Door-to-Door Sales for Landscaping, Mowing Route Density, & Breaking Into a Crowded Market

Hey everyone, it's Mike Andes and you're listening to the Landscape Business Course podcast. Today we're going to do a marathon of Q and A. Probably take us, I don't know, maybe 30, 40 minutes and just try to answer some of the questions that came in on Landscape Business Course Facebook Group. If you're not a part of the group, make sure you join and you can ask questions on the next Q and A. I wanted to make sure everyone has signed up for Landscape Business Course, the conference that we're having, Landscape Summit 2020. It's in January. Just go to landscapebusinesscourse.com conference or go to the homepage and just click on the conference tab on there you can see all the topics or at least the five main topics we're gonna be covering. We'll have a whole bunch of smaller ones while we're there, but we'll be talking about the five, those five different topics as well as a little bit of a schedule on there. Thursday, we start at 5pm we'll be ending Saturday evening and we'll have a special kind of event on Saturday evening together. So looking forward to that. More details to come. Over the next couple weeks, I'll be rolling out a more detailed schedule and topics and things like that. So let's go ahead and jump right into the questions at the conference. By the way, we will be doing a lot of Q and A. If you were there last year, you know that probably 20 to 25% of the conference is literally Q and A, because at the end of each session I ask for questions and even throughout sessions you're able to raise your hand and ask questions. The nice thing this is not like thousands of people. It's only going to probably be 50 to 100 probably, I'm guessing. And so what's nice is that you're able to ask questions and everyone can hear you and really get some really detailed questions answered throughout the whole conference. So let's go ahead and roll through some of these. Again, this is coming from Landscape Business Course Group on Facebook. Brandon Tubik.

I haven't read all these questions, but I'll just go through them and if I don't know what what the answer is, I'll just let you know. Brandon Tubik says targeted Google Ads to build density. Best strategy to implement. We have used Google Ads all season but really want to dial in the proper demographic. So the major thing is your age that you have. You don't want to just target area because marketing lawn care services to 18 and 20 year olds is not really the best use of your money. So we usually target people 45 and up. Again, this is going to depend on your local market and who your target audience member is. Who's your ideal customer? If you're going after more of a 30 to 40 year old, that's a working professional because you live next to the headquarters of some massive law group or accounting firm, then you might want to change your strategy. But for us and for the Augusta, our target market, it is 45 and up. So retired affluent residential, small.

Property owner. So that's kind of who we target. And in terms of building route density, I would just make sure that using Google Facebook along with eddm, that's going to be the best way to usually get a dense route. As well as putting door hangers on the neighbors of your existing clients. So you know five or nine houses. So if you're in new five, you do the neighbors of both the view most this person's lawn. You're going to do door hangers on the people next door on both sides and then the three people across the street call a five around. Some people do nine arounds, but that's a great way to build route density as well. Brandon said continued with another question. He says new client intake flow or sales funnel? We started using Jobber and realized it's not very visual, so we started dropping leads into a sales board in Trel at the same time so the team can stay up to date. We throw voicemails, notes, hold people accountable, et cetera. How do you guys do it? Augusta, by the way, thank you for the letter. Would love to chat about having you out for zero turn next season if you're not crazy busy with the franchising. So in terms of. So Brandon's basically asking do we have a sales funnel? Looks like he's using Jobber. It's not very visual for the sales funnel and so they've been using Trello to make a sales board and things like that. So the beautiful thing about software is it makes your life easier. What I don't like about software is when you have to start duplicating inputs. So I hate having to put customers into one CRM and then putting them into something else or if I do an estimate here. That's why if people use QuickBooks for example, alongside their service Autopilot or another CRM is like I do not want to have to be going between the two back and forth and fixing things back and forth if they don't sync across and it's not a seamless sync, then I want to keep them separate. Separate. And the reason for that is because I hate double entry. I hate wasting time putting into two different systems. And we have to do that on some things because not every CRM is going to have exactly what you want. So for scheduling for us we use some other things, other softwares. However, for sales funnel we have it all automated. So with service autopilot the only thing I like about them, the thing that I like them the most is their automations. Like without the automations I'd probably use jobber.

