I am going to assume I am NOT the first guy to be curious about methods used for ringing the phone. In fact, I am sure there are tons of posts regarding same.

I have an idea and before i spent money "researching", I wanted to give it a shot here...first.

The short of it is to throw out a few flyers simply explaing will demo one or two rooms for anyone who calls at no charge to show em how wonderful this "new process" really is.

Obvioulsy the idea needs tweaking but, all-in-all, whaddya think?

Are you focusing on commercial or residential?

Make you own luck,

Del Scrivner
Owner/Operator
Cowboy's Carpet Care

aside from Del's question, this has been covered alot on this forum in the past. invest some of your time using the Search feature above.

thanx --- Derek.

For residential I tried it and didn't like it my 1st customer was in the afternoon on HOT HUMID Mid summer day in Georgia and I'm sweatinglike carazy setting up and they only wanted the free room. Immediately threw away all the flyers. I also found myself having to SELL the freebie people were very suspicious.
The demo in commercial works well but I only do it after they express interest.
not just demo to demo. It's real easy to say all this when biz is good but if I was hungrey I'd try it and see how it works for you.

being well aware of search features and forum usage, I have done lots of "investing". I asked here and now, for updated answers.

But, if there is a specific thread to which you refer, I will dive into it.

Residential and SOME small commercial. (later)

For commercial it can work, I used MS Publisher to create a gift certificate, for 1 office or area 100SF of your choice. I landed a senior citizen complex for cleaning a small library for free. Best to deliver face to face. I also noted anyone can promise we will show you our skills.

my friend Paul Douglas has a great marketing plan I have seen it on the ICS board
here it is:



The CLASSIC Douglas "Plan of Action"
Posted By Mark Schipper on 10/2/2002 at 7:28 PM
This deserves a repost, and a big THANK YOU to Paul who has gotten some well-earned fame for this gem.

Thanks, Paul! (-:

[NOTE: I have cleaned it up a bit in format and corrected some misspellings, etc. But it is ALL Paul's work, and nothing has been added or changed.]

-----------------
All right here is a plan of action for everyone, that needs new clients now.

1. Put out 1000 of your most productive flyers every week per tech.

2. Mail 100 sales letters to commercial prospects per week. Restaurants, lawyers, doctors. Whatever, your choice. But do it once a week.

3. Follow up the mailing 7-10 days with a phone call.

4. Contact other business owners. Swap customer lists. Contact 100 new prospects from each list every week. Send a sales letter first. Then follow up with a phone call.

5. Offer these same business owners gift certificates to give away as premiums to their clients.

6. Give gift certificates away at every Real Estate Office in town for every realtor working in that office every week.

7. Contact 15 prior clients every day. Let them know you are still alive.

8. Contact 30 cold prospects every day, in the market area you want to work in.

9. When completing a job, go to the neighbor and knock on the door, introduce yourself. Give them a business card. Give them a flyer. Tell then you want to be their cleaner of choice as well and hope they will consider you when they need the work.

10. Offer a cash reward or cleaning credit to anyone that gives you a referral now.

11. Offer a strong incentive to use your services now. It will be too late in April. A discount, a contest, whatever, be creative.

12. Join a service club or your local chamber of commerce. Attend the meetings, do the service and volunteer work. Great networking opportunity.

13. Whatever other great idea that might come to your head.

Now here is the biggest key. Don't do one at a time. Don't just do the ones you like and ignore the rest. Do them all right now. Not tomorrow, not next week, NOW. This is the success law of taking massive action. It doesn't matter which success guru you subscribe to, they all tell you to take action. Massive action yields massive results. Don't think about it, DO IT NOW!

Use your mouse, left click and drag this entire message. Go to Edit on your too board at the top of the page, and click it. Select copy and click. Now open your word processing program and click on edit and select paste. This posting will magically appear on paper. Print it and post it where you will see it daily.

Good luck,
Paul

-------------------

The single most crucial part of Paul's message in my opinion is to DO IT.

Its funny how when I actually do what marketing, business, and financial contributors actually suggest, I achieve success.

I never do when I never implement the suggestions.

Imagine that.

Mark

With all due respect to Paul Douglas (he's a good guy) - BUT HE NEVER ACTUALLY DID THAT.


