Trade Guides
The Landscaper's Guide to AI
Twelve pages for Australian landscapers on missed calls, unchased quotes, live-priced materials and the texts that fix them. Free.
A landscaper spends five hours quoting a $25,000 garden and then never follows up. That's not a quoting problem. That's a $25,000 problem.
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Where your week goes
| The job that isn't the job | What it actually looks like | Hours a week |
|---|---|---|
| Quoting and design | Site visit, measure up, plant list, materials, the drawing, the write-up, then nothing | 5 hrs |
| Missed and returned calls | On the excavator, laying pavers, hands full of soil | 2.5 hrs |
| Materials and suppliers | Ringing the nursery, the quarry, the paver yard for prices and availability | 2 hrs |
| Scheduling around weather | Rain day. Ring everyone. Reshuffle the week | 1.5 hrs |
| Invoicing and chasing | Staged payments, final invoice, chasing the balance | 1.5 hrs |
| Client updates | When are you back, is it done, what do I water | 1 hr |
| Marketing you meant to do | The best before-and-afters in any trade, sitting in your camera roll | 0.5 hrs |
| Time you are not billing | 14 hrs |
That's 672 hrs a year, or $30,240 at $90/hr if only half those admin hours became billable time.
These are estimates for a typical 2 to 10 person landscaper business, not a measurement of yours. Put your own numbers in. Most owners who do this find they were guessing low.
A landscaper spends five hours quoting a $25,000 garden and then never follows up. That's not a quoting problem. That's a $25,000 problem.
The short version, if you read nothing else
- You're losing more jobs to a missed call than to a competitor. Switch on missed-call text-back today. It's the cheapest thing in the guide and the biggest.
- The quote you never chased was the job you already paid for. Three follow-ups, written once, sent automatically.
- Price the materials off today's prices, put a validity date on the quote, and stop paying for the difference yourself.
- Your job photos are your marketing. One a day, posted on Friday in 20 minutes. Suburb in the caption.
- Your past customers are your quiet months. A message on the right date, in your name, sent for you.
- AI does the admin. It doesn't do the trade, the judgement or the cashflow. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
The landscaper who's booked in July isn't lucky. He messaged his past clients in April.
Get the Landscaper's Guide guide
Twelve pages, written for Australian landscapers. Free.