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  Richard Gregory February 5, 2010 at 10:26pm

  As I am still fairly new to this compared to some of the more long running guys on here, and am having to advertise in local parish mags, yell and few lines in local rag, plus leaflets, and writing directly to businesses and managing agents, just trying to see if others who have to push themselves have any hit rates. I am sure the longer I stay around the more recommendations I will get hopefully!!
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  Graeme @ BGS February 6, 2010 at 2:13pm

  All good advice here so far but forget about conversion rates and charges for a few minutes as particularly price will hardly come into it.
  
  Have a quick read at my blog http://www.landscapejuicenetwork.com/profiles/blogs/do-you-know-you...
  
  Now back to basics:
  
  Do you know where you are generating your leads?
  Are you getting the right kind of enquiries from your adverts etc?
  Are you quoing for every job or selectively choosing which ones to go after?
  
  The last question is very important! If you charge £6 per hour you can be very successful at getting work but a busy and poor fool!
  
  So assuming that you dismiss those callers that immediately demand to know how much you charge, price then takes a back seat from trying to convert the enquiry into a sale.
  
  Next dismiss those enquires that are either too far afield or outside your scope of services offered,
  
  If you are finding that you have just dumped the majority of your enquiries then you need to rethink how you are advertising your services!
  
  So hopefully at this point you have ditched 30% of all enquires and now you will have to visit the potential client and quote for the job. Remember price is not the primary factor. People will buy YOU and the SERVICE you offer. The "selling" and writing up a killer quote is something that takes time. If you don't get the job, ask why and change your style etc. for the next one. Eventually you will get a very good conversion rate and only the work you want at the right price.
  
  Keep monitoring where your leads are coming from and ask for feed back and keep making little modifications until you have the right format.
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  Annabel Bridge February 9, 2010 at 11:08am

  This advice is really useful and I am just updating my website to suggest pricing for garden design to try and stop the people that think i can work for £50 from ringing me!
  
  My query is how to get feedback from those who don't want to use my services, I try ringing them a couple of times and leave a message asking for feedback but they never answer the phone. Anyone got any ideas please.
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  Graeme @ BGS February 9, 2010 at 2:41pm

  Hi Annabel,
  
  I usually get phoned back within a day except for larger jobs, I do however always advise the potential client that I would phone or Email them within a day or two to see if they have any queries with the quote and can't say i have encountered any problems. It may be worth calling with your phone number being with-held, this way they will not know who is calling and may just answer. Failing that if you think you submitted a cracking quote / proposal and they are not too far from you, pop round and visit them.
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  Roy Bretton February 10, 2010 at 2:54pm

  I used to own a stump grinding business until I recently sold the business, I would get 95% of the jobs. More often or not I would price the jobs over the phone unless it was an extra large job. I used to pick up quite a lot of business from tree surgeons and a lot of work came through my website. I used to run a Google Adwords campaign, which seemed to be fairly successful.