Was talking to a facility manager of a high end resort the other day, and was going thru my sales brochure with him. He seemed a little TOO interested, if you know what I mean; I felt like he was trying to pick my brain about the cimex so they can buy one themselves!! This dude knows about cleaning, he told me all about their wonderful Cobra extractor, with 250 degrees at the wand, yada, yada, yada...He insists being there for the demo, i'd rather do it at night and let him see the results, not necessarily the machine...A couple of years ago I had a guy who picked up my gallon of DS and started writing down the website, etc!! (Good for Rick, I guess! LOL)

So, the question is, how can you avoid these large facilities using you to demo equipment to them, so they can buy one themselves?
thanks, Joe

I had the same problem. I removed all Cimex lables from the machine, and replaced them with custom made Company Logo decals. I put several on the unit. The Release It product was put in a white gallon jug with the same Custome Logo decals. Fiber Plus Pads boxes were left in the van. Promote your mane and knowelge to pick the best system available.
Good Luck.
Jamie

I've had a couple commercial accounts quiz me about my equipment. Once they hear how much a particular machine costs, and the fact that they will need to train someone to use it, and pay that new employee,... they have all dropped the idea of purchasing a machine.

I use to do free demos for stone care and restoration. The customer would call and ask if I could “fix” their problem and I’d say let me come out and give it a try and we’ll see. I show up, apply more than twenty years of floor care experience and fix a small section of their problem; great you’d think right? Not so great, in the meantime he’s taking notes to tell the next lowest guy how I fixed the problem. We don’t do free demos anymore, they’re too expensive.

What we do is we give free estimates over the phone, if you’d like us to come out and do a Site Walk and Survey there will be a $150.00 fee that will be applied to your final invoice if we do the work for you. Whatever the findings are from that site walk belong to you; you paid for them. Of course they might not be extremely detailed as to exactly what, how and for how long we got the desired results, but you’ll have a better idea of what it’s going to take to get your floor right.

Does this scare away some people? Maybe a better question would be; does this weed out the price shoppers? I recently had a woman respond when I told her about the fee like this; there was a short pause and then she said “I can respect that, I’m also self employed and my time is valuable too, come on out and take a look”. The end result was that I gladly gave her that $150.00 credit on her $13,000.00 invoice.

Now before I get flamed here stop and think about this for a second; are we talking commercial or resi work? I think you’d have a hard time pulling that off with commercial carpet cleaning, I think in that context free demos do pay. Just make sure you keep your hard earned knowledge to yourself, sell the job and then they can reward your knowledge with a regular maintenance contract.

David Gelinas
Marbleguy

great to see you post! if it wasn't for Tom Rowe. i may not have gotten into a Cimex.

anyways, i do as Tom suggested.

once, a prospect started asking me questions as i was doing a demo. i answered until i felt it might mean i have a new competitor. i then ignored him and kept working...he got the hint and let me do my thing.

thanx --- Derek.