How to Choose the Right Vendor for Landscaping Jobs

How to Choose the Right Vendor for Landscaping Jobs

I was talking with a good friend that recently switched vendors and ended up saving 10% on the product he was buying. That’s a big deal! That can translate into a big difference in a 12-month Profit & Loss report in your business. But it got me thinking and should get you thinking about how to choose the right vendor for landscaping jobs.

Do I choose the vendor I work with strictly on price? Or which vendor is closest to my location? Of course location is kind of a big deal, they need to be close enough to work with reliably. 

But I think there’s more to it.

Here’s how I see it.

There are 3 things that come up for me in knowing how to choose the right vendor for landscaping jobs:

• their pricing of products (of course)
• the reliability and convenience they provide
• the leads they give me

Pricing

Some vendors can get you better pricing than others. Of course, you want to try to buy from the best-priced vendor.

And… you want to buy smart.

For example, it often makes sense to go straight to the quarry to buy stone base material, as opposed to buying it from your local landscape supply yard.

And some vendors are more aggressive and offer early buy programs, discounts on paying immediately as opposed to putting it on an account, etc.

So yeah, no doubt, price is a big part of deciding who you’re gonna work with, but if that were the only consideration, there’d be no point in writing this article. You’d just look for the lowest number and move on. So what else is there to consider when understanding how to choose the right vendor for landscaping jobs?

Reliability and Convenience

Put it this way, if a vendor isn’t reliable in getting you the product when you need it, the savings from a cheaper price are nothing compared to the wasted labor and efficiency costs you have when the material doesn’t show up or the order is screwed up.

I’m sure you’re familiar with what I’m talking about. I can think back to many a time that we were a few days in on a job, excavation was done, base prepped, material shows up… …and it was the wrong color. Or the wrong product.

Now what?

You call them, and oh, by the way, the color you need isn’t in stock. Can’t get another shipment in until next week.

Now what?

You have guys twiddling their thumbs on the job site, payroll ticking on the clock, and you need this job done by end of next week, so you can kick off the next job on time.

It turns into a tailspin of chaos quickly.

A good vendor that has great service is worth a lot.

When I was working at Tussey Landscaping in PA, the main vendor we worked with (Terrascape Supply) for our hardscape and water feature products was great. And when things happened, which they inevitably will, they bent over backward for us to make things go smoothly as possible.

One of the things we kind of got on to when working with them is leveraging their deliveries to avoid having to have our own team on the road running for things. And if our job site was far out from the shop, we’d just call them and have them run stuff down to our shop the day before, so that it’d be sitting there waiting for us when we got back to the shop that afternoon. When we’d get back to the shop, we’d load it up on the trucks, and head out the next morning with everything we needed.

This kept the delivery cost low, (our shop was just 2 miles from their location), was super convenient, and kept our skilled team from running errands every day.

I remember when we started leveraging this, as a foreman, from one year to the next, I went from being at the supply yard’s location multiple times a week, to counting on one hand how many times I had been there ALL SEASON!

It’s really nice when your skilled crew doesn’t need to double up as their own errand boy. And you can leverage your vendor to keep your team working.

That’s the kind of vendor you want when you’re thinking about how to choose the right vendor for landscaping jobs.

Leads

One more thing you may want to consider before jumping ship from vendor to vendor for a cheaper price is: how good has the relationship been with them in giving you leads.

If the vendor also has the public coming in there, asking for contractors to help them on their project, and you get a lot of leads from that, …then well… you may not want to jump for the cheapest vendor. Those leads can be worth a lot.

This brings to light a quick side note, make sure you are tracking where your leads are coming from, and your close rates and job dollar value on each of them. You wanna be able to see that in clean facts. Not just relying on your gut. If you don’t have a good system for this, get on a Zoom call with us and one of us on the SynkedUP team will show you how you can track this easily inside SynkedUP.

All that said, sit back and think about it a bit. If the vendor isn’t exceptional in their reliability and convenience and isn’t a good source of leads for you, then yeah, it kind of comes down to pricing. 😜

Make the best choice for you when you trying to decide how to choose the right vendor for landscaping jobs.

The price, reliability and convenience, and leads were the 3 main things that popped into my mind when thinking about what vendors to work with. What else do you consider? Have you ever switched to a vendor that was cheaper and regretted it? Or vice versa, kept on buying from one even though they weren’t the cheapest?

Hit reply or drop a comment and let me know!

Weston Zimmerman

CEO & co-founder of SynkedUP