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Do you find that you get lower response in the winter to your marketing efforts with commercial work? In other words, does it mirror residential response rates?

We've never made a concerted commercial marketing push in the winter, but I'd love to keep working on it this year and next through the cold months.

Those of you who live in tropical climates need not make any snide remarks about the "hinterland"!

But on my profile, I see I have a "Warning Level: 0%"

I haven't seen this on any other profile.

What are you insinuating

To those of you that use a certified pile lifter I have a question. The brush comes in two different types. It comes as a vegetable or nylon variety. I currently have a vegetable brush on my machine. Does anyone know the difference between the vegetable and nylon and which is better ???

Lee

situation I thought I would bring to the board brotheren:

I've had a couple of requests for cleaning area rugs. Honestly, the few rugs I have encountered so far, I simply cleaned the way I've cleaned the other carpet--vacuum, spray with my solution (i'm an encap-hydrox junkie), work in with my procaps machine, done. However, doing some reading today and I see that there is a whole different world in that regard--carpet badgers, pile lifting, etc. So here is what I'm wondering.

Is there a low tech method for getting rugs clean? I'm not ready to go out and buy a Badger (not enough volume yet). I think from a couple of things I've read, flipping the rug over and vacuuming with my beater bar vac will get a lot of dirt out of the rug that otherwise would stay trapped in there. I am not sure which is better--encap using a brush by hand (i would use the soft brushes on the zebra spot brush) or HWE. Or if I should just pass until I have other equipment. Rug cleaning is obviously lucrative and I don't really want to pass on the business, but if there isn't a low tech method that any of you guys can speak on, I'd rather pass it on to make sure the customer gets a clean rug.

I wanted to get opinions on the best encapsulation cleaner.

We've been running a promotion for 24 month interest free financing. It's been very popular. The offer ends TODAY (Friday 11/30) at 5 pm e.s.t.

Residential work has been great for us. Pays the bills, brings us exciting challenges (pet stains, traffic lances, you name it) but I enjoy commercial cleaning most of all.

I am grateful.

As it stands commercial work accounts for maybe 30% of our business. I'd like to flip that around next year and have a bulk of our work be commercial with some residential.

I don't mid working at night, we get the most repeats from commercial work (a lot of our residential are move outs or people that seem to have their carpets cleaned way too infrequently) I love the straight forward work of commercial and I'd also like to build auxiliary services like janitorial, office cleaning, etc.

I'm assuming (yes, a dangerous thing to assume....) that most of you here are doing primarily commercial.

What are the best steps to building commercial work?

Most of what we get now is Google which is awesome, but I'd like to be more proactive.

Postcards? Letters? Phone calls?

Thanks in advance for the feedback guys!

    I cleaned 4000 sq feet two nights ago, did another 4000 last night and I've got one more go around of 4000 to do tonight. There is a learning curve - thankfully it's not too steep!

Things I learned from my first night of heavy use - every pass you make does not have to be too dry to begin with and too wet at its end! It just seemed that way!

Also, I'm not using more prespray than before, it's just that I'm cleaning more area than before per night (about double!).

Definitely still a newb, but I'm enjoying the results and the productivity increase!

I am intrested in starting a carpet maintenence program but I am not sure how to price it out. Does anybody out there have any ideas?