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.uk general cleaners and specialists in the cleaning and polishing of natural stone.