Door to Door

How many of you guys market door to door as in ringing the doorbell and talking to people one on one, not just leave a flyer and leave? How effective is this method of marketing as opposed to just leaving a flyer? If you don't go door to door, why not? Are you afraid of disturbing them? That is my biggest reason for not doing it. Any insight?

[Steve]

Lawn care business tips

It seems from past discussions on this topic, knocking on doors is more labor intensive but it tends to increase the amount of customers who will sign up for lawn care.

__________________
- Subscribe to my Lawn Care Marketing Blog Feed and get daily tips sent to you. Free!
Download your Free trial of Gopher Lawn Care Software.

[turfmaster]

Originally Posted by Steve

It seems from past discussions on this topic, knocking on doors is more labor intensive but it tends to increase the amount of customers who will sign up for lawn care.

My experience has been if the customer can associate a face with the flyer or brochure you as the LCO have a better chance of getting the account.

[picframer]

We do something a little different with excellent results, if I or staff see a potential project which can range from an overgrown lawn, load of gravel or top soil sitting in the yard as we drive past, we stop and leave a post card, I now have 7 that are designed for a specific project, they are short and sweet, we were driving by and noticed you........we can save you the backwork and give a free estimate......I would guess aside from referrals this is our greatest way of bringing in new business and if the owner is there we will talk to them, almost always leads to other projects.

[Steve]

Andy,

I think this is fantastic.

Is there anyway your staff can keep track of what homes they stopped at and why they stopped there?

Do you keep track of the homes you stop at?

Have you ever reviewed who does the most stopping and promoting like that?

It would seem there could be some sort of friendly competition with this in your company to see who does the most promotion and who ends up landing the most jobs because of it!

[picframer]

We should keep track of the homes we drop cards off to however time being what it is we haven't this year, I had asked that we do, including myself and at first we did but we like many seem to be so busy, we just drop the card.

The exception is if the customer is around, almost always they want me to stop in which I do so that get's logged and I do a visit and quote.

Sales in my experience is one of those you either have it or you don't, 2 of my 14 workers have it, the rest are all great workers and get along excellent with clients but they are not driven to meet new people, prospect etc. that is fine, the cards are just a tool in the marketing tool box that can be used if the oportunity comes along and they are ice breakers for staff that are not comfortable with a cold call should the customer be there, once they get talking they do great and they are much more comfortable than they were when they started with me in May.

This winter will be a time of reflection to look at things that worked well and things that didn't, I have a lot of areas to fine tune and will do that.

[Steve]

Andy,

Do you think it is worthwhile keeping track of the addresses you drop these cards off at to send them marketing material in the future or no?

[picframer]

Originally Posted by Steve

Andy,

Do you think it is worthwhile keeping track of the addresses you drop these cards off at to send them marketing material in the future or no?

Yes one should, how do we measure how effective what we are doing is if we don'e??? We got busy and complacient as we have so much new business coming in that we simply became lax in what we started out doing, next year though.....

[Steve]

For those out there reading this and wondering what is the best way to go about this, what should they do?

Should they keep a clipboard with a preprinted form on it that allows you to write the address and which card you dropped off, who did it and why? Or what would be best?

[picframer]

Originally Posted by Steve

For those out there reading this and wondering what is the best way to go about this, what should they do?

Should they keep a clipboard with a preprinted form on it that allows you to write the address and which card you dropped off, who did it and why? Or what would be best?

I think for the most part we all carry some type of cell phone and I believe all of them have a note pad function, I was keeping them in my blackberry under notes, the reason I decided on cell phones is it's very dear to our hearts, paper, cards etc. they all get lost sooner or later and I can upload my cell to my laptop as I believe you can with pretty much any phone.