Lawn care pricing strategies determine the survival of your business. Coincidentally, lawn care pricing to be the #1 thing many lawn care business owners don't get right.
When you properly price your services, you can grow your business faster while ensuring the success of your business.
This lawn care pricing guide gives you:
After reading this article, you’ll know exactly how to properly price your lawn care services to kickstart your business’ profits and growth.
“How much should I charge for… ”
There is a very simple answer to every single one of these questions.
It depends.
It depends on your:
This is why you should NEVER copy your competitors’ pricing. You will lose money.
Plus, there's a decent change that your competitors copied their competitors, and they’re losing money right now.
The ONLY way to properly price your lawn care services is to know your numbers.
So, you must ask yourself: “How can I maximize my profits AND the value I give to my clients?”
This is called “The Pricing Sweet Spot.” This magic number allows you to make your clients extremely happy and puts a healthy amount of cash in your pocket after every job.
Time tracking is the core of pricing. It’s insane how many lawn and landscape professionals don’t track their time.
Get a stopwatch, and start tracking the time it takes for you to complete a job.
Speaking of time tracking, Service Autopilot is way simpler than using a stopwatch. It's one of the most streamlined ways to easily track the time you've spent on jobs while also storing all of your job information in one simple place you can access from anywhere.
Take this example:
Property A takes 25 minutes to mow. Property B takes 45 minutes to mow. If you charge the same price for B (45 minutes) that you charge for A (25 minutes), you are paying your client to mow their lawn.
Instant invoicing
Better scheduling
Manage your clients and employees all in one system
We say, “never copy your competitors”… but this doesn’t mean you should cover your eyes and stick your head in the sand.
Look around at what others are charging to see who is the most successful in your area. Try to discover what sets them apart – is it a service? Reputation?
Familiarize yourself with potential clients in your service area.
Find out what services they want… and what they are willing to pay. This will give you a good idea of how much profit you should aim to make.
Your lawn care business costs money to run, and everything you do, from sunup ’til sundown, drinks some of your revenue.
So, find your operational costs:
For example, if you offer lawn mowing services, you need to factor in the cost of materials and material transportation.
Add up all of these costs. Then, you'll have a baseline dollar amount that must be made on every job to break even. By the way, you can easily find this information using Service Autopilot.
But here’s the good news – because you know you get to keep every dollar after this number. The key is to figure out what the perfect profit margin should be…
This is the lawn care pricing strategy for many lawn care business owners:
That’s it.
Many of your competitors never test their prices, which is why it feels like the green industry constantly undercuts itself.
People are afraid to try anything... They're afraid to talk to their clients, and nobody tracks data to figure out where they can make more money.
However, you can do better.
Make pricing part of your culture!
Do all of these things, and you'll be well on your way to becoming a richer, happier lawn care business owner.
Now, comes the next part... the hard part… the part that makes so many lawn care business owners squirm in their seats…
No one – and I mean no one – wants to pay more for anything.
“You’re raising my prices? My yard didn’t get any bigger, so why should it cost more?”
The stubborn client is every lawn care business' worst nightmare. As a result, many lawn care business owners are afraid that a simple lawn care pricing increase will bring out the worst in people.
And it will…
… if you don’t do it right.
Use these 5 simple steps to properly raise your lawn care prices without losing your best clients.
Know what it costs to run your lawn care business. See section above for more info.
Find your unprofitable clients with our free lawn care pricing audit tool.
There's zero risk in raising prices on unprofitable clients.
First off, if you lose them, you don’t actually lose any money.
Secondly, it allows you to test.
The wrong lawn care price increase can scare away your clients. So, test out your price changes on a small group of clients first.
Listen to their objections. Then, you will know what other clients are likely to say, and you can prepare for it.
The worst time to raise prices is when all of your competitors post ads and try to steal your clients.
Try to raise prices only near the end of or after your mowing season. As a good general rule of thumb, many lawn care owners increase their prices during the end of summer or beginning of fall.
The only exception here is for no-profit or low-profit clients. In which case, feel free to raise your lawn care prices on these zero or minimal profit clients whenever.l
Out of all of these steps, this step is arguably the most important step.
When you want to increase lawn care prices across the board, you need to tell your clients WHY.
