Commercial or resedential when starting out?

[yz250]

I'm just going into to business this year with my father in-law and I'm having difficulty with our differing opinions. He argues that we should only do commercial accounts and no residential. For the most part I would like mostly commercial accounts to but I don't think this is realistic for our first year. I figured we would take basically any account we could get and then work our way into the commercial side ,but i didn't think anybody just starting off can just take commercial account's. Maybe I'm wrong . Any advice you can give me would be helpful.

[CCLS]

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Take what you can get when starting out. You really can't be picky if you do not have a customer base. You need to get some customers to get some money coming in. If you are interested in mainly commercial accounts, contact some businesses by phone or via mail.

[Phil Nilsson]

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After you get a foothold, become established you can better sort out and find a direction but like CCLS said, start with accepting offers as they come in. Most companies end up with a mixture of both. One advantage with residential is that about 80% of new bizz will come from referrals whereas new commercial accounts will more than likely come from "intense" bidding activity.

Good luck
Phil

[madpup]

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I also am just getting started. In my situation I will take what i get and when things start rolling a little better release some of the accounts that arent really helping you. Once you get your commercial accounts built up i would still do some residential they dont really take to much but i belive that they give a little something extra.

[rldrew]

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A mixture of commercial and residential is good. . .Almost 99.9% of commercials will pay you monthly. So to supplement the 30-day wait, do some residentials. Most residentials will generally pay you as soon as you finish their lawn. . .And if you maintain a service roster of about 10-30 residentials, consider it "gravy"! It'll keep money coming in to help support your business as you wait for the monthly commercial checks to roll in.

And that's a good feeling when you have 10-15 commercials paying an average of $200 - $400 a month for complete lawn service for one full year.

I agree with all of the above. . .Get as much as you can in the beginning. . .You will soon get to the point when you have so much work you will actually have to choose the most profitable and easiest customers to work with in order to keep high levels of quality and responsive service. That's excellent flexibility!

rldrew

[65hoss]

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Humm...just starting so no idea about comm'l jobs. You would be better getting your feet wet with residentials, then after you learn all your numbers and get experience you will be more capable of comm'l accounts.

[mariner]

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I had a commercial account come to me a couple of weeks agao. So, anything is possible.