00:00 Introduction
Jack Jostes:
Have you ever found yourself with a sales rut, a low pipeline dried up leads? If yes, you're honest, it's just part of business, at some point you're going to experience it. And in this video I'm gonna share with you nine mostly free sales and marketing ideas that can quickly reactivate your sales pipeline.
Hey everyone, Jack Jostes here. Welcome to the Landscaper's Guide podcast, where we share sales, marketing, and leadership ideas to help you grow your snow and landscape business. Right now it's the middle of summer 2023. I recently came up with a podcast about sales and marketing in the new normal economy or whatever we're in. But the fact is many people's sales pipelines are drying up as a result of changing economic conditions, inflation, a lot of external factors, and also sometimes a lack of proactive marketing. So today we're gonna share nine mostly free tips. My first tip is to create an offer that people can say yes to now in this economy. So what is it that people can say yes to now? How has their budget changed? What are some of the things that maybe they can take advantage of in this market?
1:23 #1 Create an Offer That People Can Say Yes To Now
And get really specific about who you want to buy and which service you want them to buy First, think of your client ascension. How can people buy one thing so that they eventually buy the next one and the next one and the next one and become a lifetime value client? But what's something that is easy for them to say yes to? As an example, we're working with an irrigation company and they're targeting their ideal customer for this campaign is HOA homeowners who bought their home within the last six months because they have six months in this particular market to get their irrigation system installed in their backyard. So they've created an offer that incentivizes that. I can't share what their offer is, but it incentivizes people to take action. Now, we're gonna market that very heavily. So getting clear on who is your Hell Yes Customer now, and what they could say yes to in this economy is the first step.
2:19 #2 Email Your Current Customers
Once you have that offer, create a graphic for it. You could create this quickly yourself, even using canva.com. Canva.com is a great site for building graphics. You could hire your marketing team, you could hire a freelancer, but create a graphic. 'cause Once you have this, you can move on to step two, which is to email your current customers. This works best when you've sorted your database by which services have people bought. And if you're not doing that, start tracking it now because it empowers you to do reactivation campaigns. Like in that example of the irrigation system campaign, maybe you do landscaping and irrigation. If you kept track of the customers who bought landscaping but they didn't do irrigation, or maybe they didn't irrigate their full, their full backyard or whatever the service that they didn't buy, knowing that can allow you then to email those customers with your special offer.
3:20 #3 Follow Up Your Email With a Text Or Phone Call
So emailing your existing customers should always be the first place to focus, because if you're doing a good job and you have a good relationship with these people, you've built up that no like and trust, and it'll be way easier for them to say yes to whatever campaign you're offering now. And chances are they may have forgotten about it or they need a little nudge to move forward. The third tip is to text or call those customers about a week after you've sent your email. One of our core values at Ramblin Jackson is be human and pick up the damn phone for a number of reasons. One, it keeps relationships intact when things are, there are miscommunications and, and email or whatever's going on. And also it often creates sales conversations and relationship building. And it gives you an opportunity to ask questions and see what do people need.
So people will likely welcome a phone call from you, and it could be simply, hey you know, Mrs. Smith wanted to make sure that you received my email that we're running x promotion on Y service. And ideally, that campaign has an expiration as a reminder this special offer expires September 1st, so if I'd love to chat with you about it and then leave your phone number in the voicemail. Remember that most voicemail if you get a voicemail is transcribed and read. So leave a transcription friendly voicemail where they can just read it and see, oh, okay, this, this was my landscaper calling me about this. I did get their email and that could nudge them to reply. My fourth tactic is strategic partnerships. And a great way to think of who you should have a strategic partnership with is to fill out the hell yes.
5:09 #4 Cultivate Strategic Partnerships
Customer worksheet. In summary, it gets clear on who are your Hell Yes Customers, what services do they buy? What's their budget, where are they? And then also fill out the other part of who is your hell no customer and what services do they need that you don't offer? Because that actually creates an opportunity for you to create a strategic partnership with someone else who does that. So let's pretend that you do landscaping, but you don't do lawn care, or you don't do irrigation, or you don't do tree removal or whatever, whatever that service is, you can then build relationships with people from your local chamber, from your state association. You can kind of be on the hunt when you're at those events like I'm looking for a lawn care application specialist who could be a referral partner for my irrigation company, or whatever it is.
And you can create strategic partnerships with them and using your graphic and your offer, you could have, you could ask them, Hey, would you mind sharing this with some of your customers? And each person who mentions you when they take advantage of this offer, I'm gonna pay you 50 bucks or a hundred bucks or 500 bucks. It kind of depends on what is the value of that customer that you're acquiring, acquiring. But when you pay them a referral fee, a commission, it's gonna incentivize them to share that offer with people. If you haven't already, download the Hell Yes Customer worksheet at landscapersguide.com/hellyes. And see our show notes where I'll put a quick link to that. Alright, the fifth tactic is the clover leaf strategy. This is where if you envision a clover leaf around your current customer's home, you bring a print, it could honestly, you could go to FedEx or print it at home, print your offer out on a piece of paper or hire a printer.
