We Did an Estimate For Them... They Didn't Ask For It!

Hey, everybody, it's Marcus, the estimator here, Augusta Lawn care of Whatcom County. Today I'm going to be talking with you about complementary estimates. A lot of you don't really know what that is. Maybe have never even heard of it. Something we started doing maybe last year. Complementary estimates just to keep people on in the wintertime. Basically, I'll go over kind of certain key things, some things you must know, but also tell you kind of who, what, when, where, why, how. As far as complementary estimates, it's something you do when your schedule isn't really as f full. So in the winter time, obviously you're not getting as much leads. You try to do a lot of marketing to keep the leads coming in and hot. But right now I have a little leeway in my schedule. I'm trying to fill it so that I could keep the crew on and keep them busy throughout the winter time. So what I did just now, I have a client on Illinois Lane. So this client here, it's in a pretty concentrated part of town here in Bellingham. I know just based on recent experiences that we have a lot of clients concentrated in that section there. So complimentary estimates we could go quick with. And I'll tell you a little bit more about that in the car as well. But what I did was Illinois Lane. I. I typed in the street name, and then basically every client we've ever had on that street pops up. So I put them on my schedule. I try to look at them quickly, think, you know, have they had service in the past year with us? Have they ever even had an estimate with us? Some people, these are just their emails and their name. I'll talk a little bit more about hot leads and things like that and who we should really be targeting with complementary estimates. But number one, throughout six, who, what, when, where, why, how? We'll start with what. What is a complementary estimate? So free estimate that we send. Basically, the premise of it is the client didn't really contact us. So usually, you know, with marketing, we're advertising, and then the client clicks on Facebook, Google, whatever, and then they go into our systems. They have a certain thing, I want my bushes trimmed. And then we go talk to them about their bushes trim. That's what they want done. Complementary estimates are things we see at the property. This is something the service screw does too, as well, is, you know, as I'm doing the bush trimming. Oh, it also looks like, you know, your gutters are full packed with debris. So a complimentary estimate would be.

Hey, I'm going to give you this free estimate. I noticed, you know, as I was doing this bush trimming for you, which is what you wanted, why, you know, why I'm here. But I noticed your gutters are full, so give you a complimentary estimate. You'll see the line items, anything you want added or changed we could do as well. But free estimate, really nice for clients, especially hot leads. I'll talk about that a little bit too as well. And yeah, so who warm clients. So again, like I said in service autopilot, if these people haven't had estimates in years or, you know, we're former clients of another company that really have never had a service or anything like that, then they're not really a priority of mine. Right. So if I send them a bid saying, hey, you know, notice, just driving by your property the other day, I thought I might send you a complimentary estimate, they're less likely to click on it. Right. So try to do hot leads. Meaning, you know, have they maybe they canceled this last three months. And so I'll kind of see if I could go in, find out why they canceled, what are their, what's going on with their property, you know, have we sent them an estimate last year about gutter cleaning? They just haven't done anything this year with it. So we could say even kind of copy and paste from last year to this year. So that's kind of the who we target with complementary estimates. When winter season, obviously in the springtime, grass is growing, there's a lot of clients leads coming in automatically. It really depends, you know, where you are at as far as the maturity of your business. But winter seasons basically know you're not necessarily getting a lot of clients in. Your schedule is not exactly full as an estimator, maybe you're doing projects and things like that too, but you really want to have, you know, at least leads coming in. And then complementary estimates would be, I would put that below it.

Where, where do we do these complimentary estimates? We service whole Whatcom County. So as far as complimentary estimates, it's almost quantity over quality. It's not exactly a shot in the dark with these complementary estimates, but it's really, we're trying to get a lot out because.

Your ratio of what's getting accepted and what's not getting accepted is a little bit lower when you're just doing complementary. Right. Makes sense. They didn't exactly ask for it. So where I try to target high concentration streets, so I could even in service autopilot type in, you know, XYZ Street. And then 67 clients will pop up. We service almost everybody in that neighborhood area. Certain things like. And then we have people way out in the county. Let's target them again. We're trying to get quantity people to accept these so high concentration streets for complimentary estimates.

How.

Service Autopilot. What I'm doing right now, what I did just before this video was again, I typed in that Illinois street, added three or four more clients. I am meeting with one today as a drive by. But those other three or four.

Are complimentary. I just typed in there so you could do it pre before you go out onto the job site. Or you could do it as you're meeting with a client. You could say, oh, I think I service that house down the street. Let me go see if they need something done. And secret is everybody needs something done done. Every something. Something can be done at everybody's property. You can't go to a property and say, oh, looks like everything's good, and then check it's. It's never that way. Somebody always needs something. So let's go do something. I'll show. I'll show you exactly how we do it and we'll go from there. So look at that. Look at all those weeds and grass and overgrown weeds. That's a small property cleanup. Again, this. They haven't had service since 2018. So I'm going to take a quick picture of this. If they want a simple cleanup, we could do that. But I'm not going to spend a bunch of time doing this estimate. Oh, what's in the backyard, what's around the sides with the gutters? What can we do? I'm just going to basically throw them out of bone. If they accept it, then we could just start with the front. And then if they accept that, then I'll be like, okay, that's good. You accepted it. Maybe I'd come back and do gutters. More services we could do for mowing, things like that. So just this front section here, I'm going to take a quick picture. That's all I really need to do here. That's all we need to do. We're off now. Type up my estimate really quick. Property cleanup. Prune dead.

