SWAG is Dead: Rethinking Landscaping Business Development

Chad Diller: Hey, business developers, are you trying to get noticed by prospects? Maybe you dropped off the cookies, you left your brochure with the receptionist, you handed out cheap tumblers at a trade show. Logoed golf balls, drawstring bags, stuff that ends up in the trash. It's not working. Property managers, facility managers, even high end homeowners, they're not giving you a shot. So maybe the answer isn't doing more. Maybe it's doing something different. So today we're talking about why swag is dead and what actually get you noticed. Welcome to the Landscape Leadership Podcast. I'm your host, Chad Diller, and this is where we have really candid conversations about marketing, sales, and growth in the green industry. Today's episode is all about green industry business development, but probably not in the way that you're thinking about it. So I want to introduce today's guest, Mark Stern from Custom Box Agency. Mark, thanks for joining us today, Chad.

Mark Stern: It's great to be here. It's good seeing you.

Chad Diller: All right, I want to give the audience a little bit of background of why I decided to have Mark on the show. We're actually partnering with Mark right now or a client of his. And Mark is helping us design an atypical way to land ideal clients as far as it relates to our podcast production division. So for some of you that don't know this, um, we're looking to launch a podcast network where we're, um, producing a number of shows that are helpful for the green industry. People like us, industry suppliers. And so, Mark, I want you, before we start talking about business development and some of the pun intended, out of the box things we're going to talk about today. Give us a little bit of background. How did you end up where you're at? Um, what was your professional experience so far?

Mark Stern: Yeah, no, um, I grew up in Alabama, so I had humble upbringings in Alabama. But, um, being, uh, born and raised up there, everyone was like me and your top that there's just this natural progression to life, which is you graduate high school, you go to college, and then you get the job, and then you go to grad school and you get the job. And that's life. You know, you have the white picket fence and everything, um, and the family and the dog. And, um, I followed that path to a te. I used to joke and say I was the poster child of corporate America. Um, but I had one job, uh, before going to business school, and that was to work on national marketing campaigns and the liquor industry. So if you know brands like Absolute Jameson Malibu. We would incubate those campaigns, went and got my MBA at Duke, and afterwards worked at Deloitte Consulting for many years. Still focused on a similar area, retail in the travel, hospitality, leisure space. Um, but you kind of look at life and go, uh, in 2012, after I graduated Duke, um, I was $165,000 in student loan debt. And you kind of pause and go, this can't be life. There's got to be more to life than this. And as a kid, I always had this entrepreneurial itch that I wanted to scratch. And it took me until 2018 to make the leap into starting my own business. And I had no idea what it was going to be. But all these experiences that I had in life, it was amazing how they all came together. And, um, you know, when you see this rise, especially in the 2000s and the 2000 teens of digital, everything used to be analog, offline, pre Internet, and now we've redefined the game and almost gone extremely digital. That the one pain point that I kept on seeing with all these products and services that I would purchase is, is it just felt like business owners made it way too hard for me to be set up for success. And I just wish that they were so much more intentional with the outreach, the experience, and more specifically, how they're leveraging physical products to enable what they're doing, whether it's locally, virtually, online, digitally. How do these domains start to come together? So this was never meant to be a business, um, but it ended up evolving into this business that truly starts looking at what, what's the customer journey? What is it that your customers truly want? How are you serving them? And then in a marketplace that everyone is doing the same thing that you are doing, how do you stand out and demonstrate your expertise differently? And you use the word, uh, atypical. I think that that's an important word here because people are so focused on digital strategies that they forget the power of the channels that we did pre Internet, the power of physical in terms of an enabler. And so it's been fun to play in this domain of how can I create something that is part of that customer journey that just makes it easier and also stands out as this premium, um, point of differentiation in your business. And so that's where it started to evolve. What really helped us was Covid took everyone into quarantine. Now we have a means to differentiate, because I can send things to your household that make me stand out in a way that my competitors simply aren't even tapping into. Or even thinking about.