7:03 #5 Utilize The Clover Leaf Strategy
Make it look really nice. The key is having a print asset with your offer on it and handing it out to the next door neighbor on each side of your current customer and the ones across the street. This is the clover leaf strategy. These people are already seeing your branded work trucks, your branded t-shirts, your crews there. They've probably already asked your neighbor, hey, I noticed you're having some work done. How is it going? They've probably, hopefully heard good things. And this little nudge of bringing them the offer on a piece of paper, a postcard, or a handout or a door hanger, whatever it is, can help nudge them to contact you. And if you have an easy offer, a first step low hanging fruit that people can take advantage of, they'll be likely to do so. The sixth tactic is to go door to door.
7:55 #6 Door-to-door Sales
My first job out of college was doing door-to-door sales as a milkman at a dairy farm that delivered milk and glass bottles to your doorstep. It was an incredible job. If you've never done door-to-door sales, it's truly exhilarating. It's really fun. You get to meet a lot of interesting people. You get to hear no a lot, which builds stamina and endurance for hearing no through the rest of your career, in sales and in business, because you're gonna hear it a lot. I honestly recommend doing a door to door sales job. If you're thinking, if you're listening and you're thinking of going into business, it's invaluable, but seriously going door to door and in the example that I shared of the irrigation company that knows that new developments that were built and constructed within the last six months are a prime Hell Yes customer for them.
Taking that offer and going door to door and letting people know, Hey, did you know that the association allows for you? You have to have this done within six months. We wanted to introduce ourselves. You've gotta tread lightly here. Make sure you're following whatever, HOA rules and so on. But this works really well. And I once met a design build landscape contractor in Oregon at the Far West Show who told me that he did $1.6 million in revenue each year entirely from doing door to door sales. So I believe it can work for a variety of different services. And when you have that print left behind, it can work really well. Quick story, when I sold milk, there was a guy named Wild Bill, so they had Western nicknames for us. They called me Lin Jack, and there was Wild Bill.
Wild Bill was a radio DJ who was also a standup comedian. He was Wild Bill Cody, and he was hilarious. And Bill brought a no soliciting sign. So when he would meet somebody who was grumpy, that was like, oh, get outta here. Door to door salesman, he'd say, Hey, you know what it seems like you're not interested in milk. Would you like to buy a no soliciting sign? And people would crack up and then he would end up selling to those people. So have fun with it, have a good time. Summer is really a great time to do door-to-door selling. My seventh tactic is what I call a call jam. So this is where you get a list of people and you get a group of people together, and at the same time in different rooms of your office, or you can coordinate it on Zoom remotely and just press mute and check in every half hour or whatever.
10:37 #7 Host a Call Jam
But basically you're gonna have a call jam where you pick up the damn phone and you call people and you keep track of how many calls did you make, how many connections did you make, how many results did you get? And you compare notes along the way, and one of you will set the pace and other people will become competitive. And as a team, you get the calls done. So it's fun. Maybe it's not something you're gonna have people do every day and you let them know that, but when you're in a sales rut, this can be a great way to activate a lot of conversations that lead to initial visits, and then the rest of the pipeline starts to fall in place after that, especially when you have that current compelling offer. So who would you call? I would look through your database at Lost Leads.
How many people did you go and meet with last year or this year so far that you talked with them? Maybe you even got as far as setting an appointment, or maybe the appointment got canceled or lost somehow, or maybe you sent them a proposal and they ghosted and they never heard from you. Give those people the benefit of the doubt and call them and say, Hey, Mrs. Smith, it's Jack from Jack's landscapes. We talked earlier this spring about installing a new irrigation system. I hadn't heard from you in a while. I just wanted to check in with you and see how you were doing. And have you solved that irrigation challenge you were having? A lot of times you'll hear things like, oh no, I didn't. I'm so sorry. We went outta town for two weeks and then we got covid I d and then we tried to get a home equity line of credit, and that took three months. And I'm so glad you called because we are realizing that we need a sprinkler system or whatever. It's so get that in place, have the next step in mind, which should be to schedule an appointment with those people.
12:25 #8 Stay Physically Strong
My eighth tip is to stay physically strong. So in my book Tree of Good Fortune, I was, I'm pretty candid about at one point I had over $130,000 of debt and around that and, and how I worked my way out of it by reading and learning sales and marketing and, and really making some big business changes. But a key thing that was also happening in my life when I had all of that debt was I was extremely stressed. And part of the reason was I wasn't exercising regularly. So when I was in high school, I had a spine injury where I lost my hearing and luckily a chiropractor helped me with that. But throughout college, I didn't really exercise. I started drinking a lot for many reasons. One, just enjoying college, but also to, to mitigate pain. And when I wrote my first book get Found Online, I set a challenge to not drink until I finished the book. It ended up taking a year, and I enjoyed feeling like I'm getting sleep and all the other things that came with quitting drinking. But during that time, I started doing yoga about four times a week. 'cause That really helped with my back pain. And then eventually that got me to the point where I wanted more. Now I'm really into kettlebell training. I just finished a workout. I love doing kettlebell swings, Turkish getups. I keep it really simple. I also go rucking a couple times a week.
