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11 Posts
Need some professional guidance here people. Short story ... I started part time doing plant and tree installation for my girlfriends father who has been in the business for over twenty years working with Landscape architects and Real estate companies preping homes for resale. Since I have a former background in art design and business opertations I started doing CAD and Landscape Pro designs for his customers, they loved the work and soon we had a hard time keeping up with demand. He has since retired so I have spun off my own company. Here's the problem, most of the install clients asked if I could take over their property maintenance so I did hoping to capture some reoccurring revenue and start a separate crew. New to this end of the business I often matched the service rates of the previous LCO's and in some cases lower. Most of the LCO's were Mow,Blow,& Goers so they did poor work. I provide a niche in the market and provide a total service including lawn, hedges, sprinklers, fert, trimming,etc. The work speaks for itself. Now I have more clients than I can handle and pick up 2-5 more through referrals weekly. Most of my clients are well to do and live in gated communities with small to zero lot lawns, a few are larger. The area is saturated with Mow, Blow, & Goers so the local rates are low $ 20-30 lawn cuts are the norm, so I have had to match these rates to keep the clients happy- also charging market rates for hedgework etc. I need to raise my rates at least 10% to beat the economics, how do you do it without a mass exodus of clients ?