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00:00 – Why You Need To Brand Your Sales Process
00:00
Jack Jostes
Buyers are buyers. You need to market the process. You need to over communicate the process. Every fifth episode is an interview with a client. If you're the main person who estimates and closes sales at your landscape company and you're looking to scale your sales, you're looking to grow. In today's podcast, I'm going to share some footage from a recent presentation I gave at a digital agency conference in Arizona about how to brand your sales process to get the owner out of sales. A lot of what I do is similar to what you do, so let's get into it to help get you out of that sales seat. I had a coach who told me, I took a photo of it in my journal. He said, draw three circles. One of them is for passion. You love doing it. One of them is demand.
00:47 – The Passion, Demand, And Profit Framework
00:47
Jack Jostes
The market needs it. And the third one is profit. And so, wow, were really missing on the profit side, right? And I'm like, well, I exported all my customers from QuickBooks. I did a descending report by revenue, and I started just chunking it out. When it comes to social media, email, your website, your proposals, it's always best to let your customers do the selling for you. So here's a simple formula that I use to overcome sales objections and pull in testimonials and things when people ask for references. And a key thing in my podcast is that every fifth episode is an interview with a client. I learned this in part. I have a business coach in Pennsylvania where there's a Amish community, and there's a man named Jerry, and we call him Jerry the Amish blogger.
01:41 – Using Content To Build Trust And Authority
01:41
Jack Jostes
And it's funny because he doesn't actually write online. He writes for a print magazine that Amish people read. And every article he writes is helpful to Amish farmers. And then the fifth one is like, well, bam. I can help you with this. I'm Jer, the guy that's built trust with you over the last four articles. And then he goes back into the four helpful articles, and then wha, Bam. There's an offer author. So I flew in on Monday because I have a client in Wickenburg Landscape, and it was really late, really fun interview. When most landscape companies talk about their process, they lead about themselves, how long they've been in business, yada, yada. But we got to flip the script and tell people what's in it for me, what's in it for the landscape customer. And here's how to do that.
02:31 – How To Communicate Your Sales Process Clearly
02:31
Jack Jostes
So when you've created this process, you need to market the process. You need to over communicate the process all the time, everywhere. Most agencies have like a photo of them at an event. Like, we do this. We've been doing this for so long. We're so good. We won this award. We know these softwares and the client's like, but what about me? Right? So the process communicates what's in it for me and how do I get it? In our process, we have a 15 minute marketing brainstorm. Brand the milestones with names that answer what's in it for me? You gotta say these out loud. How do they sound? Did they sound like sales call with tech bro? Right. Cause that's the last thing anybody wants if it's a marketing brainstorm. Okay, that sounds kind of easy. It's just a brainstorm. It's only 15 minutes.
03:27 – The Power Of A 15 Minute Qualification Call
03:27
Jack Jostes
Okay, I would do that. One of the single best things that you can do to save days of your life and your salespeople's lives is to have a 15 minute phone conversation before you go out and do an estimate with people before you walk their Property. Do a 15 minute conversation so you can find out are they in the same ballpark on budget, timeline and the services you need. And here's how you can do it. Too often, how I used to sell would be like, so what pages do you need and what functionality does it need to have? And like all this like ticky, tacky stuff. But instead it's an emotional conversation like, hey, tell me, like, how do you feel about your website? That's actually one of the best questions we've learned to ask because it unlocks.
04:15 – Asking Better Questions To Close More Sales
04:15
Jack Jostes
Well, I feel really embarrassed about it. Oh, tell me more. Why, why do you feel that way? How have you tried to fix it? Have you had a chance to review our pricing page? This is a magical question. Yeah, we did. We read that it's typically between X and Y. Well, great. How does that fit for you? Yeah, that could work. Okay, great. Well, the next step, it sounds like we can help you with this, but if they're like, no, I haven't read the pricing page, or yes, I have read the pricing page, and who would spend thousands of dollars a month on anything? Well, it sounds like you're in the research phase of your project. You know, let's do this. Let me, let me send you our pricing guide and a link to my calendar. And when you're ready, we can reschedule.
