Have you been wondering about how you can sell your lawn care business? Selling your business can be a long and daunting process. There’s no doubt that doing it alone makes the process even more challenging. We’ve heard from a lot of organic lawn care business owners who have devoted a lot of time and energy to running and growing their privately owned business, and are now ready to sell. Many of them are frustrated with the challenge of finding a new owner. And the thought that they aren’t going to be making much money on the sale of their beloved business is disappointing.
We soon realized just how common this selling challenge is among organic lawn care business owners. We also realized that we could play a big role in helping them with the challenge. That’s how our Transition and Sell Program came about.
As pioneers of the sustainable lawn care industry, we’re all on the same team.
As organic and sustainable lawn and landscaping business owners, we’re all trying to make communities safer, healthier, and more sustainable. We believe you should profit from the sale of your organic lawn care business, and that we can help you maximize that profit with our Transition and Sell Program. It’s a simple process that’s designed to help you increase your likelihood of selling your lawn care business for a higher profit than you would have as a privately owned company*. Clean Air Lawn Care does not take a cut of your profit.
Check out the three steps to the program below. If you’re interested in discussing our Transition and Sell program with us, get in touch!
Clean Air Lawn Care’s Transition and Sell Program
1) Transition to the Franchise Model
We waive the franchise fee for organic lawn care business owners who enter the Transition and Sell program. Before you make the decision to become an official owner, you’ll have detailed conversations with our CEO and HQ support team about how to best transition your privately owned business to a local franchise.
Once you make the decision to enter our Transition and Sell program, you sign the Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) and become an official franchise owner. We’ll support you as you transition your business to a Clean Air Lawn Care franchise. Our team supports you with announcements to customers, branding transitions, and marketing to make sure your customers and community know how and why you transitioned to a franchise. The transition includes a New Owner training that covers everything from turf and soil science to sales and marketing to billing and invoicing.
2) Grow Your Business with Expert Support and Marketing
Once you’re an official franchise owner, you get the full training, support, and marketing that comes with franchise ownership. All of our new owners, including owners in the Transition and Sell program, attend a week-long training with classes taught by Colorado State University professors, an accountant, Clean Air Lawn Care Founder & CEO, a local franchise owner, and your HQ support team. This training covers everything our owners need to know about running a successful sustainable lawn care business. Our in-depth training is an essential part of becoming a successful franchise owner.
After training, we work closely with you to grow your business with a dialed-in marketing strategy. We’re experienced at increasing estimate requests and customers for our franchise owners. The marketing team will create and implement a marketing strategy just for you. We focus on growing your customer base and the profitability of your current customers and business. We understand how both the quantity and quality of customers are important in optimizing your profit when you sell your franchise.
On top of an expert marketing team, we offer full billing support. Our billing and financial support trains new owners on our billing system, sets up your personalized books, invoicing, customer payments, check processing, quarterly dashboards and analytics, Bi-Annual Financial proformas, financial goal setting, and accounting support. In addition to the regular financial support, we also work to get your books in order to optimize the value of your business when it’s time to sell.
We also provide operations and business support. We work with you to break through your growth barriers and meet your business goals. From helping you hire outstanding employees to strategize your next move, we’re here for you.
3) Sell Your Lawn Care Franchise
We recommend allowing yourself around two years to grow your business as a franchise before selling it. That will give you enough time to grow your customer base and local brand awareness. Once you’re ready, you can start marketing your franchise for sale and look for the right new owner to take over. Clean Air Lawn Care does NOT take a cut of your sale. The benefit to us is to keep another new Clean Air Lawn Care owner running successfully, not to profit from your business sale transaction.
The ultimate goal of the Transition and Sell Program is to increase the likelihood of owners getting a great price on the sale of their organic lawn care business*. Franchises tend to resale for higher than independently owned businesses for a variety of reasons. First of all, franchises have better brand awareness and visibility than independently-owned businesses. Clean Air Lawn Care is a national franchise with locations all over the country, and we’re growing! We put time and money into marketing for all of our franchise owners, so brand visibility is high locally as well as nationally. Businesses with higher brand awareness and credibility get more customers, which is incredibly valuable for any new business owner. Plus, we will be working with you to grow your customers, and that adds value to your business, as well.
Another reason why selling a franchise tends to be more lucrative than selling an independently owned business is because of the built-in franchise support. As described above, becoming a franchise owner means you get all the benefits provided by the franchisor. Full, owner-focused, franchise support is something that we take great pride in at Clean Air Lawn Care. Entrepreneurs see the value of this built-in support system and that value is often reflected in the sale price.
Interested in learning more about the Transition and Sell Program? We encourage you to get in touch. All businesses are different, so contact us to see if you’re a good fit for the program and discuss the best transition approach.