Lawn and Landscape Industry Blog | Green Pro Marketing

Mar 10 2016

How can I sell my landscape business when I’m ready?

I know a lot of landscape business owners have a goal of selling the business to help fund their retirement. Whether or not that’s possible all depends on your preparation NOW. Here’s business valuation expert Dan Doran’s excellent advice.

You worked really hard to create a business and you probably still work really hard in that business. However, we all have to retire some day. Your inevitable exit from the business is somewhere on the horizon whether you have allowed yourself the time to reflect on this or not. You may know how far off you’d ideally like that exit to be, but have you done the planning to be sure that date is realistic?

If you are like most small business owners, nearly 80% of your net worth is represented by your business. Further, most entrepreneurs anticipate that selling their business will be the largest single source of funds for their retirement. Knowing what your business is worth can give you a solid platform from which to make your financial decisions, like: How much can you expect to sell for? Is this enough to fund my retirement? And what do you need to do before selling? If the value today is enough to meet all of your retirement needs then you can proceed to the sale. If the value needs to grow before you sell then you can implement strategies now so that you will reach your projected exit/sale date.

Some really good food for thought before we dive into exit planning and determining what your business is worth: remember it’s a company, not a job. You’ve worked hard to create a company that ideally pays you a reasonable salary. But when it comes time to sell you don’t want to sell a job, you want to sell a company. You can’t do that if every activity in the company is somehow dependent on you.

So where do we begin?

The Problem: “I am the Business”

Here’s a scenario: you own and work in a landscaping company. You are responsible for all selling, client relationships, and scheduling. You pay the bills and negotiate with vendors and deal with insurance. You also spend a good amount of time out on job sites. And if you get hit by the proverbial bus it’s not going to be all that long before the business will literally cease to function.

Sound familiar? In that context how much is the company worth to a buyer? Not much. In most transactions the buyer wants to see you exit the business. But if the company essentially walks out the door when you do at night you’ve got a real problem.

We call this concept Personal Goodwill. Goodwill is the “blue sky” value attached to your company – the amount in excess of hard assets. Personal goodwill is the amount that’s attributable to you. While it’s good to feel important and valuable, personal goodwill is bad. This goodwill is non-transferable and ceases to exist when the individual(s) leave/sell the business. In the context of a sale it does not add value to a company- afterall, how could a buyer purchase it?

The Solution: Work Your Way Out of a Job

In order to enhance the value of your business you will want to make necessary changes to show that your business can exist, thrive, and grow without you. Two quick fixes for shifting the weight of this personal goodwill are to:

Create well-defined systems and processes. How do you run your business? Is it all in your head? Do you have a notepad or a personal laptop that only you have access to and only you can figure out the “filing system” for? The common word here is you and it is time to share this information. Take some time to thoroughly outline all of your business related processes from how you advertise and meet new clients, to how you recruit and train new employees. Every bit of this valuable information will be just that, valuable, when it comes to selling your business.

Hire someone to run the daily operations. Likely you have been out in front of your business since day 1 and now it is time to show yourself, your employees, and your customers that someone else can do the things that you do. Not only will this build confidence that the show can go on without you, it will free up your valuable time to focus on higher-level agenda items like strategies for growth and sustainment. Doing this now will allow you the maximum time required to impart your knowledge and experience.

These two actions will eliminate some of the you (personal goodwill) from your business and prepare the business to make a smooth transition of ownership with minimal disruption of productivity. Having clearly defined business procedures and someone other than you running the daily operations makes the business more appealing to a potential buyer and more valuable thus bringing you a higher sale price and more money to fund your retirement.

Dan Doran is the Founder and Principal of Quantive Business Valuations, a certified valuation practice serving privately held businesses nationwide. He consults on hundreds of valuations each year, ranging from cases of divorce litigation or SBA 7(a) lending requirements to buy-sell agreements or purchase and sale proceedings. Dan’s immersion in the valuation process and extensive work in Mergers & Acquisitions throughout the first decade of the new millenium provide him with a unique “behind-the-scenes” perspective on successful business transactions, growth strategies and the nuances of value drivers within emerging industries.

Dan is an avid blogger and writer on a variety of business issues, including valuation, start-ups, growth, exit planning and structuring transactions. He has recently been published by New Jersey Banker, Virginia Business Journal, YFS Magazine, CBO Magazine, and New England Banking. Learn more at quantivevaluations.com

Quantive Business Valuations is a pure-play business valuation firm. We focus solely on providing business appraisal, valuation, and transaction advisory services related to closely held organizations throughout the United States. We are highly specialized in our exclusive focus on valuation related matters. Without tax and audit related commitments, we remain uniquely independent and unbiased in our viewpoints. Quantive routinely works with small business owners for a variety of reasons to include exit planning.

