As a commercial landscaper, you have to stay ahead to land new contracts. The industry is highly competitive, with an annual growth rate of 5.1% between 2016 and 2021.
If you’re looking for ways to grow your business and get more commercial lawn care contracts, here’s what you need to do:
Reach Out to Potential Buyers
When you’re ready to get more commercial landscaping jobs, it’s important that you start by reaching out to potential buyers and decision-makers in your target market. Not every business in your service area knows you exist, so you need to intentionally put yourself in front of potential clients and start building relationships with business owners, property managers, and facility managers.
In the lawn care industry, there are two incredibly effective ways to reach out to prospects and get more commercial work, and that’s by cold calling and sending sales emails. While both are impactful for landing commercial lawn care accounts, they require different approaches.
Cold Calling
Cold calling is highly effective for securing landscaping contracts. However, it’s also a numbers game, so you’ll need to create a plan to place your calls strategically.
The first thing you need to do for your outbound cold-calling strategy is to build a targeted list of prospects in your service area. While there are many ways you can build your list of prospects, you can often get them from commercial property lists, through sales prospecting tools, or by attending local networking events.
Next, it’s time for your sales reps to start putting activity into building your sales pipeline. Sales reps should start reaching out to prospects, introducing your company, and showcasing the value your lawn care company has to offer their office building.
Even if a prospect isn’t ready to secure a sales appointment after the first few calls, it’s important that sales reps continuously nurture the lead until they’re toward the end of their buying cycle. Once they’re ready to negotiate contracts, it’s time to schedule a sales meeting so your account executives can present a sales pitch and encourage prospects to sign on the dotted line.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a tried-and-true method for generating qualified leads, provided you actively qualify them first. Once you have a list of leads, you can nurture them by sending out periodic emails, but you’ll need to set up your lead-capturing system first.
For example, create a lead capture form on your website to drive targeted traffic. If you don’t get targeted traffic, you won’t get targeted leads.
It’s important to qualify your leads carefully. You can qualify your leads with your web form by including certain questions, but ultimately, your sales team will need to finalize lead qualification before setting up an appointment to ensure they’re setting sales executives up with meetings that are likely to convert into closed business.
To qualify your leads through your web form, ask questions that will tell you whether someone is your target market. For instance, if you only work with contracts above a certain dollar amount, ask the user to set their lawn care budget so you can filter out anyone below your minimum.
Boost Your Online Presence With Digital Marketing
More often than not, small businesses that need lawn care services will search online first to see what their options are. When you boost your online presence through digital marketing, you have a better chance at appearing toward the top of the search engine results page (SERP). Additionally, you can take advantage of paid Google and social media ads to capture the right leads who are actively looking for lawn care services.
A user-friendly website that’s easy to navigate is essential for boosting your digital media presence. Your services should be clearly outlined and it should be easy for prospects to be able to contact you if they have questions or want to schedule a consultation.
And last but not least, you’ll also need to have a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy in place so the right decision-makers can find the solutions they’re looking for. Once you have a website, you’ll want to use SEO tactics like keyword research and metadata to increase your site’s ranking in the search engines. If search engines identify your SEO content as valuable to the reader, the more likely they are to boost your company’s content to the top of the SERP, allowing it to be seen by more users.
Become a Trusted Lawn Care Expert
Becoming a trusted lawn care expert will help you build a positive reputation. You can establish yourself as an expert by writing authoritative and informative blogs and publishing them on your website.
This content could include new trends in lawn care to show your prospects you’re staying on top of changes in the industry. From there, you can use SEO and search engine marketing (SEM) to boost those blogs in the search engines and generate even more targeted traffic.
Another way to establish your company as a trusted lawn care expert is by sharing case studies and client testimonials. These can be shared through various platforms whether it’s on your website, social media channels, trade show events, etc. This showcases your commercial landscaping business’s proof of impact, encourages potential buyers to trust the lawn care services you have to offer
Expand Your Service Areas
Have you considered expanding your service areas? If you’re not getting the commercial landscaping contract you want, it may be worth your while to expand your reach. Since the lawn care industry is highly competitive with a low barrier to entry, it’s easy to run out of prospects. Serving more communities is an excellent way to land more commercial lawn care jobs and build relationships with other decision-makers.
Ask for Referrals From Happy Customers
Even with all the different ways to grow your business, word of mouth is still the most effective form of advertising because people trust what their peers have to say about various products and services. This is what makes asking for referrals from happy customers such an effective way to get more commercial landscaping accounts.
While referrals can be a great resource for getting prospects in your sales pipeline, they’re not predictable or sustainable for long-term growth. If you use referrals, make sure you also use other methods to generate prospects and you don’t make it your only approach to business growth.
Key Takeaways
Commercial landscaping is a competitive industry, and you need to generate a constant flow of new prospects to stay ahead of the competition. To achieve this, you need a powerful lead generation strategy. This is where Abstrakt Marketing Group can help.
At Abstrakt, we help growing commercial landscaping companies across the U.S. build their sales pipeline and generate consistent sales opportunities year round—even during slow seasons. When you’re ready to increase the profit margins of your lawn care business, contact the lead generation experts at Abstrakt!
Within two months, our outbound lead generation program has led a commercial landscaping business to submit five proposals that are worth over $117,000—and that’s only the beginning.
Contact us today to learn how we can generate significant business deals for your commercial landscaping company!
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