Getting Paid for "Picking up the Rocks"

Attention to detail is what The Lawnsmith thrives on, and ever since the company added parking lot sweeping in 2003, attention to detail is what’s been getting them work. In fact, it’s attention to detail that got The Lawnsmith, Colorado Springs, CO, its first sweeping job.

“It was a cold call on Wal-Mart,” says Keith Bellingham, president.

He says the Wal-Mart parking lot had numerous islands throughout, and the islands contain decorative river rock—smooth, round pebbles that every day end up outside the islands and on the parking lot pavement.

“I cold called the property manager and he asked me if I’d return the rocks to the islands because apparently the current sweeper wasn’t doing that. I said ‘Yes I would’ and he said ‘Can you start tonight?’ and I said ‘Yes I can’. We’ve been doing that Wal-Mart ever since,” Bellingham says.

He says operators pick the rock up with shovels, adding about 25% to the time spent on the property. “But we get paid for picking up the rocks, we don’t do it for free,” Belligham says. “So our first job had to do with attention to detail and I realized right away that that was something we could provide to set us apart from other sweepers.”

Today The Lawnsmith provides lawn maintenance, parking lot sweeping and snow and ice management to Colorado Springs and surrounding towns. Work is split almost evenly among the three services, and the company employees between 5 and 12 people depending on the season.

For sweeping the company runs three Tymco 210s, and for snow and ice management it runs two skid steers, a front-end loader and eight plow trucks to handle its 28 snow accounts (which include three Wal-marts). Snow removal includes four services, each charged separately based on time and materials: plowing, shoveling, ice melt on sidewalks and ice melt on parking lots. Work is charged by time and materials. On several accounts such as its Wal-Mart snow accounts ice management is a seasonal contract spread out over eight months.

Lawn Care to Sweeping

Initially The Lawnsmith was a lawn maintenance company offering maintenance and irrigation. Bellingham says he’s been in the business “since fourth grade” and the business was doing fine...until 2002 when a severe drought hit Colorado Springs area.

“In 2002 the region went through a nasty drought and watering restrictions were in place,” he says. “Customers were calling to skip lawn service and that negatively affected us in a really big way. It didn’t take us long to figure out we had to do something different.”

He says they decided on parking lot sweeping because of their familiarty with commercial customers and because, in that market at that time, Colorado Springs property managers needed a sweeping service.

“At that time property managers were using a sand/salt mixture on their parking lots to control snow and ice and their parking lots were always a mess. So they were in need of sweeping,” he says.

He said over the winter of 2002-2003 they planned their diversification, and he tried selling sweeping services to his lawn maintenance customers – with little result.

“I tried to sell them before I bought the machine but it was not that effective. There were not many customers that could use a sweeping service,” he says.

But that didn’t dissuade him. They bought a $63,000 Tymco 210 – with one $80/month sweeping account to support it. “March 3, 2003 was my first night sweeping that first Wal-Mart,” he says.

And while one $80 account isn’t going to support a sweeper, he says he wasn’t concerned.

“I knew I could make it work. I would just sell jobs,” he says. “I began cold calling and knocking on doors and meeting with property managers and that’s how I grew the business. Growth began to happen pretty quickly, within a year.”

Selling Quality, not Price

He says the accounts he called on all were using other vendors to do the sweeping, but customers weren’t satisfied with the quality of the work.

“That’s when I knew we were going to make it because we pride ourselves on the quality of the work we do,” Bellingham says. “Quality means more handwork on large commercial jobs. We get out of the truck with our backpack blowers and just get more detail than the other contractors. The quality of the work is what we’re focused on and we learned that from that very first job that we got.”

He says that in addition to providing more detail-oriented work, The Lawnsmith is licensed by Colorado Dept. of Agriculture for weed control on turf and industrial right of ways “and none of our competitors are licensed for that.” And he says The Lawnsmith is more inclusive than its competition.

“We’re capable of full-service grounds maintenance – irrigation, lawn care, sweeping and snow and ice management. No other company in this market can offer that,” he says, adding that his company does “a lot more snow removal than our competition.”

He says that even growing by 100% cold calls, The Lawnsmith doesn’t pursue any business by cutting prices.

“We’re always priced higher than our competition; we can’t get around it,” he says. “Our competitors don’t charge enough and, frankly, I don’t think they know what it costs to do the work, either lawn care or sweeping.”

He says that makes it difficult to sell sweeping to customers who don’t already have a sweeping service because they are more likely to just get three bids and pick the least-expensive one.

“But hopefully the properties that have a sweeping service are dissatisfied with the contractor they have,” he says. “If they’re dissatisfied with the quality they’re getting they’re likely to be willing to pay a little more to get what they want.”