How To Get Commercial Work

Hey everyone, this is Mike Andes and you're listening to Landscape Business course you might be watching on YouTube or Facebook or on the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about commercial clients and so if you haven't already, you should definitely get on the Facebook group for all the landscapers that are listening to this and on the course. So in that group we've been talking, there was a question recently about how do you find new commercial clients? How do you get into the commercial space if you've only been doing residential? How do you, how do you get the profitable ones, et cetera. So that's what we're gonna be talking about today. And I also wanted to make sure everyone has seen this already. I know most of you have already got the book. In about two weeks the Audible version of this will be available on itunes and on the Audible app. So the audiobook will be available soon. But if you haven't already, this is the book I just published. Feel free to pick it up. It's, I think it's like eight or nine dollars on Amazon. So I hope that is a benefit to you. It's very easy read. It's, it's not super long. I think it's like 140 pages and you can read it in like three or four hours. And so a great book, great read. In kind of a different format. It's not a textbook style, it's not a bullet point kind of style. It's more of a story of a lawn care business owner that starts his business the wrong way and basically has to turn it around and make his business a lot better after getting in a car accident. So it's an interesting read and some of it's based on true stories and some of the circumstances that I've heard from listeners of the podcast. So check it out. So today we're going to be talking about commercial clients, how to get in front of them, how to finally get into those lucrative commercial jobs. Now disclaimer to all of this is that we do not do a lot of commercial, probably less than 10% of our revenue is from commercial based jobs. Those 10% of our commercial clients, they do not pay any less than our residential client. We do not charge less per hour. We don't charge any way different than we would a residential customer. So they are paying a premium, but they also know, and they usually have been with us for a while and they are willing to pay that premium. So we've gotten quite a few commercial jobs, one time jobs, things like that. But in terms of maintenance, like ongoing commercial maintenance, we don't have a lot of that. Like I said, I'd say about 10% of our customer base is commercial. And so that's kind of the caveat to all of what I'm talking about. Today, however, we've gotten a lot of interest from commercial customers. It's just that many times commercial customers are looking for the lowest price bid. They're looking for.

As little as they can pay for the little, like the minimum bare requirements. And so usually that is not very high profit type of work. And so we've really shied away from it. We really haven't pushed ourselves into that marketplace. But we do get a lot of commercial requests. And so a lot of times the really big jobs that are gonna have multiple people bidding on it, we don't even go to bid for. I won't even go after them. We will only get usually commercial jobs that they know us or they have heard about us and they know that we're gonna do a great job, we're gonna take care of them, we're gonna communicate with them. A lot of times, if the owners are out of town or overseas, they want us and they're willing to pay the premium for the level of service that we provide. So that's the kind of the disclaimer before I jump in today. But we do get a lot of interest from commercial clients because what we've done with property managers. And so that's really the kicker for today's show is if you want to get into commercial work.

