How To Beat Your Competition Without Trying.
When people talk to me about growing their lawn-mowing businesses one of the first things they talk about is that dreaded word
“the competition”
They worry about what the competition is doing, how they are doing it and why they are doing whatever they are doing. Some business owners are so worried about what the competition is doing that they forget to pay attention to what they do themselves.
We have grown one of the largest non-franchised lawn mowing businesses in our town of one hundred and fifty thousand people by doing the complete opposite.
It is not uncommon for us to get twenty-five or more calls a week on our advertising budget of less than $50 a month. There are some large franchises here with 20 times our budget and people still call us first.
It’s not what the competition is doing that brings us work.
It’s what the competition is NOT doing.
The problem is that the bar is so low.
What is the competition NOT doing that is bringing us all this work? The list is long, and I will name a few here.
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Not turning up
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Not returning calls
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Not answering the phone
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Not doing what they have agreed to do
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Overpromising and underdelivering
In other words, the one thing that is missing is…
Good old-fashioned service.
Why do larger business struggle?
Consistency
When a business is small, non-franchised and has an owner-operator, you will find that most of the successful ones have got customer service down pat. Once a business like this is full (usually within a year or two), they stop marketing.
These are not the people competing for your advertising dollar.
The businesses that are doing the most marketing are the large franchises and lawn-mowing businesses that are employing people.
The large franchises are notoriously bad at taking calls and passing them on. I get calls all the time from people who have rung large franchises and not heard back.
The other common problem is that people don’t tend to stay in franchises very long as they soon get tired of throwing money away every month to pay the franchise fees. The end result for the customer is a never-ending conveyor belt of unhappy and unreliable contractors mowing their lawns.
This happens more often than you would think. I had a call from someone today who said that the franchise mowing their lawn had changed hands so many times that they now want to work with non-franchised businesses.
Staff
This is another issue. When lawn mowing businesses start bringing on staff it is hard to stop the standards from slipping.
We are fussy and we had this issue ourselves. It’s easy to have high standards when you own the business. But what happens when you take on staff? They are not going to feel the same way about your business as you do.
You can’t blame an employee for this. It is hard to feel like an owner would when you do not own the business.
I’m not saying that all employees are like this. We were very fortunate to have a few very good employees. Unfortunately, that was the only three good employees out of a dozen that we employed in this period.
If you have your own business, it is new and you are genuinely excited it is incredibly easy to outperform any business that is franchised or has staff because you have the secret ingredient.
True ownership.
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What you can do to be different and attract those customers.
Mention the sore points in your marketing.
When you advertise, go for the pain points
Non-franchised.
We use this a lot in our marketing and people like it. A lot of people like to support the little guy. I’m sure that you do that when it makes sense.
Many people prefer dealing with a small business rather than a large corporate company.
Call (your name) on (your mobile number).
Let the customer know they can call you directly; no call Centre, No other lines. If you are on a call and they reach your answerphone on your message tell them that if you don’t answer, its because you are on a call and if they leave their details you will call them straight back.
If you miss a call and can see the number, ring the customer straight back, even if they don’t leave a message. I do this all the time and have never had a bad reaction.
One of your biggest advantages as an independent lawn mowing business operator is that you do NOT have a call Centre. The customer is dealing with the owner and you know better then anyone else what you can and cannot do.
Good old-fashioned service
If you mention this in your marketing it will bring you plenty of calls. People love good service and will call someone first if they see it mentioned.
Just remember that this sounds simple but this is the one thing that a lot of businesses get wrong. If you are going to market on the “Good old-fashioned service” angle, make sure that you actually deliver.
You will most certainly get bad Google reviews if your stuff this up. At the end of the day, Google reviews tell the true story. Our business “Gecko Lawns” has over fifty five-star reviews and one four-star at the time of writing this is because we practice what we preach.
Quotes within 24 hours.
Remember with this one, under-promise and over-deliver. You say 24 hours, you aim for an hour.
When I am actively building I work with a tow truck driver mentality. I want to be the first there and the best dressed. (with a tow truck guy I guess that would mean a top-of-the-line truck)
Quote the job, if the quote is accepted, mow the lawn there and then, then book the next visit. It doesn’t get any simpler than that.
We turn up within 24 hours “the guarantee”.
If we don’t turn up within 24 hours we will do the job for FREE.
This will get everyone calling you.
Just make sure that you are on the ball and never actually have to deliver on this promise. If you get caught out apologise, deliver the free cut and PROMOTE the hell out of it. People also love businesses that keep their promises.
Now that is a real win-win
If your interested in marketing, you can find more ideas at https://lawnmowing101.com/a-successful-lawn-mowing-marketing-plan-can-quadruple-your-customer-growth/