05:07 – Buyers Are Buyers: Sell Small First
05:07
Jack Jostes
Thank you. And I've saved myself in spending an hour to get to budget. We're getting it in 15 minutes. One of my favorite Concepts from my favorite author, Dan Kennedy is buyers are buyers. Which means when people buy something, they're more likely to buy another and then another. So if you're wanting to get those long term maintenance contracts and construction and installation projects, sell something small on the front end. Here's an example of how you can do that. Dan Kennedy says that buyers are buyers. And what that means is, you know, when you're at the checkout at McDonald's, what do they ask you? Would you like fries with that? And then what do they ask you after that? The best question I've gotten at a drive thru is that all? And you're like, oh, well, I don't know.
05:58 – How To Handle Objections Without References
05:58
Jack Jostes
There's this giant, you know, display of all this other shit I probably shouldn't have. But since you asked, I'll have a Coke or a milkshake, right? So buyers are buyers. So we shave off a piece of what we can do for them into something we can produce. Produce pretty quickly. And this gives us an opportunity to do what we said were going to do. They are now paying me for what I do. Sometimes people want to move forward, but they'll tell you something like this sounds great, but I want to talk to references. And when it's peak season, you might be bidding a lot of projects, you might be have, you might have a lot of proposals out there and it would just be annoying to your top clients if all of your potential customers called them.
06:45 – Using Video And Testimonials To Build Trust
06:45
Jack Jostes
So here's one way you can handle this. Using video and testimonials and ultimately get to the root of the sales objection. Well, we're ready to move forward, but we always talk to two to three references. So we're going to need to talk to two or three of your clients. Hey, totally get it. I'm the same way. I always, you know, want to talk to people before I buy. I'm curious if you were to talk to one of my clients, what would you ask them? Now I'm really getting the actual sales objection. Well, we've just never spent this much money before. Well, great. Hey, you know, that reminds me of Aaron Wolfe. He's a second generation landscape company owner. He only spent $100 on his website. I just interviewed him about it.
07:30 – Delegating Sales Without Losing Control
07:30
Jack Jostes
Aaron, as you can imagine, runs a multi million dollar company and it's April 22nd. I'm not going to bother him during peak sales season to try and sell something for me. So let's do this. Why don't you watch the video. And if you felt like we could help you like we helped Aaron, what would we do next? Do you think? I'm going to give you the phone number of somebody who fired me? And they're like, no. I work with a lot of businesses on branding their sales process to get the owner out of sales or maybe just create some space and bandwidth and freedom for the owner. And a lot of people ask, well, how do I find somebody who can do all of this? I'd have to find somebody with 30 years of landscape experience. But you don't.
08:13 – Breaking Your Sales Process Into Milestones
08:13
Jack Jostes
You could brand your sales process and delegate the first step of it to somebody who wants to learn how to do that and then teach them to do more of the sales process over time. So we've got to break the sales process into key milestones to get out of your sales process. Once you brand, it is to delegate the initial milestones. I like the nurse doctor model. So the nurse is the qualifier, right? When you go to the hospital, if you go to urgent care, the doctor doesn't come out and be like, how are you doing? What's going on? They've got a nurse that comes and is like, hey, what happened? I'm going to take, I'm going to take your temperature. I'm going to do these things.
08:51 – The Nurse And Doctor Sales Model
08:51
Jack Jostes
The doctor's really busy, so you need to be the busy doctor that the nurse is supporting and triaging. They call it triage at a hospital. Here's a way to get out of sales. But first, I delegated the 15 minute call. Can you qualify? Cause if you can't qualify, some people can't say no. If you have a salesperson who can't say no, there's no way that they could ever advance to do the rest of this. A sales process doesn't just help you increase sales, it helps you increase time. It gives you freedom and repeatability in your schedule. It also gives other people on your team a career path. Maybe they start doing one part of the process and over time they can learn to do the others.
09:39 – Creating Freedom With A Repeatable Sales System
09:39
Jack Jostes
So if you'd like to learn how we help landscape companies with this book. A 15 minute marketing brainstorm call with us at landscapersguide.com/brainstorm. There's a link in our show notes where you can schedule online. We'll talk with you about who is your hell yes customer, what is your sales process and how could it be improved? My name's Jack Jostes and I'll look forward to talking to you next week on the Landscaper's Guide.