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Why Call Jams Are the Most Profitable Sales Activity
[00:00]
Here's the million dollar sentence that has grown my company for the last 15 years. Call your customers promptly and you will win. It really is that simple. If all you did was take that one sentence, close this episode and start calling people, you would grow a wildly profitable company. But since you're here wanting to learn more today, I'm going to show you exactly how to start doing it with something we run at Ramblin Jackson called Call Jam. A Call jam is one of the most powerful, profitable and fun sales activities any landscape company or small business can run. But nobody is doing it. Especially in the trades.
Why Phone Calls Still Win in 2025
[00:44]
In today's episode of the Landscaper's Guide, I'm going to share why phone calls still win, how to run a call jam with your team, how to prioritize who to call, the Hopper Dropper method and a real example of a landscape company who generated $52,000 in February during a slow season using this exact strategy. So why do calls win? And why don't most people make them? Today's podcast is pulling from the Call Jam chapter from my upcoming book, the Tree of Good the Landscaper's Guide to Direct Response, Sales and Marketing. The whole purpose of my book, and a key reason to listen to this podcast is to create opportunities for real, human to human conversations. One of Ramblin Jackson's core values is be human and pick up the damn phone. Phone calls are one of my secret weapons in business. Not because I love talking.
The Power of Human-to-Human Conversations
[01:44]
Honestly, I listen more than I talk. I aim for 30% me, prompting questions and primarily listening to the 70% of my customer talking. And many of my best calls are not even about the service I'm selling. They're about our kids, vacations, hunting, business frustrations, cooking, fitness, life stuff. That rapport makes the hard calls easier and it makes the sales calls stronger. But most contractors simply do not call people back at all. You you know it, I know it, and customers know it. Lack of communication is the number one complaint with home service companies, including landscapers. If you simply call people back, you already have beaten most of your competition. Call your customers promptly when they reach out and you will win. That's the whole book in one sentence. Now. There's a lot more to it. And I understand why people avoid calls.
Why Landscapers Don’t Call (And Why That’s Good for You)
[02:50]
There are understandable reasons why landscape contractors don't call. They're overwhelmed. There are fires to put out. You'd probably rather build things than talk to people. Or you just don't know what to say and of course wah. I don't like calling people is something I hear from a lot of people. All understandable. But you chose to be in business and this is all the reason why. When you do make the call, you win because your competitor won't. So what is a call jam? A call jam is a scheduled team based calling event where multiple people block time on the calendar to call a specific list of customers or prospects. It's fun, competitive and it creates accountability so it actually gets done. Who should participate in the call jam? A call jam isn't just for salespeople.
What a Call Jam Is and Who Should Join
[03:47]
Operations managers, account managers, marketing staff, admins and the owner can all participate and make it fun with prizes. You can think of your own prizes based on your company goals and culture and I'll share some of mine. The first one is the Next Steps Benjamin award. It's a $100 bill for appointments. Deal signed or moving someone to the next step of the sale. Because that's the whole purpose of this is not to make a big volume of calls, but really to move things along towards a decision to hire your company. Next, we have the most hopper droppers. These are $50 gift cards to DoorDash for the most calls plus follow up emails and I'll tell you more about that in a minute. Next, most dials with quality. We have a $25 Amazon gift card for the most logged calls with a voicemail.
Call Jam Prizes That Motivate Your Team
[04:48]
The Team Spirit award. This can be 15 bucks to the local ice cream joint or whatever for somebody who's bringing energy and encouragement to the call jam. So here's how to run a call jam. First, put a two hour block on the calendar and invite your team. Prepare call lists at least one week in advance. Kick it off with enthusiasm and clear rules, one of which is that you're gonna check in every 30 minutes where people are gonna report how many calls have you made, how many connections have you made, how many emails did you send and what are your next steps? Recap the results and at the end do it again and award the prizes. Now here's how to prioritize who to call. Call your hot leads first. This would be new leads.
How To Prioritize Hot Leads
[05:45]
Earlier I was talking about calling people back promptly. We always want to be doing that. And during this call jam this is a time to still prioritize those new leads. Maybe you haven't connected with them yet. People who have open proposals that haven't given you a decision yet, expiring proposals, maybe you have a rate increase coming up or something like that and Customer service issues. That's where you, as the owner might participate best is was there an issue with a customer last week? What if you personally called them to make sure that it was resolved? Well, that would go a long way for your reputation and referrals. Then after you've finished calling your hot leads, call your warm lead. Second, these are existing customers who bought one thing but not yet another, such as maybe they bought the landscape installation project, but they haven't yet joined your maintenance plan.
