Selling to your customers

Silver Moon Lighting

Bright business minds will tell you that you don’t succeed by finding customers for your products, you find products for your customers. Silver Moon Lighting did just that to absorb a 30 percent drop in their core business.

A 'Fix-It' Solution
Silver Moon Lighting started seven years ago installing Christmas lights for large residential properties in southern California. As business picked up, customers started asking if the company could also repair their existing landscape lighting systems, so the company branched out. The expansion gave the company a little balance and consistency – crews could work on holiday lights only two months out of the year.

But last year, landscape lighting revenue dropped off 30 percent. Big installations – tied to the housing market – slowed down. Customers scaled back projects, which meant Silver Moon was subsisting on smaller jobs.
“We are kind of limping along with customers saying, ‘I’m redoing hardscaping, putting in a pool,’” says Diane Finley, vice president of the Poway, Calif.-based company.

So the goal for 2009 was to keep their four employees working. And to do that, the company reached out to its few hundred customers and ask them what they needed done. If the plan worked, Silver Moon could keep its employees working and solve some of its customers’ problems. 

“The last thing we want to do is lay somebody off, have them go get another job and we’re not able to get them back, because we love our guys,” Finley says. “Our guys are so talented in many areas … any one could be their own handyman. We’ve got customers; they always need fix-it things here and there.”

Communicating Correctly
So Silver Moon sent out an e-mail that outlined various handyman services its employees could perform at their regular rate of pay, and that were legal under the company’s contractor license.

“Now’s the time to get those odd jobs around your house completed, fixed and taken off your ‘to-do’ list,” the e-mail reads in part. “Our staff is talented and experienced in many areas, so as the economic situation declines and our core business slows, we have made the decision to expand the services of our company.”

The message then lists about 15 services the company could offer – everything from demolition and drywall to painting and pressure washing.

The hardest part, Finley says, was striking a balance between sounding desperate but also communicating the company’s need for more work.

“It was kind of sticky, because you don’t want to go ‘God, we’re really hurting, can you guys help us?’” Finley says. “You don’t want to come off that way as a business.”

Customer Feedback
In between lighting jobs, Silver Moon’s team painted, refinished stucco, powerwashed a driveway and hung rain gutters for their customers.

“We had a lot of good feedback,” she says. “Our customers were very understanding. That really did help us survive in 2009.”

Customer Communication
Want to try the same thing? Read the full e-mail that Silver Moon Lighting sent out to its customers here.

The author is managing editor of Lawn & Landscape. Send him an e-mail at cbowen@gie.net.