Lawn Mowing Sales MASTERCLASS

Everything you're about to hear will determine how much money you make this year. If you want bigger checks, more confidence, and more customers to say yes, listen to this video. I'm going to be sharing with you guys the last 5 years of knowledge of selling, convincing somebody how to do what you want to do. Everything in life that you do, you're either being sold by somebody or you're doing the selling. All right. It's just the fact and way of life. Why not cultivate and learn this skill set of sales and do as much volume as you can to learn this skill set so that way you can start to sell not only customers to come and buy your services, but also sell your team on why they should come and work for you. Let's talk about this. I've got some really good key points. So, this is sales training. I'm going to call it 2.0 because this is kind of the next level. This isn't just a 101 class. The very first thing I would say when it comes to sales, to give you a little bit of premise, obviously you need to be convicted and have conviction of the actual service you're selling. If you don't believe in it, you're never gonna be able to truly sell it. I can confidently stand here in front of the camera and tell you that we are the best lawn care company in a 200-mile radius of this place. The reason why I know that is because I talk to all of the other lawn care businesses around here, they watch me on YouTube, and nobody is doing the amount of training, the PowerPoint, the onboarding orientation, hands-on training with trainers. Nobody is as diligent as us Nobody is bringing and delivering the quality that we do to our customers. I know this because I've seen it when I'm on the phone and I'm selling these customers. If we're truly here and positioning ourselves to help these customers, it is in their best interest to select us so that way they're not selecting the Chuck in a Truck who may be cheaper price but creating all sorts of problems to the customer when they don't show up, cause damage on the property, and they just bounce and ghost the customer and they don't fix these things. You You guys should have conviction of the services that we do. When there's a problem, we take care of the customer. So that's number 1. We need to have conviction of our service. And I have that, and that's why my conversion rates on the phone are drastically higher than any other lawn service, probably seller on the phone. Because I've seen it and witnessed it with my own eyes. I know the training that we put our team through. That's number 1, you must have conviction of what you are selling. Once you get that, and hopefully you guys do have that for the team that's working here at Military Lawn Cuts. The next thing is this: there is a motto called speed to lead. There is a statistic from my mentor Mike. He mentions that 70% of the time, the first company that answers the phone will get the sale. 70% of the time. The customer doesn't shop around prices. They don't care if it's $5 more or $5 less. 70% of the time, the customer is going to book with the very first company that answers the phone. When people are filling out submission forms, when customers are calling the company, we need to pick that phone up as quickly as possible to make sure that we are in that 70% close rate, obtaining that customer. Zero missed calls between the hours that we're open. We should not be missing any phone calls. Every missed phone call that comes through is a customer that would have booked with us most likely. They're gonna call the next company and they're probably gonna sign up in the next 10 minutes. I can't tell you how many times I've tried to call customers back after 20 minutes of a missed call and they're like, oh yeah, sorry, I already signed up with this other company. It's because they're going to sign up up with the very first customer that answers the phone. So we need to make sure we're answering the phone as quickly as possible. When it comes to calling pending estimates, these are estimates that you go out, you either send them a mowing and weed control quote, you go out and do a drive-by estimate. Now it's our turn. You just sent them the estimate. It is so crucial to call the customer same day. In fact, when I was out there, most of the time, if I had the time and we weren't that busy, I would send them the estimate while while I'm there parked in the truck, and I would call them on Nextiva literally before I left and drove away. Because the faster we get the estimate to the customer, speed to lead, the faster and more likely it is that they will book. They have a problem, it's our job to solve it. The people that can solve the problems the fastest are the ones that win the sales. If a customer calls in, we put a drive-by on the estimate, it goes 3 days before we get an estimator out in that location, guess what? 72 hours later, the customer's probably not going to be booking us in that 70% range. These are statistics and that I'm shooting from the hip. I haven't ran the exact statistical numbers, but this is just what I've seen over the last 5 years. 70% of the time, the customer is going to book on the very first call and/or in the first 24 hours of the estimate getting sent out. That is why we have our team call the estimate same day. If our GMs or estimators are going out to do drive-by estimates, They're calling same day. When they get back, picking up the phone, hey Mrs. Jones, I was just there to do your flower bed. Just wanted to see, I got a spot on my schedule tomorrow, wanna see if we can get you squeezed in here. All we need is a good card on file. Make it super simple. 