Everything goes through the property manager. So, for example, right now I'm in this studio. The studio is a part of a strip mall that has, I think it's like 40 different tenants, 40 different locations or stores in it. Now, that is, I've never met the owners of this strip mall. I only know the property managers of the strip mall. And so when you go to any sort of commercial space, apartment buildings, malls, strip malls, small little complexes, whatever it is, most of the time, most of the time, there's not going to be an owner that you're going to be talking to. You're going to be talking to a property manager. And how this works is a property manager typically gets paid a percentage of gross rents. So, for example, if you are property manager for a residential house, you might get 10 to 15% of gross rents by managing that house. In other words, the property manager is going to. At a residential home, they are going to take care of maintenance requests, they're going to get the estimates from vendors, they're going to show people the house when it needs to be rented out, they're going to evict people, they're going to do collection of the rents, et cetera, and then they're gonna distribute it to the owner. Now when it comes to a space like I'm in right now where it's a mall and there's a whole bunch of tenants, how it works is this the property management company that is in charge of this facility. I send rent to them every single month. They are gonna get usually between 5 and 10% of gross rents and they're gonna take care of everything in terms of making sure that I pay my bills, making sure I pay my rent. They're gonna make sure that the whole grounds is taken care of. Like the landscaping is taken care of, the sn, the maintenance on the buildings, the H VAC system, like all of that, they're responsible for taking care of. And traditionally they're going to get a percentage of rents. Now I say all of that to say this. The property manager is going to get a percentage of gross rents. They are not going to get. Their money is not dictated by the amount of work they do on the property. So this is the juxtaposition is that the owner wants the property manager to be as involved as possible. They want them to be hands on, on the property, caring for the property that's the owner of the property, like this mall. They want that property manager to be there and be involved. The juxtaposition is that the property manager is getting a percentage of gross rent and thereby traditionally is wanting to do as little work as possible every single month and be on the property as little as possible, if at all necessary. And so how do you get into commercial work is you have to realize that the property manager is the one that's usually getting bids. The property manager is the one that you need to create a relationship with. If you want to get your foot in the door. With commercial work, they're going to be the ones that call you to set up the job. The owner is not going to traditionally call you. On a 200 unit apartment complex, there's going to be a property management company, unless they're self managed. But anyways, there's going to be a property manager. Even if it is self managed, there's a property manager for that 200 unit apartment complex. Now how do you get in the door with them is the big question. So first of all, we've established that commercial properties are usually dictated. The person in control is the property manager that might be a property management company, that might be a group of individuals, but it's a property manager. Now, we've also established that the property manager is the person that you need to get to know like, and they need to trust you and you need to create rapport and a relationship with them if you're going to ever get commercial work. Now the question is, how do you get your foot in the door with a property manager? So many people ask how do you get your foot in the door with commercial? Is by getting your foot in the door with the property manager. Now how do you do that? This is what we talked about on the group and the chat that I left a lengthy comment about and that is this. What I would recommend you do is do one of two things. Either one, you just go and shake hands and literally meet people and you go into every single property management company in your local market, literally just Google property management with city name and you are going to get a plethora of different management companies. In our area, there's probably about 40 different companies. And now that ranges from a property management of like 1 and 2, like a mom and pop, husband and wife that does property management all the way up to like a company that has 60 or 70 employees that manages literally thousands of units. And they do commercial, they do multifamily, they do residential, they do vacation, they do office, they do all sorts of property management. So that's a big, there's a big range. But you're going to find a lot of different property management companies in your market. Now, if you can get your foot in the door with a big property management company and they love you and you really service them well, there is the chance that you will get work that we kind of only stick to now. And that is they don't even go out to find other bids. They are just going to come to you and be like, look, we know you're gonna take care of it. Can you just get a bid and get this taken care of? Because again, the property manager isn't gonna make any more money by going out and getting 20 bids and trying to save a few dollars. They are not. Their monies is not dictated by the net profit.

