How Master Gardeners And Landscapers Can Increase Their Customer Base To Increase Their Profits…

How can you as a master gardeners or landscaper can increase your customer base to increase your profits?

This will take a bit more time and effort on your behalf, but it is definitely well worth it in the long run AND for your pocket!

You can do this as you go along, but I recommend more to do a little back tracking to get even better results. So I will go over this last one first because the last portion of it will encompass the first way as well.

Get out a list of your clients over the past few years. Go over this list and for now pick out the top ten or twenty customers that you know you did your best jobs for them; the remaining ones you can continue with later. Put down their names, addresses, phone numbers, and a brief summary of what you did. Organize them in order as if you were driving around from house to house (or businesses).

Call these folks to ask permission for you to take pictures of your work if you think that it is necessary.

Grab this list along with your digital camera. Hop in your car and go take pictures of the work that you did.

What we are trying to accomplish is to establish a portfolio of your work for future customers to see what you are capable of doing. If you can get some older and more established gardens and landscapes to show potential clients, all the better for you. Take as many pictures as you can from many different views and angles.

When you get home or back to your office, then you can go through these photos and organize them. First put them into separate files for each customer. Then make a file for each type of job; this could be such things as poolside landscaping, stonewalls, block walls, paths, steps, foundation plantings, areas around mailboxes, decks, arbors, sitting areas, borders, trees, shrubs, sculpture, fountains, benches, etc. This way it will be easier for you to layout pages with specific items to show those future customers what you have done. Then make up those pages and print them out.

Put together a printout of your company’s logo, your name, phone number, and website; make 10 copies.

Get a 3 ring binder that holds clear plastic sleeves and has a plastic pocket on the front to use for sliding in those printouts of your company’s logo, your name, phone number, and website. This way you can pull one out and leave one of these pages with the potential customer with all your information.

Slide the pictures of the various gardens in according to what type of situation you have like walls. Put labeled tabs at the beginning of each section, so you can quickly flip to it instead of fumbling around in front of the customer.

Make up or have any checklists or other types of sheets to take notes on about what specifically that new customer needs, wants, or desires and work orders, customer contracts, etc. Make 10 copies of each, and put each type into a different plastic sleeve and label them with a tab too.

As you start new jobs, take before and immediately after photos, then go back again one year, two years, and three years later to show how the sites develop with the plant growth over time.

This way you can impress these potential new customers with not only your creations for past or present clients, but how well organized you are too. They are more likely to hire someone who is well organized.

The reason to do this is that many people cannot visualize what their property will look like when all the work is completed. This portfolio will give them a more substantial idea of what they can expect…and it should give you more customers and cash in your pocket.

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