Trades Talk Podcast

Jack Jostes: The Follow-Up System That Turns Old Bids Into Booked Jobs

Trades Talk Podcast

Show Notes

This week on Trades Talk, Justin White sits down with Jack Jostes, founder and CEO of Ramblin Jackson, the snow and landscape exclusive marketing agency, host of The Landscaper’s Guide podcast, and author of the new book The Landscaper’s Guide to Direct Response Sales and Marketing. After 17 years building marketing systems inside the green industry, Jack lands on one core belief: the company that actually follows up is the company that wins.

Jack and Justin get tactical on why most contractors are sitting on a goldmine of unclosed bids, how to define your Hell Yes customer and build your entire marketing engine around them, and why it can take up to 18 touches to close a sale. They dig into multi-touch follow-up campaigns, using AI without losing the human touch, and the seasonal gold mining moves that fill your shoulder season schedule.

In this episode:

The Hell Yes customer: how to define your ideal lead and build your whole marketing engine around them, and how one contractor niched into HOAs and grew from $750K to over $5M

Direct response vs brand awareness: why measurable, repeatable follow-up beats being the best company in town, and why closing can take up to 18 touches

Gold mining your database: how a single Call Jam session of calling old, unclosed bids can fill next week’s schedule, something Justin says works about 90 percent of the time

Multi-touch, multimedia follow-up: landing pages, QR postcards, cold email, LinkedIn, and real phone calls working together to land a single commercial account

The AI plus analog balance: automating with a landscape built CRM and engagement scoring while handwritten cards and personal calls do the closing, plus sending prospects a prompt that shapes what their AI learns about your company

Jack’s biggest takeaway is simple. Be the one professional who actually follows up. Most businesses are terrible at it, which is exactly why the follow-up itself becomes your edge.

If you are a landscape or trades owner leaving estimates unclosed, buried in manual lead gen, or trying to build a sales engine that runs without you, this one is a playbook you can put to work this week.

JW Group Website: https://www.jwhitegroup.com/ Justin LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-white-%E2%98%85-35b7a210b/ Justin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justinwhiteceo/ Justins Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@justinwhiteceo Jack Jostes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jackjostes/ Ramblin Jackson: https://ramblinjackson.com/ Jack’s Free Book: https://landscapersguide.com/books K&D Website: https://kndlandscaping.com/ K&D Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kanddlandscaping/ Disruptors Community: https://www.skool.com/disruptors Disruptors Advantage Newsletter: https://disruptors-advantage.beehiiv.com/

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