Of that property. Usually it's almost always based upon gross rents. And so thereby they are going to want ease of access. They're going someone that's going to get estimates to them quickly, that's going to get the work done quickly, that they're not going to have to micromanage that they're not going to have to be on the property very much. So keeping all those things in mind, the question is, how do you get your foot in the door with the property manager? And this is how you do it, one of two ways. Either a, like I said, you talk to them, you literally go and you Google every single one in your market and you speak to every single one. So a couple years ago, when we. We thought, okay, well, it's worth trying to get into this commercial thing, because we were mostly concerned about creating work during the winter. And that's the beautiful thing about commercial work, is you can keep your crews busy a lot of times during the winter. And so when we wanted to get into that market, what we literally did is got cookies and some of our marketing material and went to every single property management company, dropped off cookies and some of our marketing material. That's literally all we did. So that's the first thing I would say, is just get to know them. And I don't mean you need to go take homemade cookies to all of them with a binder of your jobs like we did. But what you can do is you can call them, you can go in and talk to them, walk into every single one of their offices, just introduce yourself, give them your business card, have them give a face to the name of your business. And this is the crazy thing. One out of hundred of them is going to be like, oh, yeah, you know what? By the way, we actually have a property going up for bid next week. It's a new property of ours, and you're welcome to come and bid on that property. And literally that's might happen on 1 out of 100 of these property management companies. If you go into the door, introduce yourself, they like, you're dressed professionally, you have a good company brand and things like that. So that's the first way to get your foot in the door is just go meet them, make sure they have a face, the name, make sure that when they think about landscaping, they're gonna think about you and the experience and relationship that you had with them when you came into their office. That's the first way. The second way is this. And it's called something I call blind estimates. And what that means is they don't ask for an estimate, they don't ask for a job, they don't say they need any work done, but yet you give them an estimate. Now how do you do that? You literally go and drive to all the commercial properties that you want to service, and what you're going to do is you're going to be looking for two things. You're going to be looking at multifamily. You're going to be looking for a number that says call this number if you want to lease or rent here. And if you're looking at commercial properties like strip malls, like the one I'm at now, or malls or offices, whatever it is, you're going to be looking for a sign that says looking to lease space. And they're gonna have the property management company and the name of the person you need to contact and the phone number. That's all you need. That's all you need. Cause then what you're going to do is you're going to contact that person and you're basically gonna get your foot in the door by basically just asking a couple questions about the property. You can literally just say, look, I'm interested in renting some space or I'm interested in renting an apartment. Get some information, try to get to know who the decision makers are. If you don't have the number of the name of the property manager, you can call the number and just ask for who is responsible for X property and that you're interested in renting. Get to know who that person is, get to know their name, you can look them up on LinkedIn, see what they like and start going down that road. Now what you can do is go to these properties that you want to service, the ones that are close to your demographic, the ones that are close to your office, the ones you know you can do a great job on, the ones that you've always wanted, whatever it is, you can go to these properties, just drive through them and look for different areas of improvement. So again, these property managers do not want to have to be at these properties very much. And so if you can be their eyes and ears on the property, you're going to elevate the level of value you're providing to them by them not having to be there on site. So what you're going to do, you're going to do a drive by, you're going to drive through the property and you're going to look for things, you're going to look for things that areas of neglect or areas of improvement. Where is our current landscaping company cutting corners? Where are they forgetting about certain things? Or maybe not forgetting, maybe they're doing everything contractual in their agreement. However, they just are not offering the services or not suggesting services that are really needed at the property. For example, you might see moss growing on the sidewalks, you might see gutters that are full. You might see downspouts that are broken. You might see the siding getting some mildew on it. You might see a tree starting to grow up against the siding of the building. All of those things are areas of improvement or areas of neglect. What you can then do is create an estimate. Literally create an estimate and send it to the property management company and say, hey, look, I know you've never heard of me, but we notice at this property that there is a bunch of moss growing on the sidewalk. We can do pressure washing and we're willing to do that service for you. Here's the price for them. It's a massive win. They didn't have to be at the property to notice the neglect. They did not have to call a bunch of other services to get estimates. They didn't have to meet all of those people and give them a scope of work or a job proposal. They didn't have to collect estimates from all of your competitors. They literally just got all of it handed directly to them. You the one saying that, here's the need, here's the price, let's go. And they will be like, wow, someone took the time to do my job as property manager, they should have recognized those things. And this person is being proactive and giving me this estimate. Now what they're going to do is they're going to accept that estimate. They're like, yes, please, pressure wash.

