How to Bid Landscaping Jobs and Win Profitable Contracts

Bidding on landscaping jobs isn't just about crunching numbers. It's about a smart, selective process that starts long before you ever step foot on the property. The real secret to winning more work is learning to selectively choose which jobs to bid on in the first place, making sure they’re a perfect fit for your crew, your equipment, and your bottom line.

Winning Bids Starts Before You Ever Measure

Most contractors jump straight to the site visit, tape measure in hand. But the seasoned pros know the real work—the strategic filtering—happens way before that. Learning how to bid on landscaping jobs is less about firing off a ton of proposals and more about crafting the right proposals for projects you can actually win and make good money on. This is what we call pre-bid qualification, and it's your best defense against wasting time on dead-end leads.

Define Your Ideal Client and Project

Let's be honest: you can't be the right fit for every single person who calls. The first thing you need to do is get crystal clear on who your ideal customer is and what kind of projects you excel at. Are you set up for sprawling commercial maintenance contracts, detailed residential design-builds, or quick-and-easy planting jobs?

• Service Alignment: Does this job play to your strengths? If your team is amazing at horticulture, taking on a massive hardscape project with intricate paver work could be a recipe for headaches and costly errors. Stick to what you do best.

• Project Size: Is the job big enough to be worth your while but not so massive it'll swamp your entire operation? A huge project might have a tempting price tag, but if it pulls all your resources off of your loyal, repeat clients, it might not be worth it.

• Client Budget: Try to get a feel for the client's budget expectations from the very first conversation. Constantly chasing after clients who just want the cheapest price is a race to the bottom that will absolutely kill your profit margins.

When you have these criteria dialed in, you create a powerful filter. As soon as a lead comes in, you can instantly see if it’s a "heck yes" or a "polite no." Turning down a bad-fit job is a smart business move—it frees you up to go all-in on the opportunities that will actually help you grow.

Assessing Profitability and Competition

Next, you have to look at the financial side of things. Success in this business means understanding the money game, especially when you're up against tough competition. With 696,334 landscaping businesses in the U.S. as of 2024, you're not alone. The pressure is on to bid competitively without giving away the farm, especially since industry-average profit margins hover around 10-15%.

Winning bids are built on a rock-solid understanding of your true costs—where labor often eats up 50-60% of the budget—and a clear-eyed view of what the market will bear. It's worth a look at the latest landscaping business statistics to see how your own numbers stack up.

The most profitable move a landscaping company can make is often saying 'no' to the wrong job. Every hour spent on a bid you can't win or profit from is an hour you can't spend finding and winning a great one.

Before you invest a single minute in a takeoff or estimate, you need to ask a few tough questions:

• What is our capacity? Do we realistically have the crews, gear, and time to knock this job out of the park and meet the deadline?

• Who is the competition? Are you up against the usual low-ballers, or are they other quality-focused companies like yours? Knowing the players helps you position your price and your value.

• Are there any red flags? Be wary of vague project details, crazy timelines, or clients who seem difficult from the get-go. Always trust your gut.

To make this easier, here's a quick checklist you can run through every time a new bid request comes across your desk.

Your Quick Bid Qualification Checklist

Before you commit your valuable time to a full estimate, run the potential project through these checkpoints. This simple exercise can save you hours of wasted effort on jobs that were never a good fit to begin with.

This process isn't about turning away work. It’s about being strategic and choosing to invest your time in the jobs that will build a healthier, more sustainable, and more profitable landscaping business.

Mastering the Takeoff for Pinpoint Accuracy

Once you've decided a job is a good fit, it's time to get down to the brass tacks. An accurate bid is built on an accurate takeoff—that’s the detailed process of measuring and quantifying every single thing you'll need to build the project. If you get this part wrong, your entire bid is built on a shaky foundation, and you're either going to price yourself out of the job or, even worse, win it and lose money.

The takeoff is where you turn a landscape plan or a site visit into a real-world shopping list. It's about counting every last shrub, measuring every square foot of sod, and figuring out exactly how many cubic yards of mulch you’ll need. Precision here isn’t just a nice-to-have; it's everything. A 10% miscalculation on your takeoff can easily swallow your entire profit margin.

Choosing Your Takeoff Method

You really have two ways to tackle a takeoff: the old-school manual way or the modern digital approach. Neither is right or wrong all the time; the best choice really depends on the project's complexity and the tools you have at your disposal.

