Market Analysis for Landscapers: What Marion Delano Taught Us at Elevate 2025

Smarter sales starts with market clarity

Categories: Business Insights | Sales Performance

If you’ve ever built a sales plan in commercial landscaping, you know the feeling: a blank map, a list of properties, and no clear way to prioritize where to spend your team’s time.

Marion Delano’s session at Elevate 2025 cut straight through that fog.
He broke down market analysis in a way that was simple, directional, and refreshingly actionable – designed specifically for landscapers who want to stop “chasing everything” and start focusing on the slices of the market where they can win.

Here are the takeaways worth bringing home to your team.

1. Market Analysis Isn’t Complicated: It’s Directional

Most business developers start with instinct:
“This neighborhood feels good.”
“We’ve had luck in this sector before.”

But Marion made the case that instinct needs guardrails.

His formula was straightforward:

Properties x Average Contract Value = Your Total Market

That one calculation gives you a ceiling – a rough sense of what your territory is worth. From there, you can slice it by sector, submarket, or niche to see where the real revenue opportunities sit.

You don’t need a PhD.
You don’t need perfect accuracy.
You just need to be directionally right.

2. Penetration Rate + Market Makeup: The Two Numbers That Shape BD Time

Marion emphasized two different, but equally important, data points:

A. The makeup of the market (what % of properties belong to each sector)

This tells you where your BD should spend their time based on what’s available, not based on hunches.

His example:

In Washington, DC, HOAs make up only 8% of the total addressable market.
→ So even if your team likes selling HOAs, you shouldn’t spend much time chasing them there – the market simply doesn’t support it.
In a neighboring county where HOAs make up 45% of the total market,
→ Your BDs should spend nearly half their time going after HOAs, because that’s where the opportunity actually is.

This is not about performance – it’s about market composition.

B. Your penetration rate (how much of that market you already serve)

This tells you where it’s easiest or hardest to grow.

Another example Marion used:

In DC, Level Green already has relatively high penetration.
→ It’s a market where they’re well-known, and winning incremental deals is harder and more expensive.
In Montgomery County, Level Green has a lower penetration.
→ Lower brand presence, meaning BD time is cheaper, more efficient, and more likely to result in wins.

The same logic could apply to verticals (retail vs. office, for example).

Why this matters

When you combine market makeup (what exists) with penetration rate (what you already control), you get a BD plan that is:

grounded in actual opportunity
far more efficient
easier to coach
10× more predictable

3. Market Share Should Mirror the Market, Unless You Choose Otherwise

Marion shared a deceptively simple idea:

Your sales mix should generally match the market mix

If HOAs are 12% of the market, but 45% of your book, you’re overweight.
If office is 40% of the market, but only 10% of your book, you’re leaving opportunity on the table.

Unless you intentionally choose a strategy (like focusing on enhancement-friendly sectors), the market should guide the mix.

It’s one of the easiest performance diagnostics a company can do, and very few are doing it.

4. Change Events Are Your Best Friend

Some of the most interesting stories came from real-world wins:

A university executive leaving their job
A new budget-cut announcement
A shift in property management
A restructuring inside a portfolio

These are green lights.

When a change event happens, the window to win the account is wide open, but typically only for a few days.

This is where BD discipline matters:

Monitor LinkedIn job changes
Track news alerts
Keep an eye on local business journals
Talk to your contacts regularly

The companies who win big often do so because they move the fastest when change hits.

5. AI Makes Market Analysis Faster – Not Perfect

Marion’s team uses AI for two things:

Data Synthesis

Upload a CoStar export → AI clusters properties by management company, contract size, and opportunity. What used to take hours takes minutes.

Gap Research

Ask AI:
“Give me every university in this county with over 500 students. Include facilities contacts.”

It won’t be 100% accurate, but it will be 80% right in 5 minutes instead of 5 hours.

The key insight:

AI is the first draft, not the final answer.
Validate everything.

But once validated, it becomes a massive time-saver.

6. Activity Drives Results. Strategy Drives Efficiency.

Marion drew a sharp line between activity and effective activity:

Activity = touches, calls, meetings
Effective activity = focused touches in target-rich zones

You can burn out a BD by asking for more activity.
You can unlock a BD by giving them a sharper strategy.

His message was clear:

Use market analysis to limit the universe, then hold BDs accountable for consistent touches inside that universe.

This is how you get predictable, productive pipelines – not just busy calendars.

7. Sales Planning Isn’t Static, It’s Something You Monitor Weekly

This was perhaps the most practical insight:

You update your sales plan the same way you update your production schedule – weekly.

Because markets shift. Portfolio managers get promoted. Competitors lose accounts. Budget cycles change.

The best sales teams:

Revisit targets weekly
Adjust resource allocation as needed
Stay aware of change events
Validate that BDs are focusing where data says the opportunity is

Sales planning isn’t something you write in December and file away.
It’s a living document.

Why This Session Matters for Your Team

Marion’s session was one of the clearest explanations of strategic selling in commercial landscaping. Not fluffy sales advice, but real-world prioritization based on market math.

If your BD team is still operating on instinct, legacy relationships, or “spray and pray” outreach, his message is worth discussing internally:

Know your market
Know your penetration rate
Focus on the sectors that can actually move the needle
Act quickly when change hits
Use AI to amplify, not replace, good research

Clarity speeds everything up.

Coming Next: A wrap-up from the Elevate “Shop Talk” commercial maintenance roundtable

The real-world stories and tactics from that session were too good not to share – especially the ones about weather disruption, quality audits, and accountability.