Commercial Landscaping Maintenance 101: A Comprehensive Guide
Commercial properties need upkeep of landscaping for a welcoming experience. These businesses hire companies to take care of their landscapes. This work can be lucrative, as the areas to cover can be large, and it’s recurring. As a result, your business should offer commercial landscaping maintenance. You’ll need a plan to offer these services.
In this article, you’ll learn about the importance of commercial landscaping maintenance services. You’ll also gain insights on how to develop a plan and overcome challenges.
The Importance of Offering Commercial Landscaping Maintenance
Commercial landscaping maintenance describes providing services for business properties. The services can include planning, designing, installation, and ongoing upkeep. It encompasses any type of commercial outdoor space. Examples include office buildings, multi-family apartment properties, and malls.
Your company can benefit from servicing commercial landscapes, including:
- Increased revenue from larger jobs that need ongoing maintenance
- Building relationships with commercial space owners, potentially leading to more work from their other properties or referrals to peers
- A variety of service offerings so that seasonal lulls or other factors don’t disrupt your cash flow
- Retaining high-performing workers by ensuring they have consistent work
- Opportunities to be creative with design, which can become highlights for your work portfolio
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As you can see, you have much to gain by offering commercial landscape maintenance. Let’s look at how to build a plan.
7 Steps to Designing a Commercial Landscape Maintenance Plan
Building a strategy is an excellent foundation for your business. It’s necessary to be successful in acquiring more commercial work. It enables you to review the market, challenges, and opportunities. A plan is beneficial for these reasons:
- trategies help you understand the true scope of commercial landscaping jobs. You’ll also understand the needs of business owners. These differ compared to residential.
- You’ll have a defined approach to bringing the service to market. You’ll gather ideas for awareness and promotion.
- Such a strategy factors in the budget and resources needed to fulfill commercial work requests.
- You’ll identify the structure and objectives of launching this new service. Decide how you’ll track success as well. Ways to measure include sales targets progress, lead generation, and other milestones.
- You can forecast demand and compare that to your current book of business to ensure you have the capacity and can complete jobs on schedule.
Follow these steps to design your commercial landscaping maintenance business plan:
1. Establish clear objectives and goals.
Define what you expect from this new service. These goals will guide your plan. They may include researching the potential market and current competition.
2. Set your pricing.
Every business plan should include rates. Review your current landscaping pricing and how you’ll need to adjust for commercial customers.
3. Assess commercial properties for landscape requirements.
A commercial outdoor space is different from a yard. It’s a good idea to check out a few types of businesses and their landscaping. Consider the obstacles and many other kinds of maintenance needed.
4. Determine the best plants and landscaping features for commercial spaces.
Depending on the property, various plants could be the best option. You should consider how people use the space and what areas are in the shade versus in full sun. Commercial spaces often have water features or other unique landscaping elements. Research those as well.
5. Incorporate seasonal adjustments.
Commercial landscaping is seasonal like any other. The type of maintenance they’ll need differs across the year. Add to your plan what each season looks like so you can ensure the best results.
6. Plan how you’ll maintain plants.
Commercial landscapes should always be inviting. Dying plants can make the space less so. The health of plants will be important to business owners. Include plans for checking on plants’ growth.
7. Assess your equipment.
Commercial jobs take longer to complete and are larger in scale. Thus, your current equipment may not be enough. Look into investing in new machinery that’s commercial grade.
What Are the Common Challenges in Commercial Landscape Maintenance?
As with any service you offer, common challenges are present. Here are the most prevalent with recommended solutions:
Adjustments in maintenance practices to meet seasonal demands can be tricky.
The key to overcoming this challenge is planning out your schedule in advance. Then, calculate the time commitment for the maintenance of commercial spaces.
Recruiting and retaining skilled workers is a current industry issue.
A report on the landscaping labor market revealed that 86% of firms have at least one job open. Additionally, 84% of owners said finding and keeping qualified labor was a major challenge. Some ways to resolve recruitment include:
- Creating apprenticeship programs
- Participating in high school career readiness programs
- Rewarding employees when they refer others
To keep employees, provide them with a livable wage to start. Opportunity for advancement and benefits matter too.
Aligning to customer expectations can be problematic without clear communication.
You can remove this challenge by articulating the services you do and do not provide. Be sure that this is in your contract as well. Continue to communicate with clients on all areas of maintenance.
Adhering to regulatory requirements is mandatory.
If you’ve only worked in residential landscaping, educate yourself on any work-related regulations. You must follow these while engaging in this kind of work. Reach out to experts in the space with questions.
Inefficiency or the absence of technology makes it difficult to scale services.
Another challenge you may face pertains to technology. If you’re going to add a service, the consequence is that you’ll have more customers and schedules to manage. This can become cumbersome without a robust field service automation platform. Using one boosts efficiency and streamlines business management.
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Top Takeaway Tips for Maintaining a Commercial Landscaping Business
By following these recommendations, you can maintain your commercial landscaping business:
- Keep your strategy up to date. Changes in your market, landscaping business trends, analytics, and customer feedback inform this.
- Look at technology tools. Explore how they can streamline processes. They can prepare your company for the addition of new customers.
- Review all the equipment and its longevity. Identify gaps you’ll need to fill to handle commercial jobs.
- Look up competitors in your space that perform commercial work. Compare your offerings to theirs and get ideas.
- Analyze your current marketing and advertising plans. Consider how they’ll need to adapt to reach commercial business owners.
- Get feedback from your workers and peers. They have valuable perspectives related to commercial work. This information can help you form a strategy and tweak it as necessary.