70% within 24 hours. Once you get to that 48-hour mark, the numbers start to drastically fall off. What I have seen is once an estimate has been sent and 48 hours goes by, there's about a 45 to 50% chance chance that that customer is going to book with us. Again, why is that? Speed to lead. The faster we get it to them, the faster we solve their problem, the more likely they are to book. If 2 days go by, they're much more less likely to book. It's about a 45 to 50% conversion at that point. At 72 hours, customers will still likely book, but again, the percentage of them drastically drops off. So what I have seen is anywhere from like 20 to 30% of customers will actually book after the 72 72-hour mark, or roughly at the 72-hour mark. Let's say you send the estimate to the customer and a week goes by. Every minute and every day that goes by, less likely is that customer going to book. So that's why it's super crucial to call them every single day in that first 3 to 4 days of you sending an estimate. So let's say you sent the estimate and one full week goes by. What I have seen for the statistics of how many people actually accept the estimate after 7 days goes by is significantly lower. I'm talking maybe 10 to 15%, very, very low conversion. In fact, most of the time you may feel like you're just leaving voicemails a lot of the time, the customers don't really want it. You could see how as time elapses, it makes it worse and worse that you're actually going to convert to sale. And after 2 weeks of you sending the estimate and 2 weeks going by, literally statistically, it's like a 5% chance that the customer's actually going to book with you. Very, very low. That's why in our company, typically at that 20 to 21 days mark, we're already just declining the estimate for them. We don't want to just keep wasting our time. Time is crucial when you're sending these pending estimates, and it's imperative that we call each day in that first 72 hours. We hit them 3 times with calls, texts, emails, because that's when they're most likely to convert. This is another key point: when the customer answers the phone and you're selling to them about our services, which you believe in your heart and in your mind and in your soul that we are the best option for the customer, sell Sell the vacation. Here we go. Sell the vacation. All right? I feel like I'm talking to the camera the whole time. Sorry about that, guys. All right, sell the vacation. Recently, an awesome team member on our team, Chance, says that him and his wife want to go to Japan. Amazing. That's going to be very cool. You're going to be able to explore, right? Sell the vacation. When you get there, what are you going to do? Are you going to explore? Are you going to go to different sceneries out there? Any kind of big monumental traveling sites that you can go to and explore? That's what we're selling. Don't sell how early you have to wake up to catch your 14-hour flight and the TSA is going to be all backed up and the line's going to be super long. You're going to have to go through security. You're going to have to wait for the plane to come. Then you're going to have some jet lag because the time zones are different. Like, don't sell the process. Sell the end goal. We're going to bring you a lush green lawn. All you got to do is add a card on file. It's that simple. You're not billed until the service is 100% complete. That is what we're selling. Sell the vacation. Make it super simple and super easy for these customers. All right, number 2. This is a big one. This will dictate if you are going to convert a lot of sales or if you're not. It's the tone in your voice, the confidence and conviction of the product and the services that we are delivering. I already told you at the beginning, we are the best lawn care company within a 200-mile radius. There is no other lawn care company that is holding their team to a quality standard that we are. And I know that, I'm convicted of that. So when I am talking to these customers on the phone and I am taking these inbound calls, I am telling them our goal is to be the last lawn care company that you sign up for for the entire time that you live in that house. And that's a fact because I was just taking a sales call this morning or this afternoon, and the guy's like telling me all of the things that their previous lawn care company wasn't doing right and how they weeded too low and all this stuff. No worries. We can take those tailored preferences and put that specifically in the notes on every single visit so that no matter what crew or what truck is there, they know exactly what you want. So I'm going to go ahead and update those notes for you and make sure that that doesn't happen while you're with us. And oh, by the way, if it does happen, which is a very, very rare scenario, please give us, give us a call, give it, you know, reach out to us. We will always make it right. We'll come back and fix it. If we can't fix it, we'll literally give you your money back on the last visit. That is what selling? Selling the confidence and the conviction, knowing that we're going to do everything that we can to take care of the customer. Let's talk about specific words when I'm selling these customers. When I am calling— or actually, when they're calling me and they're like, hey, I want mowing services, what's the price to mow? Cool, I'm gonna give you a mow price. When I tell them what the mow price is, okay, here's, here's one of the biggest things where I see a lot of people fail. A lot of people will just go straight and get into the price. If you do that, they're going to turn their brains off and they're not going to interested anymore. So instead, what I do is I give them everything that it's going to be included. Also, I use specific words with conviction and confidence to say, our professional mowing services include mowing, weeding, edging, and blowing the front, back, and sides of the property. And for that service and all of that that is included, the price is going to be $39.95 plus taxes and fees. Give them the value of what is entailed in the service. If you're doing a flower bed drive-by, right? And you're doing a follow-up call on that before you, you know, hey, I haven't got a chance, you know, customer might say, hey, I haven't got a chance to look at my quote yet. Cool. Hey, do you have 30 seconds? I can go through it right now with you if you'd like. We're getting them to say yes more on the phone. That's another tactic that you can do. Get them to say yes over and over again. And so when you get to the end of the sale, they've already said yes 5 or 7 times, so they're ready to say yes, sign me up, here's my card, right? It's another tactic that you can use when they're asking about their flower bed quote. Cool. 