#2. Mail 100 sales letters to commercial prospects per week. Restaurants, lawyers, doctors. Whatever, your choice. But do it once a week.

#3. Follow up the mailing 7-10 days with a phone call.


I don't think that would be very practical.

If you had an entire professional sales staff??? - Maybe.
But an owner operator??? - No way.
Follow up 100 letters with 100 phone calls each week???
Contact 30 prospects every day???
He'd have to be taking some pretty good vitamins!
Paul must be a better man than I am.

In my experience, the "shotgun approach" of opening the phone book and firing blindly at a huge array of prospects fares badly. It simply does not bring in the kind of new customers I want to attract. Maybe it's just me, but an approach like the one mentioned above is a bit of a stretch from what honestly works in the real world. Sorry, but that post seems like a lot of fluff IMHO.










Rick Gelinas
rick@excellent-supply.com

I tend to agree with Rick, I'm an owner operator. If I did all that when would I clean the carpets and would the carpets I clean be all from gift certificates . I prefer targeting certain areas by zip code,same with commercial. I do pass out flyers in between appointments,I do press the flesh with commercial. Mailers to current customers,referral reward program, 5 around program,gift certificates for business accounts for 1 room. Advertise on internet, local publication,and still have time to clean carpet. However if your system works , like Rick said your better than me!

I know this will go against what a few have said, but I usually have better success when I do what others will not.

We mail out 500 letters or postcards per week to residential qualifiedly list, and 200 letters or postcards to a targets list of commercial prospects.
Along with them we will also mail out to any leads given us.

30 calls a day would be easy to do and it would take about 2 hours of my time 2 1/2 tops. Although I do not call cleaning prospects as a rule I do call other business professionals to form alliances with. I have called over 40 people in certain industry's in a day.

Cleaning is the easy part of this business you can teach 13 year old to clean
and do it proficiently, running the business and separating you self from everyone else is what takes time effort and a plan.

Phil,

In a residential setting I would NEVER just clean a free room.  You will quickly be out of business because there are pleanty of people with soda spills, pet urine, beer spillage, last night's mac and cheese, etc., etc. in just one area/room.  You would be cleaning free rooms from now until the cows come home and get VERY FEW paid jobs out of it.

If you want to offer a FREE ROOM then you offer it with a paid cleaning- smallest room is FREE.  Better yet sell a FREE ROOM OF PROTECTOR with a paid cleaning AND entire house protector application.

Just ask yourself this question to prevent yourself from comitting a major error like that: "Can I do this with EVERY single customer and make a profit and not lose money on EVERY single job".  If the answer is YES run out and do it, and do it again.  If the answer is NO then don't do it- EVER!!!!. 

Carpet Cleaning is not a "loss leader" type of business.  Grocery stores can afford to sell milk for less then what it costs them because you are MUCH more likely to stay in the store and buy MANY more items- thus profit for them.

Carpet cleaning is not like the grocery store.  Only give a "Deal" or a "Discount" when you KNOW you are goung to make a sale (AKA- $$$$$$$$).

Make you own luck,

Del Scrivner
Owner/Operator
Cowboy's Carpet Care

Del, I had not thought about it that way. You may have a very valid point. But for clarity, the idea was to do a hand-full out of the gate to help generate some business.

But, I certainly want to generate B-U-S-I-N-E-S-S not open a charity route.

I am currently stuck in "marketin" mode, curious about how I might get this up and running before I drop coin.
I am also still running a hi-rsie window cleaning business. Currently doing construction windows but gearing up to do residential only. getting away form builders. So, I jump back and forth in my head about what, exactly, I might do to kick it off.

I think about mixing both services on one ad but fear I may "water down" the image by being a jack of all trades kind deal.
Then, I think about doing seperate campaigns but in the same market.
Obviously, these are not concers many here will address but at similar. so, if a freebi here and there had helped others, I;d give it a shot. So far, the general thought is "NO">

Thansk for the insight.

Regards,
Phil

Don't give anything away for free. Professional businesses just don't do that...you need to seperate yourself from the herd of discount carpet cleaners or you won't stay in business. I'm not saying that you should never give people a deal or run a promo, but if you advertise freebies you get a certain type of client (you don't want those clients). You want to attract people that recongize the benefit of having their carpets cleaned regularily, they don't go for the coupon offers and freebies. They are already out there...find them, impress them with incredible service and results, ask for referals and your business will grow.

