Is Your Sales Team Overwhelmed with Demand?
The unofficial start of summer is here: Happy Memorial Day Weekend!
As we look ahead to the summer, our schedules are pretty full at Grunder Landscaping, but we're still talking as a team regularly about the number and quality of leads coming in. We're keeping our fingers on the pulse and looking ahead to any holes we may have in the schedule.
This month, that's landscaping installation work we'll have the capacity for in September. While it's still far out, we have to be generating leads now and closing the right sales to close this hole in our schedule later.
This season has been tough for sales, but for different reasons than it usually is. We're facing a few challenges that I'm sure your teams are facing too.
We're getting so many leads, that we have to book our initial visits farther out than we'd like to. When a lead comes in, either over the phone or through our online form, our sales team screens the lead and schedules the initial visit quickly. However, the initial visit may be scheduled for 2-4 weeks after this initial call for Design-Build work. Our designers are so busy that this is the quickest they can get to new leads, even though it's much slower than we usually would respond.
To manage this, we're upfront with our clients about important details like the timing of our meeting and the job being completed during that screening call so that they have clear expectations from the start.
Our sales team is managing their calendars. If our designers are out doing initial meetings all week, they won't have time to work on designs or presentations for leads they've already met with. Our designers block time on their calendars to ensure that once they have the initial meeting, they can move a lead through the sales process efficiently and hopefully close the sale.
We're keeping our clients excited. Right now we have an exceptionally long backlog for hardscaping projects and pools, and a decent backlog for landscaping installations. We're clear with our potential clients upfront about when their project would realistically be scheduled for installation. We are getting a few objections on timing, but most of our clients understand.
We believe strongly in relationship selling, so in the time between each step in our process, we're constantly engaging our clients. We text them some inspiration pictures or share with them a picture of the supplies when they get delivered. We're checking in and keeping them excited while they wait. It's a small touch, but we think it helps with the prolonged backlog.
The sales challenges we're facing this year are different, but it's still critical that we're using our time efficiently, properly screening prospects, and setting clear goals. My friend and fellow landscape sales professional Chris Psencik will join me on June 8-9 to talk about the tips and tricks we use to manage sales, both when we need more sales and when we need to manage large volume, during our next Virtual Sales Bootcamp. Sign up to join us and you'll also get access to the session recordings in case you miss a session or two. We know your schedules are busy this time of year but remember: nothing happens at your company until something is sold.
Enjoy the long weekend, I'll talk to you next week!
Marty Grunder
President & CEO
Grunder Landscaping & The Grow Group