Business Growth Solutions for Landscaping Contractors

The landscaping industry has witnessed high-profit generations in past financial years. The skilled labour shortage is still a major hindrance to their progress. As per the Landscaping industry report by LMN, around 51% of the company owners could not find or hire enough staff to fill vacant positions. This post is for Contractors, Professionals, and Business Owners looking to grow their landscaping business.

The relief is that even with these adversities, the companies are making satisfactory profits. The average revenue for SMEs offering landscaping services was $441.8 thousand.

Nevertheless, the shortfalls in the business have created a stressed demand-supply cycle. With the modern solutions available for the landscaping business, it’s high time to use them for business growth.

This post deals with the benefits of using them and how they can help. We request you to conduct your analysis and due diligence before availing any of the services mentioned here. Always ask for a free trial, demo, or promo code to help you decide if the solution is helpful to you.

The solutions suggested here, while being highly relevant to the landscaping industry, should serve as an inspiration for new research if you are not in the landscaping and lawn care industry.

❓ What are Business Growth Solutions?

Business growth solutions are unique B2B products (IT and otherwise), services, specialty products and services, online tools, etc., that can help a business be successful and ensure sustained growth in the future.

These solutions help you save costs and time, be efficient and offer numerous opportunities for growth.

Business growth solutions are meant to free up your time and make it easy to focus on what’s important to you without worrying about that one more thing in the business.

Though these solutions are advertised as extremely helpful – it’s on the business owner to explore, compare, and eventually decide to buy or not buy the solution from a particular company.

🤨 What can these growth solutions do for you?

Growth solution is a wide term. From helping you launch a new business to reviving and sustaining an existing one, modern B2B landscaping solutions offer growth opportunities through multiple facets of a business. Landscaping growth solutions can help you save on cost and time, manage operations with efficiency, and scale with ease. The three major things that these can help with are:

1. They help you build a sustainable business.
2. They help you get ahead of the competition.
3. They help you expand your business. 

#1 Making a Landscaping business Grow sustainably

As important as it is to think about the environment, building a sustainable business also requires you to stay in the market to bring that change. Sometimes it is a trade-off, and many times it’s not.

A landscaper software (Such as a CRM) can help small businesses to improve their processes. Solutions integrated with AI (chatbots, analytical software) can help automate workflows you would otherwise spend hours working on – and you know time is money in this business.

Most tools available today (field management systems or job tracking tools) are easy to use and do not require a complicated setup. These solutions are designed to cut back on costs and provide more efficient workflows to help you stay in the business.

Growth solutions such as specialized consultancy packages and training programs help you develop a positive mindset.n

#2 Staying ahead of the competition

Roadshows used to be a huge part of the promotions for the trade industry. They would help small businesses get attention and steal some of that market share. They still work well, but you need an edge to stay ahead of the competition.

Trade-specialized marketing companies offer you a unique competitive advantage by using modern tools based on Google & Facebook’s cutting-edge technology.

The platforms help you open your business to more channels than ever before. Think Influencer marketing, landscaping affiliates, Google and Meta Ads, SEO, Podcast and magazine advertising, and more.

And to truly stay ahead of the competition, you’ve now got nursery management software & plant marketing companies to streamline your offline and online operations.

#3 These solutions can help your business expand

Manage scheduling staff, your on-call team, professional rosters, and even your admin tasks– all with the help of virtual receptionists. They work remotely, offer the most professional tone to your business – or homely if you prefer that, and they can work day and night.
Whether it is managing operations or your workforce, you do not need to be burnt out.

You can focus on what is important to you and take control. With this time, you can work on expanding your business and spending time with your family. The obvious question here is – do you outsource something as crucial as talking to a customer and making a first impression?

Well, it depends on how you have been doing it till now. If you have been missing calls and appointments, and your fixed costs of office admins are burning a hole in your pocket – then you surely need a service like that to help you out.

