What do you do when you bid for a job

South Africa is abundant with business parks, golf estates, residential estates, botanical gardens and parks, to mention but a few landscaping opportunities around.

Once your landscaping business is established and you have a considerable number of clients and references, it is high time you start expanding your business reach and growing it. You must start thinking of adding commercial or business clients in your client list.

Nowadays, businesses in an attempt to cut costs, prefer to hire a professional landscaper or lawn-care professional to take care of their lawns than keeping someone on a permanent basis.

Business or commercial clients also pay better than individual clients. The only problem you will encounter when looking for business from commercial clients is bidding.

Bidding and presentation skills are some of the things you should sharpen once you start thinking of taking your business to the commercial business level. Unlike in the case of residential clients, the approach is completely different and competition is much harder.

Having thought of bidding for bigger jobs also means that you have to start thinking about improving your marketing and advertising strategies, in order to create awareness about your business.

You must at least do the following in order to bid successfully:

Your presentation should give a detailed summary of what you intend to do for the prospect, how long it is going to take and what it will cost.

Always be on time for the bid, even if you are presenting late.

Dress neatly for the occasion. Remember, even if you own your business you are actually not your own boss, but your own customers are.