Rejected by a landscape lighting company?

Rejected by a landscape lighting company?

By Mike Gambino

Have you ever been turned down by a landscape lighting company or a trades person?

You may have been rejected, but a savvy contractor’s manner of turning down clients may be so artful that you don’t even realize it happened. All you know is that you’re calling other companies.

First, why would a potential client be rejected by a landscape lighting company? Aren’t all landscape lighting companies desperate for clients?

No they are not. Well, not all of them, anyway. In my decades of practicing in the industry, I’ve had these reasons for subtly turning a client away:

• We are just so booked up that we can’t currently take on another project at that time.

• The homeowners are obsessed with price, with getting a deal, and put that above all else, even down to questioning the cost of a single fixture.

• The homeowners may be excruciatingly picky and demand way more perfection than is probable or possible. While we may cater to super picky people with high-end projects, the costs are proportionate and we draw the line when owners want to squeeze a nickel yet want everything perfect.

* The homeowners may be rude or disrespectful and don’t have time or are never available to discuss critical aspects of their landscape lighting design and installation. If a client seems disrespectful of different genders, races, sexual orientation or whatever, I will not take the job and subject myself and employees to that.

• The homeowner may have a brittle personality and be just unpleasant to be around. Who needs that?

• The potential client may have had poor experiences with or sued previous contractors and will be looking to take it out on the next poor unsuspecting contractor who works on the property. One way contractors find this out is to ask about past experiences with home improvement contractors. If a homeowners has nothing but complaints about past service providers, that reveals a lot.

In these cases and more, we are wise not to pursue particular jobs. But we do so in a way that doesn’t anger or disrespect the homeowners, as those homeowners might well refer other people who are more compatible with our company.

If you are being rejected, you’ll hear phrases like this:

• We’re not a good fit for your project.

• I’ll give you the names of other companies.

• We’re too busy to take this on right now.

Or, a strategy used by some home improvement companies when they face a difficult client is to price the job so high that the bid is sure to be rejected. And if the high bid is accepted, at least there is extra money to make the painful job worthwhile.

The worst way of all for a contractor to turn down a client is to shut down communications and not return calls and leave the property owner in the lurch. I find that common courtesy goes a long way and my company does not choose tactics such as these.

This landscape lighting blog is published by Mike Gambino of Gambino landscape lighting inc. all rights reserved. Mike is a professional landscape lighting system designer/ builder and has been designing, installing and maintaining landscape lighting systems for more than 20 years. Mike resides in the Los Angeles area with his wife and 2 sons. To visit his website go to www.gambinolighting.com . To inquire about hiring Mike please click here .

Blog articles may be published with permission on other websites without editing or removing links.

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