Pricing and quoting for landscaping and lawn care work
How to present prices for maintenance and installs, good better best packages, deposits on hardscape, and the way pricing decides what your marketing can do.
Pricing is a marketing decision in this trade, not just an accounting one. A company that charges $38 a cut has to advertise to a different person, on a different channel, with a different offer, than a company that charges $70 and shows up with two guys and a clean trailer. Most owners set price by copying the guy down the road and then wonder why their ads bring in customers who argue about $5.
Know your cost per hour before anything else
The only number that makes pricing decisions easy is your loaded cost per crew hour: wages, payroll taxes, workers comp, fuel, equipment replacement, insurance, and a share of overhead. For most residential companies that lands between $55 and $95 per crew hour. Run yours honestly, including the mowers you will replace in three years.
Then price by time. A quarter-acre lot that takes a two-man crew 22 minutes on a route with four stops on the same street is a different job from the same lot ten minutes out on its own, and it should carry a different price. Route density is margin. Price it in.
Presenting maintenance prices
Publish a range, not a number, and publish it publicly. Most companies refuse and then spend the season on the phone qualifying people who were never going to pay.
A working format for the website and the Google profile:
Weekly mowing, residential lots up to a quarter acre: $45 to $70 per visit, including trim, edge and blow. Half-acre to one acre: $70 to $110. Prices depend on gates, slope and obstacles. Seasonal contracts billed monthly.
That paragraph does four jobs at once. It filters the price shoppers, it gives the AI answer engines a fact to quote (see the AI search guide), it makes ad clicks convert better, and it stops your office from negotiating.
Bill monthly for the season rather than per visit. A flat monthly number smooths your cash flow, survives the weeks with rain, and roughly doubles the odds that the customer stays through a slow August.
Good, better, best for maintenance
Three tiers, sold on one page, is the highest-return pricing change available in lawn maintenance because most customers will not pick the cheapest one when a middle option exists.
- Basic, $X a month: mow, trim, edge, blow. Weekly in season.
- Complete, about 1.6 times Basic: everything in Basic plus spring and fall cleanup, two fertilizer and weed control rounds, and shrub trimming twice.
- Full Property, about 2.4 times Basic: everything in Complete plus aeration and overseeding, mulch refresh, irrigation start-up and blowout, and priority scheduling.
Present them side by side with the middle one marked as what most customers choose, because it will be. Typical split once companies do this is roughly 25% Basic, 55% Complete, 20% Full. The average account value rises 40% to 70% without a single price increase on the base service.
The other benefit is retention. A customer who bought only mowing leaves the first time a neighbor quotes $10 less. A customer whose fertilizer schedule, mulch and irrigation are all with you does not.
Quoting installs and hardscape
Different discipline entirely. Three rules.
Price on site, or promise a time and hit it. The company that hands over a number at the walkthrough, or texts it by 6 p.m. the next day, wins jobs from companies that quote a week later at a lower price. Speed reads as competence.
Quote in ranges only where the range is real. "Paver patio, 320 square feet, Techo-Bloc Blu 60, 8 inch compacted base, polymeric sand, $9,600 to $10,400 depending on excavation." A number that specific tells the customer you have built it before. A round $10,000 with no detail invites negotiation.
Show a comparable. Attach two photos of a similar finished project with the town and the price. This is where the before and after library the crews are building pays off, and it is why the Meta ads guide insists on shooting every job.
Give three options where you can: the patio as asked, the patio with a seat wall and lighting, and a smaller phase-one version. Buyers who are given only one number compare you to other companies. Buyers given three options compare your options to each other.
Deposits and payment terms
- Maintenance: autopay on card or ACH, billed monthly on the first. No exceptions, and say so in the agreement. Chasing $220 checks in November is not a business model.
- Installs under $5,000: 30% deposit to schedule, balance on completion.
- Installs over $5,000: 30% deposit, 40% on material delivery, 30% on completion. Never take final payment before the customer has walked the finished job with you.
- Change orders in writing, even if the writing is a text message they reply "yes" to. Hardscape disputes are almost always about something nobody wrote down.
Offer financing for jobs over about $8,000. A third-party consumer financing option typically costs you 3% to 6% of the ticket and converts a meaningful share of "we will do it next year" into work this month.
How pricing changes what marketing can do
Two companies in the same town with the same trucks:
Company A charges $40 a cut, runs a thin margin, and cannot afford $30 per lead on Google. Their only viable channels are door hangers, yard signs and referrals, which are cheap but slow and limited to streets they already work. Their marketing budget is effectively zero.
Company B charges $65 a cut with a $220 a month Complete package. An account is worth $2,640 a year. They can spend $150 to acquire it and still make money in year one, which unlocks Google Ads, Meta ads and paid AI visibility. See the Google Ads guide for what those cost.
Company B does not have better marketing. They have better prices, which is what allows marketing to exist. If your ads are not working, check your average account value before you blame the ads.
Raising prices
Raise once a year, in writing, in January or February, before the season starts. Three to seven percent on existing accounts is absorbed almost invisibly. Give a reason and a date: "Fuel and insurance are up, your weekly rate goes from $55 to $59 starting March 1. Everything else stays the same." Expect to lose two to five percent of accounts, almost always the ones that cost you the most to service.
Then use the space. Companies that never raise prices end up with a full route that makes no money, and no budget to replace the customers they lose anyway.
Frequently asked
Should I put prices on my website? Ranges, yes. Exact prices for install work, no. The range filters your leads before they reach the phone, and the trade-off, a few price shoppers who never call, is a benefit.
A competitor quotes 30% under me. Do I match? No. Sell the difference in writing: base depth, insurance, crew size, response time, whether they will still be around in October. If you match on price you have taught the customer that your first number was fake.
How do I price commercial? Per year, per property, with a scope document listing visit counts and inclusions. Commercial buyers compare apples to apples on paper, and the company with the clearest scope usually wins over the cheapest number.
Pricing pages, quote templates and follow-up sequences are part of the free 14-day trial. Text or call (385) 832-6175.