Mar 08 2016

Doing this can KILL your landscape business Facebook page

When you started your landscape business Facebook page, you probably shared it with all your friends and family, maybe made mention of it in an email to past and current customers, and then waited for the lovin’ from thousands in your local area. And waited.

And waited.

How can the world of Facebook know how awesome you are unless they all like your page? And how can you show potential customers you’re the best if you only have 63 people who like your page? This can sometimes lead desperate business owners to make one (or both) of these mistakes.

Buying likes for your landscape business Facebook page

There are websites out there where you can buy thousands of likes for mere dollars. It’s tempting; overnight you can go from zero to hero, boasting 5,000 fans on your Facebook page! But it’s not about just numbers (as you’ll see here in a minute).

Trading likes with other landscape contractors

If you spend any time on industry forums, you’ll see threads where someone gets a brilliant idea. “Hey guys, post your Facebook page links and we’ll all like each others’ pages!” It’s an easy way to fluff up your numbers, but it’s almost as bad an idea as buying followers. Why is that?

How Facebook really works for businesses

Way back in the early days of business pages, it was easy to get thousands of people to see your Facebook posts. Then Facebook made a major change. They would be using an algorithm to determine who got to see your posts. Today, on average, only between 5-10% of your followers will ever see a given post.

Now that’s not an absolute number. It’s an algorithm, which means it’s watching the way people interact with your posts to Facebook. If a post is getting a lot of likes, comments, or shares, Facebook assumes it’s a good post – and more people get to see it. If you have several good posts, Facebook may start showing more people each post to start with. On the other hand, if every post you make falls as flat as a racist joke at a formal dinner party, Facebook may actually show your posts to FEWER people.

Here’s where the quality of your Facebook fans makes a huge difference. Let’s say 100 people from your local area, who might actually want to buy from you, like your page. Let’s also say that you’ve swapped likes with 300 other landscape professionals, and maybe 10 people randomly clicked like on your page as they saw it go past in their feed. That’s 410 page likes, which is pretty good for a local landscape business. Let’s say you create a Facebook post, and that day Facebook shows it to 6% of your followers (which is pretty standard). That’s 25 people.

Facebook isn’t going to select which 25 people see your post by what helps you. Maybe 10 of your potential customers will see your posts. Or maybe everyone who sees your post comes from that group of 300 landscape companies you swapped likes with. Are you going to get business from a lawn care company located 800 miles away that sees your post? Probably not.

How to use your landscape business Facebook page the right way

Facebook is tough as a lead generation tool. That’s not really why people go on social media. They want to see how their niece did in surgery, argue with someone about politics, and catch up with their friends. They’re not there to be sold to. A facebook marketing strategy is a slow burn. Here’s how to do it effectively.

Grow your followers organically. Make sure all your clients (past and present) get an invitation to like your page. Email them a link, because if you just say “find me on FB and like me” they won’t.
Don’t buy followers
Don’t do follow for follow swaps with other landscape contractors
Post content that people want to see, or will want to share! That can be timely lawn and garden tips, great photos or videos of your projects, or other things that will grab someone’s interest and paint you as an expert.
Post regularly, but don’t post garbage just to post something

Still a little lost on how to manage your landscape business Facebook page effectively? We can do that for you! Contact us today to learn more.

Nov 10 2015

Websites for landscape companies: are they worth it?

It surprises me a little that, in 2015, we still find people asking “is it important for a landscape company to have a website?” It’s also amusing that we get these questions via a) email or b) an online forum. Still, it’s clearly a question mark for a lot of folks so we’ll dive right in.

What a website does for your landscape company

We should start by talking about what your landscape company’s website can or should do for you. That can be broken down into broad categories: help people find your business, help people learn about your business (and why they should hire you), and make it easy for people to buy from you. Let’s go one by one.

Help people find your business

Many years ago, the phone book was the easiest way for people to find a service provider for whatever they needed. Businesses were listed alphabetically, which is why there are older businesses with names like AA Landscapes, AAA Landscapes, AA-AAA-AA Landscapes, and so on. Times have changed.

