How to keep your client pipeline full

One of the many marketing ‘gurus’ I consider to be a mentor is Dave Dee. He’s a former corporate drop-out, struggling business owner, turned full-time magician that has really cracked the code on sales and marketing. No matter the field. At any rate, I recently read an article on his website that I think resonates very well to the lawn care and landscaping industry.

Here’s the article:

Have you ever heard someone say you have to keep your pipeline full of prospects who want to become clients? “It’s good advice if you want to grow your business and charge premium prices, but just about everyone has no clue how to actually make it happen. That’s the topic of today’s Q&A… Samuel A. Smith asked… “I would like to know the best way to keep “my pipeline of prospects full”. That’s a line that I read in a book. It sounds great but I don’t have a clue about how to accomplish it. Would you recommend cold calls or meeting people face to face or using mail or the Internet? Help!” There is a very famous successful chiropractor who was asked what the “secret” was that allowed him to attract so many great clients to his practice. His answer? “I don’t know one way to get 100 clients, but I know 100 ways to get one client and I use them all.” You’re not going to find “just one” way to keep your pipeline full, at least not in the beginning when a referral only business isn’t an option. The good news is there are many things you can do to bring in groups of high-quality, high-paying clients. So what do you do? 1. Chasing the client is the wrong way to go about this. Cold calling raises all kinds of ugly thoughts in the prospect’s mind: If he is so good, why is he cold calling? Why isn’t he busy enough already? Your marketing needs to be designed to get the client to chase you. To be pre-sold before you ever meet with them. 2. Focus your marketing attention on high-leverage activities that you can automate. A high-leverage marketing activity is something that will continue to steadily pump out great clients long after you stop putting “manual labor” into it. When you get a client by knocking on their door cold, you can’t automate it to get another client without physically doing the activity again. On the other hand… When you develop a sales letter or website that reliably and predictably brings in new clients, it can be run automatically over time. This is also true of advertisements that work, response-driven business cards that work (Not a traditional business card! See my “Marketing Magic System & Toolkit For Elite Service Professionals” for killer business card designs) and dozens of other strategies. 3. Once you develop a strategy that works, document it and keep running it consistently over time. Remember: No matter how busy your business gets, keep the marketing machine rolling.

You can find the actual article right HERE.

Bookmark Me!