Multiple Canadian companies now offer receptionists from Canada and help you get more leads than you ever could. They can make appointments for you, schedule jobs with your team, take notes, and even follow up for feedback after a job.

Landscape planning software can help in quick invoice generation, estimating jobs using AI & aerial imagery, and help maintain a professional’s productivity. They can even have a marketing tool integration that can help you promote your business better – getting more leads and getting more work.

😎 B2B Solutions available to Landscaping/ Lawn Care/ Snow Removal companies for business growth: 

These solutions exist to serve you, just like your business exists to serve the needs of your customers.

Choosing a growth solution for your landscaping or lawn care business depends on the objective you have or based on the pain points you have while working in the industries.

Maplescapes has categorized these solutions based on a landscaping company’s function, type of solution, your pain points, and generally what is available for you. Along with the solutions, we’ve also added a few of our posts to help you gather more information.

This is a long list from an even longer list of landscaping growth solutions available in Canada. Bookmark this page to keep coming back when you must go through each of them.

⚙️ Operations

💢 Pain points

• If you are a nursery, you know those long-distance deliveries can easily be a nightmare.
• If you are a parts manufacturer, you know the pain of logistics & supply chain issues in Canada.
• Do your professionals punch in more time than what you’d expected for a job?
• Are you concerned with the fuel costs and always trying to figure out the gas average of your vehicles?

🤩 Landscaping operations business growth solutions

1. North American Brands has a suite of services related to low-cost logistics, warehousing, order fulfillment from partners & more.
2. Descarte is a giant in logistics and telematics. They provide solutions so that you can save on fuel costs, be efficient in your logistical operations & be compliant with regulations.
3. UPI Energy’s TankWatch monitor helps you optimize fuel costs, save on ground maintenance and avoid emergency delivery fees.
4. GEOTAB & SVR from secureQuip helps in fleet performance. They help you with GPS tracking, trip reporting, and stolen vehicle recovery.
5. Readychek helps you be compliant if you own a commercial vehicle or a trailer. Offers paperless inspections with just a mobile app and desktop app.

🚀 How these solutions help you grow your business

1. Instead of worrying about orders & returns, these solutions can help you save on resources and time to take that pain.
2. If you are short on space, have regular orders from someplace far away, or even if you do not want to create a logistical nightmare of importing products from dock to your warehouse and then selling products in wholesale, warehousing, and inventory management can work wonders.
3. With fleet tracking, you get to know if there is rash driving, excessive braking, or drivers moving out of the expected geo (geofencing). With tracking like this, it’s one less thing for you to worry about.

🎨 Landscape Design

💢 Pain points

• Do you use AutoCAD or other design software for small gigs, and it takes up a lot of your time?
• You use design software that has the library for your landscaping design project, but you have to have several workarounds for landscaping.
• Your customers face the hurdle of being unable to visualize how a stone would look in their outdoor living space -> not being able to decide.

🤩 Landscaping design business growth solutions

1. Vectorworks is a complete design software solution for landscaping architects, interior designers & landscaping designers. They also have online collaboration and presentation features to get you on top.
2. Renowork has a suite of custom visualization software for builders, manufacturers, material suppliers, contractors, remodelers, marketing agencies, and even homeowners. They have integrations, analytics (unique in the industry), designer services & even an AI-assisted automated estimation service.
3. Keystone has a KeyWallPRO® Design Software — though for their own customers, it has all the elements you need to design and estimate costs for retaining walls. Along with the design, it also helps with the materials, like analyzing gravity wall and soil reinforcement materials.

🚀 How these solutions help you grow your business

• Reduce the time taken by your customers in choosing the stone and second-guessing their decisions. Suppose they can visualize how a particular material is going to look easily, see the patterns, and try different options virtually. In that case, they might do it at home and save you time.
• The online visualizers not only help your customers engage with your offerings it also create a product library for you to show off.
• Though there are multiple giants in design, you need a solution that is made FOR YOU. Having design software built for the trades just helps.