Today, people are just as likely to drop the yellow pages in the recycling bin as they are to open it up. Your prospects are much more likely to search online. You can list your company with a variety of online directories, but that puts you right back in the phone book scenario – better hope your company isn’t called Zee’s Lawn and Landscape.

A better way to be found is with a website optimized for the terms your prospects are searching on. For example, a company based in Cleveland would want their website to come up high on the search results for “lawn care Cleveland” or “Cleveland landscaping”. A website lets you be found by people looking for what it is you offer, where you are. It’s called Search Engine Optimization, and there are resources where you can learn all about it, or you can hire a pro.

Help people learn about your business

Once someone finds you, how can you encourage them to buy from you? If you just have a phone number listed, those prospects will call you and the job of selling yourself is 100% on you, right at that moment. How much can you convey about yourself and your company in 90 seconds on the phone?

When a prospect arrives at a well-designed website, they get a chance to learn about your company. They can see what type of work you do, learn a bit about you (the About page on lawn and landscape websites sees a ton of traffic), and get an idea of what sort of professional you are. Then when they contact you, they’re often already very interested in having you do the work. It’s like having a sales assistant working for you 24/7.

Make it easy for people to hire you

A gorgeous website doesn’t help anyone if the potential client says “yep, looks nice” and clicks the back button without contacting you. Your contact info should always be easy to find, and your pages should includ

e calls to action to get them to reach out to you for a quote. Depending on what you do and how you handle new clients, a website can do everything from encourage people to call or email to letting them book a consultation right there. You don’t get that from a flyer.

When shouldn’t you have a website?

I still believe that every lawn and landscape business should have a website. That said, not every business benefits from a highly optimized, sales-focused website. If you’re a solo operator who’s not looking to grow, or you’re almost running at capacity, think long and hard about this: do you want an influx of new leads? Or are your current channels working? If you don’t have a website you should start one today to claim your domain name and start building credibility with Google. Once you’ve done the basics, though, your goals and abilities will help you decide what to do next.

Ready to create a website that will drive leads and sales for your lawn and landscape business? Contact us today to schedule a consultation and find out what’s best for you.

Oct 27 2015

Should your landscape business accept credit cards?

Credit cards have become a popular form of payment for almost all consumer transactions. A survey conducted a couple of years ago by WePay shows that “…on a regular basis, 58% of small businesses are asked by their customers to accept credit cards.” If you’ve been in business for any length of time the odds are good that you’re among that 58% of small businesses. The question is, if you don’t currently accept credit cards – should you?

The Case for Accepting Credit Cards

First, let’s explore why homeowners might want to use credit cards to pay for their lawn service or for a landscape job. They’re all pretty simple:

convenience – in the survey we mentioned above, 64% of consumers indicated that they write fewer than three checks a month. Between credit cards and online bill pay, a lot of homeowners never get the checkbook out nowadays. They don’t want to have to dig it out of the back of a desk drawer for one transaction.
financing – A homeowner may not have $5,000 sitting in her account to do that front walk, but she knows she can pay it off within three months or less.
reward points – if every $X is a worth a mile on their United card, or they get 1% cash back, why wouldn’t they want to use that card as much as possible?

For the sake of this discussion, these points can really be boiled down to one reason homeowners choose to pay with credit cards: because they want to. The value, then, in accepting credit cards is that you’re not throwing up a barrier that keeps them from buying from you.

If the customer doesn’t want to be bothered with writing a check, they’ll find a way not to have to, and that may well mean hiring someone else. If they’re using the card to finance the purchase, what are your options if you don’t take credit cards? Finance them yourself? Tell them “call me in three months when you have the money”? Similarly, if the homeowner knows they’ll get 20,000 miles if they hire your competitor and 0 miles if they hire you, you’re putting yourself at a disadvantage.

Every business is a sales business. Don’t chase away sales. Forbes magazine asked why more small businesses don’t accept credit cards, and this is a great quote from the article:

The benefits of accepting credit and debit cards far outweigh the cost. The various studies show that when people are given more payment options (beyond cash); they are more likely to make impulse purchases, join loyalty programs, and spend more per purchase – and that can only help your business to grow.

Should You Charge a “Convenience Fee” for Credit Cards?

The biggest objection I hear with regards to accepting credit cards is that “I don’t want to/can’t afford to give away 3% of my revenue every year!” Some lawn and landscape business owners then decide that they’ll recoup that money by charging a convenience fee for credit card customers. I don’t think it’s a great idea, and here’s why.

