Hows it going in your area ?

[Bunton Guy]

At what rate are you guys picking up new lawn maint. customers ? 1-2 per week ? 5-6 ? For me it hasent been going so smoothe..I will do atleast 3 bids a week (commercial work) and 1 residential. I loose most all of them to low ballers. I spend to much time on each bid and dont close any of them. Its depressing but will hopefully get better by start of spring.

[Bob Minney]

I only work residential so most new customers right now are for clean up or scheduling early aerations. Getting 1 mow customer per week, about average for this time of year. 75% of new mow customers come on in April so it's too soon to tell on that part.

[AGG Lawn Maintenance]

Hey Bunton Guy. Try some direct marketing. Pass out flyers to targeted areas. Also try a 3 or 4 line ad in your local area news paper. Do a 30 day ad. Remember it doesn't matter how big the ad is. I have ran ads in Feb-December, having the most luck in April and October. This year we will only run an ad March-April and again in October. After many years in the business I have found that word of mouth is the best form of advertizing. Maybe you can offer your current customers 10% off for each person they refer to your service. Only give your customer a discount if you sign that person. Example: $100 a month customer get 10 people to sign its free for them for that month. You lose the $100 but you gain $1,000. You follow me?
Good Luck
Travis :D

[Bunton Guy]

I allready give my customers $50.00 per customer they send to me that signs a service agreement.

[horseman201]

We moved our business (50 mile from where we live now) at the end of last season so it is like we are starting all over again. We have been picking up 1-2 residentials per week since the 2nd week of February. We started putting out flyers in the first part of February because we didn't know what other companies did in this area. We have had a great response and I think we will get alot more in March and April. At this point we have 21 yards with a 2 man crew. May not be impressive to some but we feel like we are doing great with the average of all yards being $40 each. If the business picks up like ours did last year, we will get about 65% of our business in April.

[14yearoldcutter]

<img src="http://www.villagephotos.com/pubimage.asp?id_=140761" width=510 height=293 >


Just Surfing.. No customers

[George777]

My partner and I had about 6 estimates in the last 2 weeks. We picked up 3 for fert.
3 yellow pages
3 flyers

[Spence]

I have lost a couple and gained a couple. I hope to pick up a few more when the growing season gets fired up. I also have talked to a few people who will hopefully become regular customers when things get to growing.

[AL Inc]

So far lost 1 and got 4 new clients. I also dropped or sold 15 that were not profitable, big complainers, or were just out of the way. I'm trying to concentrate on being more efficient and stay in more local areas. I think it's inevitable that people seem to come out of the woodwork as soon as the weather gets really nice and all of the sudden you're swamped. So don't get discouraged at this time of year. It will pick up. Mike