“Using How-To Booklets To Build Your Business”

by David Pautsch

There are really only two things you can do to build your business
1. Get new customers in the door.
2. Get old customers back through the door.

You do this by offering great products, at good value, with great personnel. In stores where service is the main motive, customers are treated more kindly, quickly, generously, faithfully, attentively, specifically and humbly – and they come back, again, and again, and again. So what is the difference between growing businesses and stagnant businesses? Most of it has to do with ATTITUDE!

Plant the Seeds
When you give out the Ramsey series of “How To” booklets, you are planting seeds of goodwill, education, interest, generosity and care which will come back to you in sales. You are providing something of lasting value. While they might throw away your business card, they will keep something as attractive and informative as these booklets.

Depending on how savvy you are in distributing these booklets, you will find new people coming to your store as a result of your gift, and old customers coming back in appreciation.

Ideas for Using the Booklets to Service Customers

  • Give them away as business cards
  • Help your sales staff save time when you’re busy with other customers
  • Give it to everyone coming into the store so they use it as a shopping list (see lists on the back of each booklet)
  • Personally give one with each sale
  • Display booklets on the counter
  • Use as a sales tool for staff (or seasonal help)
  • Insert them in customer mailings and bills
  • Growers: Use as a purchase incentive
  • Landscapers: Leave with customers to ensure proper care

Ideas for Using the Booklets to Increase Store Traffic

  • Distribute them door-to-door in a plastic door hanging bag with a coupon also stuffed inside
  • Use them as part of a gift basket
  • Give them as an incentive to those who make a minimal purchase
  • Make them a value-added component of an existing product. This helps you move products that need a sales boost
  • Insert them in your local newspaper with a coupon
  • Give them to Welcome Wagon and Realtors to distribute them on their visits to newcomers
  • Mail them to target zip codes and homes with a coupon
  • Distribute them at seminars, conventions, shows and fairs
  • Give it to everyone in the neighborhood where a landscape job has been completed
  • Use it as a promotion for special events: Christmas, Easter, Earth Day, Arbor Day, Mother’s Day, etc.