💼 Business Management

Business management is a mix of operations, admin and other departments in a business. While operations focus on logistics, supply chain, project management, etc., business management focuses on activities that typically fall under business administration.

💢 Pain points

• You might be an amazing landscaper, but are you that good in business management?
• Do you have processes to help you focus on what you love about landscaping?
• Are you stuck in admin work? When you started the business, it might have looked like there was a world to conquer, giants to fall and a market to capture. But are you stuck in day-to-day so much that you routinely lose track of time?
• Do you get confused when seeing multiple reports from multiple software/platforms?

🤩 Landscaping business management growth solutions

1. OrderEase has a suite of solutions for B2B and B2C in the trades. They help you with POS integrations with inventory management and your existing ERP. A must-have for large manufacturers and wholesale dealers.
2. FloristWave is a business management software for florists, and CompuPlants is for nurseries.
3. Include is a full-stack business management service for landscaping companies. While they do focus on selling their software by having numbers in “Millions” on their website, it might just be a gimmick. The real value lies in the pain points they help you solve.
4. RealGreen’s service assistant has unique integrations with their own add-ons. It is a CRM that helps you manage your contacts, has a payments module, has measurement solutions to help you estimate, and has a ton of marketing features. They are built for lawn care, maintenance, landscaping, arbour care and pest control companies.

🚀 How these solutions help you grow your business

• Specifically designed products for the trades have their own distinct advantage when it comes to business management as companies making these products understand your business inside out.
• Business management software is meant to unify your reporting, streamline operations and help you manage your business from a single platform.
• Suppose you are building your business for the future. In that case, you know how changing the processes and following them is as important as doing aeration and dethatching while maintaining a lawn. Business management software helps you create processes and report anomalies based on those rules. This helps you further optimize your business and help you scale.
• A CRM helps you keep track of your customers – old and new. The integrations available today with CRM companies make a huge difference in your decision process. Choose a solution with integrations to your existing software and helps you get strong in areas you are not.

🤑 Marketing

💻 Landscaping Website

💢 Pain points

• Your business is not visible to your potential customers.
• Your competitors (who are very similar to your business) are doing better and have an edge.
• You want to expand, but the old methods are not working today.
• You have a lot of leads and past customer data, but you do not know how to use them.

🤩 Business growth solutions for landscaping websites

1. If you own a nursery or provide plants to your clients, you would need a comprehensive catalogue of plants you supply. Netps Plants Finder helps you easily upload plant photographs, descriptions, information and filters to your website, all legally compliant. They also have a plant finder tool that helps customers print info sheets for all the plants, even those unavailable on your shelf.
2. Solutions like PaverPicker, which are similar to Renoworks, offer a virtual showroom that helps your customers visualize your offers in their homes.
3. If you are a dealer, manufacturer or reseller, you know having a catalogue is a must. The old method of getting a customized catalogue made in print and in PDF is a repetitive task and is expensive. ARI offers custom solutions for e-catalogues. You can list parts, accessories and other OEM stuff, along with the ability to sell directly. It also includes parts lookup and availability, which might be a huge deal for you to get more business.
4. Do you offer materials, but people must first calculate how much they want? Calculoid helps you embed custom calculators on your website. Think quantity and cost of mulch, gravel, stone, soil for topdressing, etc.
5. Tired of carrying those brochures and catalogues? Hunter’s Siterec app helps you save time and close sales faster with its nifty features. You can recommend, compare and get more info about Hunter’s irrigational update products with your own branding and logo in the app.

🚀 How an improvised landscaping website can help you grow your business

• If people are able to see how a particular stone would look, they’ll be able to make decisions easily, which reduces the time taken to buy. Also, since out of your competitors, you’d have the ability to show all your offerings in an easy format, people in trades can start to use your website as a point of reference for all your offerings.
• Since finding a part and then checking the availability is one of the most repetitive tasks that both the reseller and people in trades do, having a centralized solution takes that pain away. Along with having these as a solution for your customers, you also increase website visits, which is a welcoming thing in digital marketing.
• These solutions help you offer turnkey solutions and increase the engagement rate on your website.