Chad Diller: Yeah, and I love that, you know, like we're primarily focused on digital, but the physical aspects come in contact with us on every day. We have things sent in our mailbox, we have packages that show up to our door and they leave an impression. And I know that within the green industry there are physical business development things that are happening too. So a lot of, um, you know, the current landscape, pun intended. Again, this is like the show of puns today. For some reason. The current landscape is, you know, this is what commonly happens. So I polled, um, our audience and some of our client base and I was just trying to confirm my suspicions and it, you know, there were no surprises there. Um, when it comes to like high ticket clients like property, uh, management firms or um, trying to partner with, you know, a custom home builder, those big ticket kind of prospects that you're trying desperately to get their attention, all of the landscape companies out there are kind of doing the same things. They're going to shows and events, they're setting up booths, they're having sponsorships of golf holes, they're dropping off cookies and literature, they're hosting lunch and learns. And all those things are great. And there are a lot of companies that are doing those things really well and actually even innovatively as they're doing them. But the effort really isn't the problem here. Um, I kind of want to unpack these core principles as we talk about customer acquisition and trying to woo a prospective client. There's a lot of companies that are putting forth effort. They're doing all these things, but effort isn't really what it's going to take to have separation. Why is that?

Mark Stern: Yeah, I think the game is not effort, it's intentionality. And how do we shift the conversation around intentionality? I've seen so many businesses that they may do the cookies or the same thing as everyone else, but you just hit it on the head, which is everyone else is doing this. So all of a sudden is it a game of top of mind, meaning you were the last one to give me cookies, but the next person who gives me cookies or stands out and does the same thing that everyone else is doing. And so I'm not here to say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So that's a core tenant here. If some of these strategies are working, I'm not saying you should forego what's working. The part of what I want to think about is, you know, there's an end user, there's a customer, there's A pain point. Do you understand what's going on in their world? And are you able to package your story of your services, how it's different than everyone else's? And so this is kind of where. How do we start to think through the experience that the end user is going through? And how can we truly say we understand you in a way that as we start to do these different touch points, there's a lot more intentionality? And I can unpack this with an example, if that's helpful.

Chad Diller: Absolutely.

Mark Stern: Yeah.

Chad Diller: Yeah.

Mark Stern: And I was thinking about this because, um, you know, one of the things we think about when, especially on the retention front, for a lot of people, the name of the game is not to always be in this acquisition world, but when we think about customer journey, how are we onboarding and delivering our services, but more importantly, how are we retaining this client so they don't want to look anywhere else? And when I was in corporate consulting with Deloitte for many, many years, I lived in Chicago at the time, and I was very loyal to United. And the reality is the only reason I was loyal to United was they had a loyalty program and I had status. But there was nothing about United at the time that made me like United. Um, um, it was just convenient. Then another airline came back and said, hey, if you meet these parameters, we'll match your status. And so when I had that, they made the friction of switching so much easier because what did I really care about? I cared about status at the time. And so when this other airline came along and provided a better experience, I tested it out. I met their threshold and they matched me on status and I became loyal to them. The question ultimately comes at what made me go back and reevaluate United. Well, you flash forward a couple years later. I never liked the customer service, the in plane experience. There's a lot of things that I didn't love other than the fact that I've now qualified and had status. And that's really the only point of loyalty I had. But when you look at things like, uh, the global pandemic we went through, Covid, it disrupted the airline industry. Then you had strikes with pilots, and, uh, the crew as well went on strike. And so now you're looking at the airline industry and the experiences. There was delayed flights left and right. And I found myself, this was about a year or two ago, um, saying, like, I need a fly and the only good flight was United. And I was just so tired of just getting to the airport and having my flight delayed. But what Was interesting. That caught my attention that United did differently. Now, years later, somebody they hired really understood customer and customer journey and experience. And when my flight was delayed, they sent me an alert before I even left my home, because someone understood that I value my time more than anything, and I don't want to be hung up at an airport. So getting that notice was a positive experience for me. Then they sent me a lunch voucher for 15 bucks. So when I got to the airport early, they treated me to a meal. And then when I got on the plane, the experience was somebody optimized and changed that experience in a really powerful way, all the way down to when I landed. They sent me an apology email. And in that apology email, they gave me 500 extra bonus points as a result. So it was interesting to me because all of a sudden, what I felt as a consumer was they understood me. They understood that I valued my time more than anything. They recognized what happened. They took responsibility, and they did things that made me feel special throughout this journey that, in a way, made me go. That experience I had years ago. I. I'm willing to give you a second chance because this was such a better differentiated experience, unlike anything I'd seen from any other airline, that all of a sudden, they got me. And so when I think about a good journey, at the end of the day, we all have pain points and we all have values. How well do you understand your customer, their problems and what they're going through? And when you think about how you're delivering, it was so different than anything I'd ever seen from any other airline that somebody took the time to understand customer journey experience in a way that made me go, okay, you have my attention. And now my loyalty is different than convenience of, uh, oh, uh, I just always flew you to. They get me, they understand me, they understand my life and what's important to me. And they delivered a system that just reinforced that in a way that other airlines have not seen do. So that's where I look at this and say that intentionality is a game changer for businesses.

