Courting Business: Tips For Landing - And Keeping - Customers
By Ken Hutcheson

A bedrock of American-style entrepreneurship is that individual success is proportional to individual effort. The idea of surviving off the sweat of our brow goes back to the image of hearty pioneers scratching out a living off the land. Indeed, this romanticized vision grows stronger with each passing year in the American success story.

When it comes to running a business, however, many factors combine to influence success, from competition and market conditions to the product or service being offered. Add managerial, operational and financial prowess, and it becomes clear that true success involves more than just a willingness to work hard.

One of the most overlooked yet most important ingredients for a business to thrive is successful customer relations. That’s astounding, considering seven in 10 jobs in the United States are in private service-producing industries, whether landscaping, computer graphics or dance lessons. And for every one of those service businesses, there is a critical interaction when the provider persuades the prospective customer to pay for a desired service.

The first encounter with a prospect can make or break a deal. Yet, too often, the service provider goes in poorly prepared - like a boxer heading into the ring without his gloves.

At U.S. Lawns, we educate our franchisees in all aspects of running a successful and profitable business. We provide extensive training in landscape management, from estimating project costs to equipment purchases to bookkeeping. We provide marketing materials and ongoing business mentoring from seasoned advisers.

We equip our franchisees with the tools they need - except one: We can’t walk into a local prospect meeting and seal the deal for them.

What we do is provide strategic and practical advice on preparing for the initial customer presentation. Being armed with the right information and making the best possible first impression greatly improves the chances a prospect will be converted into new business. But don’t stop impressing once a contract is signed. Make sure they remain a customer.

Here are some tips to winning the deal and keeping them happy.

Tip 1: Think like your prospective customer
I like to call it getting behind the eyes of the customer. If you can learn to see what they see, you will be more likely to understand and anticipate their needs.

Tip 2: Know the prospect
To think like your prospect, you need to know as much as possible about the company you are calling on. Smart entrepreneurs treat every prospect meeting as a job interview, and much like a job interview, you need to know who you are talking with, what the company does and how you are a fit for that organization. If you make a pitch for services the prospect really doesn’t need, you end up wasting valuable time - both theirs and yours. Doing the research also helps you determine if the prospect actually is right for your business. Tip 3: Talk the talk.
Learn the vernacular of the industry you are calling on. If you are selling your services to a widget maker, you better understand when the prospect asks about the impact of your service on his widgets. For example, when offering our services and pricing to an apartment complex, it’s important for our landscape-management franchisee to know the difference between gross potential income (income assuming all units are occupied) and net rental income (actual rent for existing leases).

Tip 4: Dress for success.
If you are pitching your service to, say, a bank president, business casual may not make a good first impression. In my industry, a major commercial prospect can be lost as soon as you walk in the door if, instead of being dressed in professional business attire, it loo like you just stepped off a mower. Any credibility gained from being part of a large corporation such as U.S. Lawns is sacrificed at first sight. The work shirt may be clean and the service being offered excellent, but you will never be taken seriously.

Tip 5: Get inside the customer’s head.
This goes back to seeing what the customer sees. By putting yourself in the customer’s place, you have a better understanding of their needs. And, with adequate research, you might even provide insight for the customer about their own business. For example, by walking a prospect’s property, one of our franchisees might find the current irrigation system is poorly designed and wasting water.

Tip 6: Walk the walk. Don’t ever promise more than you can comfortably deliver, but always deliver more than you promised. Exceeding your customer’s expectations strengthens your credibility, builds on your reputation and expands your business opportunities through positive referrals. Tip 7: Know your own business. Shakespeare said it best: To thine own self be true. Be honest with yourself about the strengths and weaknesses of your business. Not only will that help you understand where you need to improve, but it also will help you avoid over-promising to a prospective customer. For example, in commercial landscape management, being able to accurately estimate landscape maintenance costs for a job can be a make-or-break proposition. A competitor may underbid you on a particular project, but you can take comfort in knowing they probably will lose money or underperform on the job.

Tip 8: Keep the romance alive.
You’ve invested time and energy to research, pitch and ultimately land a customer. This doesn’t mean your work is done. Developing an ongoing relationship means constantly investing the time to stay in touch with the customer on a regular basis. One of our franchise mentors routinely advises business owners to make customers their friends. It improves communication, strengthens the bond and makes it easier to get through the occasional but inevitable rough spots. After all, it’s much harder to fire a friend. Tip 9: Listen to the customer.
One of the biggest mistakes in business is selling a customer something they don’t want. While you may know your business and genuinely believe a particular service is what the customer needs, you don’t know all the other aspects of a customer’s business. Turning back to my industry, one of our franchisees may sincerely believe new landscaping would help the customer draw more business, but that same customer may want (or be able to afford) only basic commercial landscape maintenance. Simply put, satisfy the customer, not the need.

Tip 10: Be flexible.
The two previous tips combine to make an important point: Knowing your customer and constantly listening to them will help you keep them if times get tough. During economic turmoil, companies will look to cut expenses wherever possible. If you have invested the time to build a relationship, you can work with your customer to, say, temporarily scale back and provide only the services they can afford for the time being. This builds trust and long-term loyalty that will pay dividends when the economy does bounce back.

Establishing and growing a business is one of the hardest things anyone can do. We’re all aware of the scary statistics on the rate of business failures. Improve your odds in the win column by knowing your business and knowing your customers. These are simple truths that will get you a long way down the road to success.