Very Effective Selling On A Very Limited Budget

After nearly 45 years in the Building Service Contracting business, the question I get asked most, next to where do I get good people, is" how can I secure the good customers"? This is a universal problem with the emerging company attempting to compete in the market against the larger, many times better known, companies. To complicate the issue, most of the time, we are attempting to compete with a very limited or sometimes non-existent budget.

Keeping budget and time constraints in mind, let's discuss two ways in which you can make a major impact and secure your share of the marketplace. I have used both methods extensively and found them to be extremely effective.

The first method is what I affectionately call "HIT LIST MAILINGS." These are upscale mailings done at pre-determined scheduled times throughout the year aimed at your major prospects. These are the 10, 20, or 30 key prospects in your market area that you have determined are the ones that best fit your ability to service. They are not necessarily the biggest companies in the area but rather the BEST ones for YOU. This means you have to decide, along with your operations department, what types of accounts you service the best and then determine which accounts in your market area fit that profile. These are the ones, then, that make your "hit list."

Many of the companies I work with automatically want to put the high volume companies on the list and I usually have to work with them to analyze whether the high volume will translate into high profit or does it just produce high volume. It is important to understand how the accounts you would put on your hit list affect your operations department should you be fortunate enough to secure them.

Once you have made the determination as to who goes on the list the next thing to do is to decide when the mailings will be done. This is probably a good place to mention that these mailings are not just letters but rather actual, mostly usable, items that have a lasting effect so the customer always knows who provided them. I always tried to mail them around a special event or holiday. For example, around the fourth of July you may want to mail an American flag suitable for mounting along with a message that says something like "celebrate your independence from cleaning worries, call our company today for a firecracker of a deal that won't explode your budget" A flag is also a good mailing in June for Flag day around the 14th with an appropriate patriotic message.

At Labor Day an appropriate mailing might be a tool kit that includes a screw driver, hammer, pliers etc. with a message something like "we want to go to work for you. Call us today; we have the tools and trained staff that will take away your worries." Around Labor Day I have also had delivered directly to their office a helium balloon with a pair of heavy duty work gloves with the message "we are ready to go to work for you today". This is very effective in that it draws attention and gets directly to the intended person.

There are many other dates and mailers that can be used such as a small calculator sent around November 1 asking them to calculate their savings at budget time by using your company to do their work. Another one I have found effective is a flashlight complete with batteries with a sticker attached that says something like "Light up you life by calling our company to provide your custodial services".

Two of my favorites that also resulted in our most effective results were a pill bottle and a miniature trash can. The pill bottle was filled with individually wrapped jelly belly jelly beans and on the outside of the bottle was the prescription printed that said "take two jelly beans, call our company, take two more jelly beans, call our company etc." Then the warning label said "WARNING, OUR COMPANY CAN BE PLEASANTLY HABIT FORMING." The miniature trash can had a crumbled piece of paper on the inside with a message to the effect that "our customers don't hear a lot of trash from us, we do the work and do it right at a fair price" etc.

If your city has a festival at a particular time of the year, you can also tie in a mailing around the festival that grabs their attention. You can usually budget about $8-$12 per item for each mailing so that if you have 20 prospects on the list, somewhere between $100 and $250 will produce a very effective mailer that GETS TO THE BUYER. It is easy to see that by budgeting 4 to 6 of these mailers each year, you can make your company known to the people you really want to do business with. Almost always, if these mailers are done well they will get to the buyer and not go into the trash as will many letters or direct mail pieces.

Some important points to remember in setting up a "hit list" program such as we described above are:

1. Always do it in good taste. Don't mail items that can be deemed offensive.
2. Be prompt. If you are developing the mailer around a certain date or event, be sure that the mailer get there before the event. EXAMPLE: One year our company sent a small basketball goal and basketball that tied in with the NCAA college basketball tournament in March. All of the wording was developed around March madness and how the prospect would not be mad if they had our company providing their service. We made sure that mailer arrived on the Monday after selection Sunday just before the tournament began play on Thursday. You can see that all effectiveness would have been lost had the mailer gone out in April .
3. Be sure that you have the correct size box etc. in which to put the article. Best to check with the post office. In fact, they have boxes that many times are the exact size you want to use.
4. Be sure that the postage is correct. Take one to the post office and weigh it beforehand and get the correct postage amount.
5. Always remember to put your business card and a business reply card in with the item being mailed. Here again be sure the business reply card is printed to the postal regulations (Experience speaking). Ask the post office and/or have your printing vendor double check to make sure it meets all postal regulations.
6. Find a good advertising specialty company to work with. Tell them what you are looking for and have them keep on the alert for unusual items that will get the attention of your prospect.
7. Plan ahead. I suggest you plan one year out and determine when you are going to do the mailers so you have the time to do them right.
8. ALWAYS call a week after the mailing to ask for a 20 minute appointment to meet the prospect to discuss your company and the prospects needs. This is very important. If gives you the opportunity to make sure they got the mailer and in many cases you will have piqued their interest enough that they will at least give you some time from their schedule. something they wouldn't have done in the past with a regular direct mail piece or letter.