🐾 Graphic, Print & Markings

💢 Pain points

• Your old flags and markers just do the job, but you want more value out of them for either survey or utility.
• Your offline store is amazing from the inside but not that amazing on the outside to invite people in.
• You are short-staffed; you need to display helpful information at prominent places in your establishment, or you need to make your products stand out.

🤩 Solutions for Graphic, Print & Markings

1. Bellwyck Horticolor is a specialized bunch in the horticultural industry. They have tags with more utility. They also provide packaging, printing and publishing solutions. Blackburn also has comprehensive marking solutions.
2. Signarama Dixie has outdoor signs, indoor signs and a whole lot of offerings to improve your business curb appeal.
3. Orora Visuals has a multitude of offerings in the same space for our industry.

🤩 Other Marketing Growth Solutions

1. Plant marketing by Frank helps you save time on personal visits to nurseries abroad. They also help you with conflicts and help you trade overseas.
2. Audio marketing concepts are a differentiated service offering voice and music to give your brand a unique image. They specialize in “marketing for hold” and aroma marketing.
3. LM2 marketing people are all about trade show assistance and boutique marketing research.

👷‍♂️ T&D and Human Resource

💢 Pain points

• You can manage your staff, but you want to do it better.
• You feel your employees take it as only a job, not their career.

🤩 Business growth solutions for landscaping HRs

1. Greenius is a training management solution for landscapers. It helps you manage staff and take regular feedback to know if they are happy.

🦄 Unique/Speciality Solutions

These solutions are unique and specialized for the trades.

1. You can contact Mark It for subsurface utility mapping, borehole clearance and more. They provide locating services (privately) to help you avoid legal liabilities (which might not be covered by your insurance). Vivax Metrotech helps you do the same thing (call before you dig) yourself.
2. RMT provides the most accurate weighing systems and high-def backup cameras.
3. Wajax TechIQ helps you maximize your asset life. They offer condition monitoring sensors to extend the life of your heavy equipment.
4. Deeproot’s Silva Cell is one of the world’s leading solutions for growing trees in hardscapes. Arbor system operates in the same space, offering urban tree pit planting packages.
5. Phytoserv provides consultancy in the space of regulation/compliance, research and customized support to growers.
6. Akr consulting specializes in Government Funding, including Grants, Rebates, Refunds, Subsidies, and Tax Credit.

✅ Own a landscaping business? Get better in Operations, Staffing, Marketing, Finance…

1: Managing Operations: How these third-party offerings can help:

The landscaping business management services and software offer a range of operational features that benefit a landscaping company.

👉🏼 Scheduling and Dispatching: 

These tools allow you to create and manage schedules for your landscaping projects. You can assign tasks to your team members, allocate equipment, and set deadlines. With a centralized system, you can easily view and adjust schedules as needed, ensuring efficient project execution.

 👉🏼 Invoicing: 

All-in-one solutions provide invoicing capabilities, allowing you to generate professional client invoices. You can customize invoices with your branding, itemize services rendered, include additional charges, and apply discounts if necessary.

 👉🏼 Field Management: 

These services and software help you manage your field operations effectively. You can track the progress of projects, monitor task completion, and communicate with your team members in the field. Field management software is popular in the field industry. They provide comprehensive solutions along with useful integrations with your landscaping business software.

 👉🏼 Employee Time Tracking: 

Time tracking features enable you to monitor the hours worked by your employees accurately. This helps with payroll processing, project costing, and evaluating employee productivity with detailed insights into their work.

 👉🏼 Providing Client Property Info to Professionals: 

It includes features that allow you to store and access client property information. This can include property specifications, photos, previous work history, and specific client preferences. 

