How to get more gardening clients and turn one-off jobs into regulars

Someone looking for a gardener usually messages two or three at once, and the first clear, friendly reply tends to get the job. Answer the same day, even if it's only to say you can come and look on Thursday.

Most gardening businesses lose more work between enquiry and booked visit than they ever lose to competitors. A few follow-ups cover most of it:

Offer a short menu, such as fortnightly maintenance, seasonal hedge cutting and one-off clearances, each with a price guide. A client can pick 'fortnightly maintenance, mowing and edging included' without a phone call to find out what it means. Our guide to quoting and pricing gardening work covers the numbers.

Put before and after photos from your own jobs on your website or Facebook page, with the client's permission. List the towns or postcodes you cover too, so you stop getting enquiries from places you'd never drive to.

When the client says yes, book it that day. Fieldfare turns the accepted quote into a live job with the client, site and work already filled in, and a regular visit is set up once and keeps appearing on the calendar.

Clients leave gardeners over reliability far more often than over price. Turn up on the day you said, and if rain pushes Tuesday to Thursday, text them on Monday night.

It's also easy to lose track of who has drifted. A client who had you fortnightly until July skips two visits, and nobody notices until spring. Fieldfare shows the last visit date against every client and flags the ones who have gone quiet, so by February you have a list of people to ring before they book someone else. Each site keeps its own access notes, photos and visit history, so whoever turns up knows the gate code and where the green waste goes. More on that in CRM for a gardening business.

Ask happy clients for a review or a referral soon after a visit they were pleased with, while they still remember it. Neighbours watch you work on a front garden every fortnight, and some of them will ask for your number.

An enquiry from next door is worth more than one from across town because it fits a route you already drive. Before you say yes to a new address, check where it falls. Fieldfare puts each day's jobs on a map, so you can see whether the new house sits between two Wednesday clients or half an hour off the round. For reshaping the week around new work, see how to plan weekly gardening routes.