In order to start a outbound telemarketing strategy for your landscaping business you should begin with creating a script that will work. It is almost always preferable to create your own script according to principals which work rather than using a canned script you obtain on the web. There are numerous reasons behind this among them:

You appreciate your prospects and the requirements much better than another script creator ever will. A script made for your unique product or service is going to sound better than a general script which prospects could have listened to from other companies. You can have the script give you just the important information and fit your offering accurately.

Even though it is crucial that you use a script made just for you there are numerous tactics that can be used to increase conversions.

Quick scripts are usually the most effective telesales scripts. The potential customer has to know why you are contacting them and why they should be interested within several second of getting on the phone. Get to the point promptly, do not go with the full sales pitch on a first call, keep with the essentials. Keep the aim of the call in mind when creating the script. If you are producing a lead or setting an appointment that should be the goal of the call. Don’t add anything that doesn’t need to be included, it will only annoy the potential client and your conversions will be affected.

This is the basic format you can follow:

Hi ____________, this is NAME calling from Landscaping Company. We’re currently providing landscaping services to several of your neighbors, our company is offering free quotes for home owners in the area. We offer full services such as…. and low cost affordable full service plans to homeowners.

Rebuttals to common questions:

I understand you already have a service but we guarantee to beat any rate, and we offer additional services such as… I know its a little early to be thinking about landscaping, but we can give you a quote and lock in a much lower rate for the entire season than you’ll get if you wait until May. That’s great, I just need to verify we have your information correct:

I have your name as… and your address as… and your phone number… What is the best time for you on DAY?

Thanks for your time and just to confirm we’ll be stopping by on DAY/TIME to take a look at ____ and get you a quote on having some work done. Have a great day.

When you have a good finished script developed you shouldn’t be hesitant to try to make improvements. It can call for some changes based on the telemarketer’s feedback to get things running smoothly after the calls start to be made. You will also want to come up with answers to questions that prospects may ask during the call.

A business plan will help minimize the difficulty and hard work needed to establish a personal injury law practice. The reasons why a strong plan is required when setting a practice is cited by Linda Pinson in her book “Anatomy of a Business Plan.”

1. It acts as a guide on how to face the realities associated with setting up a personal injury law practice. In addition, it provides a clear outline of your goals, potentials, strengths, weaknesses and prospects. It also comes with tools for analyzing and implementing changes for boost the profitability of your personal injury law practice.

2. It serves as documentation for financing. Using the plan, you will be able to determine how much capital to put up in your law practice and to predict the amount of money needed to advance the practice’s objectives and boost its profits.

It will require a good deal of strategic thinking to come up with an effective plan if you decide to put up a personal injury law practice on your own. Create a business plan with your particular needs and the needs of your practice in mind. It will help to sign up as an apprentice in a personal law firm to give you a general idea of business-related matters such as payroll, marketing, case management and billing.

Since a useful business plan is an organic document, it should be stored and kept in your computer and updated when necessary. You will find that the plan becomes refined as your practice progresses. In case where you find that you are unable to continue with your business plan, find out whether the plan is unrealistic or you are not keen on doing what is needed to keep the practice going.

According to K. William Gibson, an effective business plan consists of a description of the services that the practice intends to offer; information on the site(s) where the practice is located; a description of the types of clients you want to target; a forecast of future revenues and operating costs; a record of the personal resources that you intend invest to fund your personal injury law practice and a statement of your personal assets and liabilities.

You also need to seek the help of certain professional before writing your business plan. These professionals include a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), A Bar Association Practice Management Advisors and Established Personal Injury Lawyers.

A CPA will determine whether your business plan is sound and in correct form and is the person to go to for questions with regards to the rules and regulations of the International Revenue Service and other government agencies.

Practice advisers are commonly ex-active attorneys or law office administrators who had gone through everything you are about to experience.

Experienced personal injury lawyers will provide the mentoring you will need to predict the possible out-of-pocket expenses involved in personal injury lawsuits. You may also ask experienced lawyers for names of vendors and experts who can help you establish cases in the future.

One of the most effective marketing tools ever invented is sitting on your desk right now. It’s your TELEPHONE! While many professionals waste time cold calling strangers, some marketing savvy pros are using phone in unique ways to quietly attract more new clients, increase customer loyalty, generate loads of referrals, boost sales and profits all while saving time and money. Would you like to know how?

Telephone – like other tools – can be used in a variety of ways. Unfortunately, most people settle on mostly one phone-based marketing activity – cold calling.

I know there are training programs out there teaching how to fall in love with cold calling. Perhaps you enjoy interrupting people, trying to speak as fast as you can so that you can squeeze in your entire sales pitch before they hang up on you. Frankly, I prefer to chew on nails for a week than to make one cold call. But hey – that’s just me. Besides, the best cold call is when a prospect calls you – but that’s a subject for another article.

So here are my top three tips for using phone-marketing effectively.

Top Tip #1 – Call existing clients or prospects.

Remember the saying “don’t preach to the choir”? Well, it’s wrong! You should only preach to the choir!

Instead of bothering strangers, connect with your existing customers or people who have indicated interest in your services or products.

Top Tip #2 – Have a specific reason to call.

Make your message relevant to the person on the receiving end. If you are not sure what you have to offer that’s valuable to your clients and could be shared by phone, you should be looking for a job… But if you insist on running your own business here are a few tips:

- Call to say thank you! Yep, that simple. I just spoke to an internet marketer who makes it a point to call all new online customers within one day. With a bit of clever technology he often makes a live, personal call to the new clients within minutes of them placing an order. Can you imagine how blown away his customers are?

- Educate customers how to better use your product or service. If you help them get the most out of working with you, they will be more successful and more likely to recommend you to others.