And just because ease of use and just user friendliness. But with automations, that's my sales funnel is because it's already automated. Like I build the sales funnel, as soon as the estimate is created they automatically go into the funnel and I know it's going to go through that funnel exactly the same way every single time. And unless they mark that estimate as lost then or unless they reject the estimate, they're gonna continue to stay in that sales funnel. And if at the very worst they go through the whole sales funnel and we've lost the bid, then they're going to go back into a monthly recycling them, recycling that estimate and recycling that lead to try to stay in touch with them. And that keeps them in the sales funnel all the time. So in terms of how to do that, I've never used trello, to be perfectly honest with you, I've played with it, but we've never used it. At Augusta we try to keep it all as much as possible on one CRM. And so if we didn't use service autopilot we'd probably have to use some sort of other out of the box automation software and start duplicating things. And I just wouldn't like that. So we try to keep as much as possible on one CRM AB says, hey Mike, first off, I can't wait to meet you. And being part of the first 10 Augusta franchisees. Augustanation. So AB is part. He's in New York, Long island and so he's a franchisee. Augusta. My two questions are a bit evil, but nonetheless, I don't think you meant evil. My two questions are a bit evil, but nonetheless. 1. Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay, got it. Number one, in my territory, 99% of properties already have a landscaper. So how do I take those properties from their landscaper? What's the best thing to say or not to say to the property owner? So this is a case when.

You gotta let Your professionalism do the marketing for you. Like, I am not an advocate of going after people's customers. Like, there's a way to maliciously use Facebook ads and even Google Ads to target the customers of other.

