Hi all, thanks for your wonderful posts on this forum. It has really helped me in deciding that this is truly a great advance in cleaning. I am a hardcore truck-mount steam cleaning advocate, so the fact that I find this board convincing is miraculous.

I sold my cleaning company years ago and these days I spend my time sitting around writing ads and and sales strategies for carpet cleaners (among other prospects) and really never leave the computer...

So I got all excited about this cleaning method, and grabbed a partner and we ordered a Cimex and created a new start-up carpet cleaning company. It feels good to start another company, kind of like coming home... guess I drank too much Bio-Clean when younger.

I should get my machine in a few more days.

I used material from this board and Rick's web page to make a presentation manual and headed out to canvas some accounts for our new little company. It's kinda hard since we don't even have a phone number yet.

The day before yesterday I spent an hour and a half canvasing and booked a couple of jobs in the $200 range and got another good prospect for about $800 and 4 contacts, and 4 "No"s.

I was plum tuckered after that, like I said I am in bad shape from sitting around all the time.

So yesterday I did telemarketing for a couple of hours to bigger places to get contact info. That really sucked, I didn't get any decent results, but lots of contact information.

I think I prefer going out face-to-face. Easy money and more fun than phone calling.

Ironically, yesterday, one of my marketing clients calls and says, "Hey there is this new cleaning method out, I ordered three set-ups and I need you to create some marketing material for me. I said, "I'm on it."

I would appreciate any recommendations or even half-baked ideas on how to sell or market our new cleaning method. I'm pretty good at turning ideas into systems. And I am happy to share my results and some strategies to anyone who is interested (for free of course), but there are some limitations as I have paying clients who I am obligated to protect their territories and so I cannot share finished strategies with folks in a few certain U.S. cities.

Feel free to contact me directly with any questions, requests or suggestions at jimwolverton@msn.com or reply to this thread, but I am pretty lame about remembering to check boards, so my responses may be slowed here.

Jim,

Welcome to the Cimex Forum and to the Cimex/Encap family. We're an infamous band of renegades who appreciate the value of a good cleaning system. You'll fit right in here.

For those of you who don't know who Jim Wolverton is... I was introduced to Jim when I purchased a Piranha Marketing package a few years ago; back when Joe Polish was named Cleanfax Mag’s man of the year. I know that a lot can be said about JP's many flaws. But I will say this; that $800 investment was the kick in the pants I needed to start learning about and implementing marketing in my cleaning business.

Back then Jim was one of Joe's key coaching club members. I understand that Jim actually composed a lot of the Piranha material. He has since left Piranha and he now writes marketing for his own clients. So when Jim called to order a Cimex we had a good time talking about business and marketing.

No doubt we can all benefit from having another bright mind added to the mix. Welcome aboard!




Rick Gelinas

Thanks for the intro Rick.

Since you brought it up, let's get this issue out of the way...

No, I do not work for JP, nor have I done any work for him in some time. There are reasons we do not work together and they obviously couldn't be good. But the fact that my new start-up company made around $900,000.00 in 3.5 years using JP's material is a testament that there is merit to JP regardless of what anyone thinks of him personally.

As a policy, you will never hear me say anything negative about anyone. I deeply resent those who do such things. Such remarks ultimately drive me away from forums where people cast dispersions, whether it be JP or anyone else. All I can think of when I see such negative comments is, "If that is what this person says about someone else, I wonder what he is saying about me?"

I really like this forum so far, because it is operating like a think-tank or an ongoing brainstorming session instead of like the Cleanfax forum where every time I post something someone slams me because I know JP or censors my post because they suspect that I must be trying to sell something since they don't believe I would give good marketing information away for free.

So throw away all your bias for or against JP and forget that I sell marketing stuff, and let me earn a position of respect on this forum based upon my own worthy contributions. Maybe we can all do something great together.

Thank you for being here Jim. I'm sure it will be a good thing for all.



Rick Gelinas

I agree with Rick, welcome, Jim.

Since I don't know how to make an arrow to the South, and Jim is South of me, I bow to the West as best I can.

Jim- if you are interested, come up to Portland, and check out my operation.

Gary

It's always a plessure to have someone with the experience Jim has to be willing to share it with us.
I for one i'm looking foward to it.


Thanks Jim

I am in the same camp - startup biz and like the encap potential. I am in the process of developing marketing materials and realize some shared resources could be of real benefit.

What I find I could use is some quality photo's of encap at work - before and afters, ect. that tell the story. Client testimonials would be good, and 'wow' facts about encap would be useful too. Sharing such items among encap professionals I am sure would be of help to everyone.

