Dominate Your Market: Take Only the BEST Lawn Care Customers!

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes from landscapebusinesscourse.com and today I'm going to be talking about how you can grow your lawn care business, your landscaping business, by getting the right customer. A lot of times when you start your business, it's like, hey, I'm willing to sell my service to anybody. And you really do believe that anyone that has a lawn, anyone that has landscaping, anyone that has a house, that's your target customer. Today I'm gonna kinda show you how I rank customers because not all leads, not all customers are created equal. So let's go ahead and talk today though about a sliding skill. I'm actually gonna give you a numerical way of measuring exactly how valuable or ranking a customer. Alright, so down here I'm just gonna do customer rank and, and literally this is how you can decide who you want to cut. As you get really busy in a spring rush, you're like, man, I gotta get rid of some of these customers. This is how you can do it. If they're a lower customer rank, you don't mind losing them. Maybe you give them a price increase. Okay, so let's go ahead and go through this. This also is gonna be helpful when it comes to if someone asks you a favor, like a customer asks you a specific favor, you might not do it. If they're really low customer rank, you might be a little more flexible with them if their customer rank is really high. Here we through 10, this sliding scale. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, all the way up till 10. Okay? So a customer is going to fall somewhere in the sliding scale. And I'm going to start with my five variables. Now I want to start off first and say that I'm not talking about corollary demographics here. Okay? So corollary demographics are things that I believe correlate with the five things I'm going to talk about, but are very much like, yay. Like, it's very much about age. For example, is it more common, Is a higher value customer going to be someone that's older? Typically, yes, but not just because they're age. That's not the thing that actually moves the needle. It's going to be the fact that because they're maybe retired or 60, 70 years old, they have a higher net worth. And because of that they're able to afford more services. And because of that, you're able to increase the value per year to that customer in comparison to a working professional that might have you mow the lawn, but they're going to Install the molds, they're going to trim the bushes, they're going to do all the project based work. So age in my mind is what I call a corollary demographic. Same thing with net worth or certain areas that have higher value real estate. Yes, that is a corollary demographic. Of these five things I'm about to mention, cause you could really break it down like 100 different rankings, a way to rank a customer. These are the five ones that I kind of rank the most though because I feel like a lot of those demographic corollaries like age and income demographics and cost of real estate feed into these five different variables. Okay so first one you gotta ask yourself are they a one time job or are they recurring? Okay, now everything on the right hand side that I'm gonna draw today is gonna be placed a value of one. Okay so one, this would give them one point, this would give them two points. So you can run your customer through this kind of quiz and ask yourself what's the value of this customer and where do they rank on the customer ranking scale? Alright, the second question I'm gonna ask in terms of how did this customer come to you is was it a paid ad or was it organic? Did this person just find you on Google when they were searching? Did they get a referral? Did they see your truck drive by day after day after day and eventually just gave you a call? Again, I'm gonna give one point to someone I had to pay an ad for. I'm gonna give two points to someone that came organically. I didn't have to pay for that lead. Okay, so lead source. Alright, number three is gonna be, you're gonna ask yourself is this person gonna buy one service, for example, are they just going to get mowing or, or are they gonna take me up on multiple services or upsells? Multiple services or upsells. Are they going to take lawn treatments, are they gonna do coreration overseeding, Are they gonna get fertilization, are they gonna get bush trimming, are they gonna get weed control, are they going to get gutter cleanouts and fall cleanup and leaf and bush trimming and mulch insulation, all the other stuff that I can sell them to increase the lifetime value and the annual average value per customer.

