How Aggressive are you?

[Scott]

How Aggressive are you?

I'm sure a lot of us know about some serious propertys that offer big money to be maintained. And at some time or another you'll hear what people are getting paid for their contracts.

Would you bid on those props, knowing your competition's bid and just undercut him/her.
What if your relationship is,, say just in passing? You know him and he knows you but you guys wouldn't exactly meet at Hooters for lunch.

Would you have any problems taking bizness away from other landscapers that you know?

Would you have any problems hiring another landscaper's foreman or maybe some of his help? Bleed them for info and use it in your favor?



Is this unethical? or is it just business?

[Scaper-S2k]

Not sure I would hire their help for the info.

Depends on the situation I guess. I have known some guys since I got into the biz. I don't know them real well, but we have spoken before and wave (or yell something funny) at them when passing.

No, I would not bid against them at all unless we both knew about it and we had some agreements prior to the bidding. I have actually had a guy bid my account....MUCH HIGHER so mine looked better, and vice versa. Yeh, I know.....


Now just the averge company that I see all the time but have no real connections with? Bidding is fair game.



On most of my accounts, I do not bid lower. 98% of the time I bid higher. Especially if I know what they spent in the past years. So I promise the better service he wants, but explain that it comes at a slightly higher price. And I do that REGARDLESS of what he was paying last year.

[Kimber Landscapes]

No way.
I would not treat them like that and I hope they would treat me the same.

[Scott]

Well all I have to say is, business is business. I wouldn’t intentionally go and target a single business’ accounts but baby needs to eat.

I don’t have such a great relationship with any other landscaper in town that would stop me from bidding if approached by; owner, HOA, manager, etc… I feel that is all is free game.

The employee swapping situation is also a common one. Most of the employees for the large companies in town have worked for at least 2 other landscapers previously. Last week I was called by an old contact to come bid on a beach condo. When I showed up, the maintenance crew was there and I knew 2 out of the 4, one was the lead. They asked if I was here to bid and they both offered to work for me as long as I could guarantee less than 50 hours per week but same pay. They say they’re burnt out. Pay is good but they claim they don’t have a life and the owner could care less about any quality of life issues. They say he even rarely talks to them and when he does, it’s always in a downward corrective manner. This owner could afford to lose a few accounts.

[Stephen M.]

I don't actively go after the competition's accounts because the competion doesn't have anything I want, but they all want what I have. The majority of my customers won't switch because they have been with us many years and many have said "Why would we, they don't know anything". A small minority switched and came back for a variety of reasons like dependability and quality control.

I do know that my employees are regularily propositioned and turn down offers on a regular basis from the competition. Their reasons are that they know the owners, who are jerks and the jerks don't treat their employees as well as we treat them. Also, our payroll checks don't bounce; they can go anywhere in town to cash their checks and those checks are never rejected like the competition. Even when we paid at lower wages a few years ago, I had guys return to work for us because they knew that they would always get paid. One guy commented that there was no advantage to making $10 per hour under the table from the competion. Most of them were owed for several weeks of work but the guy went to Disneyland instead of paying them.

We now start our people at $10/hr and move them up every year.

[MASTERMOWER]

Talking about serious commercial prop contracts?

Whoa, based off what yall are saying, apparently around my part business is cut throat?

I heard all the time (esp in college) bout how company A drastically underbid cpmany B to score the (commercial) landscaping job. So much so, the company barely turned a profit on the job. I can only assume the same such practices go on for maintenance. Through observation, the commercial property contracts are nearly always awarded to a different comany each year. It's quite rediculous....one reason I prefer to sway from the larger commercial properties...for now. The population here is bout 50k; everyone knows everyone.

One landscape designer has been 'stolen' from two different companies. He started at A, apparently become well known for his designs (though I've seen his work, nothing stellar), B lured him over with a huge pay increase, last I knew he went to work for C (conditions unknown). It isn't uncommon to find an employee of one company which hasen't worked for some other one.

Good topic btw!

[Stephen M.]

MasterMower, that about sums it up. My partner [my wife] and I have run our company for 20 years and since we are one of the oldest companies in the area, we seem to be the trend setters. Our company color is blue, so when we ran blue trucks, every landscaper out there ran blue vehicles. When we switched to white, everybody is now upgrading to white trucks. Few ran truck and trailer combos, but we have for years, so everybody now has a trailer.

I'm laughing and wonder when the competition will invest in aluminum trailers like we did last year!

About 4 years ago, a landscaper transplant moved his business from Seattle and came over here on the Olympic Peninsula. He apparently decided that the only way to get business was to underbid me and he grew quickly. Mind you, I still got business. I learned last year from one of his former employees, he saw us as a threat. He wanted a piece of our market and thought he could get it by underbidding us. Problem was, we weren't in the same leauge and I didn't want what he was bidding. Well, we were such a "threat" that he went out of business in 4 years. His ex customers were calling me and getting sticker shock because he was always half what I was. It got so bad that I created a stamp for my proposals that read "If your lawn guy charged you more money, he'd still be in business".

It can be cutthroat if you are going after the same work. What I have learned to do is to go after niche work that few are doing in my area. Most of the lawn guys ran 21" mowers and few had 36". But now most run 36", but we get the larger properties because we have a 52" and a 61" ztr.

Now we are getting calls from potential customers on the recommendation of xyz lawn guy or gardener because they either don't want to, don't have the equipment, or the know how to do xyz project.