Telemarketing. Some folks consider it a dirty word. And everyone has received one of those annoying phone calls while eating dinner that oftentimes ends up with a terse, "No, I’m not interested," and a firm hanging up of the phone.
Many contractors critical of telemarketing view the practice as little more than offering bare-bones service at ridiculously low prices. Others see telemarketing as a sign of a company’s lack of interest in building relationships with clients and servicing their needs.
Some industry veterans, however, are quick to point out that telemarketing, when managed effectively and strategically, can be instrumental in healthy and profitable growth for lawn care companies.
TALKING FROM EXPERIENCE. Jim Campanella, president, The Lawn Dawg, Hudson, N.H., has watched his company grow to a profitable three-branch operation almost entirely on the strength of its telemarketing efforts.
How can telemarketing do this? Campanella reported that his telemarketing efforts have generated an average of seven to eight leads per hour of telemarketing over the last three years, and his sales personnel have turned 22 percent of those leads into sales.
Sound hard to believe?
Tom Walczyk owns Emerald Earth, a Middletown, Conn.-based lawn care company servicing approximately 700 customers and also relies almost exclusively on telemarketing. He reports average closing rates between 23 and 25 percent on comparable lead generation.
So how do these two contractors turn random phone calls into business? For starters, most of the telemarketing calls their companies make aren’t truly random.
Both Campanella and Walczyk emphasized the importance of being as selective as possible with the names you telemarket to.
"Telemarketing is effective when done correctly, and part of doing this correctly is managing the lists you call off of," explained Walczyk, who contracts with a telemarketing service to make the calls for him.
Campanella said he plans his telemarketing approach by prioritizing the streets of homeowners he wants to target in order to achieve greater sales and route density and to minimize bad leads. From there, phone numbers can be gathered from the local phone book or from a marketing service.
"But make sure you’re not telemarketing to people who are already your customers, because you don’t want to risk upsetting them," Campanella added.
The Lawn Dawg handles its telemarketing efforts internally, and Campanella explained that the telemarketing process begins in the fall of each year with list preparation.
Campanella described list preparation as a two-step process. The first step is to decide what areas of town to market into based on demographics and desired route density.
"We literally drive up and down every single street in a new town before starting our marketing there to decide whether or not we want to market to each street based on the likelihood those people will become customers," said Campanella, saying the ‘scouting’ process takes a day or two each year. "Then we put those streets into a perfect route order to organize the order calls are made so we develop a density for following up on leads and for servicing new customers.
"With conventional direct mail, the Yellow Pages or referrals, the odds aren’t as good that you’ll develop the route density you want," he continued.
The second step of the preparation is cross referencing a new list purchased each fall against his current database.
"Then we replace any new names, make any address changes and update phone number changes," he explained. "About 30 percent of this information changes each year, so if you don’t update your records each year then you can only get in touch with 70 percent of your potential contacts."
Another key to the telemarketing campaign is hiring reliable people to make the calls and keeping them onboard throughout the calling period, which is one reason why some companies outsource this work.
"Our goal is to have each sales representative handle 30 to 40 leads per day, so we assign one telemarketer to each sales rep that we have," Campanella pointed out.
And contractors need to prepare the callers as much as possible in order to make the job easier and to boost lead generation.
"Callers have to be prepared because of all of the rejections and wisecracks they are going to encounter," related Walczyk.
Part of preparing the callers to be successful is keeping the script they read from as simple as possible (see Read from the Script, page 118). Campanella said simplifying the script makes hiring callers easier and helps them become more comfortable with the task.
Campanella’s telemarketers have a set schedule to follow. People being called for the first time are called between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. each night while people receiving follow-up calls are called between 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. that night.
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THE SCRIPT
If a manager hires someone to perform a certain job but then expects the new employee to perform much more complicated tasks, that manager should be held responsible when that employee fails. Jim Campanella, president, The Lawn Dawg, Hudson, N.H., employs the same philosophy regarding the responsibilities of the people making telemarketing calls for his company. "Salespeople sell, telemarketers don’t," he emphasized. "Otherwise, the amount of leads the telemarketers generate will go down dramatically, which will negatively affect caller morale." Campanella said these employees are generally difficult to motivate and have to be managed closely. "Callers have to understand they are temporary employees from the start, and then you have to micromanage them and know how to do the job yourself, otherwise they will be on the phone calling friends instead of potential customers," Campanella remarked, adding that whoever manages the callers should stay at the office as long as callers are there making calls each night. Simplifying the script callers read from can be a key to boosting their productivity, and here is a sample script that telemarketers for The Lawn Dawg commonly use: "Hello Mr./Mrs. ______, my name is ______ and I’m calling from The Lawn Dawg, a professional lawn care service. The reason for my brief call is that we’ll be in your neighborhood this week dropping off some free price and program information to some of your neighbors and I was wondering if we could drop off a free estimate for you also. There’s no obligation and you don’t even have to be home – we can place this right in your door. Would this be okay? IF RESPOND "NO:" Are you currently using another service or do you fertilize your own lawn? (Regardless of their answer, re-offer delivery of information for price comparison purposes.) IF RESPOND "YES:" Is your correct address ______? Did you use another service last year? If so, who? Did you have any problems with the lawn last year, such as weeds, crabgrass, grubs, etc.? Someone will be out within the next few days. They’ll measure your lawn and leave an exact price quote and program information Thank you for considering The Lawn Dawg. |
MAKING A LEAD A SALE. Generating all of the leads in the world is a wonderful idea, but contractors obviously don’t make money off of leads alone. Devising a plan for lead conversion is just as important as the plan for lead generation.