- Introduce them to a new resource you found helpful. By the way, could you see an opportunity for making this recommendation a strategic alliance?

- Invite customers and prospects to a special event and tell them to bring a friend or business associate. It doesn’t even have to be your event. Are you planning on going to a workshop with a great speaker? Why not bring along a few clients and prospects?

- Make current customers aware of exclusive offers available only to them. Hey, they pay your bills, why not put something special for them once in a while.

- Remind them about attending an event. Yep, sometimes inviting people is not enough. So call to refresh their memory – they will thank you for it.

- Use your call in conjunction with other marketing tools to build anticipation. For example you could make a call to announce that a special mailer will be arriving in the mail-box and email-box thus increasing your chances of your written marketing message actually being noticed…

I’m sure you are now asking: “couldn’t I just use email to do all of that”? You certainly could, but… If you relay on email alone you lose a very person aspect of using your voice. Plus, with a click of a button – puff – and your email is gone! Your call has a higher chance of making it through.

Which brings me to my last point…

Top Tip #3 – Use technology to automate your calls.

Yes, I’m talking about pre-recorded messages – like the ones that interrupt your dinner. Well, actually not quite like that… Before you rush to judgment that this stuff doesn’t work, let me explain a couple of reasons why it does work.

Unlike those annoying calls from strangers pitching new credit cards or better mortgage rates I’m suggesting to leave messages for people you have already done business with in the past or who specifically requested you send them more information. That’s a big difference!

In addition, the technology today makes it possible for the call to disconnect if a live person answers so you don’t alienate people by making them talk to a computer!

Finally, distributing a pre-recorded message makes it possible to contact hundreds and thousands of people with just a fraction of the time it would take to make personal calls.

Let’s just say that you are billing a $100 per hour of your time. Assuming that each call could take about a minute (and that’s a fast call!) you could make about 60 calls per hour. Your cost is $1.66 per call! And you will get more and more tired and less and less energetic with every call – decreasing the quality of your message.

As an alternative an automated phone broadcast can cost you about 14 cents per minute. And every message is your BEST MESSAGE!

For example, sending a 30 second message to 2000 customers would cost you $140. (half a minute x $0.14 per minute x 2000 customers). What a bargain! It’s fast, it’s cheap and it gets through! By the way – imagine personally leaving 2000 messages… That would take you over 33 hours… Good luck trying!

Bottom line to this long winded explanation is this: making THE RIGHT TYPE OF CALL THE RIGHT WAY in conjunction with modern technology and other marketing tools can make a huge difference in your business.

BONUS GIFT

Want to hear four sample marketing recordings and read my comments what makes them effective? Listen to them here…

As I’m sure that you can understand, it is very important to make sure that your business is getting in touch with your customers and potential customers regularly. Although there are number of different avenues to do this, such as through email, snail mail, and over the telephone, one of the most important things that you can do is to make sure that you incorporate telemarketing into the mix. Unfortunately, this is something that many of us are not equipped to do on our own, so hiring the right telemarketing services is going to certainly make a difference in the efforts of your company. Here are some reasons why you would want to consider hiring telemarketing services so that you can boost your success.

One of the primary reasons why you would want to consider hiring such a service is because it allows you to focus more on your business. Telemarketing is time intrusive, and for many of us, our time is better spent doing other things within our business. For example, likely you have a limited sales and customer service division or perhaps you take care of the majority of it on your own. If you hire a service that is going to take care of the telemarketing for you, it allows you to focus more on the customer service, and that can really help to add to your success.

Many of us really live or die by the advertising that we do, and this type of marketing can really add to the number of new clients that we are bringing into our company. This is especially true for certain sectors and divisions, many of which use telemarketing on a regular basis in order to generate new leads. By hiring out the services, you can do a lot to improve on what you are doing with those leads once they are available. If all you have to do is focus on turning the hot lead into a sale, you are much more likely to be able to do so.

Another aspect that you could consider is that using a service such as this can help you weed through a number of different prospects and only take advantage of those that are interested in what you have to offer. This would fall under the realm of hiring an appointment setter, somebody who was going to call numerous people and then make an appointment with anybody who happens to answer in a positive way. In this way, all you really need to do is to schedule your time so that when you have a lead that is available, you just get back with them when it is necessary to do so.

Finally, you need to consider the fact that the diversity which telemarketing offers to you can really make a difference in your business in many ways. Although there are other forms of advertising available, and your business may be interested in taking advantage of them, when you use telemarketing, it can really help to boost your numbers significantly.

Warning: this article reveals an essential strategy that must go in your business plan for small business success. After working with 146 businesses of all sizes I have noticed an inherent difference between success and struggle.

Virtually every sustainable long term enterprise inserts into their small business plans this key strategy. Without fail, most struggling enterprises do not implement this key tactic. So what is the strategy?

Essential Strategy to include in your business plans for small business success.

Stay in touch with prospects and past customers on your database at least every 90 days or less. Now it can be as frequent as weekly, fortnightly, monthly but never more than 90 days.

How do you do this? Well the very first step is to collect all contact data and have a simple database to put them in. Worldwide database management software such as Goldmine and Act are good possibilities for smaller business. Larger businesses will need more sophisticated industry specific versions.

Burn this saying into your mind: “More contact equals more sales.” The reverse is also true: Less contact equals less sales.

In the 21st century a new paradigm of successful business communication has emerged and it does not matter what industry you are in. After all, we are all human beings with wants and needs. Our past and current customers deserve our attention.

If you do not stay in touch with your past or current clients at least quarterly, there is a high percentage chance they will become someone else’s (your competitors new customer).

So this must do strategy no matter what business you are in, is critical to your success. Include it in any business plans for small business success.