Competitors. It's not hard and use their names and your ads and everything. But it's just like, I'm a big believer of what goes around, comes around. What you do is gonna come back to you. And so, like, I'm just not a fan of that. I want everyone in my market to do well. All the other landscapers, if they're playing by the rules, if they are honest with their employees and honest with customers and doing things right, I want them all to succeed. So I'm not gonna go tear them down. What I would say is that if 99% of the people in your market have a landscaper, that's a really good sign. There's lots of opportunity. You just gotta make sure you're better than the other landscapers. That means cleaner trucks, more professional people, better sales material, better copy on your ads targeting specific, dense routes. So that way they always are seeing your trucks when really, like. So I saw something really cool one of the members was doing the other day where he made sure that he always did door hangers on the main streets of his town. So that way, like the main arteries. So that way his trucks would always be along those. So people from all the other cul de sacs and neighborhoods would always be seeing his trucks along those main roadways. And that's how he spread and began to grow. Is always marketing along the arteries and like, where a lot of the traffic is going. And so things like that just being smarter. Like, even, for example, at our local shop, we were talking and it was brought up like, okay, a lot of the landscapers locally are listening to the podcast and getting educated from landscape business course, and they're starting to do a lot of things. And it's becoming harder to get these estimates, or that's the reason why we might not be winning some estimates occasionally. And so. But what I said is, you know, and so some people, like, even in your market, you might be doing something and a competitor starts doing the same thing. Like, at the end of the day, if a competitor is copying you, you're winning. Because if they're following what you're doing, it means one thing. It means you're in front of them. And so it's not a bad thing. I want the industry to improve. And if what I'm doing is working and other people are Copying, it's going to be better for them, their employees and their customers. Let's go for it. I'm all for it, but at the end of the day, if they're following what I'm doing and copying it, it means that I'm ahead of them. And I'm always gonna be ahead. I'm gonna figure out another marketing tool a year before them. By the time they catch on, I'll have something else. Just one new thing at the end. Right now, it's pay for performance. By the time a lot of people are on board with that, I'll have something else we're figuring out and conquering. And so that's why I'm so confident in the franchise working, is that we'll always be one step ahead of the competition. So when it comes to a market that's saturated, you think everyone has existing landscapers. That's when you just gotta be better. At the end of the day, that's, you know, you gotta be better. Better marketing, more professional, getting the bids back faster. If 99% of people have landscaping services, I can guarantee you 10% of them are looking for new services or at least price checking in the spring or they're moving. Just people who are moving and getting to a new neighborhood. They'll ask other landscapers for bids. You've gotta be the fastest bid, you gotta be the most professional bid. You gotta be the have the best in place to be personable as well as professional, as well as timely, as well as cost effective. And so putting those combinations and just being better is what's going to allow you to break into the market. Number two, once I find one particular landscaper in my area that isn't doing the best job, do I take advantage and grab all his accounts in my territory? I will be seeing you, God willing, on the 14th. We could discuss then. So basically saying, hey, if you see someone weak in your market, should I go target all their customers? I don't think so. Again, let your work speak for itself. Let your professionalism speak for yourself. Let your website speak for itself. There's a really good chance that most landscapers in your market that just have a single truck or a couple employees, and they just kind of do it on the weekends or whatever, like, they are not going to look as good as you online. And usually they're not even going to look as good as you in person if you have professional trucks and trailers and equipment and trained staff and all of that. But even online is a massive difference, because most customers, if you look at the numbers and you look at the data. Right now most consumers, even the home improvement space, go online to vet the contractor. And so you being professional online, having a great website, having great pictures, should be really open and honest about pricing online. All of those things is what's going to separate you from Joe Blow down the street or from the landscaper that is quote unquote struggling and not doing the best job. And so you've just got to be better. At the end of the day in a crowded market, it proves that there's a lot of work to be done. You've got to prove yourself that you're better than everyone else to get into the market. All right, next question comes from Kosh. Josh, Did Augusta learn essay automations on your own? Which ones are most useful? If you did, if you used an outsourced source to help build them, would you care to share? Do you use Service Autopilot for anything other than routing, invoicing, employee tracking, damage cases, assets recruiting, et cetera? Summed up, how can we use Service Autopilot more effective most effectively? All right, so first question is, did Augusta learn Service Autopilot Automations on your own? Yes. We never had anyone else build any of the automations for us. And the reason I'm a big believer in this and is because I truly believe that if something is super integral to your business, you need to know how to do it. You know how to build it, you know how to operate it like, because otherwise you just become vulnerable. Like if I put the put automations in the hand of some other developer or another company because there's third party companies that build Service Autopilot automations and I'm not against them, I think they do a great job. But for me, I want to know how to customize them. I know how to use them to the most of their like using the peak like as much as I possibly can. I want to be able to customize them to my needs as well as the needs of the franchisees. I do not ever want to have someone my hands being tied because someone else built them and I don't want have to pay them monthly fees to hold the key to those handcuffs. And so I'm not a big fan of anything in my business having someone else have leverage.

Against the thing that's core competencies. And with Service Autopilot I feel like automations is the only reason we have it. And so why would I let that core competency of the CRM be dictated by a third party? And so with Augusta, all the franchisees, they get automation packages and that's going to be stuff that we've built that I've personally used we've ran at Augusta. And so in terms of which ones are the most useful, I'll name a couple of them. Obviously the estimate follow up is really huge. We have several different types of follow up for estimates.

Let me see. So though collections really important, keeps your accounts receivable down a lot, they have really good automations for collections. Automations for dispatch based upon like if you do treatments to let them know not to be on the lawn or put their pets out that can be automated. Also automations for dispatch for like dog picking up their, you know, dog poop and then letting Sometimes, you know, customers always say hey, let me know when you're headed over. Well instead of doing that manually, you can just have an automation do that. Other automations we do are things like when an estimator completes an estimate out in the field, it'll automatically email the office and let them know that it's ready to be sent. So that way it's just really fast. This is just a whole bunch, we use a whole bunch. And I think when you get started as an Augusta lawn care franchisee, we preload with about, I think it's like 8, 6 or 8. No, it's like 8 or 10 now. So anyways, we preload quite a few automations for the new franchisees and then we will continue to give them more complex ones as their business grows.

Summed up, how can we use Service autopilot most effectively? Basically if you don't use service autopilot for automations, I would go use Jobber just because it's not easy to use. It's a very complex system really in comparison to other CRMs. It takes sometimes years to really figure out even if you've been trained on it, to really understand how the system works and utilize it to its full capability.

