Know What Your Customers Will Expect From You

It’s up to customers to choose the right landscape professionals to work on their properties, but there are several steps professionals can follow to help customers choose their company.

Published February 16, 2000

It’s up to customers to choose the right landscape professionals to work on their properties, but there are several steps professionals can follow to help customers choose their company.

Horticulturist and gardening writer Lindsay Bond Totten recently offered some tips for homeowners to look for when hiring landscape companies. These tips can also help landscape professionals by knowing what their customers are looking for in their services. According to Totten, items homeowners should be looking for include:

  • A company should be ready and willing to share references with prospective customers. Pictures of completed work can help customers decide if a company’s abilities match their expectations. A single landscaping style and repeated use of the same plants may indicate a limited repertoire.
  • The customer may inquire about a professional’s education, training and certification. Respected firms are proud of their horticultural backgrounds and often advertise their own or their employees’ professional accomplishments. Membership in state and national trade associations is an indication of the company’s status among peers.
  • Customers may also solicit a landscaper’s suggestions for one part of the yard before commencing on a full-scale design. When reviewing the plans, they should evaluate how carefully the professional has listened to their wishes, then decide whether to proceed.
  • Customers will be wary of an estimate that is way below that of competitors. Industry professionals know what skilled workers are worth and must charge their customers accordingly. For instance, knowing how to dig a hole correctly – how to treat the rootball, how to amend the soil in which the plant will grow and how to identify that the specimen is the right one in the first place – is something customers need to be willing to pay for such that the job is done right.

Totten also included some benefits customers will notice by hiring a knowledgeable landscape company. These benefits include:

  • A longer-lasting landscape. Poor pruning practices and inadequate soil amendment drastically shorten the life of plants. Also, specimens planted in well-amended soil need less water and fertilizer and are more likely to survive drought than those that are not.
  • Fewer pesticides. The more a person knows about plants, the better equipped he is to match the right plant to the right source. He’ll recognize varieties that might get pests in the future and offer alternatives. The results: fewer sprays and lower maintenance costs.
  • Better designs and landscapes that "work." Experienced landscape gardeners know how fast plants grow and how big they’ll get; how to build steps and pathways that last and how to position beds to make mowing easier. In other words, they know how to solve landscape challenges and problems.

    • Courtesy of the Denver Rocky Mountain News; written by Lindsay Bond Totten, horticulturist and gardening writer for Scripps Howard News Service.

    No more results found.
    No more results found.