10 Rules for Lawn Care or Landscaping Sales Success
Looking to bump up your closing ratio when doing sales presentations for your lawn care or landscaping business?
Give these 10 suggestions a try and see if they don’t help increase your closing rate:
1. Be enthusiastic. Nothing has more power to sell than enthusiasm, especially if you’re enthusiastic because you truly believe your products and services are THE BEST.
2. Set goals, make a plan, make it happen. Start by defining EXACTLY what you want to achieve, both short and long term, create a road map for making it happen, and then get to work.
3. Sell to help your customer first. Yes, you got into sales so you could make a living for you and your family, but if that’s your primary concern you’ll never achieve the results you could IF you focused first on solving your customers problems or satisfying their needs. Remember, you’ll get everything you’ve ever wanted if you first help others get what they want!
4. Believe in your company and its services. If you don’t believe that you and your company can indeed provide THE BEST products and/or lawn care and landscaping services available it’ll be hard to be truly enthusiastic. If needed, spend some time figuring out what needs to change so you CAN believe in your company.
5. Establish long term relationships. Remember, your customers are your MOST valuable asset. Focus the necessary time, money, and energy required to establish long term relationship and your business will flourish for years to come.
6. Qualify the buyer. Never waste time with someone that really isn’t qualified or interested in what you’re offering. If you do your marketing correctly, it should do most of this qualification for you so you can spend your time CLOSING these qualified prospects.
7. Be on time and look professional. People want to work with the best and if you can’t be on time or look professional it screams of a lack of professionalism. Lateness says, “I don’t respect your time” and looking unprofessional says, “I don’t truly believe in the value of my company or the services we offer.”
8. Sell benefits, not features. The customer doesn’t care about how you do what you do, all they care about is how what you do will make their life easier.
9. Anticipate and overcome objections. You know there will be questions or concerns about the service proposal you’re presenting so be prepared for them. Understand your products and services well enough and have the answers prepared so when your prospects voice their objections you know how to handle them effortlessly.
10. Have fun! Going back to rule #1, enthusiasm can overcome a lot, but you’ve got to have fun if you want to be enthusiastic. You’ll have a great deal more success if you enjoy what you’re doing because you’ll work harder and you’ll convey your enjoyment of your work to others.
So, as you’re looking for ways to grow your lawn care business, keep these 10 principles in mind the next time you do a sales presentation and watch your closing ratio improve dramatically.
For more information about how to effectively market your lawn care business, visit www.FREELawnCareMarketingSecrets.com.
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March 9th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
[...] 10 Rules for Lawn Care or Landscaping Sales Success. … If you don’t believe that you and your company can indeed provide THE BEST products and/or lawn care and landscaping services available it’ll be hard to be truly enthusiastic. Read more: 10 Rules for Lawn Care or Landscaping Sales Success | The Lawn … [...]
March 10th, 2009 at 9:40 am
“Sell benefits, not features. The customer doesn’t care about how you do what you do, all they care about is how what you do will make their life easier.”
That is probably the biggest thing I have learned when doing sales. Its not an obvious one that a lot of people know about. It takes awhile to realize that people don’t really care about the technical stuff that you do. They just want a good end result.
March 10th, 2009 at 11:45 am
[...] 10 Rules for Lawn Care or Landscaping Sales Success. … If you don’t believe that you and your company can indeed provide THE BEST products and/or lawn care and landscaping services available it’ll be hard to be truly enthusiastic. … Lawn Care Tips… [...]
March 10th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Great post Chestin. I always look forward to your posts. That is a fantastic Top 10.
March 10th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I still cannot grasp the difference between native and standard landscaping. The comparison was rather vague for me. But I’m really all for designing your outdoor area or your landscape in such a way that it attracts as many birds as it can. Maybe getting experienced landscape architects can help any of you with a ‘native’ landscape if you want one.
March 11th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
great post, another tip for getting your landscaping company out there: if you are thinking about starting a lawn care business, make sure you start small and rely on word of mouth until you start to get a good reputation.
keep coming with other tips!!
March 17th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I have owned a commercial/industrial/residential maintenance/design.install firm in SC since 1984…and you are right! People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care…mostly about what your services can DO for THEM. Save them time and money…the least amount of effort they can expend working and/or worrying is what they are after. It’s all about their end result. When you forget that, your sales will decline.
April 10th, 2009 at 9:26 am
I agree strongly with turfgal. People are interested in how our services will make their lives better, especially with so many working couples. Word of mouth is still the best form of advertising for small companies. Testimonials from existing customers are useful for inclusion on your website. This lets prospective clients read what your customers think of your service. Always provide the kind of service you expect to receive from other companies.
Best wishes to all for success in these hard economic times.
JMHO
http://www.t-tlawnmaintenance.com
April 14th, 2009 at 11:25 am
Karl, I’m not disagreeing with you because word-of-mouth is extremely important, but for most businesses it’s way too sporadic and inconsistent to be depended upon. If you want your business to grow, it’s important to effectively implement as many different marketing methods as possible because if you’re dependent on just one method, it could mean a slow death. Especially if that method is sitting around waiting for referrals!
Also, while I agree with lawn care that you need to develop a good reputation right off the bat, I don’t think you HAVE to start small. You simply need to make sure you have the capability to provide exceptional service to all your clients.
Ultimately, it comes down to having the proper systems in place. Marketing systems. Operations systems. Etc. With the proper systems in place you can reach tons of qualified, interested buyers quickly through effective marketing and you can also provide exceptional service that makes people want to refer you.
However, at the end of the day it all comes down to making your customer’s lives easier. That should be the focus of everything you do because if you’re successful at that, you’ll have a thriving, profitable business in no time.
May 1st, 2009 at 7:34 pm
I agree with putting the customer first. If only all companies followed that rule : (
June 20th, 2009 at 4:01 am
These are all excellent rules for lawn contractors no matter where in the world we operate from. The only other thing I would re-emphasise is to remember how busy our clients are these days. Times have changed very fast and as already mentioned both people in couples usually work. With this in mind I always try and keep my services as easy to use as possible for the busy clients. For my business I ensure I have clear and easy to understand invoices, I invoice via email if required, I offer online payment options, and a couple of even easier systems for invoicing. My point is that we need to keep up to date with our customers and how they are living their lives, otherwise we become redundant to our clients, and our continuing business success suffers.
June 20th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Great points…we really need to adapt to our forever changing clients. Simplifying processes to make their lives easier makes a world of difference.
February 24th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
That was a good reading and informative. You obviously know your stuff!
March 19th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
My wife and I found your page and thought it was to be quite entertaining. I aprrecitated the news and I look forward to viewing more from this website again. Is there a way to be notified of more news that are published here on your website?