Let’s face it. While we love what we do so much, we would do it for free (and sometimes do), but we still have bills to pay. Your bills — employees’ pay, insurance, rent and even fuel —remain there at the end of every workday, demanding their cut of the money you’ve brought in. Finding more revenue streams for your business helps with the bottom line and can be the difference between being able to pay these bills and not.
Diversifying your income stream is a surefire way to insure a consistent income flow. While this truth may be common knowledge, finding those streams can be challenging in the pond world.
Pond inspections are a simple way to add another income stream to your pond business. Let’s say you are already doing installations, repairs and maintenance. Pond inspections are a natural fit for your pond business.
Regular Customer Contact
body of this biological waterfall filter!
A huge source of missed income for pond builders is maintenance and repairs. In our area, it is not unusual for a client to call looking for help because their builder had disappeared once the project was completed. Sometimes, they have lost contact with the builder because the builder had not checked in on the pond for several years.
As a professional, you can walk into a pond and see problems that the pond owner misses. After all, they see the pond every day — or sometimes, they don’t understand what should be happening. The beauty of adding po
nd inspections to your services is twofold. Not only can you help your client protect their investment, but you can also create new business if you are finding problems in their system. This is an untapped income stream for your business.
Many contractors fail to follow up with clients that they have built ponds for after the first few months. The “No news is good news” maxim is very real in the pond industry. We think that just because the client isn’t calling us, they don’t need help. This is often not the case; sometimes, the pond owner just isn’t aware of the potential problems signs.
Calling to check on customers at least once a year can help your company improve customer relations, retain those clients that you fought so hard to win and help your clients avoid those potential problems.
A Proactive Approach
Annual inspections can help keep a low-maintenance pond in good shape. A well-built pond may need very little maintenance for the first several years, unintentionally leading the owner to become complacent. By the third year, the koi are really starting to put on size, and the lack of regular maintenance starts showing in the form of poor water quality and declining fish health, both of which can go unnoticed by the pond owner. This could easily have been avoided with an annual inspection, when the pro would have noticed the warning signs of a lackadaisical maintenance routine.
Issues such as overgrown plants, detritus buildup, and koi diseases brought on by poor water quality can be avoided with annual inspections, which allow the pond professional to see problems as they are beginning. Finding these issues early can save the pond owner thousands of dollars in repair costs.
At Pond Digger Construction Company, we recently inspected a pond we had built but hadn’t been back to for a few years. The water was clear, and the fish looked healthy, so each time we called to offer spring cleaning or fall prep, they declined, believing that their pond was fine. When they finally had us come out, one of the irises in the pond had literally grown as big as a Volkswagen Beetle. It was eating the waterfall and pushing down part of the liner to find soil. It took our crew all day to remove it, and we had to repair the waterfall filter connection where the roots had pushed out. This expensive repair would have been much easier to manage two years earlier!
Multiple Revenue Streams
Adding pond inspections to your repertoire not only creates a new income stream from the inspections themselves, but it also allows you to create an untapped revenue stream in the form of repairs found during the inspections. Because many of these issues may have gone unnoticed by the pond owner for months or even years before causing a serious problem, they may not have called your company to complete the repairs.
Performing these inspections for pond owners, especially on a pond that you didn’t build, will require you to step outside your comfort zone and learn about new varieties of filtration equipment. Understanding bottom drains, settlement tanks, UV systems and pressure filters, along with basic waterfall filters, regeneration zones and koi health is imperative. Staying at the forefront of industry standards and best practices keeps your company relevant and boosts your company’s credibility.
Promoting this new venture will require you to develop a marketing strategy that highlights your ability to do this job and do it well. Reaching out to your existing client base and past customers is the best place to start, and it will allow you to perfect your sales technique before beginning a cold-call campaign.
Enhance Customer Relations
Explaining the benefits of an annual inspection, emphasizing health of the pond and the fish and spelling out the potential monetary savings that comes from catching a problem early will help your client understand the need — even if their pond has been fine for a few years. Once you feel like you have the sales techniques down, start a broad marketing campaign.
A well-performed inspection that solves ongoing or even previously undiscovered problems can build a tremendous amount of trust with your client. During one pond inspection, we found several leaks that the client had not been aware of. The autofill was keeping up with the water loss, and the water was going deep rather than puddling, so it would have gone unnoticed for much longer had we not performed the inspection. The client was deeply grateful when the next water bill came! They are now a customer for life.
Be sure to walk the client through each step of the inspection and communicate your findings, both good and bad, to keep them feeling comfortable and confident in your inspection. Make sure they understand how important the inspection is to the health and longevity of their pond and fish.
The Mechanic Model
If you do find issues that need to be resolved, be clear on what the issue is, why it is a problem, how it may grow into a bigger problem, and how they can resolve it now. Sometimes we have even resolved smaller issues during the inspection.
We had a client call to schedule an inspection due to what they believed was a leak. Upon arrival, we found it quickly when we turned over a large rock in the waterfall. A recent rainstorm had washed out some dirt behind the rock, allowing the liner to sink down and let water out. We quickly fixed this during the inspection, and the client was thrilled to have it handled. While we were there, we did notice a few other issues and scheduled a return visit to repair them.
Think about the auto service industry. When you go in for an oil change, the mechanic might mention brakes, transmission, tires or even windshield wipers. They typically offer you a cost and timeframe in which you can safely complete the repair or replacement. That is how you want to communicate to your pond owner. Once they have all the info, they can now make an educated decision about how to proceed.
Adding pond inspections can certainly round out your company’s portfolio of services and create a new income stream while raising customer confidence in you and your business. With the changing economic climate, this is a strategic move to keep your company on solid footing and in the forefront of your industry for years to come.
