TV Garden Makeovers and Managing Expectations

Garden makeover shows vs customer expectations. A rant.

I'm not normally one for ranting on social media, but I spotted a question in one of the landscaping forums on a well known social media platform this weekend - all about qualifying the lead.

Customers in general, don't realise (or don't care) that costs landscapers time and money to visit a site and prepare a quote. But all too often, those quotes are rejected for being far higher than the customer expected. All because a celebrity gardener had done it for a third of that cost on the telly. To add insult to injury, the client feels that the landscaper is trying to rip them off.

Sadly, garden designers and landscapers can't influence what happens on telly land - but we can do our homework before committing to visit a potential client. That way, if you don't think the client will be a good match for your offering, you can politely decline the opportunity to quote.

My pal Paul Baker at My Garden Design is a landscaper and knows all too well the pain of being stuck at the computer creating quotes, and so he has very kindly shared his "cheat sheets". Simple questionnaires (one for phone enquiries and one for email enquiries) that help reduce the risk of wasting a day following up a lead that will never come to fruition. This blog on the My Garden Design website talks about qualifying sales leads and leads to the FREE downloadable forms.

You do need to register as a trader to be able to access the forms but it's super-quick, totally free and you won't be bombarded with spam emails.......Paul hates sending them as much as he hates receiving them lol

Here's the blogpost

https://mygardendesign.co.uk/5-questions-to-ask-the...

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