14 Ways to Grow Your Landscaping Business (Immediately)

If your landscaping business has reached a plateau or if you’re strategizing to improve future growth, you may be wondering how to grow your landscape business.

Growing your landscaping company should be considered a multiple-faceted approach. You don’t want to just focus on bringing in new business; you also want to focus on closing more of the leads you’re already receiving, maximizing the business you have, and improving your profit margins.

Increase Your Conversion Rate

One way you can start growing your landscaping business immediately is to better convert the leads you’re already receiving.

Whether you acknowledge direct costs or not, you’re probably paying more money than you think to bring in each lead, bid the project, and close the sale. Not only are you paying for whatever marketing avenues drove the lead to you in the first place; you’re also paying for the systems to communicate with that lead once it’s attained, track the progress of the lead in the sales funnel, pay for the sales staff to bid and follow up with the prospect, and the time and planning to schedule and initiate the new job.

Because of all the costs associated with bringing in and selling a lead, you want to make sure you’re being as effective as possible when a lead does come in. To improve your conversion rate to grow your landscaping company:

1. Follow up more quickly. Following up with a lead via phone within 5 minutes of receiving initial contact can improve the probability of qualifying that lead by 21X.
2. Follow up more frequently. If a lead submitted an inquiry via a web form or 3^rd party lead generation site, don’t give up if you don’t get ahold of the lead the first time. On average, it takes 5 follow up efforts to get ahold of a customer.
3. Have a CRM. If you’re relying on spreadsheets or email chains to track your lead follow-up efforts, then things are falling through the tracks. Get a CRM to manage and track your leads and to automate (tasks, emails, etc.) whenever possible.

Maximize Your Existing Clients

Another way to help grow your landscaping business immediately is to maximize your existing clients. Many landscaping companies make the error of selling their clients once but never reaching out to them to pitch again.

Improving the way you retain clients as well as the way you cross-sell or upsell existing clients can help you grow your landscaping business without having to invest more money in lead generation.

• Increase contract renewals. Many landscaping companies will assume happy clients will come back year after year, but this isn’t always the case. By being proactive and reaching out to clients, you stop relying on chance to ensure contract renewals. By improving client retention by only 5%, you can increase your revenues by as much as 25-95%, according to some studies.
• Cross-sell existing clients. It is 60-70% easier to sell to an existing client than it is to sell the same service to a new client. Cross-sell to existing clients by offering services that naturally complement their existing service but that they may not have thought to outsource to you (or that they considered hiring you for but didn’t take the first steps to do so). By cross-selling to existing clients you can increase your revenues as much as 10-30%.
• Upsell clients. If you have a client who schedules a one-times service while they’re on vacation, reach out and see if you can upsell them to a recurring contract. If you have a lead interested in grub management, upsell them on pruning services as well. It never hurts to ask and can increase the contract size without much extra effort.

Strengthen Your Profit Margins & Cash Flow

Another way to grow your landscape company immediately is to take a look at your profit margins. By keeping a close eye on costs and improving your profit margins, you can increase your gross profit without increasing the amount of work you’re doing.

• Know your costs. One of the biggest mistakes landscape companies make is not having a good handle on their actual costs. Without knowing how much your services actually cost to perform you may be unnecessarily sacrificing some of your profit margin. Improving cost-tracking means having a better system in place to bid projects (more accurate land measurement, inventory/supply tracking, employee tracking and scheduling), etc., and using that information to analyze project profitability.
• Schedule your assets more strategically. In a service company such as a landscape, lawn care, or tree care company, time is money. You should be finding ways to make sure your teams are as productive as possible. This means strategically scheduling projects to minimize drive time, equipment downtime, and ineffective labor use.
• Improve your inventory management. Another essential part of growing your landscaping company immediately is to have better inventory management. This means having a system for tracking what inventory you have in stock, your costs for that inventory and which providers you use (so a price hike doesn’t go unnoticed), what upcoming projects you have and what inventory you’ll need, etc. This helps ensure you don’t have too much extra capital tied up in inventory you’re sitting on for excessive periods of time. You want to know what you need, have what you need, but not have a ton of extra lying around.

Increase Your Lead Flow

After you’ve fine-tuned your landscaping company with the above steps to promote growth, it’s time to bring in more leads. You want to save this company-growing step for last since bringing in more leads when you have a less efficient system (poor lead management, close rates, or asset management) can mean unnecessarily wasted money and missed opportunities.

1. Make sure you have a website. If you don’t have a clear, professional website, it’s time to get one. If your website is outdated, it’s time to improve it. Things you want to look for are:
   1. How easy is it for someone to contact you?
   1. Does your website clearly state what you do and does it state what you do in terms your clients use (don’t use too much jargon—talk to your clients the way they talk to you)?
   1. What questions do clients have when they reach your website—and can they quickly find the answers?
   1. Is your website overwhelming to navigate, or is it easy for people to find what they’re looking for?
   1. Do you have customer reviews and photos that validate your company?
2. Get listed on Google My Business. When many people look for a local company, they search using Google. Your Google My Business listing is the listing that shows up next to the map when people are searching for services in their area. Make sure you have an active, verified listing and that all of your information is up-to-date.
3. Get reviews. Reviews are more important than ever in growing your landscaping business. The majority of people read reviews before reaching out to a service company. If you have very few reviews—or several poor reviews—you’re significantly decreasing your chances of receiving new leads. Ask clients to leave reviews on your Google My Business profile, Facebook, Yelp, or other online listings. These listings are more trusted by prospective clients than reviews you pick and choose to share on your website.
4. Ask for referrals. Ask your existing clients if they know anyone who might be interested in your services. Ask if you can leave a few business cards with them for friends or family. Offer incentives for referrals. Offer a discount on their service if they let you put a lawn sign in their yard for the season.
5. Knock doors. It may seem old-fashioned but adding a goal to knock 5-10 doors in the area when your sales rep is bidding new projects can yield more leads without significantly increasing effort. Let the homeowner know you’re in the area providing a bid for their neighbor and ask if they’d like a quick quote as well.

How Can We Help?

Arborgold landscape management software offers multiple tools and platforms to help you manage all the above processes and more for a more efficient, successful landscape company. Explore how Arborgold can help you grow your landscaping business today by clicking “Take a Tour” below.

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