Warm Leads, Website Engagement, and CRM Signals
[06:42]
You can also prioritize people if you have your software set up, like lead wrangler from Ramblin Jackson, people who have engaged with your website, people who have clicked on the pricing page, or people who are in your email list that have opened or clicked on a recent email campaign. After you've exhausted your hot leads and warm leads, move on to your cold leads. Third, so these could be old leads. They could be dormant contacts, people that ghosted you a month or two ago, maybe never hired anyone. So try calling them and reactivating them. It could be your dream 100 list. If you're doing commercial outbound sales, LinkedIn prospects, et cetera. When you call, use the hopper dropper method to get the best results. In fly fishing, a hopper dropper is two flies. One is floating and the other is sinking.
The Hopper Dropper Method Explained
[07:41]
The one on top of the water is a hopper. And sometimes it actually looks something like this, like a grasshopper. Right? So this is going to float on top of the water and then from that you're going to tie a fishing line to something else that sinks underneath the water and that's the dropper. Like a midge or a nymph or. This is one of my personal favorites, a purple St San Juan Worm. This combo hopper dropper has caught me more trout in Colorado than anything else in my fly box. And in sales, this works extremely well too. It's leaving a descriptive voicemail that's the hopper, and then immediately sending the follow up email, that's the dropper. This doubles your chance of somebody responding, just like it doubles the chance of a trout looking up and maybe getting the dropper or the hopper.
Example Voicemail + Email Script
[09:24]
So your voicemail is probably going to be transcribed and read, so make sure you speak clearly so that way somebody could read it or listen to it. It might sound something like this. Hey Paul, it's Jack from Liberty Landscapes. We designed your outdoor kitchen and backyard last fall and I wanted to let you know that we're having a fun promotion going on right now for existing clients who may need help with other landscape projects. If you schedule an in person meeting with me before October 29th, I'll bring you a hundred dollar gift card to the Cork Steakhouse. I remember we talked about doing a dog run on the side of your house and that you'd mentioned getting a cold plunge. We just got some new ones that are really cool so call me back or text me 555-555-5555 and look out for an email from me as well. So if I left that voicemail for Paul and he's reading like wow, dude remembered the cold plunge that I wanted last year and he's got a new one and he sent me an email with an offer, it's going to be more likely that Paul is going to return that next.
How To Use Call Jams in Seasonal Campaigns
[10:19]
Leverage Call jams in your seasonal marketing campaigns are designed to fit into the seasonality of your business. Are you ramping up for fall cleanups? Holiday light installations? Projects to complete before Memorial Day? Whatever it is, an effective seasonal marketing campaign should include at least two call jams plus email campaigns. Here's an example of a six week outline. It might include Email one Call jam one, Email two a few days go by, maybe a week, email three and then call jam number two.
The $52,000 Texas Case Study
[11:15]
And then once this thing expires, if you have an offer, do a final call jam to the people who raised their hand and said they were interested but didn't move forward. I'm going to share with you how this worked with an actual landscape company in Texas. Theiss Landscape Works just outside of Houston, Texas, ran a simple seasonal offer. They had a landing page. They updated their Google Ads running to that landing page. They had a two postcard mailing campaign, six emails, and then two call jams. They ended up getting 14 appointments. Six of them closed and generated $52,000 of revenue. This was a 43% close rate and multiple cold leads reactivated who bought a different service just a month or so later. They found that this call jam was so effective that they added a final one to the mix the Monday after their campaign ended. And that was the most important part of the whole thing.
Big Picture: Conversations Create Sales
[12:21]
So the big picture is to have conversations with customers that lead to sales. Everything comes down to having conversations with customers that leads to sales. As AI grows, people crave human interaction even more. Call your customers, leave voicemails, send emails, use text message marketing when appropriate. Automate what you can and track everything in your CRM. Now there you have it. The call jam. Go call your existing customers, host a call jam with your team, prioritize hot leads, then warm, then cold leads. Use the hopper dropper method and tie your call jams into seasonal campaigns. Track everything. Call your customers promptly when they reach out and you will win. If you'd like even more ideas to grow your snow and landscape company, subscribe to our podcast@landscapersguide.com podcast to instantly receive my top three podcasts, plus email invitations to my upcoming live and virtual workshops. My name is Jack Jostes and I look forward to talking with you next week on the Landscapers Guide.