Maintain Customers Through Summer and Fall!

Every solo operator staring at a dead phone right now thinks their business broke. It didn't. You just stopped doing the one thing that keeps it running. Spring Rush ended. The calls slowed down. Maybe they nearly stopped. You're looking at the calendar that used to be packed and now it has gaps in it, and you're starting to wonder if something's wrong with your business. Nothing is wrong. This is completely normal during this time of season. Every single lawn care company is in a seasonal market. They go through dips and ebbs and flows every single year, including us. So take a breath because panicking is not the move here. The move is figuring out what to actually do with this exact stretch of this calendar. And the entire point of this video. I'm Will Kelly. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Military Lawn Cuts. We run 3 locations across North Dallas, Fort Worth, closing in on 25 team members, and we are one of the fastest growing lawn care companies in the region. Last month at one of our locations, we were pacing right around $30,000 $30,000 for the month. Nothing wrong with that number until you see what happened next. We ran one specific play inside that location, the exact one I'm about to hand you, and the location closed the month at $42,000. Our other location did the exact same thing and jumped from around $30,000 to right around $40,000. Across the board, we saw close to a 25% increase in monthly revenue in the middle of what's supposed to be our slow season, using nothing but the people we already knew. So by the end of this video, you're going to know exactly how to take this exact quiet stretch you're in right now and turn it into one of the highest revenue months of the entire year. Not with new leads, not with more marketing spend, with people who are already sitting in your phone. If you're just getting started and you've only got 3 or 4 customers on the books right now, this still applies to you, maybe even more, because building this habit early means you never hit this wall the way most operators do. Here's what almost every solo operator and small crew believes right now. They believe the problem is demand. They believe the phone stopped ringing because the market dried up, because everybody who wanted their lawn done already got it done back in the spring, and there's simply nothing left to sell. So you see, that feels true, but it's not. Ask yourself this: How many people called you back in March and April, gave you their name, their number, their address, maybe even their email, and then you never talked to them again? How many current customers do you have right now? Is it 5, 10, 15? However many who you have never once offered anything besides their regular mow. That right there is your real problem. The well isn't dry. You're standing right next to a whole one and you haven't lowered the bucket. So let's fix that, starting with what you need in place. First thing, and if you don't have this yet, fix it today, is a system that captures every single lead that comes through your business. You need to get their name, phone number, address, and email, and ideally how they heard about you. If you were capturing that during the spring rush, that's great because that list is exactly what you're about to use. If you weren't, that becomes your first priority, starting with every new lead from this point forward. Think about what actually happens without that system in place. Somebody calls you in the spring, you quote them over the phone, they say they'll think about it, and that's the last time you ever hear from them. If you never wrote down their name, or their phone number anywhere, that person is gone forever. Not because they weren't interested, but because you had no way to reach back out. Multiply that by every quote you gave during the busy season that didn't turn into a signed customer, and you start to see how big that pile actually is. That pile is your summer opportunity sitting there in the palm of your hands. You need somewhere to actually hold that information information and put it to work, which means you need a CRM. This stands for customer relationship management software. I talk to a lot of people that somehow keep everything up in their brain or on their smartphone in their notes section or on an Excel spreadsheet. If you don't have one yet, get that sorted out before you literally do anything else. In fact, I give you permission right now to pause this video and go do it. But first, I'm gonna share a little nugget for you guys. So we run ours through HomeWorks, and if you want to try it, I have a code in all caps, REFERRAL_WILLKELLY. This will get you a full free month on the platform, which they do not offer anywhere else. So this is specifically for my viewers that watch me, but the tool matters a lot less than the habit. So pick one, get every lead and every customer into it and move to the next step. Here's the actual play. Once a month, you're going to pick one upsell service and push it to two different groups of people. A bush trim, a round of fresh mulch, de-weeding the flower beds. It doesn't matter which one as long as it's a specific and it's seasonal pain point for the customer where they actually need the service. One offer, one month sent to your entire list. Here's why it has to be one offer and not a menu. If you send someone a list of 5 different services, they freeze. And a person who freezes doesn't book anything. If you send them one clear approach— a bush trimming, done— that's it. They either want it or they don't. And the ones who want it, they book fast. So think of it as a rotation. This month, maybe it's bush trimming. Next month, Maybe it's mulch. The month after that could be de-weeding the flower beds. You're not trying to sell everything at one time. You're taking turns, one pain point at a time, all the way through the summer season. The first group is every lead who ever called you, asked for a quote, and never signed up. The second group is your existing customers, whether you've got 5 or 50 of them. Both groups get the same message. Here's what we're doing right now. Here's the problem it solves for you, and here's how to get on the schedule. You send that message by text, not email. Not just one or the other. If your current CRM can't send text messages, that's worth switching over in itself because email and text do not perform anywhere close to each other. Text messages get opened around 80% of the time, where email doesn't even come close to that. When money is on the line, you're trying to drive an actual sale, you send a text. Save email for the stuff that's just informational. Keep the cadence simple. One offer once every 4 weeks. Not every week, not randomly, whenever it crosses your mind. Once every 4 weeks like clockwork so your list expects to hear from you instead of feeling spammed by you. Here's the piece almost nobody does, and it's the one that actually created the room for all of this extra revenue inside of our own business. Go look at your own schedule right now today and ask yourself, what's sitting on my calendar for the upcoming weeks, and next month that I could pull forward into this month instead. We are in a seasonal business. If you just let the calendar run itself, you drift through the growing season doing the same routine, and then fall shows up. Leaf cleanup and aerations hit all at once, and you've got no room left for any of it. So during the peak season months, we are constantly pulling services forward on purpose to free up the back half of the year and to make room right now for whatever upsell you're pushing out that month. Here's what that actually looks like in practice. Say a customer is scheduled for a landscape refresh in 3 weeks. If your crew has the capacity this week, call them and ask if they'd rather get it done now. Most people say yes because sooner is always better for the homeowner. Not only are you able to pull that up, but guess what? They probably may need a refresh sooner again in the future. So you're generating more revenue by always pulling that up. Now that job is off your November board and onto this week's board, which does two things at once. It puts real revenue on your schedule right now during the stretch that feels slow, and it clears space in the fall for the jobs that only exist in the fall season— your leaf cleanups, aerations, and the work you cannot pull forward because it isn't time for it yet. Operators who don't do this end up buried in October with no room to add a single new customer while their summer calendar sat half empty for months. Don't be that operator. Pull the schedule forward toward you instead of waiting for it to fill up on its own. Before we wrap up this video, I want you to actually do something instead of just nodding along. Pull up your phone or your CRM right now and count how many leads or current customers you have who you have not reached out to in the last 30 days. Drop that number in the comments below right now. I want to see how many of you are sitting on a bigger opportunity list than you even realized. Here's what I told you at the top: by the end of this video, you'd know exactly how to turn a dead stretch of summer into one of your best revenue months, just like we did inside of Military Lawn Cuts, using people you already know. That's the whole system. Recognize that when the slowdown occurs, this is normal. Capture and hold on to every lead the right way. Pick one offer a month and push it out by text to your leads and your current customers. Pull your schedule forward on purpose instead of letting it just happen on its own. That's exactly how we took one location from $30,000 a month to $42,000 in a single month's difference. And it's exactly how you take your quiet stretch and turn it into one of your busiest months. So don't wait around for the phone to start ringing. Go open your list today. Pick your one offer. And send it out this week. That's the difference between a business that survives the slow season and one that grows straight through it. Thanks so much for watching, guys. My name is Will Kelly. Make sure you subscribe to the channel if you want to grow a more successful mowing business.