Manual takeoffs mean printing out the plans, grabbing your scale ruler and a highlighter, and physically measuring and counting everything on the page. For a simple front yard planting bed, this can be fast and perfectly effective. Some guys I know still prefer it because they can physically mark off items as they go, making it feel more concrete.

The downside? It’s slow and leaves the door wide open for human error. It’s painfully easy to misread a scale, count the same section twice, or just lose your place on a busy plan. For larger or more intricate designs, the hours spent doing manual takeoffs really add up—time you could be spending finding and bidding on the next job.

Digital takeoffs use software to measure plans right on your computer screen. You upload a PDF or an aerial image, then use digital tools to trace areas, measure lines, and count items with a click. It's way faster and practically eliminates the simple math mistakes because the software does the heavy lifting for you.

A great takeoff isn't just about counting stuff. It’s about building a rock-solid foundation of data that guides every other part of your bid, from your labor hours to your final price.

This pre-qualification process ensures that by the time you're deep into a takeoff, you're only spending your valuable time on projects that are actually worth winning.

This workflow is your filter, making sure the jobs that land on your desk for a full takeoff are the ones with the highest potential.

How Software Puts Your Measurements on Overdrive

For landscapers who want to bid more work and do it more accurately, modern takeoff software has been a total game-changer. Instead of burning hours hunched over a plan with a ruler, you can get precise measurements in a matter of minutes.

Here’s a quick look at how it works in the real world:

• Turf & Mulch Areas: You just trace the outline of a lawn or planting bed on the digital plan. Boom—the software spits out the exact square footage. It can then instantly tell you how many pallets of sod or cubic yards of mulch you need to order.

• Plant Counts: This is a huge time-saver. Many platforms can actually recognize plant symbols on a plan and count them for you. This gets rid of the mind-numbing task of manually ticking off hundreds of tiny circles.

• Linear Measurements: Need to price out some edging, a fence, or an irrigation run? Just trace the line on the screen, and the software gives you the precise linear footage. No more rolling a measurement wheel across a crumpled blueprint.

• Hardscape Materials: Measuring for patios and walkways is a breeze. Once you've traced the area, you can tell the software your paver size, and it'll calculate the total quantity needed, even factoring in a waste percentage for cuts.

By automating these tedious tasks, you get a massive amount of your time back. For example, platforms like Exayard offer powerful takeoff tools that can turn what used to be a half-day measuring job into a 15-minute task. You can check out the full range of features and see how it works for yourself.

Ultimately, this speed lets you submit more bids. And in this business, submitting more high-quality bids directly leads to winning more work and growing your company. It turns bidding from a bottleneck into an engine for growth.

Calculating Your True Labor and Material Costs

Once you've nailed down a precise takeoff, you know the "what" and "how much." Now for the moment of truth: putting an accurate dollar figure to those quantities. Guessing on your direct costs—the raw materials and labor—is the fastest way to kill your profit before a single shovel hits the ground. This is where you turn a list of plants and pavers into a real-world budget.

Getting these numbers right is absolutely critical to your bottom line. The U.S. landscaping industry has grown massively, ballooning from $83 billion in 2013 to $176 billion in 2023. With projections showing the market could hit nearly $190 billion by 2029, the opportunity is huge, but so is the competition. Laser-focused bids are what separate the thriving businesses from the ones that are just spinning their wheels. You can dive deeper into the latest landscaping industry trends and statistics to get a feel for the market.

Dialing in Your Material Costs

Looking up the retail price of a shrub online and calling it a day just won't cut it. To find your true material cost, you have to account for all the "hidden" expenses that quietly chip away at your margin.

The best place to start is by creating a centralized price book. Think of this as your company’s internal catalog for everything you use, from specific types of mulch and soil to pavers and plant species. Keeping it updated with the latest pricing from your suppliers doesn't just make estimating faster; it ensures every bid is built on a consistent foundation.

Beyond the sticker price, make sure your material costs include these easily forgotten factors:

• Sales Tax: It seems obvious, but it’s amazing how often it gets missed. An 8% sales tax on a $10,000 material list adds $800 right to your cost.

• Delivery Fees: Are you getting pallets of stone dropped off at the job site? That freight charge from your supplier has to go into the bid.