Chad Diller: Yeah, we've talked a lot in our process about, uh, this whole thing of designing this customer experience. And you were explaining some. Some aspects of that. And I know you do work with some brands, um, in that onboarding and in that retention. But as we kind of go before that into this business development phase and think about our audience, there some intentionality of designing what it's like for a busy property manager, a, um, custom home builder, those types of people were going out where we're interrupting them and, like, how many plates of cookies do they have? How many lunch and learns can they put on their schedule? What are these intentional different things that we can do to make someone really kind of stop in their tracks and go, wow, they put a lot of thought into this. Um, I know, Mark, when we talked about these physical assets, and I do want to give you an opportunity to share a little bit examples of what you do for your clients. Like, the one thing that I remember us saying is, like, I don't want to throw this away.

Mark Stern: Yeah.

Chad Diller: Like, when someone gives you something, you're like, okay, this isn't swag, Which I'm not going to steal your joke, Mark. What does swag stand for?

Mark Stern: You can keep it, too. Uh, we joke and say that swag means stuff without a goal. It's just stuff.

Chad Diller: So thanks for giving me this Moleskine notebook that you have, you know, 5,000 of these back in your warehouse or gardening gloves or whatever it is that landscape companies that you're giving out. Like, there is this subconscious disconnect where you're like, okay, thanks for this cheap tumbler that probably cost you a $10 sense, like, what am I going to do with this? This is now my prize precious. You know, like, I'm going to keep this. No, it's not going to happen. So how do we make prospective clients within this landscape industry? How do you make. Or in general, how do you make them realize that something was designed very specifically for them?

