The Perfect Lawn Care Service List – What Should You Offer?

When you start a lawn business, it is quite natural to want to offer lots of different services. However, I also understand that more is not always better. Especially if you are starting on a limited budget.

Every single extra service is going to require you buying another piece of equipment, and some of that equipment may be underused or, worse still, not even used at all.

When writing your lawn care service list, having a laundry list of services will just confuse things

If you are on a job and see that you can offer something extra and you have the experience and the equipment, then go right ahead.

But don’t add every single service imaginable to your business card.

Before creating your list of services, there are a few things that I would like you to consider.

Do you need a licence?

Assuming you have already got a business licence (if required by law), you will probably not need a licence to mow a lawn.

However, if you decide to do lawn treatments, then you may require a chemicals licence.

If you decide to do hardscaping, you may require a licence for that, too.

Insurance

One of the major drawbacks of not checking that you have a license is that it may affect your insurance if you need to claim.

I have known someone who accidentally killed a lawn by using the wrong spray. He had public liberty insurance but wasn’t covered because he was using chemicals without the correct licence.

Locally, where I am, the standard insurance policies won’t cover lawn guys who do tree work above three meters.

Do your homework before you add a service to your list.

If in doubt, leave it out of your lawn care service list.

If you are not sure that you are 100% confident doing a certain service, then dont include it in your lawn care service list

Back in the early days, I accepted a few jobs that I was not 100% comfortable with, and 90% of them turned into trouble.

The Perfect Lawn Care Service List - What Should You Offer

Make a list and then cross out the work that you are not happy about.

If you think that this might cost you regular lawn work because you can’t or won’t do the job, then find someone who can.

Put them on your speed dial and give them a call whenever a customer asks for this kind of work.

We do this with gardening.

We hate the work, so we dont do it. However, we know someone who does gardens and dosnt mow lawns.

Whenever a gardening job comes up, we text it to them, and they take care of it.

Fewer services are easier to market.

If you have a marketing budget of $150 a month and you just advertise for lawn mowing, then you could get quite a few calls.

If you divert half that to tree work, then you will get fewer calls for lawns.

If you add gardening to your list, your budget is now $50 a service, and that dosnt really move the marketing needle.

I once had a business that I was running Google Ads for, and he listed twelve different services he wanted to market for $150 a month. That was never going to work.

Keep your lawn care service list short for the maximum bank for your buck.

Start with many – Finish with a few.

There is an old Chinese saying, “scattered force lacks direction,” and I have to agree.

When you start your business, time is money, and you want to spend as much time earning income as possible, so looking for more work around the properties you are servicing makes sense.

This is an easy and free way to pick up extra income, which is great in those early days.

However, as your business matures, I find it better to slim down the services that you offer.

I started mowing lawns because it was good regular work, and along the way, it is easy to get distracted and start leaving a day aside each week for bigger jobs.

This doesn’t always work out for the best in the long run.

You may earn good money on those days, but there will also be the days when you dont have that work, and your regular income will drop.

If you had filled that day with lawns, then you would have had income all year round.

The two ways to build your business.

We all know that things are going to slow down over winter, so the way I see it, there are two different ways to play this.

The usual route

Most contractors go out in the winter periods and look for extra work that they can do to fill in the gap where the lawns have slowed down.

They start doing tree jobs, section clearing, small landscaping jobs and all those other little jobs that can be done at that time of year.

It keeps them busy, and it keeps the income coming in, so that works out quite well.

What we do

We approach things a bit differently. We have gone down the usual route and now use a different technique that works well for us.

When things start slowing down, we ramp up our advertising for lawns. Instead of doing all these other jobs, we just bring more lawns on board.

We end up working far more lawns than we can handle come spring, so a month before spring hits, we package up a round of the lawns we dont want and sell them.

We usually arrange the takeover day for the first day of spring.

We end up with a lump sum and higher-paying lawns for the next season.

I am not saying that time would work for everyone, but it works for us.

So remember, next time you get asked if you can do that extra job.

Ask yourself what is better.

Would you rather have that extra work or find a new regular lawn to mow?

Both ways work, but half the battle is knowing what your long-term plan is and then accepting or rejecting work according to your plan.