• Material Waste Factor: You'll never use exactly 100% of what you order. For materials like pavers, wall blocks, or sod, a 5-10% waste factor is a smart buffer for cuts, breakage, and mistakes.

Forgetting these small additions can create a big deficit, quickly turning what looked like a profitable job into a loss.

Your material cost isn't just the price on the tag. It’s the total cost to get that material to the job site, in the right quantity, ready for your crew to install.

Calculating Your Fully Burdened Labor Rate

Labor is almost always your single biggest expense, and it’s also the trickiest to estimate. The most common mistake I see contractors make is using an employee's hourly wage as their labor cost. If you pay a crew member $22 per hour, your actual cost for them to be on the job is much, much higher.

This is where understanding your fully burdened labor rate becomes non-negotiable. This number represents the true hourly cost of an employee, factoring in all the extra expenses that come with having them on your team.

To calculate it, you need to add up:

1. Base Hourly Wage: The straightforward rate the employee sees on their paycheck.

2. Payroll Taxes: This covers FICA (Social Security and Medicare), FUTA (federal unemployment), and SUTA (state unemployment).

3. Workers' Compensation Insurance: This rate can vary dramatically depending on your state and the risk associated with the work.

4. Benefits: Don't forget to factor in the hourly cost of things like health insurance, retirement contributions, or paid time off.

When you tally it all up, that $22/hour employee might actually cost you closer to $28-$32 per hour. Using this fully burdened rate in your bids is the only way to protect your profit margin.

To give you a clearer picture, let's walk through a simple example for a common task.

Sample Cost Calculation for a Planting Bed Installation

This table breaks down the direct costs for installing a small planting bed, showing how unit costs for materials and a fully burdened labor rate come together.

This $865.00 represents your direct cost—the money you have to spend just to get the job done. Your profit and overhead will be added on top of this base number.

Bringing It All Together with Production Rates

Knowing your true labor cost per hour is one half of the puzzle. The other half is figuring out how many hours a task will actually take. This is where production rates come into play—these are your company's own benchmarks for how long it takes your crew to complete a specific unit of work.

For example, through experience and job tracking, you might learn that your three-person crew can install 100 square feet of pavers in about 2.5 hours. That production rate is the engine that drives your labor estimates. If a new project calls for 500 square feet of pavers, you can confidently estimate it will take around 12.5 hours to complete.

Developing your own production rates based on how your team works is always more accurate than grabbing generic numbers from a book. Track your time on every job and constantly refine these rates. They are the key to building labor estimates you can actually rely on.

Pricing for Profit, Not Just to Cover Costs

Getting your direct costs nailed down is a fantastic first step, but that only gets you to the break-even point. If you stop there, you’ve essentially built yourself a very expensive hobby, not a business that can actually grow and support you.

To really make a living at this, you have to master pricing for profit. This means adding your overhead and a healthy profit margin to every single bid you send out, without fail. This is where so many contractors, even experienced ones, get tripped up. They treat overhead as an afterthought or get markup and margin mixed up. These might seem like small details, but they can silently drain your bank account and put your whole operation at risk.

Let's make sure that doesn't happen to you.

Weaving Your Overhead into Every Bid

Overhead is all the money you spend just to keep the lights on and the business running—things that aren't tied to one specific job. We’re talking about your shop rent, truck insurance, office staff salaries, marketing, and those software subscriptions that add up.

If you aren't accounting for these costs in your pricing, you're paying for them right out of your own pocket.

The idea is to have each job pay for its fair share of these company-wide expenses. The best way to do this is by calculating an overhead recovery rate.

• First, tally up your annual overhead: Add up every single indirect business expense from the last 12 months. Let's say it all comes to $100,000.

• Next, calculate your total annual costs: Now, add up all your direct job costs from last year—all the labor and materials you paid for. Let's imagine that was $400,000.

• Then, find your rate: Just divide your total overhead by your total direct costs. In our example, that’s $100,000 / $400,000 = 0.25, which is 25%.

This 25% is your overhead recovery rate. It means that for every dollar you spend on labor and materials for a job, you need to add another 25 cents just to cover the cost of running the business in the background.

Forgetting to apply your overhead recovery rate is like trying to fill a bucket with a big hole in it. No matter how much work you pour in, you’ll never get ahead because you're constantly leaking money on essential business expenses.

The Critical Difference: Markup vs. Margin

This is probably the single most important—and most misunderstood—part of pricing in this industry. Confusing markup and margin can fool you into thinking you're making a 20% profit when, in reality, you might be barely clearing half that.