Mark Stern: Yeah, there's so many different angles that you can tackle this. But, um, part of what it is is, you know, there's a reason that when you slap your logo on something, you know, I joke about swag just because the effort of saying Tumblr with my logo, slap it on. Let me give it to you. Like, I don't want stuff that has a bunch of other people's branding if I have no connection to you. Um, and so this is kind of like, connection community is really powerful. It's just stuff and stuff for me. I don't need another water bottle. But if it's going to be something that's very tailored to me, there's different extremities of where you can go is that you see people do gifting that's personalized gifting to them. That could be at a premium. I like scale. So part of what I want to think about is, can I demonstrate with a product? And one of the things you said that I think is important is when we design products, there's Human psychology into the things that we naturally save. And so when we talk about things we save, if you look around your house and say there are things that you keep and there's a reason that you keep them, when I read a book, typically I don't throw it out. I put it on a bookshelf so I know. Things you reference and remember are things you typically save. Things with repeatability or replayability, like a board game or that set of golf clubs, or those DVDs. Like I still have, my dad still has his eight track tapes. He has no means to play his eight track tapes. But there's something about the replayability of something or repeatability that makes us want to save it. Things that recognize you, call you out, are personalized to you, are things we save. Things that lead to collection, you get one piece. But if you keep playing this game and think about loyalty programs, the more you keep playing, the deeper the connection the relationship can be. And so there's many different ways to start to think about products in a way of, if I know that this is a behavior that people naturally save. When I engineer something, I want to make sure that it is something that people will keep and want to go back to and that repeatability increases the value of it. Some of the small things that you can do on that is if I send you something, I may have a QR code on it. Let's just take a water bottle, for example. How would you tell me to reimagine this experience? I can put a QR code on a water bottle in a way that if you scan it on Monday, it's a different experience than if you scan it on Tuesday. But. But if I know my avatar and the things that they value and the things that I can do to either enhance relationship, educate them, um, or things that help me drive greater authority in terms of how we think through things differently, that's really powerful. The other angle of this is I want to think about, you know, people may only be thinking about you for this one solution. In the landscaping space, I'm only thinking about you through landscaping or lawn care. Um, but the reality is you offer other suites of services. Part of the story I want to be able to tell is exactly how you can service and why you're different in that capacity. But also see the other elements of your universe in terms of making them more problem and solution, aware from your problems, from the things that you do. So this idea of, I didn't know you could do that, or I didn't know that this is part of the suite. How do we start to capture and truly say we understand your problems, here's the solution to your problem. But let me also make you solution aware of other things that you can consider. These are some of the mechanics when I start to think about a product and something physical, tangible, as a leave behind. And the reality is, you may be saying, make this real for me. We can hone in on any element of landscaping. There's so many subsections of this, it's going to be different for each one potentially. But this is really getting into the heart of understanding your customer and what's important to them. And then if I engineer that element to them, how do I think about these tenets of things that people save in terms of that experience?

Chad Diller: So let's unpack some practical examples. So we, yeah, we're honing in on the landscape industry because that's the majority of our audience that listen to the podcast or watch talk about some of these greater, uh, or adjacent industries. Something similar that you've worked with in the past. Give us an idea of some of the things that you've created to get, uh, salespeople in front of ideal prospects. Just tease the imagination a little bit of our audience.

Mark Stern: Sure. I'm happy also to talk about something we're testing in our own ecosystem right now. And we have a business in our ecosystem system that's focused on staffing. So, you know, for businesses, if you don't have the right talent in your business, it could impact how you grow and scale your business. And so part of what we're looking at is, you know, it's one thing to be another staffing agency, um, and just having the same messaging of all other staffing agencies out there. What we did is a slight point of differentiation. Actually have it right here. We created this product called 57 Hats. The cost of this product for us is I think this is under five bucks. It's not that expensive, um, especially at scale. But what the tool is inside is it's designed to help business owners understand how many hats you're wearing in your business. Because if you know how many hats you're wearing, if you go through the exercise and realize I am fulfilling all these roles in my business, we just made you problem aware of all the different permutations of things that you're doing in your business, which then we take you through an exercise of should you do this role, should you delegate it, should you delete it. And as you go through the experience, it takes less than 15 minutes to truly understand it or uh, to really go through the exercise. But what happens is people realize I didn't realize that I was doing all these things in my business. And oh, by the way, because we made you problem aware from a conversation to acquire new customers, this is what's been really powerful, is that now we're in a position that we can support staffing those roles or helping think through how AI can replace those roles in a way that's positioning us as an authority figure. Um, and this is not, this is a very much atypical approach. We're leveraging a physical product to make people problem aware, to lead them to a conversation, to ultimately upsell them into higher ticket products and services. What's cool about things like this too is it took on a life of its own. And as we started delivering this, we thought this was a self diagnosis tool. But with physical products, people may engineer new use cases that you were not even thinking about. And salespeople and other businesses were leveraging this in their sales conversation with prospects to help them become problem aware of all the roles that they were doing. With the notion of if you hire us, we will replace all these roles in your business. And so this one tool served this application on the acquisition front or the business development front to build m trust with people. We leverage this to just be a tool in your arsenal and the conversations. But it opened up to help position those utilizing it as experts or authority figures to help navigate a conversation that may not be as easy just to have in the same capacity of me talking down, saying, chad, walk me through all you do and we're sitting there, do it now. We have a means that very quickly can lead to an outcome. Here is an example of a physical product that made sense for that business.

