What do you do when you get so many qualified leads coming in that you can't handle all of it? Well, in today's video I'm going to share with you two key things that you can do when you're getting quality leads, and yes, how to get so many qualified leads that you even have this problem.
My name's Jack Jostes, and welcome to the Landscapers Guide to Modern Sales and Marketing Podcast. I'm really excited to do an interview with our senior landscape marketing strategist, Robert Felton, and I'm going to share with you how you can get my brand new landscapers marketing field guide. It's a new print guide, it's awesome. I'm going to mail it to you, so watch today's video to find out how you can get your hands on this.
Interview
Jack Jostes:
Hey everyone, right now I'm in downtown San Antonio, Texas, on the Riverwalk. I am presenting at the TNLA's Nursery Landscape Expo. This is my, well, third full show because last year was canceled because of COVID and everything, but I'm really excited to be here. And I'm with Ramblin Jackson's senior landscape marketing strategist, Robert Felton, who has worked with me for years. Robert and I actually came when I was the keynote speaker here in 2018, so four years ago, and I've been running Ramblin Jackson for 12 years. I remember when I started that, it was like, I needed to tell people like, "No really, you need to be on the internet." And people were like, "No, we've been in the phone book for 25 years," and that was the big sale. And then it changed again. And so what were people talking to you about four years ago? And then what's different now in 2021?
How Digital Marketing Has Changed In The Last Few Years
Robert Felton:
Yeah, I think it's really funny because four years ago it was all leads, leads, leads. We want more leads. We want more leads, Robert, how do we get them? And a lot of them were just catching up, getting on the internet. And now it's kind of funny. The environment's changed a lot. Landscapers have gotten the internet and what's happening is, they're getting too many leads. And there's so many changing customer expectations, especially with COVID, buying food, buying anything. I remember you bought a car online.
Jack Jostes:
I literally bought a truck on my iPhone and it was delivered to my house.
Robert Felton:
Exactly. So people are starting to shift to buying actions online. So customer expectations are changing. They're expecting to learn more before they meet with the sales person, or a team member, or the owner. I mean, that's kind of the biggest trend I've seen shifting over four years. And it's been fun in Texas because it was leads, leads, leads, getting on the internet. Now it's like, wow, I have too many leads. How do I filter them? How do I figure out who's a good one and who's a bad one?
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. And one of the ways to filter them is through a pricing page and talking about your process, putting content on your website that will disqualify people, right? You want to weed out people, let them self eliminate, the people who aren't going to meet your budget or your timeline, or they need a service that you don't offer. When you have too little information, then you get too many leads who don't know very much. And then a human on your staff needs to spend the time talking with them.
Robert Felton:
Exactly. It's like, I found a landscaper I want to buy from, I don't want pricing from some other page, I want the pricing and the budgeting information, so I can prepare for this investment on that landscapers website. I mean, I want someone to come out to my property. I want to be able to schedule things online. I want to know what's coming next. Especially if I'm investing $200,000, I want to know, yeah, what's the next step? Are you going to call me back? What are some of the uniques... What's going to happen? And that expectation is so high now. I mean, I always challenge people, how you buy food online at a restaurant. Now you can order it, pick it up. You don't have to talk to anyone. You don't have to do anything. A lot of people like that.
Jack Jostes:
They do. And food... Some people might be listening, saying, "Oh, well, food is different. You know, we're going to need to meet with people." And you do need to meet with people and you don't necessarily need to have a menu like a restaurant, but you can have a range of, Hey, front yard start between X and Y. And they include this. And they take approximately this long. Even helping people understand those brackets will help weed out the people who say, "Well, I don't want to spend $5,000 on landscaping. Why would I do...", well great. Don't call me. So that we've also nailed it down though. Once you are implementing digital marketing and you're getting leads, we've really found that there are two things that you can do in your sales process, really, that can help streamline things from an operation standpoint. What are those two things?
How To Qualify Customers Over The Phone
Robert Felton:
Yeah. It's funny. People fight me on these a lot and it's been a lot of interesting conversations. But if you want to qualify... If you have too many leads coming in, you got all these great leads and you're spending a lot of time talking to them, qualifying, figuring out who's the good one, who's the bad one. Your office staff might be exhausted. The two things that I found that worked the best is charging for the first appointment. I mean, if you're going to drive out, you might as well make some money off of it to qualify if they're a good fit. The other one is, if you have a longer process, I suggest doing a qualification phone call, even 15 minutes, asking those important questions, have a detailed script. So any of your team members could do it or learn how to do it. If you're the owner and you do all the sales calls, what are the important steps so that someone else could be qualifying them for?
