This chapter looks at sowing the seeds of success.

Preparing For Growth

Some Further Ground Work

Prior to starting your business you will need to be clear on two very important issues namely, identifying your:

• potential clients
• competitors.

 

By now you should have a fairly good idea of the type of services you are going to offer. You should also have a written draft of your business plan completed prior to starting. If in the future you wish to deviate from this initial plan, that’s fine. Your plan will provide an important framework for you to start your business with. See it as a map guiding you through your first few days, weeks and months. There is nothing wrong with re-writing it as you go along. What’s important at this stage is that you have considered and fully investigated the following:

• Details of the services you are proposing to offer.
• Who these services are targeted at.
• How much you’re planning to charge.
• How this compares with current market prices in your area.
• Knowledge of your competitors and reasons clients would choose you as opposed to them.
• An initial profit and loss forecast to cover your first six months of trading. Hopefully you’ll go as far as working out one for your first year.

Potential Clients

Initially it can be very difficult to identify who your clients are likely to be. Anyone with a garden, no matter how small, is a potential client. The key to successfully growing your business is that you gain referrals from your first clients. Not only will this save you future advertising costs, but you will also benefit from quickly establishing your reputation. This is why you must carefully research your initial pricing structure.

If you’re too cheap you’ll end up with a flood of unprofitable business, which will eventually lead to your demise. Too expensive and you won’t get any work.

Researching The Going Rates

The nature of gardening businesses means that there is no high street shop for you to pop into and browse in order to glean what your competitors are charging. Occasionally you may find that gardeners advertise their hourly rates in newsagents’ windows or at the end of their published ads. If you come across such advertisements, you should never take the rates quoted as indicative of local prices. By all means include them in your research but don’t solely rely on them.

Research methods. There are many ways of researching what your competitors are charging, but by far the simplest way is to simply phone them up and ask for a quote.

General Gardening

If you’re planning to run a general gardening business, one where you tackle a wide variety of work, then phone up a number of companies and ask them for a rough idea of how much it would cost to have a specific job done, for example trim a hedge. If, as I suspect many will, they tell you that they can only provide an estimate if they come and see what needs to be done, you could either arrange to have them visit a friend’s garden, or press them for a rough idea of charges by giving them the hedge’s measurements etc.

What will become apparent as you work your way through your competitors is that many are in fact not your competitors at all. Some of the businesses you phone will no longer be trading. Or if they are, will no longer be undertaking the type of work that you’ll be doing. This is particularly true of businesses that advertise in annual directories such as the Yellow Pages and Thompson Directories.

Then there will be those you phone who will tell you they are now fully booked for the next few months and invite you to try someone else. Others will be so rude and unhelpful and suspicious of your calling them that under no circumstances would you have them anywhere near your property let alone working in your prized garden.