The acquisition of new customers can be a very expensive endeavor. Running ads, keeping a website up to date, blogging, mailers, or anything else you may do to gain new customers costs you time and money.　
Harvest What You’ve Already Planted
While acquiring new customers is important, we may forget to market to our existing clients. You’ve already paid for the acquisition of these customers. I realize we all may not like to think this way, that we “paid” for a customer, but that’s the reality of any marketing money spent. It is spent to gain customers.
Our current customers already know the quality of our work. We already have their contact information and most importantly, their trust and business. We’ve put ourselves in a great position to work as consultants for their property.
So if all the hard work was done (and money spent) when you gained their trust and business in the first place, why wouldn’t we make the most out of that relationship?
Think of one of your customers right now, any single one… now can you think of something on their property that they would benefit from? If the answer is no, you might not looking hard enough.
Even if your business is more of a niche market, and I LOVE niche businesses, they’re truly experts, but I’d still challenge you to take a look at the landscape services you provide and think about where another opportunity may lie as an add-on or enhancement.
You may just find something that breaks the mold a bit, or something right in your wheelhouse already!
Ask your customers about other landscape services they would appreciate you doing for them.
If you’re recommending work out frequently, that might be opportunity knocking.
Ask your supplier what other opportunities might be out there that could fit into your business model. You could be missing out on work that incorporates really well into your current jobs.
Talk About the Landscape Services You Offer
If you are offering several landscape services under one roof, look at your strengths and weaknesses of those operations. In sales, we’ve all had customers hire out or purchase something from our competitors that we can provide.
Then when we (politely) inquire about why they didn’t seek us out for that work, and hear back “Oh, I didn’t know you offered that!” Frustrated and annoyed, we don’t see how they couldn’t have known it was a service we provide, but in reality, maybe they didn’t…
Look in the mirror a moment and ask;
- Did our customer really know we offered that?
- Had I offered that client this service before?
- Is this service mentioned on all my literature, vehicles, website, and social media?
- Do my sales personnel have the knowledge and training to feel comfortable selling these add-ons?
We all do our best to optimize our business operations, and marketing the add-on services to our existing customers can be a great tool to optimize our marketing and sales budgets. Wolf Creek offers training and product lines in several categories that could make great add-on/enhancement sales. Click here to contact your local Wolf Creek Company representative for details.
It is interesting for me to learn a little bit about landscaping. I did not realize that there were so many different landscaping services. I think the most important part is making sure that it feels homy when you are done.