Three phone numbers every landscaper should know

Most landscaping owners can tell you what they charge for a spring cleanup or a new bed, down to the dollar. Ask how many calls they missed last week, and you usually get a shrug.

That shrug is worth a look. Here are three numbers you can find in one week with nothing but your phone and a sheet of paper.

A note from Logan

I get asked a lot whether answering is worth it for a small crew. My honest answer is that I don't know until I see your numbers, and neither do you. So before anyone talks about a service, I ask owners to run this check for one week. It costs nothing, and you learn something about your business either way.

I'm in Prosper, and I test every part of this myself. If you run the check and want to talk through what you found, you'll be talking to me, not a help desk.

Number one: how many calls you miss

Start here. For one week, every evening, open your phone's recent calls list and count the calls you didn't answer. Leave out family, spam, and the supplier you already know about. Write the count down, and next to it, how many came after 5 PM or on a weekend.

Landscaping makes this hard to guess, because your phone is in your pocket while the mower is running. You're on a zero-turn, behind a trimmer, or running a blower across a driveway. You don't hear it ring. You find the missed call at lunch, or at the truck at the end of the day.

A few things to look for in the count:

• When they cluster. Mid-morning, while the crew is on the first big property, is a common one. So is the drive between jobs.
• After hours. People look at their yard on Saturday and call that afternoon. People in new neighborhoods call in the evening when they get home.
• Unknown numbers. Those are often the new customers. Your regulars text you.

You don't need the count to be perfect. You need it to be real instead of a guess.

Number two: how long until you call back

For each missed call on your list, write down when you called back. Not when you meant to. When you actually did.

This is the number most owners are surprised by. Say a homeowner in a new build calls at 10:15 on a Tuesday wanting a quote on sod and a sprinkler fix. You see it at 12:30, but you're on the next property, so you call back at 5:40 from the truck. That feels fast to you. You called the same day.

To the homeowner, it was seven hours. In that time, they had the whole afternoon to call two other companies. If one of them picked up, that company is already coming out Thursday to measure the yard.

Look at your callback times for the week. Then ask yourself honestly: if you were the one calling, would you have waited?

Number three: how many never left a message

Now compare your missed calls to your voicemails. How many people called and didn't leave one?

Owners often assume a caller who didn't leave a message wasn't serious. Sometimes that's true. But a lot of people just don't like voicemail. They hang up and dial the next name in the search results. You'll never know what they wanted, because there's nothing to call back about. You might not even call back an unknown number with no message.

Those calls are the quietest leak in a landscaping business. They don't show up as lost jobs. They just don't show up.

Two more questions while you're at it

The three numbers are the core. If you want a fuller picture, add these:

• How many of those missed callers became customers? Go back through the week and check.
• What were the calls about? Mowing, cleanups, irrigation, drainage, a full redesign. A missed call about a backyard install is not the same as a missed call about a one-time mow.

This turns a list of missed calls into a list of jobs you had a shot at.

What to do with the numbers

If you miss one or two calls a week and call back within the hour, good. You probably don't need anything. Keep doing what you're doing.

If you're missing a handful of calls a day in the busy months, calling back hours later, and half of them never left a message, that's the gap.

That's what missed-call and after-hours answering covers. Your phone still rings first. The calls you don't pick up forward to your answering line, which answers in your company's name, asks what the job is, where the property is, and how soon they need someone, and passes those details to you. You still quote the job and set the time. It just keeps the caller from moving on to the next company while you finish the yard you're on. More on how that works is on the call answering page.

Run it during the free trial

You can do this check on paper. Or you can let the 14 free days do it for you. During the trial, every call you would have missed is answered and written down, with the time, the caller, and what they wanted. At the end, you have your three numbers in front of you, and you decide whether $250 a month is worth keeping. There's no contract.

For what those two weeks look like day by day, read what your 14 free days look like.

Run the check this week. If the numbers say you're losing calls, Logan will set you up and walk you through what the trial finds. Start your 14 free days.