Early in my career as a Carpet Cleaner, Bill Bane (one of the real
giants in this business) told me to Never advertise price, because someone will always beat it. Oh how right he was, and still is. For decades, carpet cleaners have tried to solve "the problems" by cutting prices and make up the loss thru higher volume. It is one of those old business myths that just won't go away, but is really just a recipe for disaster. Even if the strategy works, another competitor will probably come along and do the same thing to you. It's a vicious cycle that never ends, unless you find a way to break out of it. It is the mistaken belief among carpet cleaners that customers only choose their service based on "price" The truth is that people buy what they buy for lots of reasons, only one of which is price. If your competitors are willing to lose money to gain market share , the cure is to give the customer a reason to buy your service other than price. I hope to educate you on how to get more for your service than your competitors, based on how we do it in our business. I will not post how much we bring in in our two businesses (everything came from our carpet cleaning business) I will say it is in the 7 figures, but that is all I will say about that (my son forbids me) I will post weekly on this subject and I do expect to hear from you either by posting here (best way as we all can learn) or by e-mail as some of you shy ones have already e-mailed me.

Onya Ray.

A lot still can't grasp the idea of raising their prices twice a year to keep their profit level up there.

Doing it this way also keeps your customers on side as it's not such a big hit like it is if you only raise them every couple of years.

Say you do raise your price 5% and you lose x amount of customers, with that 5% rise, you will probably still be making the same money, but with less expense and time working.

Look forward to your always interesting and well thought out views.

Cheers,

Shorty.