2: Managing the Human Resource: 

57% of the landscape companies have expressed concerns about staff strength in their respective companies. Hiring the skilled employees or imparting training to a fresher are the major challenges that these companies are facing:

👉🏼 Employee Communication:

Experts suggest that to broaden the employee hiring horizon, they must expand the effort of hiring the staff. Response to recruitment will become higher if the companies start offering knowledge training, professional job training, career evaluations and skill education.  

👉🏼 Employee Training and Development:

A team of skilled professionals will help the company to have a lasting imprint in the landscaping business. Offering advanced training is a robust strategy that leads to immense growth and success of the company in the future.

👉🏼 Payroll:

A timely paycheck delivery is a key to an employee’s contentment. A proper payroll will help both the company and the employee to have a better understanding of the deductions and the calculations. 

👉🏼 Staffing management:

Deploying the correct candidate in a desired profile will spark employee enthusiasm. Monitoring the day-to-day work of the employees will eventually enhance their productivity. 

3: Help in Marketing

A curated Market plan is a prime way to impress potential clients and win the hearts of existing clients. 

👉🏼 SEO:

Well-strategized SEO for landscaping, snow removal or a lawn care business improves the website ranking. To make the SEO rankings better, the digital marketing specialist must backlink the website pages and optimize the keywords.

👉🏼 Paid socials:

Social Media is a convenient way to reach out to the target audience. Creating compelling advertisements and precise and crisp video content on various paid social platforms will easily help find clients. 

👉🏼 Associations:

Offering discounts and other lucrative gardening packages is a way to attract clients and build a solid foundation for your business. Collaborating with some gardening brands will open more doors to promote the venture.  

👉🏼 Events:

Hosting events like workshops, special educational programs, and chat sessions with the customers will increase the reach of the company and also help to make a next-level image. 

👉🏼 Trade Shows:

Arranging trade shows helps to promote a large audience. All the landscaping companies must organize shows across Canada to inform the citizens about their services, packages and offers.  

👉🏼 Website and Apps:

A well-curated application and website is essential for good business. The website must have an informative landing page. It must also include sections showcasing the achievements and the client testimonials. Launching a mobile application service allows you to book an appointment or submit a query irrespective of any time limitations. 

👉🏼 Offline marketing:

Not many customers have a better understanding of online marketing. The conventional marketing technique is always a thumbs-up. Printed advertisements, promotional mail and public relations should be communicated to the right audience for better reach. 

👉🏼 Branding:

It is a significant way to stand out in a daunting competition. A well-known brand has the ability to attract customers. Creating a catchy tagline and designing a relevant logo are the initial steps of brand building. 

👉🏼 Loyalty programs:

The loyalty programs must be introduced for the existing or the old customers. This way, they will not be impressed, but the business is assured of their consistency. Loyalty programs must include discounts on both services and products besides membership perks. 

👉🏼 AMCs:

AMC or Annual Maintenance Charge is the best way to maintain a consistent, long-lasting client relationship. The rates must be competitive and should be set in accordance with the trending AMCs in the market. 

👉🏼 Review generation:

Approach the customers with personal notes for giving reviews of services. Follow them up for giving review to the hired service. Leave them with a pleasant thankful note after every feedback. 

Kula Agency of Halifax, Nova Scotia, specializes in website development and design, content marketing and inbound marketing strategies nationwide. The team of experts there assist with tailored service to the company. 

4: Finance: Tricks to grow your lawn care business

Landscaping businesses are majorly seasonal. Thus, there are highs and lows. Efficient management, now possible with business growth solutions, ensures smooth cash flow all year round.

👉🏼 Invoice:

An invoice system will help the finance department to keep track of the number of complete services, the quantity of products sold, and the total AMCs availed.

👉🏼 Expense Tracking:

Tracking expenses will give you a clear idea about all sorts of expenditures. Based on this calculation, you must find a way to cut costs. Quickbooks is one such financial software.

👉🏼 Job Estimation:

A correct estimation must comprise all the parameters like labour charges, cost of license or permit, cost of the materials and job size. 