Marketing is a combination of efforts, not just one. Start talking to people, that's the most important thing. Do a mail out, run an ad, call people, marketing is trying stuff...if it works, go with it, if it doesn't, don't spend anymore money on it. You can analyze and think about it till your blue in the face...what's always worked best for me is..."start talking to people about your business".

Activity = Results.

If your looking to attract attention to your new business and want to do a free be as kind of an audition for others to see your work. Suggestion would be church, I picked up alot of jobs after doing a church from the parishaners? anyway you can also take the deduction off your taxes. As far as water down image look at it as complimenting services. Many carpet cleaners have added tile & grout,duct cleaning,dyeing,wood floor cleaning. Its all good and tie well together, most of us carpet cleaners ahte to leave money on the table thats why we incorporate other services. If you have a data base with residential customers and commercial customers start there with solicitation they are already familiar with you and trust you, bascically your already in the door and it cost more to get new customers than keep the ones you have who will spread the word of your new servcie.

Lots of professional businesses will offer something FREE to new people to get them in the door.

Dentist do it Chiropractors and a host of others. The key is to give them a low cost item that has a High preserved value to the prospect.

Going way back I started and built the backbone of my residential business giving things away be it a FREE room FREE Chair or FREE protectant it was all couched in the Ad correctly to allow me to make money on each place I entered. I can recall only doing two homes where I only did a FREE room and nothing else. The problem was I did not follow my own system and being new I fumbled.


Phil you have a gold mine of current clients now use it to your advantage
at the very least I would sent the current clients a promo flyer or post card
with your new business services. Many people spent a long time trying to get to know people in other service businesses to cross market to, at this point you have a ready made group who most likely need your services they just do not know it yet. Thats your job, to let them know.

There are lots of tricks to get residential clients from commercial contacts.

I might have misslead you and others. I do hi-rsie construction window cleaning. Or, i did. I walked away last month (long story but suffice to say, it got old waiting for payment). I got started doing windows in the residential arena. But, I got 1 call from abuilder needing my services, then another. Next thing I know all I am doing is builders work. My residentail business was almost gone. I had/have a few of the originals who waited but most are using the other guys. But, i can get em back

So, before I start my new adventure, i want to give careful thought to what my next step.
I truly appreciate all of the good info given to me here.

Phil,

After the normal stuff- invoice, friendly call or two for payment maybe...

You could send them your payment request letter- certified so you have proof. 

If they ignore that another letter- certified of course, that you will place a lein on the property for the amount of your provided services, a late fee for each and every day, and all additional charges to pay for the process of the lein and your extra time.

If they ignore that place a lein on the property.  If the building is still in the contractors name guess what?  With a lein on it they cannot legally transfer to the actual owner's name without your permission or having the lein removed.

A serious pain in the butt.  However you would get your money.  I would check with a local real estate attorney before trying it.

My experience was from when I was a police officer.  The county sheriff apparently made an inmate from his jail upset.  The inmate was a "jailhouse lawyer" and placed leins on every piece of real estate that the Sheriff owned.  The Sheriff found out about 2 years later when he tried to refinance his house and could not.  He had to go to the court and make the inmate show proof of the reason for the lien, which he could not, so it was removed.  But it took almost another 2 years for that to be removed. 

It affected the Sheriff's credit report too.  As a business owner I am sure that you would not want bad items reflecting on the business's credit report.  It could cripple their ability to grow.  So there is another plan- another pain, but if the money is big enough well worth it.

Make you own luck,

Del Scrivner
Owner/Operator
Cowboy's Carpet Care

Florida Lein Laws changed dramtically after 04 hurricanes. In short, a subcontractor MUST servce Notice To Owner in order to ever lein a property. Ahnd, since even then you can only lein the bond, they are rather useless. Bond leins will usually settle for about 10-20% of the total. Not to mention, court fees/cost, lawyers etc.

Then, if you do get a judgment, the builder just belly's up.

Each state has different laws regarding leining assests. Amechanics/methods lein only holds for a year, each re-do is $100 and you can only collect IF amd WHEN the property sells.

besides, that issue goes away the day i do. Residential is hardly ever a problem.
But thanks for the thought.