I thought I'd share this with some of you upstart guys who are always gunning for the big commercial contracts. We have just a handful of commercial work because in our area there is NO $ in it whatsoever. We do them basically as a way to keep the mowers busy on Monday/Tuesday since the bulk of our resi properties demand Thurs/Friday service. It's hard.
One of them is a BIG national company that has a plant in town that we took over a couple of years ago because it pretty much looked abandoned and they needed to meet some standards. It looks pretty decent now but is by no means a showplace. Well they emailed last week wanting to switch to once a month service OR maybe quarterly. HA! We only service weekly. But just for fun I told our coordinator to tell them we'd love to but it'll at the same price we're charging. In my mind it'd take 4 times as long if you're only gonna be there every 4 weeks.
It's a small contract and we're turning work away as is but still the absurdity of it.
Then there's the whole NET30 payment terms - but they only cut checks on a certain day of the month - so it's really NET60 before you get paid... IF they're accounts payable folks aren't behind...
diversifying your business is the best way to prevent you from doing work for nothing. I would have dropped them before the words finished coming out of their mouth.
Shouldn't be any worries about this one. Give them your contract to sign, your terms.
Let them try to find someone else during busy season.. if/when they come back next year name your price.
Change your terms for future commercial contracts. We require payment on the 1st for service for that month. We pause service on past due accounts and have the right to terminate due to past due balances after a certain time frame and charge a cancellation fee. Any company that pushes back against that isn’t one you want to work with anyway.
This post does not pass the smell test . Total BS . You want me to believe a "BIG national " company that you service weekly ( you say that's all you do is weekly) now wants monthly or quarterly ? ( eye roll ) You also say " We have just a handful of commercial work because in our area there is NO $ in it whatsoever " For you I guess ,but doubt you have any , and your "turning away work " sure
I'm a fairly small operation and I routinely turn away commercial work. It's not profitable for what they want to pay, it's difficult and they ALWAYS have annoying requests
I've done one true commercial account in my many years in this biz. They dropped us when their janitor said he and his son would do it for 5% less. It was a smaller account but weekly mow, maint, mulch, shrubs, blowing parking lot etc. And brought in good $.
Good friend of my sister's who is also here in town. 85% of their large commercial lawn care biz was with one account. Handful of years ago bankruptcy. They lost the main customer over a few percent. But he could not drop it lower and make any profit. Obviously one can make money in it. I am one that honestly would not know how. But I do know how to make profit on the residential side. So to each their own I guess.
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