I mentioned above that putting up a barrier between the prospect and the sale is never a good idea, and that is exactly what a convenience fee does. In sales and marketing we call it a “friction point”, something that can slow a sale down to the point that it could even kill the deal. It’s 2015, that homeowner is paying for almost everything with plastic. They’re not going to see that 5% “convenience fee” and think of the small local business owner, they’re going to think about United Airlines and all the fees and surcharges that get added on to what started out as a great ticket price.

Make it EASY for the customer to buy from you. Bake that credit card transaction fee into your pricing so that you know you’re covered, no matter how they choose to pay, and tell them with a smile that you’ll take payment however they want to give it.

The bottom line is that your landscape business relies on a steady flow of happy customers to succeed. In any market you’re overcoming worries about pricing and competitors and lead time to starting the job. Make it as easy as possible for the customer to buy – from you.

Not sure how to easily accept credit card payments from your customers? We can integrate payment portals right into your landscape company’s website design. Not only is it simple for customers to pay and for you to be paid, every time they make a payment they’ll be able to see all the services you offer. It’s one more way Green Pro Marketing helps your business grow, You should contact us today to learn more!

Oct 22 2015

How to suck at social media

There are a lot of landscape pros killing it out there on social media. Their posts are tight, they’re engaging, and they make potential clients want to learn more about that amazing brand. That’s what you want social media to do. Social media lets brands connect with people as real, actual human beings, which can shorten the sales cycle and lead to deeper relationships, which means more loyalty and higher customer value. Awesome, right?

But then there are other companies who just don’t seem to get it. We’re not going to name names, but here are some ways to be so bad at social media that you’re inadvertently driving clients away.

"Tell me you didn't post that!" — “Tell me you didn’t post that!”

Post the exact same thing across every platform

I get it, you’re busy. It can be hard coming up with something original for every post, so it may seem like the best bet is to use the same post on Facebook, and Twitter, and LinkedIn, and Houzz, and so on. You know what the problem is with that? A lot of your customers, or potential customers, may follow you on multiple social media networks. If I see the same thing coming from you on Twitter and Facebook, I’m going to unfollow you on at least one network, or maybe both. Why take that risk? Even if you’re linking to the same content (blog post, magazine article) at least change up what you’re saying about it. No one likes to feel like you’re just phoning it in.

Sell to us like it’s President’s Day weekend and you’re a used car dealer

Think about why you go on Facebook. Are you going on Facebook to chat with your friends, read news articles, and slack off a bit? Or are you logging in hoping to see so many calls to buy something that even the Draft Kings/Fan Duel people say “whoa, dude, ease up on all the ads”? Exactly. Here’s a great example of what NOT to do:

Not only are they posting the same sales message over and over, they’re re-sharing the sales message. Crazy! And go figure, this is the last post on their wall:

I’m not saying it’s cause and effect, but I’m not NOT saying it either. Don’t let this be you.

Post random stuff that has nothing to do with your business

I’ve seen lawn and landscape companies that use their company Facebook page like a bizarre clearinghouse for bizarre articles and links. A potential client is liking your page, and therefore opting in to receiving your updates, because they are interested in your landscape company. Posting video game news (seriously, I’ve seen a landscape company do this on their Facebook page) will only serve to confuse and frustrate your readers.

Your posts are “me me me me” all the time.

Social media can be a great place to occasionally share news about a new hire or a project you recently completed that you’re proud of, but with the exception of your mom – most readers just aren’t that into you. If you can share articles, videos, and links that are relevant to your business and interesting, your clients will read them, enjoy them, and SHARE them. Sharing is the Holy Grail here.

What will clients share? Well, I found that a lot of folks will share links that talk about plant pests and diseases. They share tips on simple projects they can do, and how to improve their home’s value. Remember that like Toby Keith says above, your clients are saying “I want to talk about ME.”

Not having a strategy

Not having a social media strategy is hands down the best way to fail at social media. If you plan out what you want to share, where, and when, you’ll always have something relevant and exciting for your clients.

Need help with your lawn or landscape company’s social media strategy? We can help you two ways:

we can manage your landscape company’s social media for you. We’ll come up with a strategy to include content, platforms, and posting frequency and then we’ll handle everything for you. It’s like having an in-house social media manager at a fraction of the cost.
if you want to handle the execution of your company’s social media strategy yourself, but you want help developing and maintaining that strategy – we do that too. We’ll work with you to develop the campaign and have regular meetings to discuss what’s working and how we can tweak the program.

Whichever works for you, contact us today to get started. We’ll make you look good.