An aspect of business development involves preparing and presenting proposals. While a scope is not always available, we make assumptions and present a proposal based on what is a typical landscape management practice in the industry. Remember that the proposal given can be adjusted based on three factors. The three factors are the price, quantity and the quality. The scope of a project involves both the quantity and the quality. When an estimator gets any two of these factors we can easily figure out the third factor. For example, by adjusting the frequency of service visits, pruning times or the amount of fertilizations we can affect the proposal price. Or give us the budget and some quality expectations and we can figure out the quantities needed to meet the expectations. Having a discussion with your landscaper can help you decide how to adjust the scope of a proposal to meet your sites needs as well as meet the landscape maintenance budget. A good practice is to walk the site with prospective landscape contractors so that all expectations are clearly defined and that all areas that are in the scope are clearly identified.
It is often difficult to get competing proposals to be apples to apples and this will help in reducing the differences. When you have big differences in prices between companies, remember to see if the quantity and quality numbers are similar. Beyond these numbers, most landscape management companies are pulling from similar labor pools and therefore have similar labor costs, so the most common difference in proposals is the kind of service you are receiving. Make sure that your expectations on a site match the proposals and that the company can fulfill your expectations. Landscape maintenance is an important part of a site. It can act as advertising to future tenants or create and aesthetically appealing property that will invite guests or customers to visit. We, at Commercial Landscape Management, believe that landscape maintenance is just one aspect of many things that can affect your site and we want to work with you to make the site a valuable part of your portfolio.