[Hamons]

Couple weeks ago I attended one of Marty Grunder's teleseminars. It wa s a great experience. basically it was an hour long presentation with a half hour question and answer with Marty Grunder. It was a conference call with about 100 people.

It cost $99

I thought I would share some of notes that I took from it. He has another one coming up in January. I highly suggest it. I have budgeted in money for next year to join him for several.

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Advertising Planning

• All Planning is good
• Write down a list of what successful advertising would look like. For example: When I send out 3000 postcards I plan on receiving 15 calls and closing 5 deals. Do this for every form of advertising -- Don't think it -- Write it down -- THEN TRACK IT!
• What are your revnue goals -- These are needed in order to plan advertising -- For instance -- If you want to Grow from $100k to $125K gross next year -- What are you going to do to beingg in $25k worth of work?

The 10 Best Ways to advertise are

The 10 best ways I recommend you marketing are:

Job Site Signs

Newsletters

Targeted Mailings - For many companies this is all they need to do to make the phone ring.

Mailing your card on your own to a targeted mailing list is better, in my opinion and research, than being lumped into one of those card decks you get at home. Why? It is always better to have your message standing on its own, than next to someone else’s. For some excellent ideas, please check out Focal Point at growpro.com: The Leading Golf Pro Site on the Net or call them at 800-525-6999 and ask for Joe Shooner; he’ll be happy to help you. Tell them Marty sent you!

Follow up systems
* Walk around with foreman the day of hte job completion
* Survey sent out 1 week later
* Call from the owner 1 week later

Vehicle signage

Door Hangers - Hang some door hangers in the neighborhoods where you are already working. For an idea, go to Motivational Speaker Marty Grunder - Marketing Management & Motivation and see our latest one. Remember, marketing in the areas you already have business is one of the smartest things you can do! Why? You already have a following and you’re in the neighborhood, and typically, if there are currently buyers in one area, reason stands to assume there are more there.

New Home Owner Letter

Cold Calling - Commercial Accounts

Market to the Clients of another successful Company that has clients who would also buy from you. - Seek out another successful business in your area that you could co-market with. For example, if you’re a landscaper, find the best pool builder in town and see if you can mail to their mailing list. Or if you are a plumber, is there a successful heating and air-conditioning company with which you could share clients? Think. I’m sure you can come up with a few good ideas. And that leads me to my last suggestion.

DWYSYWD - Do what you say you will do when you say you will do it

Do a little bit more

Worst Advertising Methods

Yellow Pages

BillBoards

Val-Pak

Tv and Radio

BEST MONTHS TO ADVERTISE

April - July - September



His next Teleseminar is January 24th. Please join me as I present What a Landscaper Ought to Be Doing in the Winter. If you sign up for it by December 31st, you can participate in it for $79.

[Mac]

Marty's an excellent businessman. Thanks for sharing what he had to say.

[Stonehenge]

Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Probably one of the best voices on marketing in the industry.

[jwholden]

Could you elaborate more on the follow up systems? I assume the idea of these follow ups is to make sure that the client knows you care and are making sure everything was done right.

Thanks,

John

[Mac]

I know Marty has a decent sized maintenance operation, but I still cant believe he advocates cold calling accounts. Has anyone found this to work? Im usually too busy closing referrals to cold call anyone so I just dont know.

[AZTLANLC]

If I'm not mistaken he is referring to commercial accounts
which I think works pretty good too, you know when you see a new store like HD, waltmart, walgreen, etc and call just to see if they need a bid or are looking for someone to take care of the place, most of this stores have a person in charge to decide who will be taking care of the place but that person in an office branch, not even the manager usually decides this things.
Or when you see that little store opening up approaching to the owner has worked good in the past to us.
I don't think I'll ever cold calling to residential customers, I much rather walk down to their house knock on the door and introduce myself.

[Hamons]

Follow - up Systems --

This is simply the system that his comoany follows on following up with every single job they do every single time. He considers this advertising because it builds good will with the client which increases referrals -- the cheapest way to get high quality leads!

Cold Calling -- He suggests this si the best way to get any account -- but they do it mainly for commercial accountys. Walk into a commercial place, have some candy for the girl at the front, ask to talk to whoever makes decesion on landsape maintenance and ask for the opportunity to service their maintenance needs. He wasn't using cold calling to mean just on the phone -- it just means unsolicited visits or calls in order to sell a service.

I have gaine d a few commercial accounts by cold calling some very high vivibility Dr's offices and sucha nd I plan to do it more this year. Letters and phone calls are easy to avoid -- a guy standing at your desk is harder.

[Turtle]

Just a tip for the cold callers A lot of these people if you just cold call to a property manager office building etc. Instead of asking them the usual are you accepting bids for the property at this time. About 75-90 percent of the time you get No. I always tell them we would like to bid the property whether yuo are looking for a new landscaper or not just so they can have it for budgeting purposes or check on their current lawn maintenance price.. It at least gets your name in their office and the next new property they pick up as a client youll get to bid.

[chrissygardensc]

If I wanted to send out a letter and brochure to new homeowners or new construction home owners, where can I find access to their names and addresses?

[Hamons]

Here is what I did last year. It worked well for me. I took my ten best accounts. Then I used whitepages.com. I did a reverse address search and then the website will show yo the 30 neighbors closest to them on their street. This was a small targeted mailing that gave me great results.

Here is a thread that I thought that describes this mailing. http://www.groundtradesxchange.com/f...g-ideas-2.html

[chrissygardensc]

I went to city hall and asked for the records of who got permits for building... they let me see the book. I took notes of the contractors I knew and what I could make sense out of but the clerk seemed irritated when I asked her to see the the records.. does anyone else do this?? If the builder got the permit.. it did not show the owners name. How do I find out the owners name of the new construction besides stopping and asking?

[prapoza]

Try newpros.com much easier and pretty cheap.