Studies have shown that it’s much more expensive and time-consuming to acquire new customers than to retain the ones you have now. You’ve already put in all the hard work to land your lawn mowing and gardening customers, and now you’ve got to provide a service that sees them rely on you time and time again. 

While your best efforts in lawn care, gardening, and other services are undoubtedly more than satisfactory, there’s value in maximising your income with each client on your books. Here are some of the many ways you may be able to upsell your lawn and garden services to your current and future customers.

Offer Exclusive Customer-Only Deals

When you first started operating in your lawn care business, you would have established how much a service costs you to provide and what your margins are. With this information in mind, you may have the confidence in your bottom line to offer exclusive deals to current customers.

For example, you might mow the lawns for Bob the busy businessman once a fortnight, but you’ve noticed that his gardens have become overgrown. You could tell him how much your gardening clean up services cost for non-customers and how much less they could cost him if he tacked it on as an additional service while you were there lawn mowing.

Take note of your surroundings while you’re mowing the lawns. You never know when your water blasting, fruit tree care, hedge pruning, and tree trimming skills might be required.

Provide Package Deals

Everyone loves getting a deal, and you may find that your lawn care customers are no exception to that rule. They may have hired you to tidy their gardens or mow their lawns, but there may be other services they require that they don’t know you offer.

Consider offering package deals that incorporate multiple services to help your customers maintain their entire yard. For example, you might offer a spring yard cleaning package, which involves leaf blowing, weeding, and lawn mowing to get rid of the last signs of winter.  

If you’re flexible with the services within these packages, you may find yourself performing more than one task at many of your clients’ homes who previously only utilised your lawn mowing services.

Consider Trials

While providing free services is not every lawn care operator’s ideal way to upsell, it may be an option if you’re trying to sell more of a particular service. You might be trying to include more tree trimming tasks in your average week and may decide to offer to trim one tree for free, so your customer sees the difference it makes. 

From this demonstration, there is potential for you to welcome them on board as a new customer for tree or hedge trimming, alongside the other services you already provide.

Don’t Forget to Follow Up

Not all lawn care customers will be able to make a decision right away about whether they’d like to upgrade their services. They might need to consult their significant other or even review their finances to see if it’s a viable option.

Sometimes, you’re tending to the grounds of a business, which means there can be multiple people involved in the decision-making process. It’s easy for your offer to be forgotten about or put on the back-burner, so make a note in your diary to follow up.  

In 2-4 weeks, see the client in person, send a text message, an email, or make a phone call to see if they have had a chance to think about your deal. Sometimes, a gentle reminder can be all it takes to have them sign on the dotted line.

Let Your Current Work Speak for Itself

When you’re doing an excellent job with the tasks your clients have hired you to do, your workmanship can do all the upselling for you. You may find that customers are so impressed with how well you edged their lawns or tidied their gardens that they approach you with other jobs they’d like you to do.

When they’ve brought up the topic for discussion, you can use it as an opening to talk about the many services you provide that you think they might benefit from.

Offer Seasonal Deals

Each season can wreak havoc on our properties. Winter can have everything looking drab, while autumn sees trees creating no end of mess with their leaves. Summer and spring are seasons of growth, with weeds and plants growing out of control. 

Seasonal deals to combat these many problems might be how you maximise your income. If your customer is aware of deals for extra help over the growing season or a clean-up service during autumn, they may jump at the chance to have their yard looking at its best once more.