Here’s your weekly installment from L&L columnist Marty Grunder – four ways to tweak your sales calls to speed up the process and increase your closing percentage.

Good luck this week!

My buddy and mentor Ed Eppley is a brilliant sales coach. He was teaching us what we need to do to help ensure our selling efforts are successful with prospects. Here are 4 tips he shared recently with my team.

1.    You need to establish clarity around the expectations your clients have for a successful transaction.

2.    Begin the second call by establishing what changes, if any, have taken place since our first conversation” in the thinking of the prospect. (Done to determine if either the “current” or “desired” realities on which his proposal is built are still the same.)

3.    Consider asking what budget people have established for their project. (Not always a true indicator of what people are prepared to spend but it may help determine what value they place on your kind of work.)

4.    Be prepared to ask “closing” questions to help prospects make a decision so you can advance the opportunity further through the selling cycle. If they say no, it creates an opportunity to ID specifically why they are hesitating which should ultimately shorten the selling cycle.

As the season gets underway, it’s easy to get lost in the hustle of day-to-day operations. You’ve got crews to manage, customers to call back and equipment to fix – and it can seem like there aren’t enough hours in the day.

But if you can get away from it all for an hour, I’ve got a great resource for you to keep yourself focused and motivated through 2011.

L&L columnist Marty Grunder has just announced his 2011 webinar series schedule, and he’s got some great stuff on tap. Want to raise your prices, but aren’t sure how? Want to make your company more productive?

Check out the full schedule of webinars at Marty’s site. The first one takes place on April 28, and they run through November. You can sign up for each one a la carte for $99, or get all five for $375.

Not sure it’s worth it? Check out a webinar Marty and his colleague Joe Calloway did for more than 500 L&L readers a in January on our site. It’s chock-full of great information and advice to keep your business on track and growing in 2011.

Another Great Idea from L&L columnist and die-hard Reds fan Marty Grunder. This one’s about taking initiative and responsibility for your lot in life (or business). Here’s to a good week.

One of my favorite sayings is: “When you do nothing, expect nothing.”

I don’t know that there is a more true statement in life than that one. When you sit on the sidelines and watch things happen, you get passed by. Activity moves things forward; sitting around does nothing. So, hence my saying, “When you do nothing, expect nothing.”

If you’re not happy with where you are right now, take some action. If you aren’t pleased with sales, don’t sit there feeling sorry for yourself; go make some calls. Go see some old clients. Get moving.

If you’re not happy with the performance of your team, talk to them. Just sitting there ignoring the facts is never going to change anything.

When I look back in life at all the mistakes I’ve made, most of them went on and on because I sat there and did nothing to change things. I just didn’t act. Learn from my mistake and take some action this week. Because the alternative, doing nothing just doesn’t work.

When you do nothing, expect nothing.

Another great idea from L&L columnist Marty Grunder, this time on how you should try to keep things in perspective as the season gets started this year – and not start working 90-hour weeks.

I used to think that if I just worked a little bit harder, I could get everything done and everything would work itself out. I have learned that you can’t just keep working harder and expect things to always be better. As I often say, “The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.” (I did not make that up; I’m not smart enough to have thought of that, but I’m not exactly sure who did. The Internet does attribute a variation of it to Gerald Burrill.) If you feel you might in a bad spot, it’s advisable to stop and look at the situation. That’s my advice this week.

In the coming weeks, if you feel overwhelmed and aren’t sure what to do, take a deep breath and go to lunch. Get out of the office and go for a walk. Do something, but don’t neglect your health or your mental well being.

As I finish this up, it’s 4:00 pm and I am walking out the door to go work out for an hour. Years ago, I NEVER would have or could have done this. But, I’ve learned that my company pays me to think from the neck up and the only way I can think is if I get all the frustration and concern and, yes, stress out of me. Great ideas come to me when I am working out, relaxing and the like. They DON’T come to me when I am working. As CEO of Grunder Landscaping and Marty Grunder! Inc., I need to be thinking, not always grinding away at work.

