In Lawn Care Sales Funnels – Part 1 we talked about how an average lawn care sales funnel works. In this part we continue the conversation and break each step of the sales funnel down into critical steps… If a prospect doesn’t make it through all 4 steps the funnel leaks and a sale is not made…
Patch the leaks!!!
Click Here to Watch Part One
Let’s break each of these down specifically. Attention, if you can’t get noticed, you’re not making a sale. The goal here is to be everywhere your customers are looking for the services you provide. Approach it from that angle. Where are your customers looking for your services? Where do you need to be? Figure out how you can get there.
A really effective thing that you can do is approach your trucks from a different angle. Approach them as not just vehicles that get your equipment from place to place. Make them mobile billboards. I see so many companies with white trucks with tiny green lettering on the side of their truck that nobody notices. When I drive by, I just think it’s a normal white truck.
I don’t even know it’s a business truck. There’s a lawnmower in the back. Okay, that’s great. The lettering on the side of the door is that big. I drove passed. I don’t know their phone number. I don’t know their name. I don’t know anything.
Do a better job at getting attention, getting noticed in your marketplace. If you turned your small fleet of trucks in the mobile billboards, that will help you pay for your trucks. You will start getting business off your trucks. You will start having prospective customers call you and say, “I see your trucks everywhere because of your truck branding.”
Take your creative approach. Think about the things that you can do to get attention in your marketplace. Another example would be online. One of the common mistakes that I see is companies will call me and they will have a website that they’ve had it for 10 years. They’ve had it so long that one of their pages is naturally ranking in position five or so in the first page of Google.
When I start to talk about SEO, they’ll tell me, “We got that covered. We’re on position five on the first page of Google for one of our key phrases.” That’s all fine and good. That’s good that you’re there for one key phrase. There are thousands of different key phrases that your prospects are searching for. You want to be everywhere that you possibly can within your budget.
Instead of relying on one opportunity, one key phrase to show up for your perspective customers when they’re searching for you, why not show up for thousands? Why not have a full SEO campaign that gets you that broad exposure from multiple keywords? Why not supplement it with Google Adwords on top of that so you can capture even more search phrases that are less frequently searched? Why not appear in all of the different local search sites like Yelp and City Search and all of the others that customers are going to to find businesses like yours and are showing up on that first page of Google?
Think bigger. Think broader. Be everywhere your customers are looking and get noticed. That really ties into the next step which is interest. After you’ve gotten their attention, if you’re not interesting, if you don’t have a compelling reason for them to think about doing business with you, you’re not getting the sale.
This goes into all parts of your marketing whether it’s your website, the photos that you use, the message on your flyers, all of these play a part on whether or not a prospect is going to be interested enough to move to the next step, which is to engage with you.
Look at what your competitors are doing in the market. Think about how you can appear different, have a different message and really distinguish yourself from your competitors. Marketing is really all about distinguishing yourself from your competitors. What are your differences and why are your differences better?
The better job that you do with that in your marketing pieces whether it’s offline marketing or online marketing, the easier it’s going to be for you to sell. The more people are going to engage with you and the easier it’s going to be for you to push them on into a sale. That’s what marketing is all about.
What we commonly see are companies that have the same exact message as every other company in their market. We cut trees. We cut lawns. We’re professional. We’re the best. It’s all meaningless when everybody else in your market is saying the same thing. It’s all meaningless.
Distinguish yourself. Determine what sets you apart and promote those facts. What do your customers care about? What do they object to about using your services? Address those issues. Are you promoting a guarantee? Do you have proof? Do you have 50 letters that your customers have mailed you because you have fantastic service? Do you have video case studies of the beautiful landscaping job that you did that shows how you transformed somebody’s property and then you have the homeowner on the video talking about how thrilled they are having that barbecues on the new patio that your team just built the previous weekend?
What can you do to convince prospects that you are the best choice and they should move to the next step which is to engage with you? How easy have you made it for your client to engage with you, to call you, to e-mail you, to contact you, to raise their hand and say, “I’m interested. Help me.” Did they have to jump through hoops? Did they have to leave a voicemail to reach somebody? What are you doing? Is your website laid out in a way that it encourages this engagement with you? Is it easy for them to fill out a form?
Do they have to hunt through paragraphs of texts to find out what your phone number is? Do they know what service areas you service when they visit your website? All of these things play a part. The more row blocks that you put in front of your customers, your potential customers, the more sales that you’re going to lose.
We want to streamline this step as much as possible. We want to take out all the pain and all the effort that they would have to go through to reach you. You want to make that as easy as possible. You’ve got to be responsive. If you give me slightly better than your competitors that are letting all their calls go to voicemail, you’re going to get more sales.
Finally, take action. They’re interested. They’ve seen us in our market. They’re thinking about doing business with us. This is when salesmanship takes over. At some point, a prospect is going to have to speak to you or a team member, either face to face or over the phone so we have to sell them on our sales, on our services. Why should they do business with you?
It’s shocking to me how many companies can’t define this simple thing. Why should somebody hire you? What are your unique selling points? If you can’t define what makes you special and unique in your market and you can’t define why someone should buy from you, why would they buy from you?
Actually put thought into what makes you special. What is irresistible about your company? What are they going to get when they hire you that they can’t get anywhere else at a cheaper price? What irresistible offer can you make them to do business with you?
Train your staff. Anybody communicating with customers need to be trained. There needs to be a script. There needs to be guidelines. There needs to be answers to any and every objection a prospective customer would have to hiring you. That has to be addressed. The only way that gets addressed as if you train your sales people. if that’s you, then you’ve got to have an answer for everything.
One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make is somebody will call and their sales process goes like this. “Hello. Chuck’s Lawn Care. Okay, you live where? Okay. Yeah. It’s going to be 40 bucks to cut your lawn. Okay, bye.” That’s terrible. Put a follow up strategy in place. Capture the information of every person that calls – phone number, e-mail, mailing address – market to them even if you don’t get the sale.
Put some effort into selling your services. Don’t just quote a price and let them go by to your competitors. Put effort into it. Don’t get caught up in the buzz words where there are content marketing, social media, e-mail marketing, whatever new buzz word a marketer created this week to sell you something.
Stop getting caught up in that stuff and chasing it. Every week you’re chasing something new. Stop doing that. Focus on fixing the stuff that you’re already doing. Get that operating and performing at a very high level and then any marketing that you add to that in the future is going to be more effective.
When we get that sales fund on really really streamline, it’s going to make our cost of client acquisition cheaper. It’s going to increase our sales close rate. It’s going to make everything that we do in the funnel perform better. Therefore all of our marketing is going to be more effective. It’s going to be cheaper for our business to do it.
Guys, pay this some attention. I really encourage you to stop doing marketing halfway. Get really good at the stuff that you’re doing. Then move from there. I hope that made sense. I want to encourage you guys, tear apart your sales funnel. Really analyze what you’re doing, how it’s working in your business. What’s working, what’s not? Fix it. Add some new stuff to the mix. Good luck.
Patch the leaks in your sales funnel.
What role,if any, do you see for business cards in one’s marketing strategy? Best Regards, Patrick