I would use Jobber if you're not gonna use automations and service autopilot. Just my opinion. Amity Morales asked how do you handle customer complaints about breaking things at the property when there's no proof if it was your crew? Because if, cause if it's the crew. Because if it's the crew, we fix it of course. Okay, so Amity's basically asking, okay, if someone, a customer says hey, there's a damage case on my property, but there's really no evidence that it was your crew at the end of the day on these ones it comes down to do you want to risk a really bad online review, and we're just going to assume that there's absolutely no evidence. Besides, maybe it happened the same day as your crew was there, or maybe even you don't even know that. Literally someone just convicts you of something. If it's so obvious. For example.

The garage is smashed in the garage door, and you can look at all your trucks, you can track them, and no one was by that house. Or.

There'S no paint on any of the trucks or any damage. And like, the whole. Their whole garage door is, like, smashed open, then obviously that's something I'm not going to do. But when it comes to, like, he said versus she said sort of thing back and forth, at the end of the day, it's gonna come down to how bad do you not want to have a negative online review? And that's up to you. Do you if it's, you know, if it's a $200 repair, maybe you do it. If it's 10,000, okay, probably not. So it just really is going to be how bad you not want to have that online review. And then if you decide, look, this is, like, too expensive, it's a $5,000 repair, and I don't think our guys did it. Or at least there's no evidence of it. And.

Then it's like, maybe you go negotiate, maybe you talk to the customer. Maybe you start. You try to have, like, a third party come in and try to mediate between the two. It's gonna depend on, like, are they malicious? Are they really super mad? Or is it just like, oh, I think this broke the other day? Like, so it's. Every single customer is gonna be a little bit different. But at the end of the day, it's really gonna come down to how much. How bad do you think they're, like, how mad are they? Are they gonna go make a horrible online review that's worth, you know, 20, $30,000 of damages to your business and in terms of future revenues, or is it worth just paying 150 bucks and fixing the little edging or a little figurine in their lawn care or in their bed? So that's really a call that you have to make on an individual basis. But again, have your trucks tracked. Great way to do truck damage stuff. If people say that a truck was a certain spot and you can prove that it wasn't, that helps clock in and clock out on jobs. That helps to know timing. Little things like that can help sometimes. On those Keith Dodget asks, what time does it start? Oh okay. No, he thought it was live anyways. Cecil Perkins, where do I store all my training videos and screen recordings? What platform do you recommend for this? So two different ones I'd recommend is if you use, you can use YouTube and just do private videos. So that way people, only people with your login information for YouTube can access the videos or just use Google Drive and then you can share certain users access and then like if they get fired or they leave you can just take access off so that way you don't have to change your your login details for YouTube all the time. Marcus Love has a few questions. It looks like full service packages, full service package contracts or no contracts. We don't do contracts but we also focus mostly on residential and one time jobs. So we do not do full service packages at Augusta. We do take that back. We do have some but we focus on just a one time Mohs and cleanup per service and treatments per service. We might sell them a treatment package but we are going to charge them on each treatment, not like on an annual basis. Office administrative procedures and procedure to help with quoting, scheduling, how to respond back to emails, messages and reviews. So again an office person is an expense, they are an overhead, but they can make up for their pay in leaps and bounds. And so recently with Augusta Lawn Care, the franchisees we've launched what's called Command center where we're going to answer their calls at our call center here. And that way they can be in the field, they can be doing estimates and not have to worry about hiring an office person. We're also building in the functionality to send estimates for them through service autopilot as well as take calls and sell estimates, all of those things. And so it's a huge part and that's why we've done it for the franchisees, to give them the value. Because there's a massive amount of overhead that comes with hiring an office person simply due to the fact that when you need them, when you need them to get started is usually around like the 3 to 500,000 in annual revenue marker. But that's also a time when you don't need them full time and it's tough to find a good part timer. So what ends up happening is you hire this person and literally half their day they are wasting just like texting or doodling or doing whatever on the computer. And so what we've done with Command center is.