The second effective way to make an impact with prospects and get the appointment you want is through what we call INDUSTRY UPDATE LUNCHEONS. The prospects for this process can be the same ones or a mixture of other prospects depending on whether you are using the hit list mailing process as well. We use the industry update luncheon to invite several major prospects to have lunch with several of our major clients that would be a good fit and will give you a good reference if asked by the prospect.

Here we reserve a meeting room at a nice restaurant (not extravagant) and provide a true update of our industry. Let me emphasize..This is not a lunch to pound a commercial at them for an hour but rather a time to socialize and truly bring them a speaker with a topic of interest in the industry. The last thing you want to do is make anyone feel pressured. We have brought topics to the lunch such as the evolution of back pack vacuuming, green cleaning, day cleaning, bundling of services, effective training systems ,robotics in cleaning, new quality assurance methods, etc. All of these are topics of interest to the buyers you have in the room, including your customers, and should be presented in a professional educational way. It is important that you "give them a reason to come". It has to be informative and educational. Now, of course, it is also very convenient that all the topics of forward, progressive ways of cleaning that you bring to the table are those being done by a forward progressive company such as yours but you don't need to tell them that. The entire lunch is a subtle infomercial and you don't need to be constantly extolling your company's virtues. Giving them a packet of your company information as they leave will more than suffice for sales and marketing pressure brought to bear.

Some important points to remember in developing this industry update luncheon:

1. Print formal invitations. Do them professionally and mail them about 3 weeks prior to the date. We found Wednesdays or Thursdays to be the most effective days of the week to ask someone to take time out of their busy schedule.
2. Try to utilize a professional speaker or presenter, one that will not be a commercial for you but rather someone who truly brings them an informative message. The attendees will "get the message" that you want their business.
3. Invite twice as many prospects as customers. The prospects do not yet feel a sense of loyalty to you and will be more apt to cancel at the last minute so you want to be ready if they do.
4. Call several days before the luncheon to confirm attendance and to encourage those who have not responded that you would really like to have them attend. It is important that you remind them that this is not going to be a sales pitch for your company. The only sales pitch will be that you will hand them some information about your organization as they leave for them to do with as they will.
5. Make name tags for everyone in attendance as well as name placards for where you want them to sit. You need to determine the seating arrangements, which gives you the opportunity to place people where you want them. You will find your good customers will do the selling for you. In fact, many of them want to help you.
6. Have a schedule and FINISH ON TIME. We found it best to begin at about 11:30 A. M. with a brief get acquainted time and introductions with lunch served at 11:45. The presentation should be from about 12:30 to 1 P. M. with question time and then dismissal promptly at 1:15. This is important. If the prospect want to visit further after 1:15 they will stay and you or someone from your staff can assist them for as long as they care to discuss any subject.
7. Offer to pick up the prospects and customers and take them back to their offices. We found this to be very helpful.
8. Use as many props in the presentation as possible. If you have someone talking about back pack vacuums, have one there to demonstrate. Use Power Point presentations with plenty of hand out information.

Here again the budget doesn't break the bank. You will have the cost of the meal and the meeting room if they charge for it. If you bring in an outside speaker you will have those costs but again, if you sign one prospect the investment was well worth it.

I think it is important here to note that one company I discussed the industry update luncheon concept with has adopted that as their sole method of obtaining new customers. They found it so successful they felt they could get all the customers they could operationally handle by utilizing this method.

Both of the methods discussed above are very effective ways to get in front of the buyers you want to talk to and you are able to do it with a minimal amount of investment. Our benchmark was that if we could turn one prospect into a customer as a result of a "hit list" mailing or industry update luncheon, we had succeeded in our endeavor. We were very successful in doing that each time.

I encourage you to consider either one or both of these ideas if you are operating on a limited budget for marketing your company and securing new customers. When planned correctly, they are extremely effective.