Here’s our weekly digest of articles, images and generally cool stuff from the web. Enjoy, and have a great weekend.

• Build your sales pipeline.
• Using sound to build a garden.
• Native plant bingo with CLCA.
• How to irrigate a slope.
• Bummer: Why trees can’t grow taller than 300 feet.
• Employee addiction.
• They’ve got a bit of universe conflation here, but this is pretty good.
• Above: GIFs of plant leaves withering.

Great post from Seth Godin this week:

When making a b2b sale, the instinct is always to get into the CEO’s office. If you can just get her to hear your pitch, to understand the value, to see why she should buy from or lease from or partner with or even buy you… that’s the holy grail.

What do you think happens after that mythical meeting?

Read the rest here to find out.

(h/t to Scott Brickman for passing this one along)

Here’s our weekly list of cool and otherwise interesting things from the web. I’ll be out next week for the Thanksgiving holiday, so look for more updates after. Enjoy!

• A guide for commercial property owners and managers on the new EPA WaterSense program, and how it can save them water.
• Related: Water savings ad campaign in Denver uses naked people to get its point across. (via the Water Bloggers)
• Deer now vectors for malaria-like disease in New England.
• Sales training for California contractors.
• Landscape lighting to the max.
• Finally, some logical news from Canada’s Left Coast.
• Lessons on Lincoln’s leadership.
• Above: The third issue of MOWmentum is live now in iTunes and on Google Play. Check it out today.

Our resident sales expert and unfortunate Bengals fan Marty Grunder has some great deals for fall training and development.

In this series of webinars, you’ll learn how to improve your sales process, plan for 2013 and develop yourself as a leader.

If you want to have a good year, now’s the time to start working on it. Sign up today.

We’re putting on a can’t-miss webinar tomorrow with our resident sales expert and columnist Marty Grunder.

It starts at 12:30 EDT tomorrow, and you can register here.

Yes, it costs $69.99. But you’ll get invaluable insight and proven sales strategies that you can implement in your business tomorrow, including:

• How to screen each and every prospect to make sure you are meeting with prospect who will buy.
• What you must do before each and every call to improve your chances for making a sale by 50%.
• Why your price doesn’t matter if you do 3 simple things.

Plus, you’ll get a  sneak preview of the L&L State of the Industry research on revenue and profits from me.

If you can’t make it tomorrow afternoon, you can still register to get access the recorded version later on.

So, if you want to increase your sales this fall and in 2013, you owe it to yourself to spend an hour with us tomorrow. You’ll be glad you did.

Here’s our latest digest of educational, informative and interesting stories from the web. Enjoy!

• How colors make us buy.
• 2011 foreclosures at lowest rate since 2007.
• Don’t just work harder. Work harder on the right things.
• The Oracle of Omaha could (but probably won’t) buy John Deere.
• Leadership lessons from Genghis Khan.
• Write better press releases.
• Above: Marshall Horsman, technical manager for Harrell’s, on how to best fertilize palms.

Frank Fistner, president at ArtisTree, has a good list of language you should never include in your contracts. It’s a good thing to pass this along to your sales team for distribution to property managers and HOA boards during bid time.

Fistner’s list includes these vague gems:

• “Custom-blended” fertilizer (details, please?)
• “If deemed necessary” (by whose definition?)
• “occasionally inspected”

At L&L, we support any effort to eliminate fuzzy language. You can read the full list at the ArtisTree blog.

Here’s our weekly digest of cool and interesting stuff from the web. Enjoy!

• Seth Godin on why we lie to salespeople.
• Don’t lists from landscapers around the country. (via @EdenMaker)
• Business ratios to track.
• How many plants do you need? Try the landscape calculator. (via Austin Outdoor)
• On your competition.
• Rebuilding the forest in Forest Lawn. (via @jasoncupp)
• D.C. cherry trees turn 100 years old. (via @ISArboriculture)
• Above: Casey Trees plants 30 trees at the Smithsonian National Zoo.

Seth Godin on why your sales presentations should be tailored to the type of client you’re talking to:

When talking to an amateur, to a stranger, to a newbie, to someone who isn’t committed, the best path is clarity, which means simplicity. Few choices, no guessing, no hunting around.

When talking to a fellow professional, to a peer, to someone in the same groove as you, the goal is to maximize useful density of choice. Put as much power in the hands of the user as possible.

[...]

The texture of your sales pitch ought to be deeper and more sophisticated for a return customer than it should be when you’re selling door to door.

The menu at a fancy restaurant should probably have more choices and more detail than one at a fast food joint.

When dealing with any sales team or field crew, it’s easy and inviting to have one script or one presentation. But not all your clients are the same, nor do they all need the same information. HOAs have different goals than a single homeowner, and property managers want different things than a city council.

Maybe instead of a cookie-cutter approach, you have three or four or five different pitches or presentations that can be further tailored to a specific audiences. If you can accurately match your information to your prospect’s desires, you’ve made closing the deal that much easier.

If you’re competing against the guy who put this up, you have my sympathy.

Because he’ll do anything to get the business. Read it yourself: He’ll mow your grass, clean out your garage and move your sofa. No job too small!

I hear from readers all the time about the mythical lowballer – how he’s stealing business and driving down prices and hurting the industry. They’ve been around forever and they won’t ever go away.

The only way to compete with someone who will do anything at any price is to do the same. Otherwise, you have to ignore him.

Do you target customers who pay the lowest possible price and also ask you to haul their old washing machine to the dump? Do you get a lot of your leads from the grocery store bulletin board?

If you don’t like competing against lowballers, stop. Find new customers.

As Seth Godin explains that your customer isn’t always the person who signs your checks.

Zappos is a classic customer service company, and their customer is the person who buys the shoes.

Many manufacturers have retailers as their customer. If Wal-Mart is happy, they’re happy.

Apple had just one customer. He passed away last year.

Not everyone with a lawn or snow-covered driveway is your customer. And not every landscaper is your competition. Figure out where you want to spend your time, focus your energy and stop worrying about these guys.

(image via @jasoncupp)