Chad Diller: I love, like so many things about this, the fact that it's just an atypical thing you're leaving or sending. We had talked a little bit about that. Like you can do mailers, custom mailers, things that are thick, look really premium, beautifully designed, all that. And we talked about the whole henchy name custom box agency. Like when you send something to a key stakeholder, it's a package, so it only gets opened by that key stakeholder. And it doesn't get kind of filtered and gone through by the receptionist and thrown away. And it's on their desk and they open it up and they're like, what is this? This is pretty interesting. So I love the atypical nature of it and how interesting and unique, um, it is. But I also love that aspect that. The fact that you're not just saying, here's what we can do, you're saying, I deeply understand your problems and how hard your job is, and here's a way. Here's some ways to do it better. Here's some framework that you can use to solve problems, your business. So I think it's just super cool.

Mark Stern: Yeah. Um, I'm just gonna say, can I brag on you a little bit?

Chad Diller: Um, sure. Yeah.

Mark Stern: I was gonna say, I go on so many podcasts, and it's one of the things about, like, people always, like, especially if you've never been on a podcast before, um, how your team prepared me. I was like, I don't see this. It was instantly an atypical approach, and it understood, like, I want to make sure you're set up for success, and we want to make sure we're also providing value to the listeners. Like, there was this attention to detail that made me go, wait, this is different than other things that I've experienced. And so how you package that story up, when I think about turning that element into a physical product, there's so much that you can do that kind of reduces my concerns or the butterflies you may have in your stomach coming on a show. Um, especially for someone who's never done it, in that sense, it was very atypical how I would package that up, almost as like, uh, and as experts, um, in the podcasting space, in helping people build authority, it's the same thing, is that it's not only value to me as a guest, but also value to the listeners and how you're thinking about all those elements in terms of the quality of production that you are putting together.

Chad Diller: Yeah. So for our audience, you know, your landscape, salespeople dealing with property managers or these partners, like custom builders and that sort of thing, don't just inform them about what you do and then beg for a meeting so that you can kind of explain everything and monopolize your time. It's all. Being a great salesperson is all about helping your audience make decisions more easily and more confidently, whether it's with you or with anybody. Yeah, you know, that's. That's kind of the approach I've always taken when I've written content, and I try to always do that, like when I write something or create a video. I don't care if you use us or not. I just want you to make a good decision. And that's part of creating a physical ass asset that allows them to do that. And all of a Sudden it's on their desk or they take it away from a trade show and they're saying, this is different. And now I want to interact with this. And now I am a day or two or a week down the line, and I've used this physical asset, and I've learned from this physical asset. And I'm better because of this physical asset. Not like I just understand what you do more. That's. That's the part that I like about what you do.

Mark Stern: Uh, I love it. And then exactly how you approach this, it's the same thing is when you do something atypical, then you become kind of that comparison point for anything else. Well, landscape leadership does it this way. Well, custom box agency did this for me. And all of a sudden you reset the standard versus everyone's bringing cookies. It is something that really catches attention because it is a point of differentiation.

Chad Diller: Yeah. So we have clients that, you know, we have clients doing interesting things from the digital front, too. Um, we had referenced this a little bit before. Like, you're talking about the physical, like designing a game, a box, some sort of customer experience for acquisition, a mailer, a series of things that go out. But you and I had talked about this too, that digitally intersecting with that physical. How do you combine the digital assets so that you're touching somebody, you know, via email or text message or any of those things, or they're visiting content digitally along with physical assets. Give us some examples of how you've seen companies do that.

