Prospecting - Idea\'s

[Coitster]

Hello all,
I wanted to put a post on the message board about prospecting. I have tried many things over the years in terms of getting customers and I thought it might be a good idea to bounce some techniques back and forth to see what you all are doing. I personaly get all my business from retail and insurance. I don't do any dealerships or fleet accounts (to many nightmares). I do like fleets but have a family and young kids so I don't like working weekends or evenings. My wife would divorce me if I did anymore of that, because I also do Paintless Dent Repair and a record hail season just ended. Most of my business I get from Going B to B (Business to Business). I go and walk the parking lot very breifly and then walk in and find the person who owns that vehicle and give them my pitch. I am able to close most of them because I offer a free windshield repair with insurance. The only problem is when it rains. What I do on those days is I call back all the customers that I got business cards for that didn't go for it when I first talked to them. The other way I get business is by cold calling business's (AKA Telemarketing). That usualy works well because every 3 hours I am on the phone I usualy book 4 to 5 jobs for the next day. I also track everything in a contact management program ACT!. What does everyone else do??????
David
Coitster
Glass Experts

[SGT]

We target corporate accounts primarily focusing on the company fleet as well as the employee potential. Kills 2 birds with 1 stone. We also put limited efforts on retail marketing. Mainly word of mouth and flyers for retail. This method allows us to better manage what we can handle or want to handle at this point without over extending ourselves. We have a complete marketing package that we send to selected prospects that can be used partially or in whole depending on the circumstances. We have explored variousr avenues for advertising, some that have good potential and some that are limited there return capabilities. We have decided to go with a small yellow page ad. We know that this will generate allot of price shoppers but we are primarily concerned with the image it projects overall. This is our present path...Oh, we also use ACT as it intergrates well with other software.

[Coitster]

I got got a book by a gentalmen named Dan Kennedy called the Ultimate Sales Letter for making great sales letters. Have any of you had experiance using sales letters and what kind of responce have you all gotten????
David
Coitster

[cure4glass]

I got got a book by a gentalmen named Dan Kennedy called the Ultimate Sales Letter for making great sales letters. Have any of you had experiance using sales letters and what kind of responce have you all gotten????
David
Coitster

Coitster,
I had to bring this topic back up to allow you to followup about the book on Sales letters.I previewed some excerpts from the book, and will order it later.Have you put into action any of these letter?( I know you have!!) Just curious- Greg

[Repair1]

DEALER WORK CAN BE GREAT BUSINESS

I myself have a good book of dealer business and enjoy most of them.
The key is GOOD DEALER BUSINESS which generally means the bigger stores. Talk about talking to all the drivers at fleets think about all the salesman on each lot you spend 30 to 40 minutes there doing repairs you talk with them about repairs give them the spill. You get their personal business and there customers it

[Coitster]

Hey Cure,
To answer your question, yes I have started using sales letters and have had great responce with them. I use them no in place of just faxing a typical flyer or handing out business cards. A sales letter lets you get your entire view point accross to the customer in a well thought out maner. You must however make sure your sales letter is not boaring, I started out (And Jeff AKA DeltaKits rememers this) with a 4 page long sales letter that talked about every concivable thing, it was in full color lots of great headlines and attention grabers.

Then I realized that by the person telling me that they would let me send them some information that I didn't need a huge attention grabing headline to get their attention. I ALREADY HAD IT. I know sometimes I am dense but hey, it seams I got to mess up a bunch of times before I get it right.

As it stands now I use a friendly 2 page sales letter and just cover the basics like in my pitch when I talked to them to begin with, but also the key in using a sales letter for windshield repair is to also not leave it back in the customers hands. After you send them a sales letter make sure you follow up with a phone call the next day. THIS IS CRITICAL because remember customers very seldom get around to doing something if you leave it in their hands. Also when I call back they are usualy sold on the idea of chip repair, they just wanted a day or so to let the information digest into their heads, or they wanted to call their agent to make sure what I told them is correct. Hope this helps.
David
Coitster