I'll give them two points versus if they just have one service, that's all I do for them. I'm just gonna give them one point when it comes to the ranking. Alright, so the fourth one is a big thing for cash flow in my opinion. That is do I Have to send them to collections and it's tough to get payment. Or do they pay immediately via credit card? They have a card on file. I'm just gonna put pay immediately because for some of you, pay immediately means they send a check cause they're commercial property, et cetera. But do they pay immediately when I need payment? That's a big. So again I'm giving them one point if I have to send them to collections and they're tough to pay. If they pay immediately, I'm going to give them two points. Alright, the fifth and final way that I'm going to rank this customer and all my customer base is where they're at. I talked yesterday about the importance of route density I am going to be looking at. To get to this property, do I have to drive more than five minutes away from the closest property in my route? Okay, so five minutes or more away from my closest property versus inside my route density. And again, I don't like to go outside of five miles around my given point in my city. I don't like to go 15 miles this rate and then 20 miles this direction. You will never make money in lawn care, especially if you have recurring services, mowing treatments. You're going to have way more cost of downtime because if something breaks 20 miles away from you, the cost of that is dramatically more and will wipe out any profits in comparison if it's a mile away from your shop because everything's really really close and all of your crews are relatively close together as well. So again, 1 point if they're than 5 minutes from the closest property, 2 points if they're inside my route territory. So you're gonna really giving a customer a scale of five to ten, Right? Cause you can't go less than five. And really because either you're gonna get a one point or two point on each one of these. So for example, if someone calls like you want, I want recurring service. Great, two points, let's go. Alright, but you know what? I came from a Facebook ad. Oh man. I had to pay for that customer. Great. I don't mind. Just because they're not a 10 out of 10 doesn't mean I'm not gonna keep them. It's just a matter of again ranking them. Okay, but I'm recurring, I got paid. But you know what, I'm only doing mowing. Like I'm gonna handle the bush trimming, I will handle the treatments. I just want mowing. Okay, great. And then this customer, they pay really well. They got a credit card on File don't have to worry about that. And they're inside of my route density, they're close to my route. Okay, well this person would get an 8 out of 10. And again, this is a great way to keep track of your customers because if there are five, in other words, they ask for a one time service, one time job, I had to pay for them and they only get accept one service. Like when they did the one service, it's really like a one time mo. I don't like that. And then when I actually build them, they're slow to pay or have to send them to collections. Oh, and by the way, they're outside of my territory. Literally they're going to be a five. That's horrible. It's literally a one time mo that I had to pay an ad for. They will not pay on time and they're outside of my service area. The worst customer I would ever want to have. And when you're first getting started in your business, you might take on a five or a six. But as your business starts to evolve, you're gonna start shaving off these lower end customers because you will not be profitable on them. Anyone that's been in this business for a long time, the scenario that I just painted, a one time job that you have to pay for and they only want one service and they won't pay on time and they're more than five minutes outside of your route or your territory, bad news, they will just say no, I won't even take the call. I know some people, if there's a one on any side of this column, in other words, if they're not a 10 out of 10 customer, they will not accept them at the beginning. When you're getting started though your business, a lot of times we say yes to everybody and that's fine just because we need the revenue. We're trying to learn, we're trying to grow. That's fine, that's great. But as time goes on to be more profitable, you need to start asking yourself how can you move the floor? That is the lowest minimum customer ranking that you're willing to accept. How can you move it this direction? They'll be more profitable. You have better customer service rankings not because you better service, simply because your quality of your customer is better and the value of that customer is so much greater. If you're ever trying to look to sell your business or you're potentially trying to buy someone out, you should be looking at the same exact thing, ranking the customers. Cause a 5 out of 10 is not worth anything when you're trying to sell your business. I want a 10 out of 10. 10 customers that are recurring. They came to you organically cause of brand awareness. You can upsell them a whole bunch of things via emails every month or perhaps they have full service. They have already baked into their contract a whole bunch of stuff. They pay immediately, they have credit card on file and they're inside of a tight route. That is a business that with that type of customer base is actually worth something when you want to sell it. So this is how I recommend you rank your customers. When you're first starting out, you'd probably take something lower. But as your business grows and expands and you're looking to see who should I raise prices on? Yes, you should be raising prices on people that are outside of your territory area. You should be raising prices on the people that only want one service and they don't get you on all the other upsells that you send to them every single month. These are the type of things you want to think about as your business grows to make it more profitable and continue growing your company. So I hope that was helpful. If you want more information like this, check out landscapebusinesscourse.com if you want to grow your business and be able to actually target the areas and the demographic neighborhoods that are going to be the highest net worth going to have the type of customers that are awesome. The number 10, the 10 out of 10s you're going to want to use door hangers. It's a great way to get in front of your customers. Very targeted approach. Check out lawncaremedia.com and if you want to build a great website to attract customers without having to spend money on ads every single time, check out lawn carewebdesign.com I'm Mike Andes and we'll see you tomorrow.