Book Description

Book & CD-ROM. If you enjoy working outdoors and want to incorporate your creativity into your work, operating a small nursery, landscaping, or lawn service may be the perfect business for you. In fact, many operators combine all three of these elements to make an ideal year-round business. This is an ideal home-based business and can be started with just a few thousand pounds. This guide provides readers with an understanding of the basic concepts of starting their own service business. The book offers a comprehensive and detailed study of the business side of the nursery and landscape business. You will learn everything from the initial start-up decisions to working with clients. If you are investigating opportunities in this type of business, you should begin by reading this book. If you enjoy working with people and working outdoors, this may be the perfect business for you. Keep in mind that this business looks easy but, as with any business, looks can be deceiving. This complete manual will arm you with everything you need, including sample business forms; contracts; worksheets and checklists for planning, opening, and running day-to-day operations; setting up your office; plans and layouts; and dozens of other valuable, timesaving tools of the trade that no business should be without. While providing detailed instruction and examples, the author leads you through every detail that will bring success. You will learn how to draw up a winning business plan (the companion CD-ROM has the actual business plan you can use in Microsoft Word) and about choosing a name, equipment, equipment maintenance, selling your other services to your present customers, how to attract and bid on residential and commercial accounts, contracts and billing procedures, advertising, insurance, legal matters, basic cost control systems, market research, getting new clients, tax laws, pricing, leads, sales and marketing techniques, and pricing formulas. You will learn how to set up computer systems to save time and money, how to hire and keep a qualified professional staff, how to manage and train employees, how to generate high profile public relations and publicity, and how to implement low cost internal marketing ideas. You will learn how to build your business by using low and no cost ways to satisfy customers, as well as ways to increase sales and have customers refer others to you. You will learn about basic accounting and bookkeeping procedures, auditing, successful budgeting, and profit planning development, as well as thousands of great tips and useful guidelines. This manual delivers innovative ways to streamline your business. Learn new ways to make your operation run smoother and increase performance. Successful entrepreneurs will appreciate this valuable resource and reference it in their daily activities as a source of ready-to-use forms, Web sites, operating and cost cutting ideas, and mathematical formulas that can easily be applied to their operations. The companion CD-ROM contains all the forms found in the book, as well as a sample business plan you can adapt for your own use.