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of people resist this idea, especially in Texas. I hear this when I come down here, "Jack, that works in Colorado, but it's not going to work in Texas." It works in every state. And in fact, it does work in Texas. We have a client, Casey Hendrix from TechScapes Nursery and Greenery in Ennis, Texas, and he now, they charge for the appointment, you can book it... Not only, here's the amazing thing. Not only do they charge for the appointment, but you can schedule it and pay through their website. And the really cool thing is it's not even Casey going and doing it anymore. It's his lead designer doing it. And that's positioning his lead designer now as an expert. You've got to pay to meet with this person, whereas before people would say, "Oh, well, I want to meet with Casey the owner, because he's the only one that knows what's up."
Jack Jostes:
So I love that. And that prequalification phone call, even when you're charging, we have a client in Minnesota, Brandon, who, even when he's, after he's sold an appointment, he calls to confirm and he qualifies on the phone. Hey, by the way, oh, that project is probably going to be $50,000, $60,000. Does it still make sense for me to come and meet with you? Oh no. Oh, well, Hey, no worries. I'm going to refund you that deposit for that appointment and we'll move on.
Robert Felton:
Did you know that Brandon doesn't even have an office staff anymore?
Jack Jostes:
Yes, he's totally automated-
Robert Felton:
It's amazing. I've walked through it. It's good.
Digital Marketing = Effectively Tying Sales and Operations Together
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. So, a lot of times people hear digital marketing and they think, oh, I'm just going to get more leads. But digital marketing to me, is operations. It ties into your sales and operations and it can alleviate the need for certain staff or free up time for them.
Robert Felton:
And also just the sales process, I mean, we think about sales as getting revenue, all of that, but there's so much, like this has to happen. Then this happens. And I mean, when Jack and I work on sales process, we put sticky notes with arrows pointing from one sticky note to the next. And sometimes when I walk through with clients in our first phone call, it's the first time they've really laid out their sales process. And there's a lot of ifs and thens but you find a lot of commonalities, you can kind of find the path.
Robert Felton:
And I mean, that's just so helpful. And then you start putting in things like charging for the first appointment, qualification call, you add a design process. It gets really cool. And it really saves our clients a lot of time. I mean, we've been working on a lot of videos. You're always out here recording videos. I mean, I've actually sold quite a bit of video. So I was just curious, how's it working for our clients? I know you're in this mastermind with them and sharing a lot of different ideas. So I was wondering if they had any feedback and if I'm selling something that they like?
Jack Jostes:
Yeah, so right now we're on the Riverwalk. We're using two different cameras. A few years ago I was just using iPhone and I've gotten way into video over the last few years-
Robert Felton:
Your setup is really impressive now.
Jack Jostes:
We've got quite the setup, and video has worked so well for Ramblin Jackson that we've started offering it to clients, because I'm often thinking, well, a video could do that for you. And so we've started selling our sales indoctrination video, which is a video that you have customers watch before you go and meet with them. And it teaches them things like the process, the budget range, what are the next steps? Things that ultimately you might spend 30 minutes educating a customer on, you can get done in a four to 10 minute video. And that seems long but people will watch it. If they're already on the calendar, you watch it with them.
Jack Jostes:
And for our wild frontier clients, we do have our landscape executive mastermind that meets once a month. It's one of my favorite things, we have exclusive clients from all over the country who come and we meet on zoom and we do our mastermind and we just did a video shoot, actually in Boulder, Colorado with one of our clients from Dallas, Texas, Jeffrey Riddle.
Robert Felton:
Yeah, how did that go? I saw some takes from it.
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. So, it was fun because we're building a new studio for Ramblin Jackson and it's not done yet. And so we rented a studio in Boulder and funny enough, when we got there, we were working with different sets, different lighting, and Jeffrey ended up choosing a wood wall background, which is basically what we have in our studio.
Robert Felton:
Have you seen Jack? He's always on a wood wall. There's always wood behind him.
