

Some homeowners will hire almost everything done these days. In fact, in some neighborhoods it’s a status symbol to have the greatest number of service companies visit your home in a given week. One day last year, I visited a homeowner to inspect the lawn in a nice neighborhood, and counted more service vehicles in a two-block area than regular cars. This indicates that the potential wage earners in the family have all gone to work outside the home, and can now afford your service. Because they work, they don’t have time to take care of the lawn themselves.

EQUIPMENT NEEDS. Finally, if you are successful at growing your business, you’ll probably need to buy some more equipment to service the new accounts. Plus, you’ll want to overhaul your existing stuff to make sure that it’s ready to go. If any pieces are found to be unrepairable, add them to the list of new stuff to buy. Try to avoid the temptation to stretch your existing machines to be able to service a bunch of new customers.

The author is a horticulturist and certified arborist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Neb. He can be reached at 402/444-7804 or jfech1@unl.edu.