I’m feeling like the guys Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson played against in White Men Can’t Jump.  You know, the ones who were saying “This is too damn easy!” when they were dunking over their opponents in a 2-on-2 tournament.

Remember my post from yesterday?  I received a response:

Hi Jeff,
I guess I have to hold off for now.  I talked to my husband who wants to do the yard himself and says we have no budget for a project.  Maybe in the future I will be able to contact you again!  Sorry!!!
(Name Withheld)

Looks like I was able to save my own life.  About 2 hours of it, anyway.

Here is an actual email I received today:

I am interested in possibly scheduling an appt. with your company. We have a large lot and have been here for about 4 years and the weeds are overwhelming us. I am not sure if you do natural type projects with little to no chemicals, that is what I am looking for. My husband wants to do it all, but does not have the time. . Wondering if you do free estimates as well.

Thanks!
(Name Withheld)

First I should explain. I am no sales guru. You will not find my face on the cover of a book that teaches readers to earn millions in 7 easy steps. I’m a landscape contractor, just like you (most of you, anyway). Probably with truckloads more web experience than you, but still, we’re cut from the same burlap.

Now, let’s dig into why Blake (Alec Baldwin) in Glengarry, Glen Ross would call this lead “dead wood”:

First, you’ll notice no phone number or address is given in the email. That tells you this prospective client is uncertain enough about whether she even wants to hire someone to do this that she is leaving those details out. You’ll have to jump through a few hoops to get those, apparently.

Next, take a look at the second to last sentence “My husband wants to do it all, but does not have the time.” For those unfamiliar with clientspeak, this is code for “We really don’t know how much this is going to cost, but our budget is small enough that we were going to it ourselves.  We thought we’d contact you to see if you’d charge us much more than what it’d cost for us to do it ourselves.” If you’ve been in business for more than 15 minutes, you know that doing a project for the cost of retail materials is just not possible. The only sense they have for costs of the project is what they priced or estimated themselves, which is often several miles away from what it would cost to have the job done professionally.

Lastly, she’s asking about a free estimate. Not that we don’t do it; we do. But when it’s a specific point of inquiry, it’s one more card stacked on the low budget deck.

The likely outcomes for this project? Either they get it priced, fall back in shock and horror, deciding to do it themselves as they curse the landscaping industry for being so profit-crazy, or they just decide to do nothing. It’s too much work for them, but too much money to have done.

In my return email (hey, I’m a giver) I cut to the quick. If this prospective client can’t provide these pieces of information, then this is more than dead wood. This is dead wood covered in gasoline. I think I’ve got a match around here somewhere…

Hi (Name Withheld)-

Thanks for your note. I’m going to need some information from you:

What it is you want done (are you just looking to have your lawn weed-free?)

What your budget is for the project

Your telephone number

Your address

When you need this project completed

Get back to me with that information and I’ll be able to provide more info for you, as well as potentially setting up an initial visit.

Best regards,

Jeff Pozniak

Who knew installing pavers could be so easy?  Have a look.

Sponsored by the Home Depot and Danny Lipford, I’m sure this patio installation will last a good long time.  If by a good long time you mean four weeks.  This is one of the reasons why many contractors have a hard time selling to borderline DIY’ers.  C’mon, Danny.  You know this isn’t the way to build a patio.  Bill Schwab even showed you how a few years ago.  Did you forget?

Quickbooks, I have a beef with you.

You made me look bad in front of my employees the other day.

I know my ancient Quickbooks Basic 2005 is out of date; so much so that you’ve decided to stop providing payroll updates.  I mean 3-4 years?  That’s just geriatric.  Right?

But I’m skeptical - I don’t think you’re not providing updated payroll subscriptions because it’s too difficult to do it, but because you want to refresh your revenue stream, and the best way to do that is to force people to pay several hundred dollars for both software and payroll subscription upgrades.  But you couldn’t leave well enough alone with that, could you?  You had to guarantee you could roll those customers over - force them in a single-file line at gunpoint from the old versions to the new, more expensive versions.

