about me or were responsive to my needs,’” Koudys said. At the start of his career, Koudys was conscious of building a certain reputation. He wanted people to say, “He’s not the least expensive, but he’s the best.” So, he sought clients who wanted the best and were willing to pay for it. His best advice for finding these clients? Go to the golf course. “Insert yourself into that community. People hire people they know. You want to position yourself so that when opportunity knocks, you can open the door,” Koudys said. One eye is king When asked why he thinks so many landscape designers and architects undersell, Koudys pointed to a lack of confidence. If you’re trying to penetrate a client market you didn’t grow up in — for instance, if the golf course wasn’t your typical Saturday — it can be difficult to ask for the numbers you deserve. Many designers work solo, which inhibits confidence. “Because [designers] are in silos, they have no idea what others are charging,” Koudys said. He advocated for increased community building within the design sector through events like designers conferences to give designers opportunities to discuss issues like pricing. Of course, experience is a big part of building confidence. Koudys always knew he wanted to be a landscape architect. He worked in his family business growing up, but when he first graduated from university and began landing his own jobs, he felt like an imposter. He described an enlightening conversation he had with his grandmother: “I said, ‘People are hiring me because I’m supposed to know stuff, and I don’t think I really do yet, and there’s so much to learn!’ And my grandmother pulled me aside and said, ‘Ron, in the land of the blind, one eye is king.’ And your clients are blind! Although you don’t see clearly, you see better than they do, and you can provide guidance.” As you progress in your career and gain experience and confidence, you can charge more. Koudys can put together a design faster than a new graduate and his clients will pay for that skill. Likewise, if a client presents a fresh idea that will require him to learn something new, Koudys won’t always charge for that extra time, because it’s an
someone you trust to talk about it. After the wakeup call, Wilton advises companies to stop for a second and take a deep breath. “It doesn’t mean your business is going under,” he explained. “You’ll definitely find a way through. And I think the key is to stop working on site for a second. Not forever, necessarily, but take time to look at your business. Understand what you do better than anybody else, and that’s what you should be selling to your customers.” This is where understanding your value — and to whom you best provide that value — comes into play. “Each landscape company offers slightly different value in different places. Some are low-cost leaders; some provide a higher level of service, and they should charge for that,” Wilton said. “Understanding who your customer is, what they value, qualifying them, [and] really listening to them on the front end will give you a better alignment on your pricing, and whether that customer is for you or not.” Trim Landscaping prides itself on offering a high level of service to its customers. It has a large staff, invests in training and has the capacity for commercial clients who need a lot of reporting. Clients get more support, which comes with a higher cost. If they won’t pay for it, they’re not the right client. The pain point When investigating your unique value, it’s useful to think about the “triangle” of price, quality and schedule. Usually, Wilton said, you have to pick two of the three; you must evaluate which two are most important to
a potential customer and tailor your service accordingly. Ideally, your priorities should align with that of your clients. “Our customers want to get value on the price side, but generally speaking, they want great service, their project done quickly, at one of the highest levels of quality. And we have to charge for that,” Wilton said. His company doesn’t take on residential projects under $100,000 — Wilton holds nothing against those customers, but Trim’s model doesn’t provide the best value for them. A different company will provide different value to a different clientele. It's all about identifying what Wilton calls the pain point: where your customer is experiencing pain. When Wilton and his partner incorporated their business in 2010, prospective clients were hiring several different experts for one project. Trim filled that need, building up diverse in-house crews and a team of subcontractors to manage every aspect of a client’s project — from design, to hardscaping, to softscaping. “If you can solve [the pain point], you can charge for that. If there’s no pain, there’s no sale,” Wilton said. Ron Koudys, owner of Ron Koudys Landscape Architects in London, Ont., also prices based on the value he brings to clients. “You need to use pricing to position yourself in the market you want,” he said. “What market do you want to function in?” If you want to offer a high-quality service, you can’t undercharge; if you do, you’ll feel resentful of the extra time you’re spending on a client who isn’t paying you for it. The client will sense that resentment: “[They] will say, ‘Well, [that company] was OK, but I never really felt like they cared
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