Here’s the breakdown:

• Markup is what you add to your costs to get your selling price. You calculate it from the cost up.

• Profit Margin is the slice of the final selling price that is pure profit. You calculate it from the price down.

Let's walk through a quick example. Say your total direct costs plus the overhead for a job comes to $1,000. You want to hit a 20% profit target.

If you just apply a 20% markup, you'd do this: $1,000 x 1.20 = $1,200. Your profit is $200. But what's your actual profit margin? It's $200 / $1,200, which comes out to 16.7%. You aimed for 20% but only walked away with 16.7%. That gap can cost you a fortune over the course of a year.

To get a true 20% profit margin, you have to use a different formula:

Selling Price = Total Costs / (1 - Desired Profit Margin)

So, it would be: $1,000 / (1 - 0.20) = $1,000 / 0.80 = $1,250.

Now, your profit is $250. And $250 is exactly 20% of the $1,250 final price. That's how you hit your target. My advice? Always price your jobs using a target profit margin, not a simple markup.

Setting Your Strategic Profit Margin

So, what should your profit margin be? There’s no single magic number. A standard 15-20% is a solid place to start, but the sharpest contractors I know adjust this number based on the job. In the competitive U.S. landscaping market, which is on track to hit $188.8 billion by 2025, smart pricing is what separates the winners from the rest. The pros know that a markup of 20-30% on materials and labor is a common benchmark for success. It’s what helps the 65% of businesses that top $1 million in annual revenue stay profitable, often by landing those big, repeating commercial contracts.

You should think about adjusting your margin based on a few key things:

• Job Complexity & Risk: A tricky hardscape installation with tight deadlines deserves a higher margin than a simple mulch job. You need to be compensated for the extra risk.

• Client Value: You might offer a slightly lower margin to a long-term, high-value commercial client to keep that steady work coming in.

• Market Demand: When it’s your busiest season and your phone is ringing off the hook, you can and should command a higher profit margin.

When you bring together your direct costs, your overhead, and a strategic profit margin, you get a final price that does more than just pay the bills—it builds a healthy, growing company.

If you're looking to make this process repeatable and foolproof, checking out Exayard's pricing and features can give you a good idea of how modern software helps standardize these crucial calculations across your whole team.

Crafting a Proposal That Sells Your Value

A number scribbled on the back of a business card isn't a bid; it's an invitation for the client to shop you on price alone. After you’ve dialed in your costs and landed on a profitable price, the real work begins: packaging it all into a professional proposal that sells your value, not just your services.

This document is your silent salesperson. Its job is to shift the client's focus from "who's the cheapest?" to "who do I trust to get this done right?"

The gap between a winning bid and a losing one often comes down to presentation and trust. We know from industry data that a well-prepared landscaping bid has a success rate of about 48%. A polished, professional proposal is a massive part of hitting that number. It shows you’re organized, thorough, and take their project seriously from day one.

Beyond the Price Tag: What Every Proposal Needs

A winning proposal is more than a list of services and a final number. It’s a comprehensive document that leaves no room for confusion and answers questions before the client even thinks to ask them. Think of it as the blueprint for your entire working relationship.

At a minimum, every professional landscaping bid should contain these core elements:

• Company Information: Make sure your business name, logo, address, and contact details are clean and easy to find.

• A Detailed Scope of Work: Get specific. Instead of "Install new planting bed," spell it out: "Excavate 150 sq. ft. area to a depth of 6 inches, amend soil with 2 cubic yards of premium compost, install 50 linear feet of steel edging, and plant 10 shrubs and 20 perennials according to the provided design."

• Inclusions and Exclusions: Be crystal clear about what’s covered (e.g., final site cleanup, all debris removal) and what’s not (e.g., repair of unmarked irrigation lines, removal of unforeseen sub-surface rock). This one step can save you from countless headaches and disputes down the road.

• Clear Payment Terms: Outline the total cost, the required deposit, the payment schedule, and what payment methods you accept.

This isn't just about protecting yourself; it's about building confidence. It shows the client you’ve thought through every single angle of their project.

Your proposal is a direct reflection of the quality of your work. A sloppy, vague proposal suggests sloppy, vague work will follow. A clean, detailed proposal promises a professional, well-managed project.

