Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.
LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry
LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.
For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.
Replies
Del, this is a piece of string answer - really depends on the mix & size of customers, plus type of work being done.
Some examples: for lawn care only it could be 150 to 400, for mowing only 50 to 150, for gardening only 20 to 60. These would be regulars ie every week/14d/monthly/quarterly, then you'd have people that you might see only a couple of times year or one offs.
You're just starting out, so it's a blank sheet I guess. Start with what services you're offering and what you'd like as your typical customer.
Just keep getting them until you don’t want/need anymore!
I would advise you to think in terms of how much you need to earn per week and not in the number of jobs you require.
If you think that you have to get x number of jobs you will end up in a lose/win situation, where you lose by doing the job at a low price and the customer wins because they are getting the job done at low cost.
You should try to work out a win/win formula to offer potential customers so that you are getting paid a healthy price for the job which allows you to perform a good job for the customer.
A win/lose situation would be where you are charging over the odds and not performing to the customers expectations.
If you are unable to negotiate a win/win situation (where you expect to get your* price for supplying a service to the customers expectations), then the best alternative is "No Deal".
* Your price should be based on what you want out of the job to suit your own desired income, and not based on what you hear other people are charging.
you will not get 8 one hour jobs don in a 8 hour day unless they are next door to one another and no one is at home, also there will be inclement weather and folk will nock you off for winter
I had about 30 regulars 2 of which were full days all year round then a few one offs
Aim for turnover figure not customer number. We have two contracts at 16 hrs per week each, quite a number at 1 hour per week and lots in between.
Something to think about that’s all
Definitely not Richard. I have posted before on here, that I was told many years ago never to let one customer become over 25% of your turnover. By keeping that in mind we expanded with the company who's Chairman gave me that advice. They expanded massively and we have had the maintenance contract for 30+ years. That is where luck can come in I guess.
My opinion is that no single customer should supply more than 5 - 7% of business.
The loss 7% would not mean having to take any drastic action if they cancelled all their contracts at one time. If you lost 25% of contracts in one go, you would probably have to take some very drastic action to prevent losses.
-
1
-
2
of 2 Next