# Landing Commercial jobs



## IrriPro (Apr 7, 2013)

Anyone on here had any luck landing contracts with places like walgreens for example? Im sticking with Irrigation specifically. My angle is to provide the customer with a knowledgable Irrigation technician who can maintane the site properly. Its no doubt many commercial sites are taken care of by joe mow and blow who really dosent know what a good irrigation system is or how to fix one. Id like to see a trend where we seperate Irrigation technicians from the guys mowing and blowing. Its two different trades completely. If a skilled Irrigation technician also has a mow crew thats one thing. But mow crews have no business working on irrigation. What say you?


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## griz (Nov 26, 2009)

From what I have seen on new construction or large scale remodels, the contract landscape crew comes in and installs irrigation & vegetation.

Afterwards it is usually up to the local store manager to contract with a local company for maintenance. Going to be tough being just a sprinkler guy as all the lawn mowing guys fix/install sprinklers also.


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## peteo (Jan 8, 2011)

Not to mention lawn sprinklers aren't the most complicated systems. I'll concede not everyone should or can do it but its not exactly a specialty. Case in point, I just did a decent sized drainage job for a customer last week. We destroyed his irrigation system since the company that installed it wouldn't give us a map of where everything was. After a couple hours and a trip to lowes we had the whole thing back together and working properly. I'm not dumping on your business so please don't take offense, I'm just saying irrigation isn't that complicated and to have that be your only source of revenue, you might find a lot of competition from most landscape guys.


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## leeson1776 (Feb 6, 2012)

Peteo, you're oversimplifying it: just because you managed to repair an existing system doesn't mean it's simple. Irrigation can be incredibly complex, depending on how well optimized it is, and being well optimized is very important for large systems with valuable landscaping. Here in CO water is expensive and plants can be hard to keep alive: it takes an expert to keep all the plants healthy while not wasting water. Some systems have dozens and dozens of zones. 

Anyway, to the OP: Good luck. What you're doing is similar to what I do in that it's specialized. 
You have to meet with the property managers and try to get a minute of their time to explain what you can offer them and why they need you. One way to do that is to just go door to door to business. 

Now a place like Walgreens may not have an in-house property manager, they might use a property management company, but you can always ask. 
Go around to the different property management companies too and tell them about yourself. They are very dumb people so speak to them like they are children lol. Bring some sales material and copies of your insurance/ licenses and then follow up with them so they don't forget about you.

You should also have a web presence directed towards obtaining commercial accounts. Here's mine: http://www.arbor-x.net/services/commercial-tree-care/
Then you can have an Adwords campaign to drive that very specific type of customer to this page. You could bid on "commercial irrigation contractor" for example. 

I'd also suggest co-operating as much as you can with other companies in your area that do commercial lawn care, but don't do sprinkler work. There may be one or two. 

Networking is important too. Think about getting on LinkedIn and maybe joining your local Chamber of Commerce (think long and hard first lol). The more people you know, the better.

I'm just beginning to pick up some commercial work, it's been tough. You have to be persistent before you get on someone's radar.


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## kellanv (Aug 8, 2013)

Typically, most commercial jobs here are installed under one landscape company that does everything, or possibly a landscape company with an irrigation sub (or multiple subs).

As far as maintenance, most of the "mow and blow" companies offer irrigation checks/services but quality seems to vary greatly. You will have to sell sell sell and market to get in the door and possibly you may get an audience/contract but a lot of management companies like the one-stop-shop deal.


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