Have you ever heard that saying? For all of us in the Green Industry, that statement rings very true.

Sales are to a company what gasoline is to that beautiful Ferrari you see parked by the front door of the elegant restaurant. But if that Ferrari doesn't have fuel, it's not going anywhere.

Our companies are the same thing; we need sales to make our businesses work. Oh sure, we need a lot more than sales to make our businesses work, but sales are at the top of the list. So, the question becomes, how do you make more sales? I have found there are 3 ways to increase sales.

1. Know who your ideal client is. I start with this one because too many sales professionals try to sell whatever they have to whomever they can find. This is a big mistake. Smart owners, with the help of their leadership team, identify their ideal client and many go so far as to sketch up a picture of what they look like. At a minimum we define who they are in as much detail as we can.

A client of mine on the East Coast defines his ideal client as a discriminating homeowner who works from sun up to sun down during the week, drives a luxury import, hates yard work but loves to have a nice lawn and refuses to spend his weekends doing anything else other than enjoying life. His whole team knows what type of client he is looking for and all of his marketing and selling efforts are directed towards this type of client. He gets involved in the arts to meet people like this and has volunteered a lot of his time at a local school, teaching gardening and landscaping to the kids of these people attending that school. He is very successful with his approach.

How much more successful could you be if you knew, with a high level of detail, who your ideal client is? There is a wonderful book I highly recommend, on this very subject. The Pumpkin Plan by Mike Michalowicz displays the power of identifying your ideal client and lays out a plan that will help you make more sales.

If you can't write out who your ideal client is right now, you need to do this. A sales approach focused on the people that your company has the best chance of having success with is a winning approach. If you're having trouble defining who your ideal client is, try asking yourself these four questions:

1. What clients, that when you are done with their job, do you feel the best about?
2. What clients or what type of work do you make the most profit from?
3. What type of work does your company do better than 90% of the like companies in your marketplace? 4. What types of clients refer you the most work?

The answers to those questions will help you see who your ideal client is. And then you need to only market to and call on your ideal clients and show them what you can do for them. Those who don't fall into the category of "ideal client" are ones you need to stay away from. That will be very hard for you to do but do it!

Find your ideal client; sell to them and sales will find you!

1. Have a Selling Process. Processes help improve your chances for success. Firefighters have processes. Doctors have processes. Teachers have processes. There's a reason for that; it enables people to work and be effective without thinking. I teach an 11-step selling process and it's not complicated. It's the steps we need to take to get the sale. And, I'm happy to say it works!

The book The Checklist Manifesto is a great book for understanding the importance of systems and checklists. If it weren't for a checklist, Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, III would not have been able to land that US Airways plane in the Hudson River. The Checklist Manifesto is a little "heavy" in parts but well worth reading and learning from. It might inspire you to create your own selling process.

Having trouble creating a selling process? Pretend for a moment you were hiring a Landscaper to do some work. Knowing what you know about the business, what would impress you about a sales professional and their process? What are the steps you feel one would take to be successful? I believe that any process is an improvement over no process. Quit freelancing! Get a process in place and follow it. If you're really stuck, drop us a line and we'll talk to you about the Selling Symposium where we teach our 11-Step Selling Process.

Whatever process you get, get one and you'll watch your sales grow!

1. Create Sales Goals. My colleague at Grunder Landscaping Seth says, "What gets measured gets improved." I love that. I have a client in the Midwest that was very reluctant to give his team sales goals, saying, "My team works hard; I don't feel they need goals." This client took my idea and ran with it and increased sales by 25% in the next calendar year.

I believe goals in general are a necessity if you want to be successful. Eliyahu Goldratt's The Goal is a book that I read when I was in college. I continued to read it every other year to understand the power of goals. It clearly paints the picture of the importance of having goals and describes how you can overcome barriers to achieve success.

Now, for the bad news. I see way too many goals that are completely unrealistic. A goal is only achievable if the group that is trying to hit it believes that the goal is possible to achieve. So, make your goals attainable. If you sold $1.2M last year, you can't tell your team your goal is $2M for next year. That's not believable and if it's not believable, it's not going to be achievable. So, pick a goal that is possible to achieve; this sounds like a simple thing to do but it's very important. Green Industry Sales Professionals who have sales goals produce better than those who don't. Get some goals and watch the sales happen.

Nothing happens till someone sells something. If you define who your ideal client is, use a process to approach and sell to those ideal clients, and have clearly defined sales goals, you will make more sales. This is pretty easy to understand, but it's a bit more difficult to implement.

My hope is that you take my experience here and give my three ideas a try and stay focused on them. None of my clients that have followed these steps have not been able to improve their selling efforts; I know they will work for you too.