1.Seeing your Customers: POP-BYS



Pop-By gifts are thoughtful, useful, and creative. They will be appreciated and leave you on the forefront of your clients mind. Have your name and phone number on the pop-by gift so they can easily find your information and send referrals to you!

Pop-By Gift Ideas

•BBQ sauce for the summer cookout with “Oh, By The Way" stickers

•Energy saving light bulbs

•Bottled water

•Homemade treats

•Jim Rohn’s “The Treasury of Quotes"

•Small tools for around the house, e.g., a set of screwdrivers

•Anything that is edible

•Coffee mugs with coffee

•Plants or bulbs for them to plant

•Microwave popcorn with movie rental coupons

•Flowers

•Back to school items for the kids

•Frisbee with bubbles

•Home or auto emergency kit

•Phone cards, gas cards, gift certificates

•A gift that is specific to your client’s needs

•Stress relief balls

•Herbal tea

•Ice-cream coupons

•Schedule of store hours during the holiday season

•Flyer with Fourth of July fireworks locations, times, and directions

•Garage balls (shows when to stop the car)

•Car wash coupons

•Heart-shaped Valentine candy boxes “From your Pond Man with “heart"!

•First Aid for Choking Magnets - Heimlich Maneuver “Just Because We Care"

•Emergency Number magnets “Just Because We Care"

•Piggy Banks “You can ‘bank’ on us’"!

•Yellow candles with Smiley Faces “Have a HAPPY Valentine Day" from your Pond Man

•Rain Gauge “Gauge our services and flood us with referrals!"

•Hide-A-Key Rock “We’re the ‘key’ to your next waterscape pond."

•Yearly calendar with pictures of pond or paver jobs you have installed

•Travel sewing kit or alarm clock for traveling clients

2. Signs

Have a sign on your truck – signs on the jobs – signs on street corners – gas stations that are being converted (chain link fence). Put as big a sign as possible on your truck.

We used to go around to past customers and ask if we could put a sign in their front yard for a month. If the customer says no, ask if you could do it for two weeks or one week or a weekend.

Signs are one of the easiest and cheapest forms of advertising.

To start with get a sign on your truck. Most contractors have done this very successfully. Then make sure your truck is always clean and presentable; otherwise you are conveying the wrong image.

The next is to get job site signs. These can be inexpensively made and should be put up at your jobsite as soon as you sell the job. When your customer is very happy about his new job get him to keep the sign up another week or two.

There is another use of the job signs and that is placing them in high traffic areas. To do this you may need to ask for permission from a neighbor that lives on a busy corner or to ask a store if you can put a sign in a busy area.

Here are some of our most successful sign locations in Los Angeles; Laurel Canyon in an empty lot 30 feet up the hill. The sign stayed there for months and we got 2 to 3 calls a day. We did the same thing on Coldwater Canyon. We have placed signs on fences at gas stations that are being torn down; they can stay there for weeks or months. One of our best was parking a big truck on the freeway overpass, after the first month we got 3 to 4 calls each and every week.

If you drive around your local area you should be able to place at least 10 signs each week.