Fully booked!!

[landsmith2001]

Can someone offer me some advice on how to increase turnover. Im run a landscaping business specialising in paving
www.malpaslandscapes.com (if youd like to check out some of our work)

At present we are fully booked till August which is ok but I would really like to take on more work to increase turnover, only being able to complete 1 job at a time is limiting things and limiting profit.

i have gone down the rd of taking on more men only to be let down big time by their work and attitude, good workers are hard to come by and the ones who are, are fully booked also.

I want to expand to earn more profit, as I do live very modestly and would like to seize the opportunity to better myself.

Does anyone have any advice about what to do at this junction??

[lutonlagerlout]

some very tidy jobs there landsmith , i would imagine that you suffer from the same malaise as me
i.e. the area i live in ,namely luton is an industrial area and 98 % of the people who live here are working class(if you know what i mean)
so the crux of the problem for me is that although we get fair sized building projects 20-100k , when it comes to outdoor works the houses on the whole are not very big and therefore the gardens are generally small
and also no-one that i have come across can justify spending10 - 20k in the garden when their house is only worth £130k
however go 5 miles down the road to harpenden and it is a different story,average house price is 450k and ppl want to spend big bucks to impress their friends etc
so you need to target wealthy areas and also dont worry about the money too much
if you do it right money will come
i'm not saying dont do little jobs,we did 3 years solid work in hemel, after doing a garden wall for the president of a golf club who told all his mates how much he liked it
also like you we employed more men but unless they are supervised things mysteriously go wrong
cheers LLL

[Stuarty]

My boss started picking up contract work a good few years ago now, at his biggest point in staff, he had 7 squads of 3 on the go, but as experience by yourself and LLL, there was always one or two who needed to be watched. Now its trimmed down to 7 men across 3 squads, but looking to get a 4th on the go somepoint this summer. The contract work, like soft landscaping for the house builders or grounds maintainance isnt the most enjoyable work, but aslong as it gets done to the required standard its a near enough guaranteed cheque.

[landsmith2001]

Cheers lads for the replys, Im in a way glad to hear that other gangs get probs when not being watched... or left to their own devices. I was begining to think that maybe im too soft
I think I may start by just creating 2 teams, myself running one and my very trustworthy brother-in-law on another and see how things go. Its either that or carry on turning work away from not having the time to fit them in...2 this week already and both recomendations! "cant carry on like that"

[i would imagine that you suffer from the same malaise as me
i.e. the area i live in ,namely luton is an industrial area and 98 % of the people who live here are working class(if you know what i mean)]
Exactly right.....just cant seem to break into the 10k plus work even... in my area anything over £6000 is a definate no!
and that resticts so much potential. It can be a nightmare trying to totally re-create someones garden on a shoe string.
Which is why we use so much timber for retaining problems.

Im sure things will improve soon I can feel it in my bones lol

[lutonlagerlout]

like i say if you concentrate on doing it right and organising things well ,then the money will come.
i often get people asking me to cut corners "to save a few bob" as they so succinctly put it.
problem is news of 1 bad job spreads quicker than 10 good ones
you have done some nice stuff there and by treating people right eventually you will get the golden contract,when we did work for peter o toole it was because my mate built his chauffeur's wall==>connections happen like that
cheers LLL

[Mick Leek]

landsmith2001

Just looked at your site And read your History page. I notice at the end a name

Is that you ? What a FINE surname. Theres not many of us about

[lutonlagerlout]

not leek by any chance was it mick?
LLL :laugh:

[landsmith2001]

Yes Im a Leek too I thought that for a long time it was a really uncommon name but im coming across more and more of us all the time lately.
And what a cracking name it is too, inspite of the p"ss takers.
I just feel sorry for my great uncle Ivor (and yes he was a plumber!!)

[mouldmaker]

Just as an aside, I wondered why the pictures took so long to load on your website. The top one on the home page is a whopping 1.82mb. A minor irritant if you have a fast connection, but anyone on dial-up will probably leave your site without having seen it. Gallery pics seem ok though. To save bottlenecks you should try to keep your image sizes under 50k, and preferably under 30k.

[landsmith2001]

ok mouldmaker thanks for the pointer.
I shall reduce the size of bytes.
thanks again

[lutonlagerlout]

i use jpeg compress a program that can get reasonable quality pictures at 800 by 600 down to about 70KB
i sent a photo by email once as a gif image,it took the receipient 50 minutes to down load(dial up)
regards LLL

[Dave_L]

Word of mouth is by far the best form of advertising - one which we rely upon (rightly or wrongly) - we don't advertise very much at all.

I sometimes think leaving a small advertising board at the jobs after completion for a couple of weeks is a good idea - what do you guys think?

[dig dug dan]

since i started my landscape business in 1993, I have not advertised and it has all been word of mouth, or they have taken my number from the truck or site board.
Its good if you can do this, as it filters out the time wasters and 99% of the non payers. It doesn't stop the awkward customers though.
The site board is good dave, if you can stop it being vandalised or thrown in the road!

[lutonlagerlout]

we have had boards stolen by disgruntled competitors,we used to advertise in the yellow pages (my auld fella is a sucker for a sweet talking telesales girl ) but mostly you would get just timewasters looking for comparison quotes
95 % of our work is recommendation the other 5 is from being on the council's list of approved contractors.
by the way someone mentioned the guild of master craftsmen on another thread , and AFAIK you just pay them a fee and get the stickers===> pointless
at least the NIEC and CORGI actually do site visits and check electrician's and plumber's work
i would love to move away from this grubby corner of south beds but the customer base wouldn't move with me and i don't fancy commuting...
cheers LLL

[Dave_L]

Come down to the South West Tony! :BEER: :p