Have you ever wished that you knew how to get landscaping leads without spending another dollar on marketing?
Good news: you can. Here’s how.
In this article, I’ll break down:
- Why marketing isn’t the solution when you need new leads quickly
- How to figure out which customers are worth your time
- How to filter out leads that don’t fit
- Why following up on quotes that never closed can turn them into booked jobs
Marketing Won’t Fill Your Schedule Fast
When leads dry up or deals come in slower than usual, your natural reaction might be “OK, it’s time to spend more money on marketing.”
Maybe that means a bigger ad budget or a brand new campaign. Both take weeks of setup, though.
Even if your marketing efforts are successful, months might still pass before either one produces a signed job. Or your marketing won’t bring any jobs at all.
Either way, you’ll still have to pay for it.
If you’re focused on how to get landscaping leads that produce work this season, going all in on marketing takes too long. More ads also tend to bring in more window shoppers who will never actually hire you.
Focus on Leads That Fit Your Business
If you want to know how to get landscaping leads quickly, you first need to know who those leads are targeting. What does the profile for your ideal customer look like?
A lot of contractors never stop to define it, but it’s a great place to start.
Who’s Your Ideal Customer?
- Property type: What property types do you service most frequently? Residential or commercial? Trying to market to both at once will make it harder to connect with either.
- Budget: Set a minimum job size that covers a full day of your crew’s costs and profit. For example if your hourly rate is $100 and you run a three-person landscape crew on an eight-hour day, your daily minimum comes to $2,400, or 24 man-hours at $100. A job that needs 18 man-hours still has to cover that full day.
- Service Type: Recurring maintenance clients bring predictable revenue. One-time installs tend to pay more per job but each requires a full sales cycle. Decide which kind of work you want more of.
- Location: How close a job sits to your other jobs affects how much profit you take home. Compare a $300 job two blocks away from your existing clients to a $400 job 40 minutes away. The closer job nets you more profit because your crew spends less time driving.
If you’re struggling to build your ideal customer profile, try this: who were your three best customers from the past year? Write down what they all have in common.
The best landscaping customer for your business looks something like that.
Filter Out the Leads You Don’t Want
Every lead that contacts you costs you time. Including (especially!) the ones who will never hire you.
Let’s say a homeowner calls you about a backyard cleanup. Twenty minutes into the call, you learn that their budget for the job is half your job minimum. If you’d posted your job minimum on your website, they might’ve skipped calling you altogether – saving you time!
Put filters in place for prospective clients before you spend any time on them. Some won’t match your ideal customer profile (meaning the work would likely be literally more trouble than it’s worth).
Filters also catch leads who aren’t serious about hiring you. A homeowner just kicking the tires on a potential backyard renovation won’t take five minutes to fill out an intake form. But a homeowner who truly wants the work done will.
Landscaping leads who make it past your filters know your requirements and have shown that they mean business about potentially hiring you. Those conversations move faster. You skip calls like the one above.
You also save time and energy driving out to properties about queries that were never going to become paid work.
When you’re working out how to get landscaping leads that make sense for your business, add these filters to your website:
- Job minimums: State your minimum job size by saying something like “Our projects typically start at $500.” Prospects with jobs that fall below that number will either move on or know what to expect when they contact you.
- Service area boundaries: Add a map or a list of ZIP codes showing where you work. This will filter out a lot of unqualified leads without any real effort on your part. If you do take jobs just outside your service area for a travel charge, say so on the same page.
- Intake forms: Use an intake form to ask prospects for the project type, approximate budget, and address. How they respond (and if they respond) tells you whether a lead is qualified before you spend any time on the phone. You can also connect your intake form or booking tool to your landscaping software so qualified leads flow straight into your system, no phone tag required.
Get back to qualified leads quickly. You’re probably not the only contractor they contacted. The first contractor to send a useful reply has the best chance at the job.
Follow Up on Every Unclosed Quote
Your quote history holds leads too!
Every quote you sent this year that never closed came from a prospect who asked you to bid the work. If you want to know how to get landscaping leads that close in days, it’s the best place to look.
Silence after you send a quote can feel like a no. More often, the homeowner just got busy.
