Discovering your ideal demographic, determining how to best reach out to it, researching that demographic and then listing its wants and needs based on that research are the four tips that a former irrigation business owner and founder of a business management software company puts forward as an approach to grow your landscape company.

Landscape service and installation professionals have an abundance of potential customers. You drive by them all day long if you and your crews are out servicing your current customers. Do you ever stop to think of how many of these residential and commercial properties would actually be a good fit for your business and how then to effectively reach those that are.

In an article posted here, Dave Crary, the former owner of an irrigation business and the founder of HindSite Software, a designer of business management solutions for landscape companies and other service industries, lists his advice on these matters.

His first tip is to determine your ideal customer, not your ideal customers, because as Crary puts it, "It is better to imagine one ideal individual instead of trying to appease a large audience."

He advises, "to picture the person that you would most want to sell your services to" in terms of their gender, family status, occupation and more. This helps you discover your demographic.

Tip number two deals with reaching out to that demographic now that you have identified them and so presumably know where they can be found, not only at specific places such as their residences, businesses, community functions, but other avenues such as Websites that they might visit or TV shows they might watch.

As in school, homework is a necessary part of this approach and is Crary's third tip: homework as in persistently researching the customers before making contact with them.

And after the research, Crary advises to,come up with your ideal customer's to-do list and wish list, which he states is an important distinction.

"The wish-list has all kinds of possibilities," he writes. "The to-do list is less interesting, but more reliable."

As a final tip, Crary suggests that you measure your customers' satisfaction using the free tool that is found at the above link.