Most people are only haphazardly wishing for success. They hope success will find them.
When you start a landscaping business you'll be investing both time and money in your venture. You should have a clear plan for equipping your business, advertising to obtain customers, providing quality service, and dealing with the competition.
If you will need financing, your lender will require you to have a business plan.
When you are starting a lawn care business you need to understand lawn care pricing in your area. Basically this involves getting experience at estimating the effort involved in a job and understanding the going rates for lawn care service in your area.
Get Experience in Lawn Care
Of course you have some experience cutting and trimming your own lawn. But, that can be somewhat limiting. Your lawn and grounds may not contain all the shrubbery or bushes, hills, obstacles, ditches, or other features that can impact the time to complete a job.
So, it's important that you get a broader perspective of what an particular job can entail. If you haven't done so already, watch or even work on a lawn care crew. Get a real feel for how long a particular lawn job takes to properly cut, trim and blow. The more experience you have, even if it's just watching other lawn care crews do their work, the better you will be at estimating a job.
Whether you're watching or actually participating in doing the work, make sure you record the times taken for the various activities as well as the equipment used for those activities.
Get Lawn Care Pricing for New Jobs
You need to have an idea of the going rate for lawn services in your area. You need to be competitive and not way underpriced or too overpriced.
One way is to get lawn care pricing from other companies. Start with getting some estimates for your own lawn. Also, ask some friends to call various lawn care companies to get estimates. Make sure you understand exactly the work that is being discussed and estimated.
Once you have access to the bids, do your own estimate of the duration and make a guess at the fixed costs per job. You can then get the going hourly rate.
Typically the rate will be in accord with the time it takes to do the job plus the fixed overhead per job. This may translate in cost per 1000 square feet of lawn to cut, cost per linear foot of edging or hedge trimming, and so on.
No doubt there will be low bids and high bids.
Now, you want to do your own estimate on your lawn and your friends' lawns.
Break down the individual tasks and estimate the time it should require to perform each task. Make sure you actually walk around and examine the work area carefully. Look for "hidden" obstacles like ditches that may require extra time and manual effort. You may want to add a certain percentage to your estimates because of unforeseen difficulties and, if you are like most people, you will probably underestimate the effort a job will take.
One you have some actual bids and can estimate job durations fairly accurately you are in a good position to determine the going rate. You should probably include a small fixed cost to account for drive time, unloading and loading, as well as fuel costs.
Setting Your Own Lawn Care Pricing Rates
Often rates will come close to $1 per minute or $60 per hour. Some market areas will have higher or lower rates. Of course how you estimate will depend on the equipment you use. Cutting grass with a power mower will probably take longer than using a riding lawn mower.
You should tell your potential customers your price to perform quality work rather than your hourly rate. Perhaps you can quote the price per 1000 square feet of grass and per linear food of edging. So, when you get newer equipment your time may go down, but the quality of the job remains high. And, you don't want your customers watching the clock as you do your work.
Good luck with your lawn care estimating.
Video
Title: Lawn Care Business Estimating: How To Price Mowing a Lawn Description: www.LawnCare-Business.com How to price lawn for your lawn care business. This video will show you about how to go about pricing a lawn for your lawn care business. I think you should charge by the minute in almost all cases. For instance, if it takes you 45 minutes to mow a lawn, then I...
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