Landscape Management, October 2013

BUSINESS PLANNER 2014 ILLUSTRATION ISTOCK INTERNATIONAL INC continued on page 96 Lead R un Grow Q HOW CAN I GET MORE SALES BY ANDREW POTOTSCHNIK A In describing the process companies go through to generate new customers I refer to a big old sales funnel You pour leads in the top and sales come out the bottom All sales funnels leak leads though letting them escape before you can turn them into sales By patching your funnel you can improve marketing effectiveness and boost sales And in any funnel it takes four steps to gently nudge prospects to a sale Each step is a potential lost sale waiting to happen so the goal should be to improve your ability to move prospects through the steps Sadly most companies put all their effort into getting attention and very little into the rest You wont make a sale if you never guide them through the other steps With every hole you patch youll exponentially increase the percentage of leads that become sales because improvements throughout the funnel have a multiplying effect on the sales coming out the bottom For example increasing the attention your company receives allows more chance for prospects to become interested More interested prospects increases the number of them engaging with your company and the more engaging the more opportunities you have to sell Here are the ways you can increase the effectiveness of each step STEP 1 Get their attention If you cant get a prospects attention youve already lost the sale Do you have fanatical referrers Are you everywhere prospects are looking for your services Does your business appear in search results pay per click ads their door their mailbox or on your truck in their area Most leaks occurring in this stage are a result of nonexistent or poorly executed marketing Your prospective customers simply dont know you exist or choose a company they think is larger because its more visible in the marketplace It seems every landscape company uses the same tired fleet of generic white trucks with little green lettering on the door however companies could turn their fleets into attention grabbing mobile billboards with the use of neon colors graphics and a bold easy to remember phone number and website Get noticed then listen to prospects say I see your trucks everywhere even when your fleet is only two trucks Most online marketing programs lack similar market exposure Many companies have an old website that naturally shows up somewhere on the first page of Google for one key phrase And thats it They think they have the web thing covered They dont though Prospects search thousands of key phrases to find you or your competitors A high ranking properly optimized content rich site supplemented by pay per click advertising and a presence on all of the most popular local search sites such as Google Local and Yelp will give you the largest online presence possible This allows you to be everywhere online potential customers are looking for your services LANDSCAPEMANAGEMENT NET OCTOBER 2013 94