'Cool, okay, this is what it includes. We're gonna trim the bushes, we're gonna de-weed the flower beds, we're also gonna install mulch. We'll make sure that it's 2 to 3 inches thick for you to block out all the weeds. And all of that price, we're also gonna haul off the disposal clippings for you. Now all of that price is gonna be $399 plus tax.' Deliver the value and then give the price. Don't give the price and then the value. I talked a little bit about saying yes, which actually I'm gonna add here. We're gonna go in purple. Multiple yeses. I don't even know if that's a word. Yeses with an ES. What does that mean? When somebody calls me and says, hey Will, I need a mowing and weed control price. So what I do is I pull up their map on the property. 99% of the time they want mowing for the front and backyard. Okay, it's very rare that they only want the backyard. There's only like 1 or 2 neighborhoods in our massive territory. I'm asking them questions that I already basically know the answer to because I want them to to get to say yes. So they say, hey Will, I need a quote for lawn mowing and weed control. Okay, we all know 99.999% of customers want it for the front backyard. So guess what question I'm going to ask? Guess what question I'm going to ask? Put it in the comments below. We gotta feed the algorithm here, right? So say, hey John, let me go ahead and pull your map, your property up on our satellite here. Now as far as these services go, are these services going to be for the front and the backyard? And they say yes. Great, awesome. Sometimes if I know what neighborhood they're in, we have a neighborhood here called Silverado. I'll Hey John, just to make sure I have this correct, are you in the Silverado community? Which I already know the answer to. They're gonna say yes. So again, I'm getting them to say yes multiple times before asking for the sale at the end, all right? That's another tactic that we can use to increase our close ratios and increase our sales. Using the word professional. We are a professional company. We're gonna deliver to you professional bush trimming. We're also gonna deliver professional weed control. We're gonna provide professional mowing services. Use the word professional. We're not a chuck in a truck, we're not some random company, we are a professional military company that is delivering reliable, dependable, integrity services. That is our core of a military company. Use their name often. I cannot tell you, the most magical words for somebody is their name. Now in this scenario, I've been using John a lot, We'll just say his name's John Smith. I am using his name like 5 to 7 times in the conversation. Hey John, so you said that you needed mowing and weed control services, is that correct? Yes. Okay, great, awesome. And then just so I have this here clearly here, John, is it gonna be for the front and the backyard? Yes. Okay, great. I'm using their name often in the conversation. It is ringing to their ears when you use their name. Not just customers, but team members, use their name. This is all sales, right? This is all working with people. This is probably one of the biggest ones. If you guys only pull one thing, one thing out of this presentation, this is going to be it. You must overcome the first objection. This is sales. You're going to sharpen your skills. It's the ability to be able to influence somebody to change their behavior. What does this look like? So you're going to give a price price to somebody and they're going to give you an objection. Typically in the lawn care, there's 3 objections, which I'm going to talk about here in a second. But let's just use one for example. The person says, hey, uh, this is too expensive for me. That is an objection. So you get to the end of the sale, or you give them— you tell them everything that's included, and then you give them the price using their name after you get them to say yes multiple times. And then they hit you with an objection. Do not just roll over and get off the phone and say, okay, if anything changes, give us a call back. Click. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you and I have to be able to have a dialect and a conversation with somebody and overcome the first objection. You see, humans don't like change. Also sometimes don't like making decisions. It's mine and your job to make sure that we can help them make a decision when they hit you, not if, If when they hit you with an objection, this is part of sales, we need to overcome this objection. In this scenario, the customer says, hey, we're too expensive. Well, first off, if they said we're too expensive, I didn't portray enough value to them to showcase why they should spend money at our company. Okay, so I'm failing as a salesman over the phone or calling it pending estimate calls to portray the level of value that we're going to deliver. Delivered to them. That's number one. If they hit you with that price objection, we have to try and overcome that objection. We can't just get off the phone. So there are three main objections. I would say 95% of the time, these are the three objections that you're going to get from a customer. Number one, it's too expensive, price is too high. Number two, I need to talk to my spouse. And number three, I need to think about it. If you can practice while off the phone or, you know, with, with another team member of like trying to overcome this objection, If you figure out and learn and study how to overcome those 3 objections, you will definitely be able to close more sales and make more money at your location. I will give you one example of how to overcome, which I had this today, that the customer said that they needed to talk to their spouse. Hey Susie, we'll just use Susie. Hey