The moss off that sidewalk. I really appreciate that. Or maybe they're going to say, thank you for noticing the fact that the trees are starting to grow on the siding and that the mildew is growing. And you can explain to them, look, you don't want rodents and insects coming into the building. We can take care of that for you. We can trim it for you. We can do tree chipping and thereby reduce the waste and get that tree off the side of the building or the gutters are full. We can do the clean out of the gutters. Now this is what I would tell you is try to focus on the one time sell. Try to focus on just the one time sell. Don't try to go for the three pointer right from the get go. Don't go for the commercial contract and do a massive bid for them. I would just go for the one time cleanup or the one time area of improvement and just wow them. Wow them with the fact that you were eyes on the property, that you were proactive, that you were fast, you were efficient, you got the job done quickly, you then sent Them pictures, they didn't even have to come inspect your work. You sent them pictures of the area of improvement that was needed. You sent them the estimate very quickly, you got the job done quickly. And then you sent them the bill along with pictures that they could show the owner and show that something was done to improve the value of the property. That's all massive value to the property manager. They do not have to be there, they don't have to manage other vendors, they don't have to be back and forth with the owner. And you and other vendors like you can make it short, simple, easy and fast for that property manager to not to be on the property. And yet their job is being done for them. And so by doing that, if they're happy, next time their bid rolls around for maintenance contract, I promise you they're going to want you to make sure you're on that bid proposal at least that you're involved. And guess what, they might be willing to pay a little bit extra knowing that you're going to be proactively looking for areas of improvement on the property, which by the way you should be doing for all your properties anyways to maximize the those high profit add on services like gutters and pressure washing and all the other miscellaneous services like tree trimming and fertilization. Those are things you should already be looking for. But if someone else is neglecting that, a competitor is neglecting that, that's your area in get that one time service. And then later down the road either they or you will end up coming to a point when hey, the maintenance on this whole property like the trees and the grass and we can do all of it and either you propose that at the end once they're happy, or they come to you a year later and say, hey look, our contract's up, we're looking for a new vendor, we'd love to have you in on the bid proposal. And now you have a foot up on all of your competitors because they know that they can trust that you're going to look out for areas of improvement. You're going to save them time by them not having to be at the property. I literally went to one of our properties at Commercial last year and the property manager said that they hadn't been at that property for six months. And so for six months we were the eyes and ears of that property manager on that property. We were the ones sending them pictures, letting them know when trees had fell down, letting them know that there was moss underneath the steps and taking care of it, taking care of the gutters when they're full. Like all of those things were literally being done by us for the property manager. And so we create that value. And then so when things happen, they won't even go and submit a bid proposal. They will not go ask other companies, they will not ask other vendors because they're gonna save themselves time. They know that we're gonna take care of them and that we're gonna be proactive in throughout the entire process, sending them pictures for the owner, etc. So keep in mind that the property manager is an intermediate. They have three different parties that they have to suffice. The tenant, the owner and the vendor. You alright? So they're right in the middle of it. It's a very thankless job. You look online for the reviews for all these property management companies. People hate them because owners always think that they're not doing enough. The tenants always are mad at them because they want them to do certain things. And the property manager's kind of the one that's like, hey, the owner doesn't want to pay for things. And so they get the brunt of all that from the tenant. And then they have to manage us as vendors. So we have to make sure that we as vendors are very making their job easier. We're trying to take care of the tenants, we're trying to make sure we give pictures for the owners, we're trying to make their job easier so they don't have to come to the property. And so if you want to get into commercial work, you got to get in with the property managers. If you're going to get into the property managers, you have to either get to just know them and meet them and network and see them on LinkedIn, see what they like, get to know them that way, or you need to do what I call blind estimates. Get this one time add on work so that down the road when that maintenance contract comes up for bid again, you have a leg up and you have the opportunity to bid on that project. So I hope that helps a little bit. I hope it gives you at least a little bit direction on how to get in with the property managers and get started on getting some of those that commercial work. And what's really cool about that is when you create that relationship and you create that value to that property manager, they are willing to pay a little bit more. They're looking at you as more of a service than just a commodity in terms of like all the other competition in your area. And I think what happens is you can actually start to charge the same price as you would on residential, you can charge on commercial. And you will not have to reduce your prices or try to price match or bring your hourly rate down in order to get commercial work. So I highly encourage you try those different tips out. And thank you so much for listening. Landscapebusinesscourse.com check it out. I'm Mike Andes. I'll see you.