Mark Stern: Well, yeah, there's, um. So a couple things to think about. You know, when we think of it, I'm a CEO, you're a CEO. Anyone listening to this who's a CEO? Time is one of the most valuable assets we have. So when we think about engineering physical. The power of the physical to digital modality is about activating multiple channels. When we talk about this idea of building a relationship with people, you know, right now you're in this era that because there's so much noise in the marketplace having those multiple touch points, I see something flat, but it doesn't bring you to life. Then I have an interaction with the tool that brings to life the business or the, the CEO or the leadership behind the business. When I think about those two, uh, elements, people have very different learning modalities in terms of how they consume information. But there's something valuable to be said when I have something physical that I can touch and interact with, it's stimulating different senses versus something digital and how the two enable each other. When I think about the two coming together, I think about let me give you value in physical that if you consume it, but let me also provide you an outlet that extends the journey digitally that could have the call to action on it, that may provide some value. When I say value digitally, I want it to be something that I can consume in one sitting, something that is very quick. We're talking anywhere from three to 30 minutes. Because as a CEO or as a homeowner, or as someone who has a family with a busy life, time is your greatest asset. So I don't want to send you something, especially on the business development acquisition front, that feels like you have to consume hours and hours of content. I want to be able to provide value, demonstrate why we are different, and also quickly get you to that call to action. So when I think of those two modalities, they activate different senses in different capacities. We experience life through the senses. But I have a belief that especially in this age of AI, that we live in analog and how an analog, which is exactly how life was in the 80s and 90s pre Internet, analog's role is just going to get more relevant as a key point of differentiation. Especially because most people aren't tapping into offline physical, um, and most people aren't thinking about how the two worlds really enable each other and bring the worlds together. So experience wise, I want to be able to have powerful value, extend a relationship with a digital experience, but it can be consumed in one sitting and then it leads you to the call to action, which is the ultimate goal in terms of that business development piece.

Chad Diller: Sure. So not giving away the secret sauce, someone's got to pay you to do this. But if you are advising a landscape company that are trying to get in front of, pick one, uh, property managers with a large portfolio of commercial properties or one of those key relationships with a custom home builder or even just like a really affluent homeowner. Um, what would you do differently than what I described to you is the normal, like what are the first few things that point out their underestimating opportunity? Like where are some things, like some low hanging fruit, like how can they improve this experience?

Mark Stern: Yeah, um, you know, there's a couple things but for me, um, what I anchor on with anyone is you always start with the success in mind. What does success look like for your client or your prospect? You know, what, what is their pain point? What are they trying to do? And then ultimately what does successful look like for you as a business owner? When we understand what the back end anchor is, if it's I want to get their attention and be able to meet with them and have that clear meeting with them to demonstrate the value that we can offer. If it's a property developer, property management company, um, you know, that's a lot of what I look at. If I could then get into what is their pain points, what is the things that keep them up at night. Part of what I want to be able to address. One of the first exercises that we went through is, um, what are the benefits of working with me and what are the common, um, or working with you and what are the common objections that you see knowing that on the front end of like what are those common objections that any prospect may have? When I think about experience, if I can tackle those and mitigate those objections up front, that's going to be part of the element in the story that I build. The other thing is a lot of people typically do one and done. I did this one thing, but they didn't think about the follow up. So this is where we talk about journey. When I think about journey and touch points, you can't, uh. Like when I say top of mind is a big part of the sales game, I can't tell you that if you don't stay top of mind to people, it's easy because this is the same thing with buying a car. I know people, I've read statistics that say people sometimes buy a car for the person that's right in front of them. But there's no loyalty there when I think about that. If you want to build a relationship and demonstrate that this is not a one and done that, I'm just looking to make the sale and we're done. This is kind of where there's multiple touch points. So the cookies may still fit into the equation, but I want it to be part of a more comprehensive strategy in terms of how we're engaging. So if it's truly how do I get in front of and build a relationship with a property management company? It's not about one touch point, it's about multiple touch points. But I think that there's an element of this that needs to demonstrate authority, who you are and why you're different. Part of demonstrating authority is also taking and capturing the voice of those you've served. If you serve from other property management companies, I need to tell that story too because I, uh, can't tell you how many times I have listened to the seller trying to pitch me something. But I'm the type of person that will do my research and say who Else has worked with this person. And if they're not singing the praises the way that you're representing it, then to me that puts up a red flag. So then it becomes, how are you bringing these stories to say, don't take it from me, take it from other people. The other two areas are the relationship building aspect, why we have multiple touch points, as well as a degree of education of why you're different and what you have to offer. So as I start to engineer that experience, those are some of the concepts. And this is at a very high level. When you start to get into the details of exactly like what does that process look like? You'll go a lot deeper with a lot more data points. But for me, in terms of philosophy around it, that's where my head goes as I start to think about it is it's not just what is this trick I can do in front of you to get on it. It's really the heart of it is authority and relationship.