Jack Jostes
Yeah, woo
Whatever it is, it's easy when you're in that place of low sales pipeline. Maybe you have debt. I was just talking with a client yesterday who's really stressed and that stress can really manifest into a lot of other things and then make your business issues work worse. And then that makes your personal issues worse. And then you start having relationship issues and like, it's this vicious cycle. So the key is to keep working out whatever it is you like to do, even when you're in a sales rut. I think part of it, when I think about doing the kettlebell workouts, is simply just doing the reps, just showing up and doing it. And a lot of sales and business, I really think is just showing up and doing it. Most of the things in this podcast, these nine tips are things that you just go do there, their behaviors, go do the behaviors, the behaviors will produce the sales results.
14:51 #9 Share Your Offer In Facebook Groups And Next Door For The Neighborhoods That You're Targeting
So let's get into our ninth tip next. My ninth and final mostly free sales and marketing tactic is to share your offer in Facebook groups and next door for the neighborhoods that you're targeting. My town, I live in a small town, there's a very lively Facebook group where people are always asking for landscapers or different trades, people of all kinds. So one, you can look and see, have people been asking for whatever service you offer? And could you comment and could you take that cool graphic that you've designed and post it there with an offer and link to your website or to your business Facebook page. If you have a truly word of mouth business, like many of you say you do, your customers who are happy with the work you're doing are gonna comment. They're gonna say, I absolutely work with this company that did a great job.
And people are gonna see the reviews and the photos on your Facebook and social media, and they'll be very likely to contact you. But remember, you're gonna need to do this from your personal Facebook account. So make sure you clean it up, remove things from it that you don't want potential customers to see. And all of this is gonna work really well. But if people Google you or they look at your Facebook page and you have a negative review average, or your website has really old photos or hardly any photos at all of the things that your customers want, it could break the deal. And that's why having the landscapers foundation of digital marketing, especially the foundational four, your branding and differentiation, why are you different? Your website, your local SEO and your online reviews, those four things together, you're gonna get a much better result from this.
16:37 Schedule Your 15-minute Marketing Brainstorm
There are a lot of different things that you can do to fill your sales pipeline to brand and market and advertise your snow and landscape company, and it can feel overwhelming. I shared just nine ideas today, but there are hundreds more. There are a lot of websites I didn't even talk about. So where should you start? What should you do when you have a limited budget? We would love to help you figure out where to start in a simple 15 minute marketing brainstorm call. We'll get clear on who is your Hell Yes Customer, what are you currently doing for marketing? What's working, what isn't working? And we'll be able to point you in the right direction. That could mean having a longer conversation with us about building a marketing plan, or it could be referring you to the right podcast episode or inviting you to an event.
So have a call with us, reach out landscapersguide.com/brainstorm and you can schedule online directly with us. Right now, I'm out in Lyons, Colorado. I'm right next to the St. Frame River. It's a beautiful day. It's actually overcast now, which is easier for me to record this video than the first segment that I recorded. But I wanna invite you to come and meet me here and meet the Ramblin Jackson team. We're having a 14th birthday party because 14 is the coolest age that no one celebrates until this year. So come to our party for real. We're having an outdoor barbecue. We're gonna play the Stump game. We're meeting in one of the most beautiful landscapes I've ever been to. It's Laverne Johnson Park where there's this awesome zip line. The river runs through town. There's all these outdoor pavilions. There's a, in the winter, there's an ice rink there, there's tons of mature trees.
It's really a beautiful place. It's taking place. On Wednesday, August 2nd during our Ramblin Retreat, we've got the Ramblers flying out from around the country. We're getting together. We're gonna go visit one of our client's landscapes and we're gonna interview the homeowner with our client. How cool is that gonna be? So we'd love to see you there. Check it out at landscapersguide.com/events. You can rsvp so we'll know how much food to order. Bring your team, bring your family, make a, make a trip out of it. It's coming up soon though, so we hope to see you there. My name's Jack Jostes. See our show notes for, for all the different things that I mentioned today, and I look forward to seeing you next week on The Landscaper's Guide.
Download the Hell Yes Customer Worksheet: https://landscapersguide.com/hellyes/
Schedule your 15 minute Marketing Brainstorm: https://landscapersguide.com/brainstorm/
RSVP for our Client Appreciation Party in Lyons, CO: https://landscapersguide.com/rjbirthday/
