The Gambler

Wild Ridge Lawn & Landscape

Principal: Joe Wildridge Location: Indianapolis Established: 2005 2008 Revenue: $333,000 Customer/Service mix: landscape installation (80% residential/20% commercial); maintenance (20% residential/80% commercial); other services include lawn care, design/build and snow removal Employees: 10 Pricing philosophy: He exercises flexibility for grade-A clients, but he never compromises his profit margin goals.

You could call Joe Wildridge the gambler – he knows when to hold ’em, knows when to fold ’em, and he’ll walk away from a bid if the profit margin sinks too far below the 35 to 40 percent he likes to earn.

“We’ve held our ground on that,” says Wildridge, who doubled his sales last year after winning a bread-and-butter commercial maintenance client. “A lot of the business we got this year is repeat business because the quality of work is there.”

Word-of-mouth advertising and subcontractors continue to bring customers to Wild Ridge Lawn & Landscape’s door. Wildridge is new in business, but he isn’t green with pricing. His fees are never the lowest, but they are sometimes better than competitors.

“I met with a customer this morning who told us we weren’t the cheapest, but we weren’t the most expensive either,” he relates. “It was the professionalism and follow-up that impressed her.”

Wildridge says his company image has positioned him to earn commercial maintenance business. His sleek, black trucks carry the Wild Ridge logo and are washed daily. His employees are cross-trained so they can manage all the details a job requires. If they discover a weed problem during a maintenance call, they take care of it immediately.

Lowballers price out of fear, he says. “They are afraid they are not going to get the work, so they bid a lower price,” he points out. “They are always going to be working twice as hard and doing twice as much work as they should be.”

Someone has to be the lowest bidder. And that keeps the rest of the companies sharp and aware of operational efficiencies. Wildridge will make a few exceptions when pricing work. If he sees a job opportunity that could open doors to big business, he’s willing to negotiate with a customer.

“If I have a commercial client with 20 stores in the area who asks me to do one store for a bit less than I would normally, I might make an exception and work with him on price if I maintain their business for the other 19 stores,” he says.

But he won’t budge for a one-time client. “We’ve been dealt that card a few times,” he says, referencing residential clients who want him to match a lower-priced competitor’s bid. “We say, ‘We wish you the best of luck, and if there is anything we can do for you in the future, give us a call,’” he says. “Leave on a positive note.”

Wildridge says competition has stiffened this year, and he notices larger companies are willing to take lower margins to stay busy. Last year, his company won a commercial bid that a bigger company had been servicing for slightly more money. This year, that same big company bid against Wild Ridge Lawn & Landscape for a different maintenance gig.

“They undercut us by a huge amount,” he shares. “These larger operations are used to having a large client base, but with the economic times, there are fewer clients and the same number of companies bidding for projects.”

Wildridge’s overhead is far less than an outfit with 40 employees and a large facility, so he can earn a higher margin than a larger company that tries to outbid him. He lost that particular job to the bigger company – but that’s OK. He knows his costs, and he will not work harder to earn less.

“If you start to ignore your overhead costs, you are going to turn into a lowballer,” Wildridge concludes. He figures that customers who leave quality service providers for discount prices will eventually be disappointed. “There is a point where customers will be willing to pay for quality work.”

The author is a freelance writer based in Bay Village, Ohio.