Create a Lawn Care Invoice Template for Businesses Effortlessly

Lawn care invoice template for businesses

hey I'm Jason Creel and today I want to talk to you for a minute about how to properly quote a lawn care job now I want to say that this like a lot of things I've talked about goes into this broader scheme of things of your overall business image how does a customer perceive you as a business owner okay so you can imagine if I scribble a number down on a napkin and hand it to a customer that doesn't necessarily come across as very professional and yet if I have a nicely designed template that I use to provide you know all the information the customer would need that's gonna be a lot more professional and can be one of the things not necessarily the only thing but one thing that's going to help a customer choose you in the situation where they're getting multiple quotes for a particular job it's almost overly simplified but if you can reverse your role and put yourself in the customers shoes and think about your transactions you've had with other business owners and which ones did you respond to and which ones did you not respond to and why did that happen you know it was a certain way that they talked to you was it the nice way that the template looked when they quoted the job was that how quickly they responded from your quote request to the actual time that they were able to provide a quote you know if it was two weeks later when they got you a quote it probably left a lot of doubts in your mind as to how quickly they would perform the actual work if they were able to respond that same business day or perhaps the next business day then that would probably give you a lot more confidence in the company overall so these are there's a lot of factors that go into quoting a job let's point out a few things here worth remembering one the bigger the job the more important it's probably gonna be to have something more official you know so I'm talking about a nicely designed quote template now if I'm doing a landscape installation job it's gonna be $10,000 okay then again any job I do I don't want to write a number down on a napkin but in that situation the more professional I can set my company apart on somebody that's looking to spend ten thousand dollars doing their landscape and it's gonna help significantly so perhaps even investing in a thin folder to include with your quotes to have you know to have your logo your contact information perhaps a little bit of a history about your company on there a little bit of about you the owner and and then very detailed information about what is going to be performed in the job and what is not gonna be performed and then maybe some details about how the payments gonna be broke out where it's very clear the customer how this job is gonna be done now if you're just bidding on a situation where you're wanting to have weekly mowing of somebody's lawn or maybe we control and fertilization service is something that's a little bit less financially involved if you will you know a lot less money being exchanged here I still think in those situations it can at least even if they're not looking to get multiple quotes if you have maybe just one simple sheet of paper so for instance on the on the mowing maybe you start off with a conversation you said let's just let me just give you an example here if you said it Miss Smith so we're gonna cut your yard every Thursday from April through October and then we're gonna come by weekly through the winter to clean up your leaves or to do whatever you know and and here's gonna be the price per week or per month or how are you gonna do the billing and then you agree on all those things and then you have it in a paper document that you can give her not necessarily for her to sign or be some legally binding agreement you can go that extra step if you feel like you need to but it's just a professionalism that shows her hey this company serious and I can really trust them with my lawn it gives that customer added confidence so if I'm doing weed control and fertilizer I might have a similar document and I might look around the yard and I can note the square footage of the yard after the measurement I can note the price of the yard I might label on there have some choices for what type of grass she has I might have a section where I can write in some of the weeds that she has and maybe some additional notes that I can write in and when you have all that written down document you leave it with the customer any other day I'm trying to convert the customer on the spot I don't necessarily want them to go away and think about it for a week but even if you convert them on the spot it gives them something to remember the conversation you had because I've had situations where I didn't provide a document like that just being honest and somebody will call me and they'll say well I thought you were only doing this meeting number of treatment see you know something else say something like well I thought you were only doing this number of treatments per year and I said well no sir I've always done this many and this is how many it's going to be or or they might say I thought you're gonna stop mowing in September and here it is October and you're continuing to build me providing that document and you know what in today's age it might even be done through email maybe when you get back home you got a little extra step can help you appear more professional to your customers not just a peer professional in my opinion it just is more professional and I think it really can give the customer a lot of companies so a couple more things real quick on coin the properties I've already mentioned it but being prompt is so important I try to be so quick to get to the customers property to give them a quote because a lot of times it truly is the early bird gets the worm if I can be the first one there the first one to be able to talk that customer you got to think for the customer if that person shows up on the very same day that I call them or perhaps even within a few hours of the time I called they're they're at my house giving a quote to me it really would give that customer a lot of confidence that hey this person wants the business you know sometimes you get the feeling that do they not want the job I mean you know if it's like took them days to get out here and maybe they're you know they're busy I understand it I get the point but if they show up promptly and a real professional sometimes that customer doesn't want to sit there and have to go through quote after quote after quote you may close the deal before they even another person gets to the quote when you're quoting jobs I think it's important also to to help differentiate yourself from your competition by telling what is exceptional about your company but I think it's also important to do so in a way that you don't badmouth your competition you know that's not typically even if you think it might help you get the job I think your overall business reputation and your reputation as the biz this owner I try to avoid doing that I try to differentiate myself without talking bad about my competitors and you know what you like here software come in handy too because you know at least minimum have a notebook where you can keep your quotes organized but you might can do that with your lawn care software and in that situation maybe it is a week or two before the customer calls you back and if you had written down your quote on a piece of paper and didn't have a record of it you might have forgot the price that you quoted that particular customer and that can be a little embarrassing as a business owner so to have good records to be able to know what I quoted that person even if it was months later they came back to you and said yeah we're ready to move forward with you you know perhaps they even tried a different company and didn't work out so now we're ready to come back to your company you know worst case scenario you have to quote again but it's good to keep good records these are just a few tips on how to look professional when you're quoting properties how not upset your company apart how to be successful in a lawn care business.