I spend a day a week just driving around handing out a basic flyer with a business card stapled to the top. Mostly gas stations, commercial property management companies, high traffic mini marts, etc. I never exit a business without leaving this piece of info, regardless of their response. FYI I'm trying to focus on commercial flatwork.
I always walk in and ask, "Is an owner or manager available?". No bullshitting, no sales pitch, no script. I like to be honest about what I'm offering and not hit them with a cheeze ball sales pitch. I get straight up, "No's", "we do it ourselves" (and it looks like shit), "we got a guy", " we don't make the decisions, corporate does", etc. Occasionally I get a "how much", "let's go look at it", "that sounds interesting", etc. If I hit the corporate stonewall I ask for a corp #, if they don't know or care to give it to me I look on the front door or web search it. If I get the "we got a guy" or "we do it ourselves", I proceed to explain my water reclaim system w/ surface cleaner in greater detail, highlighting it's superior efficiency, ability to meet EPA guidlines, and my ability to offer a superior service because of my equipment and expertise. I also take lots of pics on the corporate stonewall cases so I can have 'current conditions' to email the head honcho who usually lives out of the area and has no clue on the condition.
I have a basic spreadsheet that I call "Leads and Follow-Ups". Just a basic grid that has 1)Date 2)Location 3)Contact 4)Phone#/Email 5)Comments. I try to exhaust every lead until I get a "No". Some of the corporate ones I'm still working on from my first day of soliciting. Some I write down all the info regardless
and put a check mark next to it telling myself it's a terminated lead, try again in 6months to a year.
A good friend of mine is a car salesman. Sleazy as they come, loves screwing people over, but I must say he sells and he does it well. One thing I learned from watching his style is don't give up, be persistent, and keep 'bugging them'. You have to be persistent which involves stopping in and talking to people and/or multiple people as many times as it takes, calling multiple times to follow up and/or catch the right person, emailing back and forth info and pictures. For me it has been lots of time and effort into getting them to even accept a bid estimate.
On a positive note the last 3 jobs I did I got them to sign a multi-cleaning contract which I don't push on them too hard , until they see what I'm capable of after the first cleaning. I attached a couple pics of my basic flyer and Lead sheet.
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