[Nebraska]

Every spring and fall we get countless calls for folks inquiring about a one time aeration. We go out and aerate, provide a lawncare estimate, and 99% of the time it's a one time $50-$60 "pop" and we never hear from them again even regardless of future marketing and calls. Scheduling and routing becomes a hassle as well.

Hardly seems worthwhile.

I've made the decision to eliminate the one time aeration customer.

The last few calls we simply ask if they are interested in a complete lawn care program (fertilizer with insect and weed control) and if they say no we just tell them we only provide aeration to our full service lawn care customers. One told me that's "B.S." and just hung up. Oh well....

Anyone do similar?

[Dale Wiley]

Run the price up

Charge them about $ 75 to $ 90 or at least 2.5 times your normal hourly rate, run a little urea with it and they think your a hero.

[markuscb]

I have to agree with Dale. I get numerous calls for aeration only or "one-time cuts" and what I do is Price it high. If you get it, great. If not you havn't spent all that time to just cover your cost. And sometime when you price it high, you can give them a contract price and show them that they will be saving money to go to a program rather than spending all that money at one time. It has worked for me on more than one occasion.

[Lawn Lad]

I used to think that sometimes doing one time aerations or any little job would be a good foot in the door. Sometimes it is, many times it doesn't. You've already seen the affects from your efforts and I'd say you're right to stop doing them at your current pricing.

For people that call us with their one time projects in the spring we charge more than we do for our contract customers. We don't advertise it per se, but I will let pepole know if they're debating becoming "regular" customers as opposed to "will call" type customers that they do pay a slight premium (which they will then see in the comparion pricing).

I don't turn away the customers that call us each year because we do get repeat business from them. I thought I wouldn't do lawn care only for people since it took away from our core maintenance business - but we're slowly building the route and making it a worthwhile add on.

I'm of the mind that a small phone call for a simple job can often lead to much more work. Often the customer doesn't know what they want and once you begin to share some ideas and show them the possibilities for their yard they'll take additional steps. This is obviously more rare, but has happened enough that I explore different options with people when I meet with them - and more times than not we do more work for them than what they had originally called us for simply because they don't know what all they want.

Back to the aerations - get a better buck for them to make them worthwhile. You might find also that you if you let the customer know that you'll continuously reschedule them from year to year until they cancel that you'll have a 90% plus renewal rate without having to resell. Send out a post card the month before and the customer will have to then call to cancel, otherwise you're coming out. You might have one or two folks that have moved since the last year, so you might loose out on getting paid, or you pick up a new customer. But the loss on one or two jobs far outweighs relative to sales cost being able to go out and do 50 or 100 scheduled aerations that you didn't have to resell.

I guess this is in keeping with the idea that if you put a maintenance contract in front of a customer each year - they will have to decide if they want to hire you, if they even pull aside the time to make the decision and then send back the contract/agreement. Better to make it automatically renewing from year to year, make the decision for them, and then they will only have to act to cancel the service. Often people are lazy and won't bother cancelling and just have you continue to perform the service without giving it a second thought.

[Mark Oomkes]

Originally posted by Lawn Lad

I guess this is in keeping with the idea that if you put a maintenance contract in front of a customer each year - they will have to decide if they want to hire you, if they even pull aside the time to make the decision and then send back the contract/agreement. Better to make it automatically renewing from year to year, make the decision for them, and then they will only have to act to cancel the service. Often people are lazy and won't bother cancelling and just have you continue to perform the service without giving it a second thought.

Doug, unfortunately thanks to Trugreen, Michigan no longer allows automatic contract renewals for chem care.

Otherwise, good points, I agree with you. And definitely charge a higher rate than the regulars.

[Nebraska]

Every entrance to a neighborhood around here has signs for aeration at $30 per yard, $25 per yard, $20 per yard.

Have tried the higher priced idea with limited success.....works on occasion though.

Everything we do automatically renews each year with a postcard or letter a month before the season begins. We don't send a contract out each season for the reasons you point out.

[Lawn Lad]

Doug, unfortunately thanks to Trugreen, Michigan no longer allows automatic contract renewals for chem care.

Is aeration included in chem care? Regardless, that's too bad. Evidently they ticked off enough people.

[Mark Oomkes]

That is something to think about, Doug. Maybe we could restructure our contracts. Thanks for the idea.