Jack Jostes:
So the footage turned out great. It was a lot of fun. It was hard work. Jeffrey did a great job. And he told me in the mastermind that he's already saving time, that he's decreased the amount of time. People are like, oh yeah, I watched the video. I understand the process. And so that's shortening his sales process. So when you think about the stress of having a ton of leads and not enough people, sometimes think about, well, what could be done one time, a video, that is then sent to people and watched over and over again. And so that's really what I love about the power of video and why I've been doing it for 12 years. And I make a lot of them. I don't think landscapers necessarily need to make as many of them as we do.
How To Use Video In Your Sales Process
Jack Jostes:
But videos... So one of the things that we're doing soon, is we're actually having an event, called the Landscapers Marketing Field Guide. So I'm publishing my new book, The Tree Of Good Fortune, The Landscapers Guide To Modern Sales and Marketing. And I'm really excited. You all can join us. We're going to be doing a virtual event. It's a workshop, Robert and I will both be presenting. And we're going to help you learn how to plant your own tree of good fortune, and we'll be talking about the foundation of digital marketing. Some of the things that we've talked about in today's episode are part of what I call the strategic three, online sales automation, video selling. These are kind of advanced concepts that you can do once you have the foundational four.
Robert Felton:
Well, I think it's so important because you can't really... I mean, having a detailed sales process, having too many leads, you have to have a great lead count to use this. You need to get this big cloud of good leads and then you need to make your sales process be a funnel so we can figure out who's good and who's bad. So, I mean, these are awesome things that are really helpful, but they really do come after you get great marketing. What is the top of the pyramid, Jack?
Jack Jostes:
Well, the top of the pyramid is what we call the bonus steps. And it's things like social media and online advertising. Yeah, so at the top... But no, a lot of people are spending money at the top on online advertising, driving people to a weak foundation. And so the webinar, and you can all register for that, and then we will mail you a copy of the Landscapers Marketing Field Guide, which is like the cliff notes version of my upcoming book, The Tree Of Good Fortune, which is being printed. It's going to be ready in October. We're having a book launch party at the GIE Expo.
Jack Jostes:
You've got to come, hope to see you there. What the field guide does and what this webinar is going to do is help people break out the steps of, okay, where do I start? Where am I at? What are my needs? Should I do video first? Or should I work on my branding? And for us, sales process is actually part of your branding. A lot of people think that your branding is just your logo and colors. Yes, that's important. You need to look good...
Robert Felton:
That is cool, to think about it as part of branding, it does make sense. Because it's like, this is the process that every customer has to walk through. It's a core experience.
Branding Is All About The Experience
Jack Jostes:
Yeah. Branding is about experience, and the experience that you deliver is what makes you different from another competitor.
Robert Felton:
You're so good at saying stuff.
Jack Jostes:
Well, thank you. I've been practicing, I'm looking forward to speaking and I also find that when your process is dialed in, you can profit more. So let's just pretend that two landscapers sell a project for $20,000. One of them has a process for getting that project done. One of them doesn't. One of them kind of is like, well, I've done this before, but they don't really follow steps. Which one's going to create more profit? Clearly the one that has a process. Which one's going to have a happier customer?
Robert Felton:
Yeah. Well, just think about if you're trying to buy something for $20,000, you're comparing, kind of come down to it, they have nice pictures. They look about the same online, but one has a detailed process, you know what's coming next, you know who's contacting you, you know who your account manager is. They have proof they've done this time and time again. I'm hiring the guy with the process, not the other one. So, I mean, I think it goes both ways, thinking about it from sales, I'm buying from the guy... They're different products then.
Jack Jostes:
Once you do this, it kind of ruins being a customer.
Robert Felton:
Yeah it really does.
Jack Jostes:
When you start buying from people who don't have a process and you can't talk to them online, it's just-
Robert Felton:
We get frustrated buying. We're like, oh, those guys just didn't have a process. It's not repeatable. It's so bad.
Jack Jostes:
Well, anyway. It's been a real pleasure talking with you, Robert. And so for those of you watching, I'd love to send you a copy of this field guide. You get it when you buy your ticket for the Landscapers Marketing Field Guide online event, which you can find out more about at landscapersguide.com/events. And we look forward to seeing you there.
Robert Felton:
Cheers.