Chad Diller: Yeah, I love sharing the success of others is better than trying to tout your own authority, calling out the problems of other people. It's so much more powerful if you just have them do it. So that's something that we do a lot with our, our clients. We create these case study videos and, uh, we ask very emotionally provocative questions to these property managers. So they talk about what does it feel like, describe what it was like, and you can put together a great story, whether it's writing or a video. And putting that in front of a prospective client is way more compelling than you listing off all of your capabilities that you have as a company. That's just great. Um, and I love the intentionality with designing it out down to the detail. It's not just a couple interactions. These are key accounts you're going after. You got to spend a couple years doing this.

Mark Stern: The other piece of this that I would think about and, um, is around if I have a touch point with you. And the property management company did not sign right away. How do I think about a physical piece is another reason to get in front of them again and reactivate them. And so that's kind of those touch points to say, you know, I want, I want to demonstrate more than anything that the relationship element of, you know, when we talk about working with, um, our clients, working with landscape leadership, we don't want to be a transactional partner that you can just sub out with the next person because everyone in the industry looks the same. We want to be a strategic partner. And it doesn't Matter what industry you're in or what you're doing, the simple lens of saying, is what we're doing more transactional or are we demonstrating a strategic that we understand you, we understand, um, your pain points and how to serve. I want to be a strategic partner for you, not just another one that, you know, a couple of months down the road, you're just like, oh, let's move on to the next person. I want you to know and believe that I truly have your best interest. And here's the reality in this game we play when you win, I went to when your customers or your clients win, you win too. Because if it happens that they had a good experience and they get loud, they're going to help bring you more clients. They're going to, um, potentially do more work with you. So that's kind of where, how do we think about being a strategic partner and not transactional truly can be a game changer for a business.

Chad Diller: Yeah, Mark, this is great. Um, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing some philosophy of how you get the attention of prospective clients. And I know we could also go off on a tangent and talk about the other things, you know, with onboarding clients and getting them to be more loyal and retaining that loyal as time goes too. Um, if someone would want to check out a little bit more about what you guys are doing with different verticals, different industries for business development, these customer loyalty, what's the best way for them to see what custom box agency does?

Mark Stern: Yeah, I always recommend going to custom boxagency.com you can schedule a free conversation with us. We love to learn what you're doing. If there's things that we can do to support you or at least show you a different way to think about a challenge you may face in your business. Reach out to us. Physical, uh, is our vehicle of choice. But physical is activated based on the strategy of what it is you're ultimately trying to do and achieve. So that's the easiest place. Custom boxagency.com you can always find us on LinkedIn. Hit me up. Um, but those are probably the best channels for us.

Chad Diller: Awesome. Thanks so much for your time today, Mark.

Mark Stern: Appreciate it and thanks for having me.

Chad Diller: Chad, here's the reality. A lot of landscape companies are doing the right things. They're showing up, following up, building relationships, but at a certain point, doing the same things as everyone else, just a little bit better. It's not enough to stand out. So the question isn't, are we doing enough? The question is, are we doing anything that's actually memorable. What would it be like to design how someone experiences your company before they ever hire you? If this episode challenged your thinking, share it with a green industry peer and consider subscribing on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining us. Here's to becoming a leader in your marketplace.