If I could only offer one tip to grow your business, it is this: Start with your ideal customers and work backward to build a signature process to serve them. Show them how you solve their problems and make their lives better. Then, lead with that process in your marketing materials to lay out a clear path to customer success.
Engagement meter (Photo: Olivier Le Moal/Essentials/Getty Images)
Your process showcases your business like a Hollywood movie trailer does for a feature film. It offers a risk-free preview that helps buyers get to know, like and trust you. This will accomplish far more than the beautiful photos of landscapes that many industry websites proudly display.
Don’t misunderstand — glamor shots of quality work demonstrate competency, but what are you really trying to do? Inspire people to buy landscaping or persuade them to buy it from you? When your marketing leads with your process, you put customers first and that’s reason enough to choose you.
Potential buyers want to know what you offer, but they have questions that cannot be answered by photo galleries. If anything, those photos raise new questions. You can distill down most questions from potential buyers to just a couple.
- How will your company make my life better?
- What do I have to do to get those benefits?
Always discuss products together with the problems they solve
The advantage to marketing your process is that potential buyers understand everything that comes with it, your products, reputation and the distinctive way you work. Remember that no matter how exceptional the product quality, nobody wants to work with a company that makes their life difficult.
Before buying from any company, people want to have a relationship with it. They want to know that you will take care of them should something go wrong. A transparent process gives them that security, removing the fears and doubts most buyers share.
When you describe your process on your website or any other marketing materials, be careful not to overdo it by showing every single step. That’s for you and your team to know. Communicate that you’ve got the typical problems under control, such as budgeting, timeframes and safety. Do this cleanly, with the quiet confidence that comes from experience.
Make it easy to buy and enjoy the benefits
When my company designed our landscaping process, we began by envisioning amazing dining experiences. We explored the best of the best in other industries, too, gaining insights for adding or removing layers to enhance and streamline the process.
You’ll need to test your process with real customers to work out the kinks. We relied on our longtime clients for feedback to perfect the changes because we knew they would tell us the truth. For example, we discovered that some buyers don’t want to be bothered with signing contracts or writing checks. So, we updated our agreement to make it digitally friendly, saying, “in lieu of your signature, receipt of your payment will be considered sufficient confirmation to proceed accordingly.”
Not only did our process make it easier to sell, but it also made training and recruiting easier, too. I hope you discover, as we did, that your process is a competitive advantage that shows you have a proven way to make people’s lives better. Many things in your business will change over time, but the one constant will be the signature process that uniquely serves your customers.
About the Author: Jeff Korhan
Jeff Korhan is the owner of True Nature Marketing, a Naples, Fla.-based company helping entrepreneurs grow. Reach him at jeff@truenature.com. Jeff works with service companies that want to drive growth and enhance their brand experience with digital platforms.Subscribe to Landscape Management
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