👉🏼 Financing – credit:

Sometimes, loans are urgent for building or expanding the business infrastructure. Always compare the rates before taking credit from a bank or any other financial institution.

Quickbooks is a financial software program ideal for any size business. Besides the peak seasons, this accounting management system will help the companies keep track of the low seasons.

🌟 Curated resources for an amazing company like yours!

• Invoice templates: A proper invoice template with the name of the customer and all necessary details, along with the proper amount. 
  • Free Invoice Template from Jobber – Lets you edit company information, client information, items, notes, discounts, and tax rates.
  • Free invoice template from Joist – contains an explainer on how to create a better invoice and a free template. Requires basic Excel knowledge but is more personalized for your company and clients.
  • Multiple free templates from FreshBooks.
  • Microsoft Excel Invoice Template – This template is customizable and can be easily modified to include your landscaping company’s branding and invoice details. It provides a professional format for invoicing your clients.

• Job estimation templates: Provide a professional-looking quote/job estimation by analyzing the requirements, clients, costs, and markup. This ensures complete transparency.
  • A primer on how to estimate landscaping jobs
  • A free & simple estimation template for small jobs

• Legal agreement templates: The legal agreement ensures the rights of both the customer and the business are secured. It also avoids the probability of future misunderstandings and disputes. Please make sure to edit and add clauses according to your business needs.
  • Free landscaping contract template from signwell

• Insurance in Landscaping: Landscaping businesses in Canada must consider a number of insurance on the following grounds: compensation insurance for workers, property insurance, and commercial auto insurance. In addition, other insurances, such as protection policies for the equipment, cyber security, and sub-contractors, ensure overall shielding.
  • TruShield Insurance – They offer a bunch of benefits like life insurance, dental protection, extended health coverage for the employees, accidental insurance for when something doesn’t go as planned on a client’s property, equipment theft, etc.

• Canada Govt support for business growth: The Government of Canada has introduced few programs for the growth of businesses. CSFB, or the Canada Small Business Financing Program, offers all kinds of financial aid to a business. On the other hand, other schemes offer the benefits of equity benefits schemes. For more detailed information, click here. 

✔ Some tips on using these to your advantage:

A landscape company must encounter lots of challenges while continuing with the business. The ways the business must adopt resilience are:

👍 Diversify: Diversifying includes various services such as hardscaping, maintenance, curating designs, etc. This strategy initiation will decrease the reliability of a sole business aspect.

👍 Efficient Financial Management: Monitoring the cash flow, preparing contingencies, and controlling costs will help the company keep pace with unexpected circumstances and financial aspects.

👍 Emphasizing Client Relationships: Studying the clients’ needs and catering to their requirements will give a high chance of building a strong relationship.

👍 Provide excellent customer service: Focus on delivering exceptional customer service to build a strong reputation and generate positive word-of-mouth referrals. Respond promptly to customer inquiries, address concerns, and strive to exceed expectations.

👍 Leverage customer testimonials and reviews: Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and testimonials on your website, social media platforms, and relevant industry directories. Positive reviews can greatly influence potential customers’ decision-making process.

👍 Attend trade shows and networking events: Participate in industry-specific trade shows, home and garden expos, and local networking events. These platforms allow you to showcase your services, build relationships with potential customers and industry professionals, and stay up-to-date with industry trends.

👍 Invest in equipment and technology: Upgrading your equipment and adopting innovative technologies can improve the efficiency and quality of your work. For example, investing in eco-friendly equipment or offering automated irrigation systems can attract environmentally conscious customers.

👍 Focus on employee development: Invest in training and development programs for your employees to enhance their skills and expertise. The well-trained and knowledgeable staff can provide better service, increasing customer satisfaction and referrals.

Note: External resources/companies mentioned here are NOT affiliated with MapleScapes. They are NOT sponsored and reflect only the view of the author.

Side Notes