Something like this isn’t uncommon:
Let’s say that several months back, you quoted a paver patio for a family. They were excited about the project. Then their water heater broke later that week, and the patio moved several spots down on their to-do list. Months pass.
Work Through Old Quotes by Year
This is where you come in.
Send every prospect a check-in, starting with the people who received this year’s most recent quotes. Some will tell you they changed their mind about the job. Some will tell you they hired a different contractor. A few will still want the work.
Remember the family with the paver patio?
In April, they asked for a quote and seemed interested.
Now it’s August, and you never heard back from them. But what if they still want the work?
Your check in could be as simple as you sending a reminder text asking whether they’re still planning the patio.
They might reply the same day, asking how soon your crew can start. By the end of the week, that job could be scheduled!
After you finish following up on unanswered quotes from this year, keep going with last year’s quotes. A project that didn’t fit someone’s budget last spring might fit in this year.
Before you do contact anyone you sent a quote to last year, check the prices in your old quote against your current ones. Material costs and labor rates change all the time. Does the number you quoted a year ago still cover the job?
If it doesn’t, say so in your message and offer an updated quote. Be up front about pricing changes now so the customer doesn’t get sticker shock later.
Keep Follow-Up Messages Short
When you follow up on old proposals, you don’t have to write them a novel. You’re working through a long list. Keep the message short and sweet.
Name the project you quoted, then ask one question that’s easy to answer.
Here’s a text you could send to a past prospect:
“Hi Rachel, this is [Your Name] with [Your Company]. I’m checking in on the paver patio quote I sent you in April. Is that project still on your list?”
Rachel can answer with a yes or no in seconds. Either answer helps you plan your schedule.
When you’re testing out how to get landscaping leads by following up on old quotes, you might be tempted to offer a discount in your follow-up.
Don’t give in! If you lower the price now, your customer may wonder why you didn’t quote the lower number in the first place. Don’t undermine yourself.
After all, the best way to price a job is to use a rate that factors in what the work actually costs and your ideal profit margin.
To learn more about finding an hourly rate using your real job numbers, check out SynkedUP’s free labor rate calculator here.
Set Reminders on a Schedule
Once you’ve tried it, you’ll discover that following up on old quotes actually works. I’ve booked more than a few jobs that way.
For every new quote you send from here on out, set a follow-up schedule. This is a great way to get replies and shrink your list of unanswered quotes.
Proposify reports that the average time from a proposal’s first open to a closed deal is between 2 days and two weeks. I recommend sending your first follow-up within a day or two so it reaches the customer while the project is still fresh in their mind.
It’s not a bad idea to send more than one follow-up message. You could send the first two days after a quote goes out and then a second reminder a week later.
Pick your days for following up in advance. When you’re really stretched thin, it’ll be hard to find time to send those reminders yourself. Consider setting them up as automated emails or texts instead.
Sending an automated reminder two days after sending that initial patio quote in April would have at least netted you an answer. The family could have told you they’d put the project on hold until summer, and you’d have a rough idea of when to contact them again.
Win More Jobs From the Leads You Already Have
When you’re scratching your head wondering how to get landscaping leads, you don’t have to immediately pivot to marketing, which costs money and operates on a slow timeline. Instead, you should start by:
- Knowing which customers actually fit what your business does best
- Putting filters in place to cut down on dead-end or unqualified leads
- Following up on the quotes that you’ve already sent that didn’t get responses
Follow-ups are easy to forget during a busy season, even though they cost less than other ways of trying to solve how to get landscaping leads.
We built SynkedUP, an all-in-one landscape management software built by contractors, for contractors, to help landscapers win more of the jobs they quote. You can attach automated reminders to your quotes so they’ll go out on the days you choose.
Ever had a customer tell you they never received a proposal? We’ve been there. SynkedUP keeps an activity log for each proposal so you know when it was sent, when the customer opened it, and when it got approved.
Our mobile app brings that functionality with you into the field and client visits. Using our AI estimating feature, you can record conversations, measurements, and other details during a walkthrough.
Once the consultation ends, the app uses those details to build an estimate that’s ready to send before you leave the prospect’s driveway. No more days or week-long gaps between a consultation and a quote!
Book a call with us today to learn more about how SynkedUP can help your business bid, estimate, and win jobs with confidence!
