Getting Certified for Fert Business

[MLI]

Hi folks!...Was wondering if i could get some
start-up tips for marketing the fert business. We
were planning on doing door knockers, and inserts
in local papers, was wondering if there were anyother
tricks or angles to grabing new customers. I have a
friend thats in marketing for hospital software, and
he suggest that we do a targeting marketing via database
research. Im not sure if this may be overboard, but
wondered what you guys did. DO you guys have any
interesting sales tatics? DO you use telemarketing in
the offseason? Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

[greengeezer]

How big do you want to get and how fast. Door hangers can work but is labor intensive, but your target area can be tightly controled. Some newspapers can insert flyers for specific zip codes. Telemarketing can be a whole different can of worms to open but is still the fastest, cheapest way to put a lot of customers on the books, after your start up expenses. Once you get "happy customers" you can use them for referals, those are the best and most loyal customers. Also, don't try to be the cheapest service. There's a customer segment out there that doesn't care about anything but price. You'll never make them happy enough and they'll leave you for the next cheap guy. I used to run a program here for Chemlawn called the "Estate Program". It was an all inclusive, money is no object program they used to offer. I was amazed at how many people took this service simply becaused it was sold and percieved to be the best money could buy. Of course then you had to deliver and sometimes got perfectionists you could never satisfy, but they were the exception rather than the rule. Hope this helps.