Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to the Grow Show Powered by Stihl. On the Grow show, we share ideas, tips, tactics and insights to help you grow your landscaping business. Based on our team's 40 years of experience running a landscaping company and working with other owners and their teams to do the same, new episodes are released weekly on Wednesdays. Here's your host, Marty Grunder.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever the case may be. This is Marty Grunder from Grunder Landscaping Co. And the Grow Group. Thanks for downloading the Grow Show Powered by Stihl. Today we're going to be talking about some sales tips that will help you sell more. You're going to be able to use this stuff. You're going to love it. But first, a reminder. You can get the latest edition of the Grow show delivered to your phone, tablet, or computer by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts. Or you can even Watch us on YouTube for an enhanced learning experience. The Grow show is the greatest thing since Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix. Do any of you watch it? My wife and I just finished up season three and it's fantastic, folks. Other than the use of the F word, which I do not like at all, nor will I ever understand using that word, it's a great show. My wife and I are empty nesters. We eat our dinner a few nights a week on trays in the family room. I hope you're chuckling and we watch that. It may sound boring if you're young, but for old people like me and many of the other subscribers to the Grow show that are my age, you're not in your head, in agreement. You know what your life has become. I'm just grateful my wife and I get along so well. I'm a very, very lucky guy, folks. And I am also looking forward to Lincoln Lawyer Seasons 4. It comes out this fall. I think if you have some other good shows that we should watch in our old age, let me know. Ha.
Now onto the Grow Show. Nothing happens till someone sells something, folks. And I know that sounds trite, but it's just so true. In fact, Seth and I have no doubt that we can get $17.5 million worth of work done in 2025 here at Grunder Landscaping Company between our two offices, we just need to make the sales okay. And that's not easy. So I shouldn't use the word just so. Here's three things that I think the world according to Marty Wham that you should be focused on. Okay, so let's go. Or grow, depending on upon how you look at it. Number one, routines Work, all right? A routine works and you need to get into one. I have a whole methodical approach for each day that I try to follow, and it works more on that whole process in a future episode. Ladies and gentlemen, this is sales, so let's stay focused on sales, not time management. But a routine works, okay? Suffice to say, boss your calendar. Don't let it boss you, okay? You've got to be the person that's taking control of that. And that is a big part of doing well in sales is being organized there. It's about telling someone you can meet them, not just saying, well, tell me when you want to meet. There's a lot of subtle things in, in sales that you can do, but you got to be control that calendar. You don't come in and look at your calendar. You should be planning a week ahead. You should be looking at that calendar. That's how you stay organized. And on top of that. But to stick to sales specifically, the best routine I have for you to follow is this one, and you've heard me say it before, for those of you that have, have gotten some of our lessons on sales, and it's this. Every day I prospect. Every day I nurture. Every day I close. I'm going to say it again. Every day I prospect. Every day I nurture. Every day I close. Every day I have to spend time prospecting. Every day I have to spend time nurturing. Every day I have to close. Work. Each day you do that, folks. So prospecting. We're looking for leads. We are looking for two kinds of people. Either people that can do business with you or people who know people that can do business with you. Those both are equally important. In fact, in many cases, the people that know people that can do business with you are tremendous sources of referrals. Pool builders, commercial realtors, bankers, plumbers, cleaning companies, contractors, remodelers, home decorators, architects. All those people, folks. Every day, who am I looking for? Every day I prospect, prospecting leads to sales. And listen, the company can only do much, so much marketing to generate sales for you. You got to make it rain, too. It's one of those things. We're leaning heavily on our team at Grunder Landscaping. They have a LinkedIn network. They have friends, they are out and about. They're driving by job sites that may need a landscaper. You have to network, folks. You gotta look, you gotta research and the like. So every day I prospect. Every day I'm looking for leads in one way or the other. I'm reading the Dayton Business Journal. I'm reading the Dallas Business Journal. I'm going online and LinkedIn. I'm looking at the Dayton Daily News or the Dallas Morning News or whatever they are, the Columbus Dispatch, whatever town you're in. I'm constantly looking for people that could do business with me. And I'm constantly looking for people that know people that could do business with me. So every day, I prospect secondarily. Every day I nurture. Nurture means you take care of something you develop a relationship with. Every day I nurture. Every day I move a relationship forward in some way, shape or form. I check in with a past client, I check in with the current client. I check in with a refer a person that refers me work. I send a handwritten note. I do something for nice for a client or a prospect. Is it their birthday? Did you call them? Did you run them over their favorite drink? Did