Clutchy

I'd love to take you out for dinner as well but again ill be asking soooooo many questions, it might be annoying. I was looking to buy a target account list of North London block management companies but couldn't find anything suitable. I did it manually (searches the web, writing down the emails and popping over an intro) but took ages just to get 20 Drummed up a few quotes from it.

The invite is there... However I will have a million and one questions 😂 If you're serious PM me your location and your favourite local restaurant and we can fix a date.

No, wasn't planning on getting qualified for those for quite a few years. Ill drop a few intro emails. I can never tell if emailing is a better option to calling as I know i find it so annoying when people solicit me over the phone

Couldn't agree more, I'm trying to 'know' more people! I don't think local networking groups are worth much. Well not the ones I've been to. Was a massive circle jerk, the only thing to come out of it were a few domestic jobs.

100% agree Not looking to expand as such as I know margins are so crap in this game its not worth the extra stress. Just trying to find out how to aquire more commercial work I think.

Hoping to get some advice from someone who has progressed their business to the next 'level' as it were. Currently we do around 80% domestic and 20% commercial. By commercial I mean the odd small scale site clearance and pruning for building site preparation - typically projects that take around 4-5 days with a 4 man crew (2 vans, skid steer, 6-8 inch chipper) and bring in around 7-10k + VAT. Rarely do we have any jobs/contracts that exceed £10-15K plus VAT. The remainder of our commercial work is generally for estate agents, working from an arb survey for block management typically. We have sub contracted for large companies with council contracts in London boroughs in the past but struggled to ever consistently make more than 450 + VAT a day for a 2 man team. This isn't something we enjoyed either. I really like working from Arb surveys and the site prep work. We are really good on the H&S side of things and we are CHAS accredited (Although its never actually got us any work directly...) paperwork and response time via email is very good too. Does anyone have any advice on how to pursue more of this kind of work? Haven't had any success on procurement sites as they always seem to be contracts of £200k plus which of course we would never win, nor would I want one client making up the majority of our yearly turn over. Happy to take anyone in the know out for dinner to talk if you could ever spare the time? Hard to find any content online specific to our industry (Open to suggestions if there is, even if it costs to join). Willing to drive pretty much anywhere in the UK for the right conversation. Many thanks

Why? Anyway Managed to get the OP done in 2 days fortunately, still didn't get home until 10pm as there was an emergency call out as soon as we got to the yard at 5pm 🥵. Quoted on an hourly call out rate plus initial attendance fee and said I have no idea how many hours it will take (first time ever, normally just quote high from a pic, but couldn't see what was going on with the trees). Anyway, he said my rate was fine and then used the word Prima facie: adjective 'based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise' Had to look it up to know what it meant, will be using that as a caveat with any quotes based off of pictures from now on. Every day is a school day

Yeah definitely prefer removals. Especially as customers so often want a 20 meter tall Conifer hedge reduced to 7 meters but 'I still want it to look nice' - well you can't 😂 So much chip comes off them as well

Conny has to be the most common price cock up, certainly is for us. I'm so scared from misjudging the depth/width of them previously and having super long days that I think we now overprice ourselves out of ever winning them!

I cannot tell you how tempting it was to jump back into the van and go home this morning

So, whats the biggest cock up you've made on a quote? So today we turned up to a job we quoted 1.5 years ago (Subsidence case, took ages for them to allow the fell due to TPO) to take down a twin stem Ash. Didn't bother adding the normal 10% as we have worked for him before at other properties. Quoted in Winter 2019 where we had to lower our prices a bit, couldn't fully see the size of the base (Fence covered it and owner decided to go out before our appointment) and was covered in Ivy. Quoted £975 inc VAT estimated it would take a day, be gone by 2pm 1 van of chip, 1 logs. Not great money I know but was a noob back then. Holy shit, took 1.5hrs to get to Hampstead today, the stems hidden by the Ivy were huge as was the base. Got 50% of the brash down today and some of the front stem. 1 Full van of logs, 1 of chip, going to easily be there another full day, maybe even a third! At least 2 more loads of logs and another for chip 😭 Lots of it needs rigging. Wouldn't dream of saying we need more money, just gotta suck it up I suppose. Not had a bad one like that for a while

Interesting to see so many people thinking the same. Someone made a thread about a tree surgery 'bubble' but didn't expect it to burst until winter! Glad we didn't take on another gang, will just be a shame to not be able to take a fat dividend at the end of the year lol 😆 After chasing the marketing agent calls have started to come in, 3 or 4 a day so will just reduce prices slightly and build up 4 weeks of work hopefully. Got a juicy quote yesterday for a site clearance in a very large garden but quoting against 6 other firms : 0

I think its something to avoid after having a conversation with RT. Short term it works, but its not good long term.

This is exactly what forums are for, thank you for sharing/helping. I can't be the only person who didn't know this 😂 I had the mentality of if it works it works. No need to ask questions...

I'll PM you the details, thank you.