Here’s to the start of a prosperous season. Good luck!

Another Great Idea from Marty Grunder: How to implement changes in your small business.

A lot of what we write about in Lawn & Landscape and a lot of what other media outlets focus on touches on big companies. (Apple, for instance, apparently gets a lot of press. Weird.) So how do you implement some of the concepts and ideas if you don’t run a $50 billion company and live in Southern California?

The same way you would if you ran a $50 billion company and lived in Southern California. Here are three tips from Marty on how.

1. Create a Culture of Constant Improvement. Never ever be satisfied with where you are; keep looking for new and better ways to do things. Try new things. If you make a mistake, don’t look at that as a problem; look at mistakes as learning, very valuable learning. Demand that your people give you new ideas and reward them for this. This works for big and small companies.

1. Constantly Communicate What’s Important at Your Company. I mean constantly; each and every day is fine. Share your mission statement (Don’t have one? Get one!). Reward those behaviors you want to see more of. Squash the behaviors you don’t want and remember that “whatever you allow, you encourage.” This works for big and small companies.

1. Listen to your clients. I say all the time that your clients will tell you what you need to do to be successful; you just have to ask them and then listen. This works for big and small companies.

Here’s another Great Idea from L&L columnist Marty Grunder on how to make it through the last few weeks of what can seem like a never-ending winter:

1. Get your truck detailed. You’ll feel better.

2. Start working out. Just 30 minutes a day of moving around can knock out the cobwebs.

3. Have an early dinner with a friend. Get the blue-plate special at 4 to catch up with someone, and you’ll still be home with your family by 6:15.

4. Plan a vacation. It doesn’t have to break the bank, but it’s something to look forward to.

5. Spend some time with your hobby. Or get a new one.

Look, you’re working hard. As the leader of your organization, it’s important to have your head on straight and relax enough so that some new ideas come to mind. CEOs need time to think, too.

Marty’s right. Even if you live in a place where it doesn’t snow, the above list can help you recharge and rejuvenate before the spring season starts.

Photo: ajcreencia

What do you do about feedback from your team?

I’ve run my landscaping company for 27 years. Hard to believe. During those 27 years, I’ve learned a lot. The area I feel I have grown the most in is Leadership. Oh, I still have a lot to learn but I’m much improved.

One of the things I used to do, and still see a lot of leaders doing today, is asking for feedback when the decision has already been made. If you want to get your followers to check out and tune you out as a leader, ask for feedback on an important decision as an attempt to trick them into saying what you want to hear. People are way smarter than we give them credit for.

For example, if I have already made up my mind to get in the irrigation business, why ask my team what they think? If I have not made up my mind, then ask for feedback and listen to the feedback.

At the end of the day, you do not have to follow the feedback; you only have to acknowledge the feedback.

But, if a pattern forms where no matter what someone offers up, you do what you want to do, why ask for the feedback anyway? You only frustrate your followers to the point they won’t follow you.

And a leader without any followers is? Not much of a leader!

What’s on your Stop Doing List?

If you’ve followed me, you know I’m addicted to To-Do lists.

I do them for all things at work, at home and personally.

However, this week, I want to challenge you to get a “not

to-do” list. That’s right, a list of things you need to stop

doing.

Those who win at the game of business and life understand the

power of focus. The power of focus on the execution of a

select few tasks, rather than doing a ton of things

marginally well. It is imperative that you decide what you’re

not going to do to improve your effectiveness.

Here’s what I have learned from my mentors and from studying

other very successful people. They all work on the things

that have the biggest payoff and don’t do the things that

don’t pay off, no matter if they like them or not. At some

point they have a revelation that they’re not going to do a

lot of things, even if they do like doing them, because they

don’t have a payoff.

You can’t create more time in a day

unless you take some things off your plate. So this week, go

ahead and take some things off your plate. Put together a

“not-to-do” list and find an hour? Or 5 hours?  Or a week?

You’ll find more time and more happiness if you do.

Talk to you next week.