And unhealthy growth.

From plants.

In front garden beds. Pull large weeds, Trim and shape over grown bushes. Create defined edges, rake out and haul away large debris. Done. Picture taken for service crew. During this winter season, certain things we can actually lower, like because we're just trying to create jobs on the schedule, right? So I'm taking off E fees, we're taking off debris. If it's going to be a full truck of debris, I might only charge for half a truck of debris just to kind of bring down the cost, make it a little bit, maybe more reasonable for certain clients that just need the job done. Put three and a half, three and a half hours to clean up that front section there. That front little garden bed really wasn't much, just a lot of dead growth and then edging, obviously certain trimming. But there's also those two front garden beds on I guess the right side of the driveway if you're looking from the street. So three and a half hours to clean up that whole front section for curb appeal. I might also add an email to send client. Could be something simple. Copy and paste certain emails I'd send to clients. Or I'm just typing it up just so you guys can see it. But if you want to get super efficient at it, you could basically already have this property cleanup and already have the email to send client already typed out. And then as you go to a new property, you just amend it as such. So if I go to the next property and I see, oh, they basically need the same thing except for they have a huge tree in their front yard that they need trimmed. So I would just include that as his own item. And then.

So that's, that's how efficient it could be, that's how quick and fast you can send these out. I'm not going to spend a bunch of time typing up this email every time to send to the client. They're not getting their own personal thing. I'm just only going to change their name. Copy and paste. I drove by your property today, noticed your front garden beds could easy little cleanup. I've sent you a free estimate. Let us know if you have any questions or other projects or anything you want done. So that's the email. Got my property cleanup, small property cleanup, picture taken for service crew. Pretty simple, pretty straightforward. Copy and paste send to command center and then they'll get that sent out. Very simple and straightforward.

Alrighty, let's do it.

Alright, so last five things I'm gonna tell you five things you gotta know if you're doing this complimentary estimate especially during the wintertime. So first thing you gotta have an action bias. So that means.

Going to clients houses. If you're doing a drive by, be actively looking for something down the street. You know, have I serviced this client before? Have I done their neighbor's house? A lot of this you could do, you know, online through service. Autopilot, too, is that, you know, who else is on the street, who's down the next street, who's concentrated in this neighborhood that.

Doesn'T have a regular service with us necessarily, but could use one. Even if they do have a regular service, maybe we're not getting their gutters. Maybe we're not doing certain trimming on certain sides of the house. Maybe we're not getting the stuff in their ditch. So just add on things. You got to have an action bias. You got to look for things. That's number two is looking for things so small weeds especially. Yeah. With recurring jobs. If you're. If you're at a client's house and they just had a big bark mulch install and they wanted that installed to just cover up the weeds. It's great mulch, natural weed barrier. But also you get out of maintenance, over the top. So after that, I'll give them a recurring service saying, okay, we'll come back, you know, every two weeks, make sure all your weeds are out. We'll pick them, we'll spray, make sure all the weeds are done. So this mulch is nice, Ready to go for you. Looks beautiful. And this is all maintained pain. So email to send clients. So getting in touch with them, making sure, you know, you know, that you're human. If you don't actually go meet with them with the complimentary estimate, they got to know, hey, I was just driving by your house the other day. Really? Certain little things like that kind of stick with the client. That they're like, oh, okay. Like it's human being. Yeah, maybe I did see him drive by. Yeah. And then, you know, once they're done seeing their email, they'll look at their estimate and then they'll think, okay. Huh. I do need a front garden bed cleanup, as we saw at that property's house. So they'll kind of. That'll stick in their head if we send them emails, make it super personable, and they'll really. They'll really think about it a lot, especially if you bring it to their attention that certain things that need to be trimmed certain times of the year, you could really sell it through the email. Right. So that's the third thing. Fourth thing with complementary estimates, it's little. I don't want to call them discounts, but things that you take away, you know, certain e fees, we don't do in the wintertime. Certain debris. Instead of, you know, maybe a full truck of debris, we'll do maybe just a Half truck of debris, I'll charge for that way the service crew knows, at least, you know, need a truck of debris. But also the client doesn't have to pay as much for it. Might bump up our closing ratio for certain things during the winter. Again, this is all we're trying to keep people on. And again, our number one priority is marketing leads coming in, leads that are hot. But certain things, when you don't have a full schedule, you want to make sure you're out and sending more estimates, which is where complimentary comes in. So for number five, with complimentary estimates, there's sort of. You're trying to get quantity doubt rather than quality. So what I mean by that, like I said when I was at that client's house, is I'm not going to bid for. Oh, you need gutters, or you need all the way around the house. You could use mowing everything. They haven't accepted anything until since 2018. So you got to keep that in mind. That, you know, maybe they're not actively looking for a landscape, or maybe they don't care that their yard's overgrown. Right. So throwing out the bone, like I said, here's a little estimate, small estimate. If you accept this, your front is going to look beautiful for curb appeal. And then if they do accept it, I'll go back and say, okay, let's look at your backyard, let's look at your gutters. Make sure everything's in touch and in check. Certain huge properties, there's a thousand things that can be done, but again, it's throwing out the bone. It's making sure it's all good to go. So that's complimentary isthmus. That's the five things you need to know to really get these going and to keep your crew busy in the springtime. In the winter time.