Let's say your customer decides to drop a room of cleaning, but adds a chair.

Or your phone staff schedules protector and your tech sells them on a guaranteed protector at .05 per s.f. more than regular protector.

Commission him on the diffence (if any), or the entire new line item?

Thanks,
JOhn L.

I would commision him on the entire package.

Now that your question was answered. How can you sell someone protectant and not guarantee it will work?
We charge 18 cents sq ft for protectant with a year guarantee in a residential setting. In a commercial setting 6 months.

All are given 16 oz bottle of spotter with the application. Res setting gets free refills. I will sell commercial settings spotter at my cost if they are on my maintence program. If they only have us come in 2x a year I'll sell it to them retail.

We just recently started putting a guarantee on the protector. Went to a class, (and read an article by Steve Toburen) that said we would sell more protector if we offered TWO PROTECTORS, one warranted and one not, and let them choose...thus the question about sell-ups.

Till now we did not offer a guarantee. So we are hoping this new approach will net more protector sales.

New pricing .17 and .22. Just been going on for a few days, and too early to tell, but so far sales for both guaranteed and not guaranteed. The nice thing is that they have a choice between the guaranteed or the non guaranteed, versus, protector or none.

Hoping for a breakthrough on this!

Anyway, this question has come up, and I welcome more input on it. Thanks Dave.

JOhn L.

John

I may be wrong but I think Steve’s mentality on this is, if you only offered one protector the customer now has to decide whether it’s a necessary cost and is it worth it. By giving them a choice between two products, A or B, they don’t take into consideration that there really is a third choice, C / no protector. At that point they reason this must be a necessary cost and there is only a .05 cent spread for the guarantee so what the heck lets go for the guarantee. Now you’re selling protector on every job and you are getting more for it. Personally I think it’s ingenious and I’m sure you’ll do well with it.

Where did you find that article at, I’d love to read it, thanks.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

The article was: "Selling the "Sure Thing", ICS FEB. 2005.

You can probably bring it up on the ICS site archives. I have gotten articles there before that I overlooked and trashed.

Also I attended the seminar with Craig Jasper on "Double your business in 6 months--Guaranteed" when it came near to my town. That strategy was dealt with at length in the program.

But now back to the original question: If the tech bumps it from the regualar protector to the guaranteed, do you commission him for what he actually sold (the difference between the already shedulded reg. protector) or commission him for the whole sale and forget that reg. protector was already ordered to start with.

Thanks,
JOhn L.

In normal circumstances I would pay the tech on the bump, exspecially if the office person is getting paid somthing for adding on the protectant.

I understand the the therpy behind selling two programs of protectant I just feel it is sleezy to sell a product and not back it up. I will show them what protectant will do for the carpeting. I can show a CD to them or demo for them.

It is just my personal business preferance.
To me it is like selling a client a cleaning package with we will guarantee you will like the job, and a pack where it does nto matter if you like it or not you still have to pay.


If anything I might offer a stronger guarantee from one to the othere package
say one is six months and one a year.


I also give them a certifcate with the date on it


David

Dave,

I think all of us guarantee our work and our protector. Even if someone calls and says "I bought that protector and I think my carpet got dirty too fast", most of us would give them a touch up, no charge. Just good sense and good business not to call your customer a liar. So we have an "implied guarantee", that most of us will honor.

You though, are one of the smart ones since you put yours in writing and probably marketed it that way.

So by telling people upfront that it's guaranteed and issuing a certificate, you get some selling or marketing mileage out of it, rather than just fielding complaints if they come in. So to me, if you are going to stand behind the product anyway, you might as well get some marketing punch for doing it, and nudge some of the timid ones into buying by publicizing a guarantee.

John L.

My experience with guarantees was- the customers almost always went for the longest guarantee- very few exceptions. So, I had a 1 year offer, a 2 year and a 5 year offer at higher prices.

With the longer guarantee, it seemed to me it helped keep the customer as "mine", and other cleaners from going in at a lower price or different system.

The thinking here was similar to buying a new car. Should you get a short guarantee or a longer one for a very little more cost?

When I buy a new car, I go for the longest guarantee I can get, so why not do the same for the carpet cleaning customers?

Worked for me.


As for the tech, give him/them whichever would be the most for them, to encourage them to do more.

Nothing makes a person happier than getting more money.

Gary