Avant Gardening is currently on a flat-fee project contract that expires at the end of January. The contract has already been paid in full, meaning no additional revenue is flowing from this client. The goal is to convert Avant into a recurring retainer at $2,500–$3,000/month before the contract lapses.
This strategy was developed during the [1] and is owned by Karly, who will draft the formal proposal.
Avant does both small residential gardening (planting flowers, basic maintenance — a few hundred dollars per job) and hardscaping (patios, retaining walls, decks — minimum $5k–$6k per project). The retainer pitch should anchor on hardscaping as the primary marketing target.
Rationale: A $2,500/month retainer needs to generate at least $2,500–$5,000 in incremental revenue to justify itself. One hardscaping lead per month easily clears that bar. Flower-planting jobs do not.
Avant already offers snow plowing in winter, but this service is not mentioned anywhere on their website. Adding a snow plowing page and promoting it would generate winter revenue and reduce the seasonal gap that makes a year-round retainer harder to justify.
This mirrors a broader principle: help service businesses find their off-season offering (e.g., an e-bike shop selling snowmobiles in winter).
The competitive landscape includes many small informal operations (owner + family, cash-based, minimal web presence). Avant can differentiate by emphasizing:
This is a positioning angle, not just a feature list — it speaks to the client type most likely to pay for hardscaping.
Karly will use ChatGPT to draft a concrete proposal that includes:
The proposal should be ready before the next client call.