20 Jan Getting a Budget From a landscape lighting Prospect
By Mike Gambino
A common problem during the landscape lighting sales process is trying to find out what a client is budgeting for a particular project. Clients are always hesitant to throw out a number, and landscape lighting designers and contractors know that without a budget they are going to be flying blind as they try to create a landscape lighting plan. If only there was a way to find out what your client wants to spend, without coming across like a used car salesman…
It’s during one of the first steps of the landscape lighting sales process: the time of our initial appointment when we have just finished walking the site with our client, discussing ideas, taking notes and reviewing their goals and objectives.
Now it’s time to play everybody’s least favorite game, “Can You Guess My Budget?”
Although the concept of the game is quite simple, winning is extremely difficult. We ask our potential clients in various direct and indirect ways what they are looking to spend. Our clients hedge, weave and bob, and do everything they can to protect or hide that information from us. If we succeed in extracting the “magic number”, we win, and will most likely get the project. If not, we are destined to completely waste our time and not get the work.
If only our clients would have told us how much they wanted to spend! We could have created a proposal that met their expectations and even given them a few different options.
So why won’t they tell us their budget? There are two main reasons: One is fear, and the other is hope. Fear that we are going to raise our prices artificially because they told us what they want to spend. Hope in that we are going to propose something that is less than they want to spend, thus getting a deal.
Getting a budget from your client
After you’ve walked the site and discussed the scope of the work, you should have some idea of what the “value” of the project is. As an example, let’s say that you think a project is going to come in around $25,000. Here’s how the conversation may go:
Lighting Designer:
This sounds like a really great project. What would you say your budget is for this project?
Prospect:
Well, we don’t know what landscape lighting costs. Why don’t you come up with something and we’ll tell you if it is what we want to spend.
Designer (grumbling on the inside):
I can certainly understand that. Let me give you some idea of price ranges. I’ve done projects that are very similar to this from $10,000 up to $75,000 depending on the type of materials we used or the size of the scope of the project we installed.
Prospect: $75,000? That’s a lot of money! The most we want to spend is $20,000.
Hopefully the prospect will quickly realize that if you were thinking $75,000 and they were thinking $15,000 or $20,000, then this would be quite a mismatch and a waste of everyone’s time if they don’t offer their budget number.
Another approach to take during the landscape lighting sales process is to give the prospect a more narrow price range. In this example, when the prospect tells you, “We don’t know what we want to spend”, we sould say something like this:
“Depending on how much of the work you want done, and what materials we choose, we’ve done similar projects for 10-20K, 20-30K,30-50K or 50-75K. What would you say is the range you are thinking of? Hopefully prospective clients will look at each other and say, “Well, I guess $20,000 to $30,000 is what we were thinking”.
“Would you say closer to $20,000 or $30,000?” Maybe they will respond with, “We were really thinking of $25,000, but could go to $30,000 if we had to.”
It is understood why prospective clients hesitate to give hard numbers.
But by getting the budget number every time early on we will minimize the amount of time wasted drafting designs and proposals while dramatically increasing our chances of selling landscape lighting services. This is the first step to starting a mutually beneficial relationship between property owner and landscape lighting designer/builder.
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 .
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