Outdoor trends continue to mimic those from indoor design, so it’s no surprise pergolas remain a popular landscape design feature.

No matter how talented of a designer you are, how productive you are, or how great of a customer experience you know how to craft for your clients — to get your clients to sign, you first need your prospects to be able to find you.

While some secretive restaurant owners have banked on being difficult to find — by enticing customers with a hidden entrance (open only when an otherwise unremarkable lantern is lit, for example) or by accepting reservations only on the 6th of the month — being hard to find is not an ideal strategy for a designer whose goal is to grow their business.

Surprisingly, however, a 2015 survey found that 60% of very small businesses don’t even have websites.

When nearly three-quarters of Americans “go online on a daily basis” and 1/5 say they’re “online almost constantly,” making sure that you’re one of the small businesses with a strong online presence is one of the easiest ways to capture your potential clients’ attention.

After all, Google’s own research has found that “82% of smartphone users turn to their devices to help them make a product decision” — and that the reliance on mobile devices doesn’t just apply to comparing products at the drugstore. Consumers are now using their mobile devices to search for information on big purchases, too — including things like investing in a new home.

So help your prospects out: try these tips to make sure that your prospects can find you — and like what they find.

You’ve undoubtedly heard the advice to work smarter, not harder. But how to turn that truism into a workable strategy?

Working with young, first-time homeowners can be unfamiliar territory for many experienced landscape contractors. For new homeowners, undertaking a big outdoor living project can be daunting — and it isn’t always easy for even highly experienced contractors to match expectations to reality (and the budget!) for brand new clients.

While it’s true that the rate of homeownership amongst young adults doesn’t yet touch the rate for established adults, research out of Goldman Sachs points out that there are quite a few young adults beginning to enter the housing market:  “the Millennial generation is the biggest in US history — even bigger than the Baby Boom.”

Chances are, if you haven’t already, you’re going to design an outdoor living project for some of those young adults.  

Creating great customer experiences, growing your business, and selling more — do those goals sound familiar to you?

For many designers, finding the time to implement new strategies that will help achieve those goals — without taking too much valuable time away from clients — can mean that “find more time” ends up as yet another to-do item on their list.

So here’s one strategy that you can put into action today: use Artistic Effects to create a work of art that will convert your clients.

Designer Shane LeBlanc has built a career that takes him both around the country and around the world to design the spectacular pools that have helped him grow from a once-small landscaping company into an award-winning outdoor living design company winning seven-figure contracts.

If you’ve been in the industry for awhile — or even if you’ve just been checking out some of the case studies we’ve shared — you've probably noticed just how many different routes to success there can be.

But what is it that really distinguishes the good from the great, the truly successful from those just chugging along?

[Catch up on Part One of Mario Rossetti's tips and then read on for his expert tips on how to craft a presentation that won't talk you out of sale.]

I can just hear it now. “C’mon, man”, you say. “What’s this all about? Talking yourself out of a sale? Really?”

You may be saying to yourself, “I have enough problems talking myself into a sale. Now I have to worry about this too? You can’t be serious.” To which I reply, “Au contraire, my pool- and spa-selling friend; I am deadly serious.” As often as I find myself training salespeople how to talk themselves into a sale, I also find that I should be training them how to avoid talking themselves out of a sale. This is not a play on words, folks. It’s the real deal.

Using drones to capture aerial shots of a build in progress, sharing screenshots to lock in contracts even before the design’s fully complete, and networking to get discovered by clients — these are all strategies John Kay uses to sell his clients on phenomenal designs.

From his start studying landscape architecture at UNLV, through working for an established landscape company in California, and then obtaining his landscape and general engineering license in order to begin his own company, John Kay has always looked for state-of-the-art ways to set his work apart from the rest.

And to set his work apart — John turned to Vip3D to see whether the latest 3D technology would earn him even better results.