How to Grow a Landscaping Business

Grow the maintenance round by density, not by area

The economics of a maintenance round are decided by drive time. Two hours a day between properties is two hours you can't bill, and no hourly rate saves a round that's spread across a city. Growth here means getting tighter, not wider.

• Map your round. Plot every property and look at the route. If the day zigzags, the problem is the route, not the rate.
• Sell hardest where you already are. A flyer or a doorknock in the streets you already service costs nothing and adds properties with zero extra travel.
• Group by day, not by whim. One suburb per day beats servicing whoever rang first, and clients accept a fixed day readily.
• Price the outliers properly or let them go. A property forty minutes from everything else needs to pay for the drive or it's subsidised by the rest of your round.
• Chase multi-site clients. Strata, body corporate, retail centres, aged care, real estate portfolios — one client, many properties, one invoice.

Charge for design and qualify your leads

Landscaping construction has a specific problem: producing a quote takes real design work — measuring, levels, drainage, a plan the client can picture — and most of it is given away free to people who were never going to proceed.

1. Separate the site visit from the design. A free visit to see the site and talk about budget is fine. A drawn concept with a plant schedule and levels is a paid piece of work.
2. Have the budget conversation early. Directly and without apology. It's the fastest way to find out whether the job is real, and clients respect it more than an evasive quote.
3. Charge a design fee, credited against the build. The client who's paid for the design usually proceeds, and the one who won't pay for it was never proceeding anyway.
4. Quote in stages for big projects. Structure, then softscape, then planting. It gets the job started sooner and lets a client with a real budget phase it rather than walk away.
5. Follow up every quote once. Landscaping quotes are big and clients hesitate. Most quotes that go quiet just need one call.

Buying plant that earns its keep

Machinery is the biggest capital decision in a landscaping business and the easiest one to get wrong, because it feels like growth. An idle excavator is a monthly payment with no revenue attached, and it's a common reason otherwise healthy landscaping businesses run out of cash.

• Count the days you actually hired it last year. Not the days you wished you had it — the days you paid for it. That's your usage rate.
• Compare against the true cost of owning. Finance, insurance, registration, servicing, tyres or tracks, and somewhere to keep it. Then add the float or truck to move it.
• Machines that travel with you win. A mini excavator or skid steer that goes on nearly every construction job earns its keep. A specialist machine used twice a year doesn't.
• Consider dry hire out. If you own plant with slack in the schedule, hiring it out to other trades can carry the payment on the weeks you don't need it.
• Buy the truck before the toy. Cartage and tipping are on every job. Being able to move your own material and spoil often saves more than another machine earns.

The general rule: hire until the numbers say buy, then buy something you'll use most weeks. Being able to say yes to a job because the gear is in the yard is worth something — just make sure it's worth the payment.

Crews, seasonality and the wage bill

Landscaping is seasonal and weather-dependent, which makes employment harder than in trades that work indoors. A wage bill runs through a wet fortnight; a maintenance round is what keeps it survivable.

• Build the recurring maintenance base before you hire. It's the revenue that doesn't stop when the weather turns.
• Split crews by skill, not by job. A maintenance crew and a construction crew run at different rates and need different gear — mixing them wastes both.
• Know the full cost of employment — wage, superannuation, workers compensation, leave, vehicle, tools, fuel and PPE. Requirements and rates vary by state, so check with your state authority and your accountant.
• Subbies for the specialist work. Retaining walls that need a licensed builder, drainage that needs a plumber, tree work that needs an arborist. Cheaper and safer than trying to hold every ticket yourself.
• Have wet-weather work banked. Pruning, mulching, machinery maintenance, quoting. A crew standing around in the rain is the most expensive thing in the business.

Our guide to what your first employee costs breaks down what sits on top of the wage before you commit.

Systems that keep a spread-out business together

Landscaping is one of the hardest trades to run from a notebook, because nobody is in the same place. Crews are on different sites, the round runs across suburbs, and the quotes are big enough that a forgotten variation is real money.

1. Put the schedule where the crew can see it. Address, access, what's being done, what gear is needed. If the crew rings you every morning to find out where they're going, that's your morning gone.
2. Quote from saved pricing on site. Turf, paving, mulch, retaining, planting — the same line items recur. Build the quote while you're standing on the block, not at 9pm.
3. Automate recurring maintenance visits. A round is dozens of repeating jobs. They should generate themselves and invoice themselves rather than being retyped every cycle.
4. Photograph before, during and after. It's your marketing, your evidence of latent conditions, and your record of what the site looked like before you touched it.
5. Cost jobs when they close. Machine hours, tip fees, cartage, labour, materials. Landscaping jobs go over on the invisible costs, and this is how you catch it.

Frequently asked questions