By
David Andrew Smith
Part one looked at telesales, yellow
pages and other directories, using mailing lists and advertising in
local papers and journals. In this article I will be considering direct
selling techniques, leaflet drops and internet advertising.
1. Direct Approach
You could simply cold call on a company and hope you can get to talk
to somebody. My experience of this is that it is quite a daunting task
and by and large relatively unsuccessful in gaining new business. A lot
of time, effort and fuel can be wasted as well as damage to ones morale
which could take quite a severe battering as you experience one
knockback after another. Not a technique to be recommended. However with
regard to builders cleans it can be successful. What this entails is
visiting any building site and passing your details, normally in the
form of a business card on to the site manager. You may not be
successful on that site but invariably companies will hang on to your
details and may contact you at some time in the future.
2. Leaflet drops
If you are targeting domestic customers then these can be quite
successful at increasing your client base. They are not to be
recommended for commercial companies for reasons discussed in the first
article. So I will presume that you wish to target the domestic sector.
In which case you have to design a very professional looking leaflet,
preferably in full colour and have it commercially printed. Do not try
and print them off on your office or home printer because they will look
less professional. The second and most important element in achieving
success with leaflets is to target your areas very carefully. Do not
necessarily aim for the most prosperous areas with the most expensive
houses in, these in our experience do not provide the rewards that you
might imagine they would. The middle income families are the most
rewarding in terms of generating new customers. Having targeted your
areas and had your 10 or 20 thousand leaflets printed use the services
of specialist company to carry out the delivery for you. Under no
circumstances consider doing it yourself! If you don’t believe me then
try it and you will soon find out why you need professional help to
deliver them. Then all you have to do is sit back and wait for the calls
to come in. We have in the past worked on a ratio of one in two hundred
producing a customer provided the target area has been wisely chosen.
3. Internet Advertising
This could command several articles by itself, but for the purposes
of this article it outperforms all other forms of advertising. So get a
website, promote it, constantly update it and watch the referrals pour
in! You could employ the services of a website designer and an SEO
expert or you could do it yourself. How will be left to another article
in the future.
About the author:
David Andrew Smith has been working for many years in the cleaning industry and is the owner of http://www.wesparkle.co.ukgeneral cleaners and specialists in the cleaning and polishing of natural stone.
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