How to Stand Out and Build Trust

Once the basics are locked in, it's time to add the elements that separate you from the low-ballers. The goal here is to establish your company as the low-risk, high-value choice.

Consider adding these trust-building components to your proposals:

• A Personalized Cover Letter: Don't just send a price sheet. A brief, one-page letter that references your conversation and shows you understand their specific goals makes a huge difference.

• Client Testimonials: Pull two or three powerful quotes from happy customers. A rave review from a past client is often more persuasive than anything you can say about yourself.

• Photos of Past Work: A picture really is worth a thousand words. Include high-quality photos of finished projects that are similar to what the client wants. Let your work speak for itself.

• Proof of Insurance and Licenses: Don't wait to be asked. Including your certificates of insurance right in the proposal immediately signals professionalism and gives the client peace of mind.

When you include these elements, you’re no longer just a number on a spreadsheet. You become a trusted expert—the obvious choice for a client who values quality and a job done right.

Common Questions on Bidding Landscaping Jobs

Even with a great system in place, you’re bound to run into some tricky situations when bidding landscaping work. Here are a few of the most common questions I hear from other contractors, along with some straight-ahead advice to help you bid with more confidence.

How Can I Speed Up My Bidding Process Without Sacrificing Accuracy?

This is the big one, right? Especially when you’re growing. The secret isn’t cutting corners—it’s getting rid of the bottlenecks that slow you down. For most landscapers, the single biggest time sink is the manual takeoff. All those hours spent with a scale ruler, measuring plans and counting every single plant, really add up.

Making the switch to a digital takeoff tool is the fastest way to get that time back. Instead of printing plans and breaking out the highlighters, you can measure areas, count materials, and figure out quantities right on your screen in a fraction of the time. That speed means you can get more well-thought-out bids out the door, which is the surest way to win more jobs.

The real goal isn't just bidding faster; it's about boosting your bidding capacity. If you can turn around five accurate bids in the time it used to take for two, you’ve seriously stacked the odds in your favor.

Another huge time-saver is creating a standardized proposal template. Having a ready-to-go document with your company info, standard terms, and spots for testimonials means you’re not starting from scratch every single time. It's a simple change that shaves a surprising amount of admin time off each bid.

What’s the Best Way to Handle Low-Ball Competitors?

It’s so tempting to slash your price when a competitor comes in way under you, but that’s a race to the bottom you’ll never win. Don't play their game. Your job is to shift the conversation from price to value. A rock-bottom bid almost always comes with hidden costs for the client, whether it’s shoddy communication, blown deadlines, or work that has to be redone a year later.

This is where your professional proposal becomes your best tool. When a potential client sees your detailed breakdown of the work, photos of your projects, and glowing testimonials right next to a competitor’s single-line quote, the difference in quality becomes crystal clear.

You have to be ready to explain why your price is what it is. Break it down for them in plain language:

• "We use higher-quality, locally sourced nursery stock that will actually thrive here, unlike cheaper plants that might not make it through the season."

• "Our crews are fully insured and highly experienced. That protects you from any liability and ensures the job gets done right the first time."

• "This price also includes a full one-year warranty on all the plant material we install."

When you focus on professionalism and the long-term benefit, you start attracting the kinds of clients who value quality over the cheapest upfront price.

What Should I Do When I Don’t Win a Landscaping Bid?

Losing a bid stings, no doubt about it. But if you handle it right, it can be an incredible learning opportunity. Don’t just file it away and forget about it. The absolute best thing you can do is politely follow up and ask for feedback.

A simple, professional email works wonders:

"Hi [Client Name], thank you again for the opportunity to bid on your project. While I'm disappointed we won't be working together this time, I was wondering if you'd be open to sharing any feedback on why you chose another contractor? Any insight you could offer would be a huge help for us going forward."

Sometimes, you’ll find out it was just about price, and there’s not much you can do about that. But other times, you might discover your scope was confusing or you left out a detail the client was looking for. That kind of feedback is gold—it helps you tighten up your process for the very next bid.

For more deep dives into improving your business operations, you can find a ton of helpful articles and guides by exploring our landscaping business resources on the https://exayard.com/blog.

Finally, get in the habit of tracking your bids. Keeping a simple log of your win/loss rate, the kinds of jobs you win most, and your actual profit on them gives you real data. Over time, that data will help you make much smarter decisions about which projects are actually worth your time to chase.