you get them, give them your seats to the ball game? Did their company win an award or expand? Did you cut it out of the paper and send it to them? Did you email them? Did their kid have a baby, get married, win a state championship? Every day I nurture. Sell a record amount of Girl Scout cookies and one of their girls do that. What did they do? Remember, folks, at the end of the day, people do business with people they know like and trust. I'm gonna say that again. People do business with people they know like and trust. That's a process that doesn't just happen like, poof. You gotta nurture those relationships. Think about your best friend. Think about your wife, your husband, your partner, your significant other. That. That relationship just. You met them Friday and you were so close by Saturday. No, it took time. All right? At the end of the day, when you make friends, you make sales. That's it. All right? So at the end of the day, I think it's important just to work on being someone others want to be around. All right? Nurture those relationships. Set up a lunch, take them to a game, stop by and see them, think about them. Drop an email, call them. Nurture, nurture, nurture. So every day I prospect. Every day I look for people that could do business with me, or I look for people that know people that could do business with me. I spend some time doing that. And the activities surrounding prospecting, every day I nurture. Every day I take a relationship, whether it's a new relationship you have or an established relationship. And I'm going to nurture it. I'm going to carry it along. I'm going to Help it do better. I'm going to encourage it. I'm going to move it to the next one. So every day I prospect, every day I nurture. And then finally, folks, every day I close. And this last one, for some reason, is often overlooked. You gotta ask for the business. It's a phone call. Hey, Jimmy, it's Marty. I know we've been going back and forth on the maintenance contract. Say tomorrow is open for lunch. Would you want to meet me at Alexander's for lunch? And maybe we can, you know, hammer out a deal? Hey, Mrs. Jones. I know we've been going back and forth on the paver patio. I'm going to be in your neighborhood on Saturday around 10. Could I just stop by and we talk to you about it? Hey, Mrs. Smith, it's Marty Grunder, Grunder Landscaping Company. Say, I know you really wanted to have this done for your daughter's wedding in August. We got to get this on the calendar now, because I'm getting nervous. Why don't we get this signed up? Are you ready? You're doing this in many different ways, but you're trying to get the business close. If you want to do business with me or one of my companies, I want to know that you want the business. So I always appreciate a close call. Now, I don't appreciate you jamming things down my throat. I don't appreciate you telling me that if you don't sign up today, you don't get this price. Because I believe all that to be baloney. But if you give me a legitimate sense of urgency, like we got to get these flowers in so that they're grown up and looking great by July 4th for your daughter's wedding, that is legitimate. The fact that you only have so much capacity to do this kind of work in a time frame that's legitimate. The fact that your supplier is offering you a discount on the pavers and they're not going to extend it beyond April 1st, that is legitimate. Share. Think about all the ways that you can create a sense of urgency, a deliberate, honest sense of urgency. And it works. Okay? And then, by all means, folks, be organized. Use Outlook, Aspire, lmn. Whatever your system is, don't wing it. There's no reason for that. One of my big frustrations here at Grunder is we spend all this money on Aspire, a wonderful piece of technology to help us get better and to help us sell and manage our pipeline better. And a lot of my team is not doing that. So we're working with them more on training. And we're telling them, you've got to use this system. You can't remember to do all this stuff. You got to put reminders in your calendar. It has to be the next action on Aspire that you're looking at. This is what it's all about, folks. It's about moving things to the work, to the to a close. Go get the work. Follow up is the single most effective way to sell work. Yet few do it, and even less do it the right way. Those three things, every day I prospect, Every day I nurture, Every day I close. The second thing I want to talk to you about today on the Grow show, Powered By Stihl is this concept that once the sale is made is when the selling really starts. And I'm amazed at how many salespeople don't know this. Our whole Secret in our 41st year of business is repeat business. All right? You're not going to get repeat business. You're not going to get referrals from clients if you don't do a good job. So you got to be looking for new work while simultaneously securing that foundational business that you have. So when you make a sale, use your technology to send out the notifications. Use your calendar to make a phone call. Have your team take pictures, and they post them. On Aspire, we can take a picture of a job. It's posted there. The salesperson can go in the night the job's done. They can grab a couple of those pictures. They can text and email them to the client and say, man, the cleanup looks great. I want to make sure you're happy. You've got to understand that when you make a sale, that's not when it stops. That's not when you say, oh, cool, now I. Now I get my commission. This is when I'm going to show these people they are really. It is a good thing they picked me because I'm going to do a great job and I'm going to be their landscaper for life. All right? So once the sale is made, that's when the selling really starts. Keep that in