Welcome to our second article on the art of selling garden design. We’ve created a handout to help explain the concept of garden design to your clients.

Several My Garden Design customers have told us that their clients are sometimes reluctant to invest in garden design. One of the skills of selling is knowing how to overcome objections. To help you with this, we’ve created a free, downloadable handout to help your clients understand why garden design is crucial to a successful project. It’s very easy to customise for your own business and hopefully will be a useful selling tool for you.

What’s in the leaflet?

• Describes garden design and explains what a garden layout plan actually is
• Highlights the benefits of having an agreed garden design to work to
• Explains how landscapers use garden layout plans for quoting and project management
• Reveals the garden design process
• Clarifies exactly what is covered in the cost of a garden layout plan
• Gives details of optional extras such as 3D design and planting plans
• With space for you to add your own logo and contact details
• Add your own pricing information
• Print and post or send as an email attachment

Click here to download the free handout (you’ll also find this link at the bottom of the page)

A client’s eye view of garden design

As a landscaper, you know just how important it is to have a clear garden design to work with. You need it for quoting, procurement, accurately marking out the site, project management, and of course for managing your customer’s expectations.

From the client’s perspective though, garden design can seem a little like an unexpected cost. Step into the client’s shoes for a moment and think about some of your own experiences of buying “big” items. A new van, a kitchen, a 3-piece suite – all high-cost items where the buyer can influence aspects of the design. It’s pretty unusual for the customer to be asked to pay separately for the design element. And that’s where the sticking point comes with garden design – people don’t expect to pay.

The difference between landscaping and retail is, that if, when you receive your van/kitchen/3-piece you absolutely hate it, the vendor is able to take it away and sell it to someone else. Nobody loses out and everyone is happy (ish). However, garden design is super-bespoke and a new garden cannot simply be taken away. (Plus, unlike some industries, landscaping profit margins are nowhere near generous enough to absorb the loss)

Our downloadable handout will help your clients to understand that the landscaping industry is very much like construction in that the finished product is not portable. Because it’s so difficult to change the specification part-way through a project – it’s crucial to have a firm plan of action. Garden layout plans are unique to the garden and to the client. They take a long time to craft and therefore cannot be created for free.

 

The construction industry requires architects’ plans and builders. Landscaping needs garden layout plans and skilled craftsmen to bring them to life.

The MGD “Guide to Good Garden Design” leaflet

The My Garden Design Team has created a document template that you can use to help your clients understand why they need garden design and what to expect for their money.

This document is free for you to download, customise, and use as a sales tool.

We’ve kept it simple – it’s a “word” document so easy to edit and change to suit your own business.

You can add your logo and contact details if you want to – in fact we strongly recommend that you do. If you want to make the document look uber-professional, ask a graphic designer to use the text alongside some of your own photographs to create a glossy leaflet.

The very last section of the handout has a section where you can fill in the garden measurements and your price for garden design. (Use the Quick Quote tool on our website for an instant quote) That way you can leave the document with your clients if they need to mull over their decision.

Don’t forget – that this can also be saved on your computer as a pdf document so that you can email it to clients AND keep a record of what you’ve quoted.

Ready to learn more?

Download the document here

Try our Quick Quote tool for pricing garden design projects 

Understand your client’s decision-making process