This week's tip is how to deal with potential customer objections to
hiring a lawn care company.
Why pay for lawn care?
If you own a lawn care
business, you are always looking for new customers.
Sometimes, potential
customers do not want to hire a company or an individual to do
their lawn care work.
They might have a few reasons why they don't want to hire you.
Part of your job is to get
them to see they it is ultimately beneficial for them to hire
you.
Think of the number of people in your community that don't yet
know the benefits of hiring your company. If you can get just a
fraction to see the benefits, you will greatly increase your
customer base.
If you are in the lawn care
business, you have probably heard the reasons why people don't
need to hire you.
Some of the most common reasons I hear are:
1) I already have a lawn
mower in the basement. It's a waste of money to hire someone.
2) Hiring someone is too expensive.
3) I will just do it myself
on the weekend.
When I am faced with these
objections,
I always try to have ideas for them to think about.
1) They already have a lawn
mower.
Owning a lawn mower can be expensive. You know yourself that
maintaining equipment is an ongoing endeavor. There are always
blades to be sharpened, the oil needs changing, the air filter
is clogged, the carburetor is gummed up and a bolt on the handle
rusted through last winter and broke in March. All of this is
not to mention that the weed-eater is out of line and who knows
what the fuel oil mixture is supposed to be.
Since Lawn Care is your
source of income, you maintain your professional lawn mowing
equipment on a regular basis. But, for a home owner that only
mows his yard 2 to 4 times per month, it is a big hassle to
continuously try to keep the equipment running.
2) The cost is too
expensive:
In addition to the reasons
listed above. Hiring a lawn care company makes economic sense.
If a customers want the look of a professionally cut yard, they
will have to buy commercial lawn equipment. Cheap lawn mowers
bought from a retail store just won't give the same cut as the
commercial lawn mowers that you have for your business. By
hiring you, they get a professionally cut lawn without the
expense of buying commercial lawn mowers.
A second answer to this is to ask them how long it takes them to
cut their own grass. Make sure they calculate the time of
getting the mower out of the basement and maintaining the
mower. Also, there is cleanup...not only of the mower but
showering the grass off of themselves and washing their dirty
clothes. Most home owners will take two to three hours to mow
the yard. Now, if your potential customer makes $15 per hour at
his job, it is costing him $45 or more to mow his own grass. If
you are charging only $35 to mow the yard, you are saving them
money.
3) They will do it this
weekend.
There are a few great answers to this. First of all, it is the
time factor. Surely there are other activities they would
rather do than spend the day mowing the grass. Spending time
with the family, playing sports, golf, working on other
household chores, vacation, working on the car, sleeping, etc.
There is a huge list of things homeowners would rather do than
spend time on lawncare.
Don't think of an objection
as a rejection. An objection is simply the beginning of the
negotiation. If you can get a potential customer to realize how
much it costs (both in dollars and time) for them to do their
lawn work themselves, you are well on your way to having another
new customer.