The backyard is becoming the new frontier in home maintenance, landscaping and renovations. While 39 percent of homeowners in a 2018 survey conducted by Houzz, an online website that helps connect homeowners with contractors, said landscaping projects take place in the front of their home, 67 percent of those homeowners said they ended up spending more time in their backyard after completing an outdoor project.
What does this mean for you? If you’re looking to grow your landscaping company, incorporating landscape lighting, hardscapes, water features and outdoor sound projects into your business services could increase your customer base and grow sales overall.
If you’re interested in building outdoor living into your business, but don’t know where to start, these four tips can help you ease into these projects.
Take an education course
First and foremost, the best way to begin anything new is to educate yourself. Ewing offers customers a variety of opportunities to help contractors learn about topics ranging from lighting installs to fire pit builds and water feature applications.
Contractors can attend a Ewing Education class that provides in-depth instructional learning on different outdoor living topics. Or, many Ewing locations offer lunch and learn events or hands-on training events as well that can help you grow your knowledge.
If you’re interested in a Ewing Education class or other training opportunities, reach out to your local Ewing location or visit EwingEducation.com.
Know what to ask
Once you’ve taken a class or two to gain a better understanding of how to do one of the projects, the next step is finding the right customer for the right project. In that same Houzz homeowner survey, 38 percent said they added fire pits to their backyard and 35 percent said they updated string lights.
While some jobs are more popular than others, in order to discover what customer is best suited for an outdoor living install or upgrade, you will need to know what to ask.
Anytime you’re on a job at a customer’s home, take a moment to look around the backyard. What is already there? What looks like it may need an upgrade? Talk to your customer about their backyard usage to discover what they might be looking for.
If they spend a significant amount of time outdoors, but don’t have effective lighting, pitching a lighting upgrade could provide them with more opportunities to enjoy their backyard space in the evening hours.
A new pond, a fire pit or outdoor kitchen could give them more opportunities to host and entertain friends and family.
Start with a small project
Building outdoor living services into your business doesn’t have to a challenge. It can start with projects that are an extension of services you already provide.
Jobs like paver repairs can help you ease into larger hardscape projects, like an entire patio installation. You can pick up hardscape sealers and glue to have on-hand when you encounter pavers in need of repair on a job.
If you’re interested in getting into lighting, start with holiday lighting jobs this season to become more comfortable with the service. These Ewing blogs can help you get started, learn which customers to target and how to pitch your services.
Just go for it
When it comes right down to it, the best way to get started with outdoor living jobs is to just go for it. When you partner with Ewing, not only will you get the projects you need to complete your jobs, you can also reach out your local Ewing representatives for expert advice and help with any project you may have.
That’s what Paul’s Lawn did to start building his lighting business. Read his story to find out more.
If you’re interested in building outdoor living into your business services, check out Ewing’s outdoor living products for more information.