And you did that by using tactics only seen in use by inkjet printer companies like Hewlett-Packard, who set expiring chips into their ink cartridges, so that even if you just opened a cartridge, if it’s beyond it’s “use by” date, the printer will not accept the cartridge, making it unusable.  Your spin on that concept is to have the software cease to withhold federal and state taxes from employees beyond a certain date.  There are no warnings that taxes are being improperly withheld (or in this case, not withheld), it’s just this silent practical joke that when discovered, totally screws with the 941’s I have to file, and potentially causes tax problems, both for me and my employees.

So I look like an idiot to my people because your software couldn’t just use the older data it had been using in the weeks prior.

Well let me tell you something, mister.  I heard from my accountant that Microsoft is putting together an accounting package based on the most stable and frequently used database language out there:  MySQL  - the same one that this blog uses, and the forum of this site, too.  And you know the folks at Microsoft - their pretty ruthless.  I’d expect them to dump product on the market just to get people (like me, maybe?) to try it.  And if we like it, we might just blog about it.  And others might jump on board.

‘Cause I have to tell you - having fancier graphics in the 2008 version, which seems to multiply threefold the time the software needs to load things process entries, is totally not worth it.

So you’d better clean up yer act, buddy.  Or when this new competitor launches, I’ll be there waving my hand saying “pick me!” when they’re looking for some businesses to try it out.

Things were moving along too easily.  We had our initial meeting, where the client had provided copies of two different (self-made) designs for a patio he wanted built.  You know how sometimes you just click right away with clients and other times you clunk?  This was a bit of a clunk.

But even so, after I’d emailed the price for the designs, I got a call back with an indication that we were tentatively a go.  Just send over the paperwork and contract terms.  Cool.

Then I get the email.  The bullet points were as follows:

Is it just me, or does Service Magic have the broke senior demographic nailed?  Of all the leads I’ve received from them in ‘08, more than half were a mistake (wanted asphalt, wanted poured concrete, wanted indoor electrical work, etc), and of the rest, only one had a budget of over $1,000.

That’s pretty magical.

The business, that is.  I knew 2007 was rough on a lot of my local competitors and suppliers, but because we seemed to be clicking right along with plenty of work (those of you who know me well know why that is), I never paid much attention.  The last few days have been an eye opener that’s made me feel both happy and more than a little unsettled.

I drove to one of my main perennial suppliers to pick up a few shade-loving vines, and as I pulled into the drive, I noticed that all of the hoop houses were down.  As I got out and looked around, there were literally thousands of 4″ and 1 gallon pots strewn everywhere, filled with soil and previously alive perennials, now just baking in the sun, having not received water in who knows how long.   If there was an Old West perennial ghost town, this was it.

I got back in my truck and visited another supplier who had what I needed, but also knew some of the back story; the owner was now working as the lead retail guy for a new, very small retail branch of an only slightly larger landscape construction firm.  Along with that news, they also told me of a large outfit in a neighboring town that had gone belly-up over the winter.

It jarred me a little, and I couldn’t tell you the route I took back to the job site, because I was trying to tabulate all the casualties our local landscaping industry has suffered.  So far:

1 of the largest companies in the area laid off 5 crews.
2 of my smaller competitors went out of business.
1 perennial supplier went out of business.
1 big competitor went out of business.

This is all in a market of maybe 150,000 people.  I guess I’m feeling pretty fortunate that we have enough work in the pipeline to potentially justify one new hire.  But knowing how hard the economy is hitting our industry, I shouldn’t enjoy that feeling for too long.

This time of year we’re usually morning-’till-midnight with meetings, drawings and proposals, trying to fill up our season with profitable landscaping work as quickly as possible.  This year is no different, as I have about a dozen proposals and designs I’m trying to finish, and many of them I’m pretty excited about.

But along with the really cool (and profitable) projects, we also get some calls for real dogs.  I just got off the phone with one.  She tells me her yard is lumpy and bumpy and she wants some dirt brought in to “smooth it out,” then have it reseeded.  Oh yeah, and she doesn’t want dirt in the front yard.  Just the back.

It just screams “there’s no money to found here,” doesn’t it?  Waste of time, right?