Personally I would much appreciate any photo's, etc. anyone could send me - or just post em on the board for everyone.

I plan to do photos over the next few months where appropriate, and am glad to share them and otherwise assist anyone with what I can.

Note - I am an entrepreneur and business man first - I actually know little about the technical aspects of floor maintenance other than what I have researched over the last 3 months. I just got my Cimex, and still loading up on everything else needed to go. Why I am getting into the biz is a long story. By trade I owned a management consulting firm for 15yrs, and play with real estate when I can. Technically I am better off discussing the 'business of making money' than cleaning carpets. I am glad to help anyone with their business or management issues too - just let me know.

Welcome aboard, Jim! Glad to see you posting here.

Scott

I've prepared a package to mail or hand out at
various businesses in my area.
It consists of an introductory cover letter, describing
my company's "track record"; a reprint of the CLEANFAX
article by Rick on encap; and several positive post
comments from cleaners describing their experiences
with encapsulation. In the cover letter, of course,
I offer a free, no obligation demo at their premises.
What if I were to conclude my offer with something like: "And if you will show me your most recent
carpet cleaning invoice, if I can't beat it, I'll
give you a crisp new $50 bill on the spot, and never
bother you again"?, Or words to that effect. The idea
being not to end up bidding unnecessarily low out of
not knowing what they currently pay? Any thoughts on
this strategy?

I would never take that approach, it is more of a janitorial approach, and you want to separate yourself from the janitorial industry.
If your prospect is happy with the present cleaner than do your pitch, try to do a demo and go from there.
The real business is in the millions of sq ft of carpet that is badly maintained or not maintained at all. I am not telling you what to price yourself at, but be careful when making a statement that you will beat the present price, it could be so low that you will never be able to spend the time necessary to do the job. The present contractor may be getting away with murder, but the minute you take over they may suddenly demand that you do everything you promised, and than what will you do?
Present yourself as a professional carpet care expert,
and let people know how much you care about protecting their carpet investment.

Of course it could go the other way too... you could run into a prospect who would gladly pay more for a better service and run them off by making yourself look like a lowballer.

You never know what is going to happen with ANY approach until you think through the scenario from the prospect's point of view. So ask yourself...

"What would I think if someone appraoched me with that strategy?"

Or...

"What kind of client would respond to that kind of strategy?"

One kind of prospect that would respond positively to that kind of strategy is the price loyal personality. You can easily win this type of prospect with a lower price and they will be a loyal client as long as you offer the lowest price, but as soon as someone else offers them a lower price they will leave you, because their loyalty is to price, not to you or good service or quality. (I believe that most clients are more loyal to either price, service or quality than to companies, so I tend to focus on serving a niche of clients and specializing to meet their wants. Loyalty to your company builds over time with repeated happy experiences.)

It is not likely that this price loyal type of client is going to stay with you. However, to get started up, you might be able to win some quick accounts, but expect them to drift away in time. So I might offer this as an introductory special with the intent of getting some quick cash flow going.

As for the comment that the untapped riches are from either the carpet that is not maintained or the clients who are dissatisfied, that is really true, but there are downsides to that too...

As for the carpets that have not been maintained at all, probably comprising more than 50% of all carpets, do you want to try to retrain your clients to keep their carpets clean? It would be like constantly trying to potty train three thousand puppies. Most likely you will end up cleaning overly soiled carpets by people who clean too infrequently and you will therefore see low repeat business as well as low productivity. But maybe you could come up with a program to overcome that. I have been trying to do this, but so far have received a low acceptance rate: hard to get clients to change their habbits.


What kind of client is not happy with their carpet cleaning? Maybe they are too finicky or maybe they have had repetitious bad experiences. I wouldn't want to use this method to waste time trying to please finicky people, because this method is lucritive due to high production, so watch out for those kind of clients, although again, by specializing on them, you could do it successfully.

But I would want the ones who have just never been lucky enough to get a good cleaning. There you get easy to please, thankful, loyal clients. So this is the first place that I would market to, looking for the ones who are looking.

And because they are looking, there might be a marketing medium where we can reach them faster/easier than going out face to face. Maybe someday, we will find the right place to attract them with marketing and then life will be pretty easy for the carpet cleaning company owner.

But marketing without knowing your client is like a hunting dog without a scent. You will be constantly barking up the wrong tree. That is why I am starting face to face selling is because I suspect I will learn what good respondants are like after I have seen enough of them and I can start to draw a profile of them to which I can market.