Marketing & Sales Insight for the Lawn & Landscape Industry

In the last two videos in this series we explored how using personalized video in your landscaping or lawn care sales process can actually help you sell more work in less time.

Today, I am going to walk you through these steps and also show you examples so you can understand what I mean. And the live action version of Ted, the old school salesman from our Green Ways comic book, is also going to make a few appearances. Stay tuned.

In my last video, I brought one of our Green Ways comic book characters to life. Ted is one of the characters that regularly appears in these stories. The live-action version of Ted gave us a glimpse into the old school ways of selling lawn care and landscaping work.

He slings out a lot of proposals and then he calls and calls, emails and emails, and waits and waits, often to just give up on prospects.

The problem is this old school way of selling lawn care, landscaping work really isn't that old school. It's kind of the current state of the green industry right now. There are a lot of salespeople wasting a ton of time and not closing deals as often as they want to. Does this sound familiar? 

Are you tired of reaching out to prospects or trying to up-sell customers and just being ignored? Are you sick of spending so much time preparing proposals, leaving phone messages, and sending emails?

Are you still using these same, old tricks to try to sell lawn care or landscaping work? Or does this sound like a few busy people on your sales team who boast a lot of activity but poor results?

Want to learn a new trick? One that will increase your closing percentage and help you sell more work in less time (and with less aggravation)? Then today's video is just for you. 

Here's an innovative idea. It's called using personalized video in your landscaping and lawn care sales process. Stay tuned.

(Thinking to myself)...Hmmmm....we really need more of this lawn care or landscaping work on the books...

(Lightbulb moment!)....I know! I'll send out an email blast.

Have you gotten bad results with email marketing for your lawn care landscaping company?

Maybe you've been thinking that you want to use email marketing to generate more lawn care landscaping leads, but you're not quite sure if it actually works.

Well, today, I'm going to share seven reasons these campaigns commonly fail. Stay tuned.

You and your team may think that your lawn care or landscaping company is the best around, but your prospective customer may be a little bit skeptical and may not take your word for it.

The great things that your happy customers say about your company carry way more weight than what you could ever say.

So when it comes to getting great five-star Google reviews, are you really leveraging them on your landscaping and lawn care website or other marketing collateral? Today I'm going to show you how to do just that.

Purchase our entire collection of Green Ways comics on Amazon

This article was originally published in the November 2017 issue of Lawn & Landscape magazine.

I live on the top floor of a contemporary mid-rise apartment downtown Austin, Texas. While I take great pride in my horticultural skills on display on the balcony, a need for lawn care services for my 70 square foot concrete and steel space does not exist.

My living circumstances, however, do not seem to disqualify me from receiving dozens of email newsletters from well-intentioned lawn and landscape companies from around the country (oddly, none in Austin).

As summer is coming to a close and Labor Day approaches, I’m often reminded of a yearly memory over my past 20 years in the lawn care industry. It’s almost aeration and seeding time!

Pulling those little plugs and broadcasting seed means not only improved lawns for clients, but a spike in revenue each fall. It’s a race until cold temperatures arrive to get as much work done as you can.

But what if your company struggles with the question of how to sell lawn aeration and overseeding? You could send out a postcard. You could run a promotion in print or social media. But that all rests on the hope that your potential aeration and seeding prospects understand the value of the service and wants you to do it for them. It’s a lot of hope to hang on the small real estate of a postcard or advertisement.

This article was originally published in Turf Magazine where Chad writes a monthly feature on sales and marketing for landscaping, lawn care and other green industry companies.

It’s hard to believe, but email was invented 45 years ago, in 1972. Upon the world-wide adoption of the internet in the 1990’s, email’s popularity spread and is still widely in use today.

Contrary to some predictions, email is not dead, and has become a pillar of modern communication. While younger generations are becoming more active on other messaging platforms, email still remains a viable and regularly used means of communication for lawn care, landscaping and tree service companies to prospects and customers of all ages.

Email marketing is used by many green industry companies to communicate with both prospective and current customers. Frustration and poor results are common because many companies view email like traditional advertising methods.

This article was originally published in Turf Magazine, where Chad writes a monthly column providing sales and marketing tips for lawn care, landscaping and tree service companies.

In 2011, Google conducted research about how consumer habits have changed. The findings, coined a term “Zero Moment of Truth” (ZMOT), referring to the moment when a prospective customer finally reaches out to a company for an estimate, consultation, or to make a purchase.

The results of the ZMOT study yielded an important number: 70%. The percentage refers to the fact that, on average, buyers are 70% through their buyer’s journey before reaching out to a company for their Zero Moment of Truth.

This article was originally published in Turf Magazine, where Chad writes a monthly column about sales and marketing tips for landscaping and lawn care companies.

As the keystone business principle states, “You gotta’ spend money to make money.” Savvy business owners of lawn care and landscaping companies plan ahead and make sure a portion of their annual revenue gets allocated to their marketing budget.

Aggressive budgeting along with smart initiatives that can be measured are common traits you’ll find when looking to our industry’s leaders.

But what happens when you “gotta spend money”, and don’t “gotta” lot to work with? Some marketing initiatives come at a premium price and you have to be careful not to waste those dollars you and your team works so hard to bring in.