As you may or may not know, I do some marketing for a gentleman named Richard Flint. He’s a personal development speaker as well as a life and business coach. He’s studied human behavior for the past 27+ years and has some AMAZING insight into what makes us tick as human beings.

He did a tele-seminar last night that I was fortunate enough to attend and the topic was ‘What Seperates Above Average People From the Rest of Us’. Maybe at some point I’ll post more of what he had to say, but today I just wanted to share one thing he said that really stood out to me.

He said:

“Being average is a choice, not a fact of life.”

When he said that I had to pause and think about it for a few minutes. It really is some pretty insightful stuff if you think about it.

I hope you’re doing everything you can to make the most of your life and not be content with being average, like everyone else. It’s a constant struggle, believe me, I know, but one that I believe is well worth the effort.

I’m still recovering from last night’s absolutely horrendous football game where my Carolina Panther’s just rolled over and died in the 4^th quarter. If we weren’t recording the game for a friend, I would have turned the channel to something that wasn’t quite as depressing.

Since I’m still in mourning, today’s message will be short and sweet.

Whenever you do any type of marketing, you should ALWAYS test the campaign before investing too much money. That means direct mail, internet, telemarketing, ads in phone directories or newspapers, or any other method you choose to employ should be tried out on a small segment of your list prior to rolling out the entire campaign.

In fact, the ability to test your campaigns is one of the reasons you should only use methods that don’t require long term commitments and that allow you to start and stop a campaign at will.

Testing your marketing allows you to create the absolute most effective sales letter, postcard, flyer, follow-up process, website, contract proposal, etc hands down. Without testing, you’re basically in the dark and are pretty much spitting in the wind, because you have no idea if you’re sending your absolute best or if you’re sending pathetic wastes of postage stamps.

Tomorrow I’ll share with you some tips for making the most of your testing. There’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to go about testing your marketing materials, so pay close attention to these secrets I’ll be revealing.

Have you started working on a plan to maintain contact with your customers over the next few cold winter months?  These next few months are the perfect time to strengthen the relationship with your customers as most will expect you to disappear until early spring when it’s time to begin next year’s marketing efforts.

Chances are, your competition is about to hibernate on their customers too.  That means that while their customers are forgetting about them, it’s also an excellent time for you to begin developing a relationship with them as well.

Go the extra mile, spend the time and money required to reach out to your existing customers and prospects now and I guarantee you’ll reap the rewards when the weather starts warming up.

s you probably know, last night I hosted a free business building teleseminar for a group of business owners that are looking to take their business to the next level. I rambled for about 80 minutes and I would like to think I gave lots of great information on how to kick your marketing up to the next level.

One of my goals with last night’s call was to give real, useable information that could be applied instantly to any lawn care business looking to get more out of their marketing efforts. While I’m not going to reveal too much of last night call (the recording will be available shortly), I did want to share one tip.

The first thing you want to do when looking to grow your business is to identify a group of prospects you want to convert to customers. This group of prospects should be very tightly targeted, both in geography and in demographics.
That way, you can create a marketing message that’s tightly aligned with the desires, wants, and interests of these prospects.

Now, this list is what’s called a farm. That’s right, just like what Old McDonald had. A farm. The reason we call it that is because it’s this list of prospects we’re going to cultivate or a period of time in order to harvest loads of new customers down the road.

The way you harvest this farm is by continually contacting them with offers, educating them on your service, why you’re the best option available to them, and how their life will be infinitely better with you as their service provider.
Just like large companies spend truck loads of cash each year trying to build brand recognition, this idea of nourishing and cultivating your farm has the same effect in that over time these prospects immediately think of you as their first and hopefully ONLY option.

One of the keys to having success with your farm is to make sure you spend the time and money necessary to build a good list. The list of prospects is vital in order to develop a farm filled with quality candidates.

So where do you get just such a list? Well, I shared this with everyone on the call last night as a 5-star tip. One of the best places I’ve found to build a list of potential prospects that match your criteria EXACTLY is the website www.EdithRoman.com.

This site allows you to select a multitude of criteria that will help create a list that’s very specific so that when you send your carefully crafted message, it’s laser targeted and hits the mark every time.

So, spend some time defining your ideal prospect, list out their characteristic and where they live, then head on over to get a ready to market to list of ideal candidates for your services.

I’ll see you again soon with some more marketing insights.

Even though cold calling on prospective customers is one of the hardest, most time consuming, and definitely most frustrating ways of getting new customers, it does work.  Now, I don’t teach cold call prospecting as a method of getting new customers simply because there are dozens of other ways for getting new customers, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it completely.  Especially if you’re just starting out in business.

If you’re going to do it, the first key to keep in mind about cold call prospecting is that in order to succeed, you MUST exude enthusiasm.  Even if you don’t feel like you’re having fun, it’s important to make your prospect think you’re enjoying yourself.  

Another thing to keep in mind is that you have about 3 seconds to capture your prospect’s attention in order to get them to listen to your sales pitch or message.  That being said, make sure your opening line is like a great headline on any sales letter, postcard, flyer, or door hanger you’d send potential prospects.

The key is to hit their emotional hot buttons and give them a reason to keep listening.  Once you’ve captured their attention with a great opening, then proceed to deliver a benefit laden sales message that gets them to take baby steps toward the ultimate goal of becoming your customer.

Again, cold calling is never fun to do and it’s definitely not the most effective method for getting new customers, but if done correctly, it does work and you will get new customers.

So if you’re low on funds and short on business, that probably means you’re high on extra time, so get out there and knock them doors!

I just wanted to send out a quick thought to help jump start your week.

Did you know that for every month you don’t contact your existing customers, you lose 10% of the value of the relationship?  

That means if the lifetime value of that customer is normally $2,000, for every month you DON’T contact them, you could potentially lose $200 from that relationship.  Yikes!

Now’s an especially important time of the year to figure out a way to stay in touch with your customers.  Even if the grass has stopped growing and you’re no longer servicing their lawn, don’t let this stop you from staying in touch with them.  Figure out a way to have AT LEAST one customer ‘touch’ each month over the next few months so that when spring time comes, they’ll be ready and waiting to jump on board when the grass starting growing again.

For an excellent low cost method of maintaining this periodic contact, be sure to join me this upcoming Wednesday at 8pm EST for a FREE lawn care business building teleseminar.  In addition to learning about this excellent method for maintaining customer contact, I’ll also share how you can define an dominate your target market in 28 days or less, ways you can use technology to dramatically improve the results of your directory ads, and one method you can use to generate a serious cash flow surge.

Remember, the teleseminar’s free but you must register.  You can do that right here:

www.FreeLawnCareBusinessTeleseminar.com

At any rate, I hope you have a fantastic week and I’m sure you’ll hear from me again in a day or so.

Cheers.