Susie, so for all the weed control and the mowing, the price is gonna be, you know, you know, let's just say $7,995, right? Can we go ahead and get you on the schedule here for this upcoming week? And she's like, hey, that all sounds good. I gotta talk to my spouse. Okay, this is exactly what I would say to her. Hey Susie, using her name, I think that's really sensible of you to talk to your spouse. In fact, I'm married as well, so I think you're doing the right thing. Now just out of curiosity, Susie, when you go and talk to your spouse, what do you think they won't like about this estimate that's in front of you? Like, what do you think that they're not gonna like about this. And then all of a sudden, Susie says, well, I think this is too expensive for, for what, what's actually included. So she hit us with an objection of I need to talk to my spouse, but that actually wasn't the objection. The objection was a price objection. So again, I failed to portray the level of quality and value that Military Lawn Cuts is going to deliver to this customer. And again, have a 200% guarantee that if they're not happy with the service, we'll go back and fix it, no questions asked. If they're still unhappy after that, we will literally give them their money back on the last visit. There's no risk to the customer when it comes to quality. Like, we will make sure they're satisfied or we will literally give them their money back. So if you have anybody on the fence about quality, like, we have a 200% guarantee. We need to be selling that. Don't just get off the phone on the first objection because oftentimes it's masked by a different objection. Next thing, number 6. 6 is bring the energy. You are the one in control of the conversation, which actually kind of opens my mind to something else as well. I'm trying to give you guys little snippets of just things that I've learned over the years, right? You dictate the energy level of the conversation. So when somebody calls me in the springtime, I say, hey, thanks for calling Military Lawn Cuts. This is Will speaking. How can I help? They're like, hey, my name's John. I need some lawn care services. A little bit of small talk when I'm mapping out their property. I'll say, "Hey John, how's your day going today?" He's like, "Oh, it's alright. How's your day?" I'm like, "Hey man, my day is going fantastic. The weather's beautiful outside. It's 75 degrees. It's spring. The grass is growing. My day is going awesome." Bring the energy. Let them feel how different we are, how positive we are, right? Like if versus— versus what if I said, "Hey, yeah John, it's just super busy today," right? Like, I don't like that vibe. I don't like that energy. People want to do business that they know, like, and trust, right? Everybody likes to be around positive people and looking at the glass half full rather than half empty. Okay. So you bring the energy level when it comes to these sales. Now, one side topic piece here is oftentimes I see when GMs are doing pending estimate calls and myself included, which again, by the way, all of this stuff, guys, I was not an expert at. I want you guys to know from a very like humility approach. I fell on my face 1,000 times to learn all these things. You guys probably will too, but hopefully if I share these points with you, it'll take you half as many reps to get there. That's why I'm sharing all of this stuff with you. So oftentimes I see when people are calling their pending estimates and they go through the whole spiel, they tell them what the scope of work is, and then they give them the price, and then the customer says, uh, ask them a question, right? And they'll say, uh, does that include the fabric liner and the flower beds? And then the GM or myself will respond on, no, that doesn't, and then they stop talking. The second you stop talking, you lose control of the conversation. You need to follow that up with another question or educating the customer on why we don't do that. Hey customer, we don't do the fabric liner, and here's why: because the labor time on the fabric liner takes significantly longer, and the price for that is super expensive. So instead, what we do is our crews come out and we pull the weeds from the root to really try to get it. And then we'll put down a pre-emergent, a granular pre-emergent, when, when once it gets watered in, it'll help block a lot of those weeds out. And then again, where I see most GMs fail is they stop talking after that. You need to retake control of the conversation after you give them the answer and say, so John, with that being said, because I want to keep those costs down for you, does Thursday sound good to go ahead and get you on the schedule for Whoever is asking the questions is in control of the conversation. So just think about that when you're responding to these people, and you want to do it tactfully, and there's a skill set around it. So it's going to take some time, it's going to take repetitions for you to learn this skill set of sales. Final tip here as we kind of wrap it up. Number 1, this is the biggest selling point in our company, and I tell the customers all the time, especially when they're kind of on the fence, like, well, I gotta kind of think about it, you know, to get that— you get that objection Hey, I can reassure you, we are the quality company around. Number one, you can go on Google and see over, I think it's like 300 or 400 Google reviews across all our locations, 5-star, 'cause we are the 5-star lawn service company here in Aubrey. Also, by the way, to tell you that I'm not kidding about that, we don't do any contracts. And the reason why we do that, that's intentional, is because we want our quality to retain our customers, not a written agreement. That holds us accountable to show up to your property property every visit, every day, every service, and deliver 5-star services every single time. Like the video if you got value. Subscribe if you want real business advice and want to grow and pass $500,000. Thank you guys so much for watching. See you in the next one.