When housing and commercial development booms, so does the need for skilled landscapers. It’s an exciting chance to expand your operations, but it can be overwhelming or risky without a solid financial plan.
With the right strategy, you can position your company to capture growing demand. Let’s look at how to build scalable systems, from equipment planning and landscaping business loans to trusted partnerships that help you meet the market’s needs.
Plan for the Demand
Increasing demand can be like a giant ocean wave. It wrecks landscaping businesses that don’t have a plan. To stay on top of it, you need to forecast what kind of landscaping will fit the growing market and how much work your team can realistically handle.
Review Your Current Operations
Start by mapping your current equipment usage, labor hours, project timelines, and workload. Will your existing crew and equipment be enough to take on new contracts? What happens if those projects all start at the same time? Estimate what it would take to fulfill additional contracts in a compressed time frame.
You also need to consider how much work you can afford to add. Review your expenses, income, debt obligations, and available financing to calculate if and how you can afford to staff and supply new contracts. To build extra earnings into your plan, identify your most profitable jobs and prioritize those contracts.
You can protect yourself from overextension and stay in control of your business when you know your limits.
Study the Growing Market
Once you understand your maximum capacity, get a feel for the market and its trajectory. How will landscaping factor into the growth? The more information you have, the better you can prepare.
An uptick in building permits, real estate listings, or population growth signals that landscapers are needed in or near a high-demand zone. These are the areas you’ll likely be working in. Study the different developments to try to predict what kind of landscaping services they need. Take note of any contacts or competitors in the area. Seek to understand the market and predict how your company fits in.
The goal is to focus your efforts and maximize your resources. If you notice mainly commercial developments requiring groundskeeping, you can prepare your crew, equipment, supplies, and financing for that type of work. Or you could focus on a specific location with many new buildings and little competition.
You won’t be able to do it all, so you want to make the most of what you can do.
Build Scalable Systems Now
Growth exposes cracks in your operations beyond labor hours and funding limits. Bills that pile up or hundreds of unread emails can flood your business, too. You need to build a scalable system before the wave of demand hits.
Invest in Management Tools
Tools like CRM software, scheduling tools, invoicing platforms, and inventory tracking are essential. Preparing these systems in advance means you’re ready to ride the wave when the floodgates open.
Scalable systems are entirely or mostly automated. For example, you can assign crews, track materials, and monitor project progress in real time with a project management system. Or you can use automated invoicing to get paid faster and reduce your cash flow gap. With the right tools, you can quickly manage your business and return to work.
Streamline Your Equipment Strategy
Landscaping is equipment-heavy. You already know that trucks, trailers, mowers, and irrigation tools are expensive. And even your best plans can’t keep the company afloat if your equipment strategy weighs you down.
A streamlined approach to machinery focuses on preserving capital and scaling sustainably. Expand your fleet as your projects demand. Rather than sinking all your cash into buying equipment, leverage equipment financing to flexibly access the necessary tools.
If you already own some machinery, consider a sale-leaseback to unlock more capital. You can also consider leasing excavators or dump trucks through heavy equipment financing to preserve your cash flow. Some companies even finance specialty tools through the busy months to avoid locking up capital year-round. Dropping any extra weight you can will make it easier to rise to market needs.
Hire Early and Prepare to Outsource
Recruiting and training full-time employees can become a bottleneck, slowing your expansion right when you need more laborers. You can avoid some pressure by hiring and onboarding before the busy season. A trained crew can hit the ground running.
But you might not be able to add all the workers you’ll need to the payroll before client payments roll in. You can’t allocate all your cash reserves and financing to labor costs.
That’s where outsourcing comes in. Bring on subcontractors for specialized services or use staffing agencies to fill seasonal gaps without overcommitting to permanent labor costs.
When using subcontractors, it’s up to you to maintain standards. Poor quality or unreliability from anyone on your job reflects poorly on your business. The best way to make sure your third-party providers are up to scratch is to build a network of trusted and vetted partners now. Then, when you need to fill the ranks, you can access skilled labor and protect your brand.
Prepare Financing for the Unexpected
No one can predict the future. And in a booming landscaping market, you might see skyrocketing material costs, crippling labor shortages, extreme equipment needs, or significantly delayed payments. You need financing options to meet unexpected demands and keep your expansion plan on track.
Gaining access to capital might mean securing a flexible financing option even before the busy season starts. You can open a business credit card to manage small purchases, secure a line of credit to withdraw significant funds, or cover client payments with invoice financing early in the season.
You can also research and choose the best loan options to apply for later. Online lenders typically offer quick applications, approvals, and funding times, which you can speed up by collecting your business information and deciding which financing you may need right now.
Say you want to take on a large commercial client with 60-day payment terms. You can apply for the fast, unsecured business loan you researched in the off-season and secure the funds quickly enough to earn the contract.
Access to fast capital in your back pocket builds flexibility into your expansion plan. With the right financing available, you can navigate any unexpected challenges and opportunities the growing market sends you.
A Winning Strategy
In a market overflowing with opportunity, your competitors will race to capture as much business as possible. The ones who succeed won’t necessarily be the ones with the most equipment or the biggest crews. They’ll be the ones with a plan.
Now’s the time to act on your winning strategy. Prepare your landscaping businesses before the wave of demand hits, and you will be one of the companies riding ahead of the competition.
