How Many Customers Did You Have After Your First Year?

[DBM]

I'm curious as to how many customers you had after your first year of business. Did anybody have an amazing first year? It's my first and I'm slowly acquiring new ones, mostly from referrals but I had a problem with overbidding in the beginning and it's hurt me a little.

Daytime highs are averaging in the high fifties/low sixties for the last little while. Do the residential calls come in with more frequency when the weather gets hot?

Doug

[65hoss]

I can't really answer about the weather, but as it warmed up for me in the south I get more calls.

At one point my first year I had about 50. If I remember correctly I scaled it back to weed out the junk and ended up with around 40 at the end of the season.

Hang in there!
Eric

[Fine Lines Lawn]

I had 32 accounts at the end of the first season.

[LAWNMOWERBOY]

Hi-

My partner and I are in our first year going "commercialy legit" and I often find myself in the same dilema of bidding too high. It really doesn't bother me that we are not insanely busy right now because I know we would hate like heck to be working for less than what we deserved to be paid .I just look at it as a process of finding the most we can charge in our specific market and region, and that can only be done (in my opinion) by starting high and dropping the price bit by bit as opposed to bidding low, realizing the bid is way low,and then trying to raise the rate mid-stream.

You're not alone...

LB

[Scraper]

Ditto Lawnmowerboys comment....you';re better pricing higher rather than lower....as long as your quality is high...you won't have any problem gettting it...however, you will have to deal with price shoppers

[George777]

My partner and I have been in this business for about 2 months and we are sitting at 25 customers. paid off our eqipment debt with all clean ups.
our method of advertising has been only with flyers and also having success with cold calls and not for just a one cut, but signing them up for a 10 month agreement. My goal is to double our customer base in the next 30-45 days. I keep my eyes open to the area we are in and look for houses that need a lawn service and see if I can get someone to open the door and if they open my attitude is to close the sale and service the lawn.

[CSRA Landscaping]

George, how much success have you had from going up and knocking on their doors? Do you usually talk to the wife or the hubby? Are you picking up customers all through the season or do you find that the bulk comes from the beginning of the season? Thanks ...

[George777]

CSRA Landscaping, I first notice if a car is in the drive way or if I see someone outside. I've had most success with senior citizens, If I speak with a lady I get her phone number and call back latter that evening to speak with the husband. I've been hearing a lot of people are just to tied up with work to get time to maintain a lawn. I love to hear that. I'm also hearing about other lawn companies not showing up. I herd that statement 3 times already this week,I also got those accounts.
I think a lot has to do with your attitude and appearace of you and your equipment. I love the challenge of closing the sale. If I sense a person with a knit picky attitude the price went up.

[eggy]

We didnt have a lot of accounts but are average is around 150.00 per account....

[lawnboy82]

my first year (legal) i serviced on a regular basis about 40 - 50. smallest being 20 dollars only 1 or 2 of those. and i think 4 or 5 over 120. the bulk were about 30 - 40 at the end of thay year i only had about 20 accounts. i took on so much that i just couldnt keep up. i learned a lot that year. i feel that now if i could do it over again i would have done a lot of things differently. and i would be a lot better off now. some places required a guy there for about 30 hours a week for a month or whatever. there were i think maybe 4 estates? and 2 commercials the rest were resi's but still if you got estates they require a lot different service than a resi as do commercials.

[David Gretzmier]

about 30 accounts, and i sold myself as full service, and made more $ per client rather than have alot of cut only clients.... dave

[GreenQuest Lawn]

This is the start of my second mowing season.(one full year in bus.)I have 37 Mowing accounts with about 90% being full service. I only have 4 that are under 15000 sqft. Most are around an acer.

[Scott H]

I had 31 including all comercial, residential, and Home owner associations.


Scott H

[Mark]

eggy you hit the nail right on the head. Its really not how many you do its what they pay. I think i started with 17yds. Ive done as many as 58 a week but now have weeded out my lower cuts. Id like to just have around 25 cuts at 150per cut, that would gross you 120k per yr. But right now im averageing around 42 dollars per cut and have 47 accounts puts me just on cutting grass in the mid 60s but maybe later on down the road ill weed some more out and replace them with the higher prices. Marks Mowing Service

[ronslawncare]

i had done over a hundred different customers for all kinds of stuff last year but was left with 30 good lawn accounts but will definately be gettin more