mind. Every day I prospect, every day I nurture, every day I close. Once the sale is made is when the selling really starts. Drive that thing home, deliver as promised, Put them in a position where they're going to give you a good Google review and they're going to give you a referral and you can go back and do more business with them. And then number three, and this one is one that is also overlooked. Remember who does the work I am really surprised at how many people forget this part of selling. And what I'm talking about is your team and showing appreciation to them for the work they're doing for you. Your external customer service, the service that you are delivering, your clients will never exceed your internal customer service. So if you want your team to take care of your customers, you got to take care of your team so they take care of the customers. If you treat your internal customers, your team, poorly, guess who it gets taken out on? Your clients. So whenever I see a company, I don't get treated well by their employees. My automatic conclusion is, well, somebody's not doing a good job with you. It's so important. We literally get tons and tons of positive comments on our teams, on our surveys at the end of the day. And I tell them this all the time. It's a narrative that you can steal. I tell my team, you are the ones that is going to spend the most time with our clients, not me. It's going to be you. Okay? So it is really important that you take great care of my customers and we do this together. You matter so much to me. The work that you do is significant. So it's really important, ladies and gentlemen, to take an interest in your team doing the work. Years ago, I was doing some sales training at a very large corporation that you would know the name of. It's fabulously successful, but I don't want to name them just in case this embarrasses them in a small way. I don't think it does. But I was doing some sales training at their plant for their largest dealers that sells their equipment. And they had 50 of their salespeople literally from around the world there. And I asked by a show of hands, of the 50 salespeople, I said, how many of you know the names of all of your service technicians? Either you're out on the road doing mobile service or in the shop working on the equipment. Of the 50 sales professionals that were with me that day, only three of them raised their hands. Of the three that raised their hands that said they knew all the names of their service people, two of them were. The two of them were the top five salespeople in the company. One of them was the number one salesperson in this entire huge multi billion dollar company that sells equipment. Now think about how sad that is that the other 47 didn't know who the, who the service people were, that the managers of that organization didn't do anything. The manager of that operation told me that was one of the Most effective insights he'd ever heard in training. And they then went on to make it mandatory that you got to know the service people. They started having barbecues. They gave the salespeople a little bit of a budget that they could buy things for the service teams and recognize them. It was a candy bar. It was a pizza. It was a cold drink. It was a handwritten note. Ladies and gentlemen, at the end of the day, it's not hard to show your work teams that you appreciate them. You'd be amazed what a nice cold candy bar and a drink might do. Okay, get them good, detailed work tickets. Tell them thank you. That way, be respectful for them. Post pictures of their work on your private Facebook page. Shake their hand. Call them out. Do a video tour of one of your jobs with you narrating it, recognizing, hey, Zeus or John or Kevin or Kim or Mary or Julie for their good work. The best salespeople truly know that this is one of their secrets. Because if your team is doing good work, it's easy to sell that. Okay, I hope these three tips helped you. Every day I prospect. Every day I nurture. Every day I close. Once the sale is made is when the selling really starts. All right? Make sure you deliver as promised. And at the end of the day, know who your team is. Be smart about that. All right? I hope these three tips helped you. If you love them, you'll be blown away with our virtual sales bootcamp April 16th and 17th. It's virtual. You don't have to go anywhere. And then our 2.0 version on May 7th and 8th. Sign up now. You'll be glad you did. I can help you make some great sales. Let's go back over the three tips. Get in a routine. Boss your calendar. Don't let it boss you. Every day I prospect. Every day I nurture. Every day I close. That's the routine every day, folks. Not some days. Every day. Number two, once the sale is made, that's your time to shine bright. And then remember those who do the work well, that's going to do it for this week's edition of the Grow Show, Powered by Stihl. If you haven't done so already, subscribe to the Grow Show. And if you can give it a rating or share a comment that helps more success minded landscape professionals find us. And if you really want to help us, take out your phone right now and text this episode to them and tell them how much you liked it. That helps more success minded landscape professionals find us. And Uncle Marty would be very grateful for that. Thanks for joining us on the Grow show this week. We'll talk to you next week.
[00:16:20] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode of the Grow Show. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And head to growgroupinc.com for more information and resources to grow your landscaping business. A special thanks to the folks at Stihl whose support makes this podcast possible and whose reliable handheld power equipment makes our jobs easier daily. We'll talk to you next week.
