[lawnscapes2]

I have been in the lawn care indusrty for about 5 years now. I am continually getting requests for jobs that are just too big for me alone, because i hevent had the manpower or equiptment to do the work.

Well after getting a few jobs under my belt last year, i decided to go for it.

I am really struggling with how do i predict sales when i am getting into a market that i havent really been in?

I have pretty much figured out my costs including tools, employees, taxes, admin, job material costs, my salary, and some unforseen expenses.

I currently have about quite a bit of equiptment, and i am planning to buy some more essentials before the year gets going, so i want to be able to have some sort of a sales goal for every month already predicted.

If i am missing some big aspect of the business please let me know....thanks

-Matt

If you want to know a little more about my situation read some on this thread

In your professional opinion which is better?

-I bought Pro Landscape
-I bought a 7x16 enclosed trailer
-I decided to stick with my truck till i absolutely need another one
-I may consolidate my baby cat loan with an additional loan this spring, but i need to be able to show predicted and potential income numbers

[Stonehenge]

In all honesty, picking a sales goal sometimes feels like picking a number out of thin air. But it doesn't have to be. You say you have all of your costs pinned down. That's great. Now figure out roughly how many hours you plan to work each day/week, and how much that's going to cost you in labor and all the associated labor costs (worker's comp, unemployment, etc). Figure out how much you want to make this year. Be realistic. Add some in there for the business (marketing, equipment repair, inflation, etc).

Tally all of that up. That's your sales goal. Break it out into months, and account for the seasonality of your leads. I like to use historical data of the number of calls I receive each month to calculate sales goals for each month (April and May should be big, July should be pretty small).

Now, check to see if that's realistic. Figure out how much in productivity you can expect from you and your staff. Let's say that you and an employee can get $1,000 of work done in a day. Multiply that by the number of days you typically have in a work season. You're in Zone 5, so that's going to be somewhere between 130-180, depending on a lot of factors. Let's go conservative and say you'll work 140 days. Multiplied by $1,000 in work per day and you have $140,000. Is that number higher or lower than your sales goal? If it's higher, then you may have some excess production capacity. If it's lower, then you'll never achieve your sales goal, because you just can't kick out that volume of work in that time frame. Either rework your numbers or add to staff. Then get out there and sell!

[lawnscapes2]

Originally Posted by martinjohn

There is a piece of software out there that can develop those sales goal and budget numbers for you as well as be you company database and do things such as proposals. It is called Three Stones Software.

I checked out their site and they dont offer very much of an explanation of what their program is capable of. I like what i have seen so far. Do you have any experience with the program?