"We start calling in mid-January, and you should make sure you don’t call too early when people aren’t even thinking about spring and lawn care," Campanella noted.
Campanella recommended getting an estimate in the homeowner’s hands within 72 hours of the original phone call, but he also pointed out that his employees are instructed just to leave a quote on the door instead of knocking on the door and giving the quote directly to them.
"We’ve already bothered them once with the phone call, so we don’t want to seem like a nuisance," he noted. "We just want to get a price in their hands and let our salespeople go to work."
A follow-up phone call is made the next night by the telemarketing callers, and, again, they have a specific process to follow.
"We’re not looking to close a sale with this call as much as we are looking to build a relationship," Campanella noted.
The goal of the follow-up call is to get answers to the following questions:
- Did you get the lead?
- Are you interested in the service?
- How did you treat your lawn last year?
- Can we set an appointment to discuss this further?
"Remember, we’re making these calls in January, so we don’t have to close right away," Campanella added. "We want to sell at the prospect’s pace, not ours."
Walczyk also cautioned contractors to be realistic about the quality of customers telemarketing can produce and to seriously consider who is sent out to close the sales.
"Closing rates on telemarketing leads can be deceptive because you pick up some one-application sales or customers who have to be ‘re-sold’ before every application," he explained. "And, if you’re using independent sales representatives, you could end up just ‘renting’ customers since the sales people are more interested in an immediate close than a long-term customer because they get paid on how much they sell.
"Training your technicians who care for the properties to handle the sales can avoid this problem," Walczyk continued. "Plus, you won’t have to worry about false sales promises, because the technician will not sell the customer on something he or she cannot deliver."
Telemarketing callers who are trained properly can make sure that a prospect who tells the caller he or she isn’t interested in the service isn’t a wasted call.
"You want the caller to record why a homeowner wasn’t interested in your service or have the salesperson record why you couldn’t close on the lead for future use," Walczyk explained. "If the family has pre-paid for service for next year, note that so you can call them earlier next year.
"And, if you’re using an outside service to make the calls for you, make sure your sales people keep of list of leads you’re given that turn out to be bad leads from people who say they never asked for an estimate or never even received an initial call," Walczyk added. "Then you can get credit from your telemarketing service if they are charging you based on the lead, so long as you negotiate this when you sign up for the service."
Campanella also recommended using signed contracts as a method to combat the notorious high customer turnover rate associated with telemarketing.
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KEYS
Don Nichols, president of Yes, Marketing, Columbus, Ohio, oversaw Barefoot Grass’ telemarketing efforts for a number of years. He and other industry veterans offered these telemarketing keys: |
TELEMARKETING TOMORROW. The telemarketing industry has not been one of the more popular groups with consumers in recent years, and legislators have taken note.
State legislators in Oregon, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Alaska have created formal "Do Not Call" lists that individuals can have themselves included on to preclude telemarketing companies from calling them. Bob Swedo, president, McMillen Advertising Corp., Brandford, Conn., said an additional 13 states are considering similar legislation. In fact, South Dakota, New Mexico and Colorado are the only states without any current or pending telemarketing legislation.
"There are national and state laws callers have to be aware of," Swedo added, noting that the laws apply to broadcast faxes and voice messaging as well. "For example, telemarketing can usually only take place between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m."
Campanella said he has observed a noticeable drop-off in the productivity of his telemarketing efforts.
"We used to use one caller to support two sales people, but now we can only generate enough leads to support one sales person per caller," he observed. "The leads are dropping because of the growth of "Do Not Call" lists and the popularity of caller ID.
'"But I think telemarketing can still be productive for three to five more years," Campanella concluded.
The author is Editor of Lawn & Landscape magazine.
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