So, you want to enter into commercial lawn care. How do you do that?
Well, lawn care experts recommend that you have separate crews for your residential clients and other teams for your commercial lawn care clients. Commercial lawn care customers require a different set of service skills.
How to Enter into Commercial Lawn Care
While you may think that moving your business to include commercial lawn care should be easy, realize that you’re dealing with a different type of customer. For example, you may need to sell to a condominium owners association (COA), a homeowners association (HOA), or a POA (property owners association).
Conversely, you may work with an asset or a property manager. And how you find your clients will be different too. You may do a lot of marketing on Facebook for residential customers, but you’ll need to become LinkedIn savvy to connect with your new audience.
You also have to bid to land clients rather than leaving door hangers. And property managers and HOA boards have different lawn maintenance needs.
They want pristine lawns to keep current homeowners or tenants happy, and these commercial entities also need to be inviting people to want to live at their properties.
Learn more: 8 Outdoor Trends to Sell in 2021
You’ll have steady and long-term contracts, especially if you provide snow removal services in the winter, but you’re also competing with other commercial lawn care companies for bids.
Finally, your commercial accounts demand that your crews show up every time on time and get the work done as promised in the contract. Your clients also want a one-stop lawn and landscape company to work on their properties.
And all your customers need to trust you because they’re busy with a million different tasks. Show that you have a proven track record of service.
Here are some of your new clients’ needs:
- A property manager for a multi-family residential community expects consistency, accountability, and a high level of professionalism.
- COAs, HOAs, and POAs need the following commercial lawn care services:
- Aeration and overseeding
- Bed maintenance, including weeding and mulching
- Edging
- Fertilization and weed control
- Irrigation maintenance
- Mowing
- Pruning trees and shrubs
- Seasonal color
- Snow and ice services
- Spring and fall cleanups
- Trimming.
- Commercial office buildings need
- Bed maintenance
- Lawn mowing
- Mulching
- Snow and ice services.
7 Methods for Finding Commercial Lawn Care Accounts
As you read above, landing a commercial lawn care contract requires a different set of selling skills. Here are seven ways to find commercial customers:
- You won’t be dealing with a property owner in most cases, but you’ll be meeting with a property manager.
- You’ll be dealing with lower profit margins, but you’ll have high contract dollar accounts.
- You can find your first commercial accounts by networking with your residential customers to see if they know of any property or asset managers.
Read more: 10 Secrets for Successfully Marketing Your Lawn Care Services for Spring and Summer
- Do your due diligence: Go to properties, analyze problem areas, and share ideas for landscape enhancements. Don’t rely on Google Earth or send a contract via email without first inspecting the property in person.
- You have a higher chance of meeting a property owner if you connect with locally owned businesses.
- The name of the game in commercial real estate is networking. So you get involved with community organizations, local networking meet-ups, connecting on LinkedIn, and attending Chamber of Commerce events.
- You may want to limit how much cold calling or emailing you do because of the lower return of investment. Instead, you want to build warm leads through relationships. You’ll have more success in the end.
Commercial Lawn Care Equipment
Of course, you’ll need to buy or lease trucks as well as purchase more equipment, such as mowers and spreaders. You’ll also need to hire more crews to handle your new commercial accounts.
At Spyker, we provide commercial lawn care companies with two kinds of spreaders:
We also have two ice melt spreaders in our Ergo-Pro Series:
- Ergo-Pro Spy100-15 100# Ice Melt Spreader
- Ergo-Pro Spy100-25 Ice Melt Winter Spreader with Variable Deflector.
Get your Spyker Spreaders today to provide professional service to your commercial lawn care customers. You can find our Spyker spreader products at your local dealer or online at these retailers.
Have a question about your Spyker spreader? Then, call our customer service at (800)972-6130 or fill out our contact form.
Sources:
LandscapeLeadership.com, “How to Get Commercial Lawn Accounts and Landscaping Contracts.”
Proscapes-Services.com, “5 Things to Know Before Signing a New HOA Maintenance Contract.”
USLawnFranchise.com, “4 Types of Clients You Want to Target for Your Lawn Care Business