Write them a letter:
You can steal this Price Increase Letter Template inside this article to help get your started.
A good letter will build trust, increase your reputation, and most importantly, it will encourage your clients to stick around, even when your prices go up.
Here's the thing, the best lawn care businesses will never beat lowballers on low lawn care pricing, and you don't want to.
However, there are at least seven ways to eliminate any competition from cheapskates and lowballers:
Cheap work attracts cheap clients. Therefore, lowballers aren’t really the threat some lawn care business owners think they are.
In general, lowballers come and go quickly, so it doesn’t pay to compete on their level.
If you follow our blog, you will hear this again and again: “Premium” is the best strategy for most lawn care business owners.
Seek to be the highest-quality service in your area. After all, premium services will bring in premium clients, which means premium profits.
“Don’t be the cheapest guy on the block. Be the most valuable.”
Years ago, a tech company decided to enter the laptop market.
Their competitors clashed over “more memory, more power, lower prices.”
Inch by inch, they fought a battle nobody could win.
So, this tech company went the opposite direction and didn’t focus on low prices or low production costs.
They went all out and made sleek, user-friendly laptops. Their laptops looked like they came from the future, and it was exactly what people wanted.
Today, you know this company as Apple, and their premium pricing strategy was a huge success. Most recently, Apple reported an impressive 42.5% in gross margin.
You too can be the Apple of lawn care or landscaping in your area. You can live out The Pareto Principle in your market to increase your profits.
Bottom Line: Make yourself unique. Differentiate yourself from the competition. People should see the quality in everything you do – your performance, your customer service, and your lawn care prices.
Jonathan Pototschnik, Lawn Care Millionaire and co-founder of Service Autopilot, has recorded a quick lawn care pricing video to help lawn care business owners just like you.
In this short video, you'll discover the basics of lawn care pricing:
Now, without further ado, here's how to create the best lawn care pricing strategy and maximize your profits...
Lawn care estimates can be a pain because you have to:
Then, after all of that, you might not even win the bid. What a waste...
However, there’s a faster way and better way using the best lawn care software.
When you choose Service Autopilot, you'll have the ability to unlock tools like Smart Maps to measure properties from anywhere.
Get precise property measurements to find the gross, net, or turf square footage. Create estimates with the utmost accuracy - without ever leaving the comfort of your desk.
Give estimates while you're on the phone with a clients to improve your closing rate and capture clients more quickly with timely estimates.
Plus, you can utilize Service Autopilot's rapid route optimization to increase your route density - instantly saving you money and increasing your profits.
Instant invoicing
Better scheduling
Manage your clients and employees all in one system
Tree inspections, pruning, removal, and other tree services tend to be expensive.
Like other green industry services, tree service pricing falls under the “time = money” rule.
Tree removal can cost anywhere from $75 to $3500+. Plus, you have to know your operational costs and an estimated time for removal in order to give a proper bid for tree-related jobs.
Since tree removal can be such a complex and careful job, experience is important to give a fair estimate.
As a result, you should consider positioning your business for premium services.
After all, many tree service clients are looking for premium services because they want to hear three little words: “Licensed and Insured."
Also, don’t forget to upsell your clients! To name a few:
Since the best clients care about lawn care businesses being licensed, bonded, and insured, they're willing to pay more for your lawn care services.
Plus, mistakes happen and just one lawsuit can break your business.
In other words, you have zero excuses to avoid it, and you NEED to get your lawn care business licensed, bonded, and insured BEFORE you service another property.
Plus, if you're licensed, bonded, and insured, you can easily charge more for your lawn care service.
After all, the best clients don't want to hire a lawn care business that doesn't protect itself.
To find out more about protecting your lawn care business, read our complete guide.
Lawn care pricing strategies can make or break your business.
For many lawn care owners, they feel like it’s a case of trial and error… but it doesn’t have to be.
When you use the lawn care pricing strategies given to you in this article, you can:
By using the tools you’re given in this article, you’ll be able to kickstart your lawn care business growth and maximize your profits TODAY!
Related: How to Price Your Landscaping Services for the Most Profit
Originally February 26, 2019 7:00 AM, updated May 18, 2021 9:07 AM
Tags: Business Operation