While that may be, on some of these I’ll still stop out to have a look at the property and create a bid, though for something like this, I won’t schedule an appointment - this will be done on my time, whenever I’m in the area.  I won’t break up a productive work day for something this small.

Once I’ve had a look at what needs to be done, I’ll write up my bid.  But for a project of this size to be worth it for us (and worth the headaches that always seem to crop up on these cheap lawn repairs, like damaging an irrigation line, getting a callback because a small section of seed didn’t come in, etc), I’m going to bid the project high.  Very high.  I hate these little projects and their potential for problems, so if we’re going to do the work, I want us to be compensated for it.

And while the temptation may be high to just ignore the promise to visit the site and provide a bid, you never know.  Every other contractor she calls might do the same thing, and yours will be the only bid she gets.  You might just be in for some easy money.

If you found this blog but have never really perused our whole site, please be sure to check out our landscaping forums.  9 out of 10 contractors think they’re the most professional forums on the web.  (That tenth contractor?  He’s an unlicensed lowballer anyway.)

If you live in the part of the United States or Canada where there’s snow, right around now the snow’s just about melted, and soon you’ll be breaking ground on your first projects of the 2008 season. Today I was cleaning my office, getting the desk down to bare wood, because I know in a few weeks my world will be thrown helter-skelter, and if I don’t start with a clean desk in April, by July I’ll need to rent a mini-excavator just to find the top of the desk again.

I was also outside cleaning my truck. My ‘93 Chevy Work Truck. We had a little sun today, and I swear that truck is like a dog in those rays, soaking up every last bit of light that shines it’s way. It was at least 10 degrees warmer inside the cab when I climbed in to give it a good wash. Inside, washing the dash and floor I felt like I was hanging out with an old friend, a friend you don’t even need to talk with you’ve known each other for so long. You just know what the other one’s thinking:

Getting ready for another season, eh Jeff?

Yup. Hafta get you cleaned up to make a good impression on our clients. You know what they say about first impressions.

That reminds me. You might want to have the driver side exhaust manifold checked. I think I’m getting a little noisy. Don’t want me belching my way up a client’s driveway.

True enough. You think you’ve got another season in you?

Sure. You?

Absolutely. Let’s go make some money.

Good luck this season. Go out and make some money.

I’ve finally gotten on board with Craig’s List.  It took me awhile and several tries, but thanks to some tutorial help from discussions here and here and a private message or two, I figured out how to navigate to my neck of the woods on the site and make a relevant post.  My feet are wet, and so far the water’s fine.

My first post in the freebie section resulted in quite a few responses from people looking for free fill.  With the cost of everything going up, who couldn’t use a few places where people want your excavation spoils?

One of the things I found, however, is that you have to be explicit in your freebie requirements.  In that regard, a freebie giveaway like fill dirt is the same as if you were looking for lawn seeding customers; you don’t want to spend time fielding inquiries from people well outside your market or unqualified people inside your market.  So learn from some of the mistakes I made.  When you post your offering (freebie or otherwise) be sure to:

• Define the geographic area.  List every municipality you’re willing to travel to.  Otherwise you’ll either be spending time deleting worthless leads (and pissing them off) or politely eating productive time responding to worthless leads.
• Define the parameters of your offering.  In my case, I was getting emails from people 40 miles away looking for 2-3 wheelbarrows of good, black dirt.  They don’t make that kind of dirt here, and even if they did, I’m not trucking a skidsteer bucket’s worth over 40 miles for anybody.
• Ask for contact info.  State up front that you need their name, address and phone number.  You’ll probably still get people who’ll respond by asking for your contact info instead of providing their own, but hopefully this will be minimized.

After the first 50 emails I got regarding free fill, I turned into the soup nazi for “free fill dirt” email.  No address or phone number?  No fill for you!  You’ll want to be much more forgiving if you’re looking for paying customers, but you get the idea.  Just like leads that come via your website, you want to move those electronic leads to telephone and face-to-face leads as quickly as possible.  If they aren’t ready to talk on the phone or meet in person, there’s no way they’re ready to invest their money.