Tip:  Landscape contractors today are operating in a different economy and adopting a different mind-set. Since the same-old, same-old marketing method does not work anymore, especially when it comes to combating a steady downward pressure on pricing, Eric Cross, CLP, offers several suggestions to help you get a fair price for your company’s services.

“The same-old, same-old marketing method does not work anymore, especially when it comes to combating a steady downward pressure on pricing,” says Eric Cross, CLP, of Duke’s Landscape Management in Hackettstown, New Jersey. “As a company, we are not willing to get into the pricing battle. We want to maintain the high quality of service we provide, and being able to do that requires that we get a fair price for our services.”

The solution, according to Cross, has been to gear up his company’s marketing effort. Sending out mailers and other impersonal approaches have not been as effective as they once were, because they fail to give the company an opportunity to explain in person what it can offer customers. “Instead,” he continues, “We are making more phone calls, knocking on doors, and finding ways to have more personal time with prospective clients. We are also getting more involved with groups like BOMA — again, to gain more personal time with the people who make maintenance decisions for their properties.”

Landscape contractors today are operating in a different economy and adopting a different mind-set. In addition to the pricing pressures, more companies are turning to online auctions to find low-cost providers of maintenance services. “We participate in the auctions, primarily to gain exposure, even though we may never be the lowest bidder,” Cross notes.

“The point is, he continues, “that companies like ours cannot just sit around and talk about maintaining their high quality without doing something about it. We have to apply pressure of our own to counteract the down pressure on prices. We have found the best way to do that is to increase our marketing effort in a way that allows us to tell our story.”

Cross offers the following list of things his company is doing to keep the right kind of work coming in and to make sure its services are not viewed as a commodity:

1.       Sell more services to existing clients.

2.       Use snowplowing as a deal maker. Many of the low bidders were overextended last year and did a poor job with the snow and ice.

3.       Talk to current clients and subcontractors. Ask them if they know of opportunities that would be ideal for your company.

4.       Use more cold calling to ask for a face-to-face meeting. His company is making 20 calls a day, trying to schedule 10 intro meetings per week through the end of the fall.

5.       Be more selective. If a potential client is not a good "fit," you are better off politely declining to bid.

6.       Ask for more multiyear contracts. Renegotiate these before they expire.

7.       The most important thing we can do is retain current clients.

By Eric Cross, CLP

Duke’s Landscape Management

Hackettstown, New Jersey

eric@dukeslm.com