Summary: http://www.gopherforum.com - Fear is an interesting topic. It is amazing how the fears we have can effect how we see the world and what we do in the world. A member of the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum brought up a great topic that has popped up in the past, leading me to think many lawn care business owners may share this fear. He wrote �I had a nightmare about gaining 1,000 lawn care clients. The problem was, I couldn�t afford to serve them. I didn�t have the equipment, or the crew. In my dream I wanted to serve all of the lawn care clients, I didn�t want to lose any of them. I was afraid that they�d never think of hiring me again if I said no this time, so what happens? I wake up� Now imagine if the nightmare was true. In the Spring you send out 10,000 flyers and BAM, everyone calls you? Wouldn�t that be worse than not having enough customers to fill your schedule? I guess it�s good to know what your maximum number of clients is. You never know what kind of trouble you�ll have if you get too many. So you have to think, how many lawns can you mow (comfortably) in a day, multiplied by 5 days a week? I�d say 11-12 customers a day, 5 days a week is good for ONE PERSON. If you have a partner, 20 lawns a day, 5 days a week will be a walk in the park! At first I did believe after my marketing, that everyone would call me. Though I simply said, �I�ll take what I can get, and leave the rest for other companies.� The problem as you get bigger is, saying no to potential customers will fill me with regret. Saying no might effect me later. When you can�t take on more customers, they might remember you as �too busy� or the �no company� or most likely move on to a company who COULD take them. Advertising comes in steps I guess. I hardly got any lawn care customers from my first attempts. The real gains I�ve gotten were from people seeing me work & walking up to me and asking for an estimate. Or referrals.� You bring up a really good point when talking about this fear. I think many entrepreneurs have a similar fear. It concerns them when they are doing their marketing. Many times I have seen forum members post things like, �I don�t want to do too much marketing because I don�t want to be swamped with customers.� I think first off, if you can realize you won�t be swamped with customers, you will be better off. Once you realize that, you will see you need to really overshoot your goals when you are marketing because no matter how many customers you think you will get out of what ever marketing campaign you are doing, ultimately you won�t get anywhere near that amount. This especially comes into play when a lawn care business owner is preparing to do some direct mail marketing to potential customers in their area. If you don�t send enough pieces of mail out, you might not get any responses. I don�t think it is possible to send out too many marketing pieces to your service area. At most we usually see a 1% to 2% response rate from direct mail or distributing door to door flyers. Another lawn care business owner said �Seeing is believing for most people. If you are mowing in an area where people can see you do a good job, they will come up to you. This has happened to me many times. A person will normally walk up to me and say �you mow my neighbor�s lawn, can you come give me an estimate? I�m just down the street.� Marketing in my opinion, can only build the base of what�s to come in time. Everything will branch off from there. One customer who initially got your flyer can refer you their neighbor. The neighbor can refer you to their friend, etc. Here is a list of which lawn care marketing methods have worked for me. Ordered BEST to WORST: * People who have seen me work, who ask me for an estimate. * Customers who have referred my lawn care company to their friends. * Confronting people who look busy, and telling them I can mow your lawn for a price of $X.XX. * Business Cards * Flyers * Craigslist.� If you are in need of free lawn care marketing material for your lawn care business, please visit our site at http://www.gophersoftware.com. We have hundreds of free lawn care logo, flyer, door hanger and web templates you can download and use for your lawn care business. We also have free lawn care business contracts, estimate and proposal forms. Download our trial version of Gopher Lawn Care Business Software. Gopher will help your lawn care business schedule and invoice more customers in less time, allowing you more time to grow or enjoy your life. Check out my lawn care business blog at http://www.lawnchat.com and my lawn care business forum at http://www.gopherforum.com
