“Vintage Destroyed Washed”….Furniture?

The latest style in jeans is to purchase them softened, worn, faded, and actually torn.   These “Vintage Destroyed Washed Jeans” are so popular that it can be difficult to find jeans that are not in such condition, especially in stores that cater to the youth market.

However, you can be certain that this style would not be considered to be attractive or desirable in furniture fabrics!

I recently had a discussion with a cleaner who was asked to clean denim furniture that had been exposed to sunlight, water, and mold damage.  While his primary concerns were how to clean the fabric in such a way as to remove the water stains and mold, I steered the conversation to the most important part of the issue:

For complete article, please visit…
http://www.ecleanadvisor.com/public/936.cfm

Simplify Your Upholstery Cleaning System – [Part #1]

One of the primary reasons carpet cleaners shy away from upholstery cleaning (despite the fact that they usually call themselves “__________ Carpet and Upholstery Cleaners” is that upholstery cleaning has many more variables than carpet cleaning, and therefore making it a bit more difficult to create a simple, easy to follow cleaning system for  upholstery than it is for cleaning carpet.

And, while that is true, there are some things you can do…

For complete article, please visit…
http://www.ecleanadvisor.com/public/930.cfm

Not All Upholstery Is Worth Cleaning!

(Don’t Waste Time and Money on Cheap Furniture)

I recently had a discussion with a lady who was preparing to have a sofa reupholstered.  The old fabric was worn and faded, and surely not worth having cleaned.

But neither did the lady want to replace the sofa.  She rightly noted that the furniture itself was solid and well made, and only needed new fabric.   She so loved this piece of furniture that she intended to keep it for a lifetime.   She also felt, based on some shopping she had done, that she could never find another sofa so well made.

She is going to spend much more to reupholster this fabric today than the piece of furniture cost her when she originally purchased it!

Conversely, I also recently noted sofas for sale for only a few hundred dollars.

Such furniture might not last more than a few years before falling apart.  But many consumers who are price oriented and who do not think ahead when they buy are filling their homes with furnishings that cannot be described as anything other than cheap.

What does this mean to you, the “Fine Fabric Care Specialist“?

Customers who will pay a fair price for taking care of their carpet may NOT see the same value in your upholstery cleaning service!

The investment of time, products, and skill in cleaning upholstery fabrics is such that some cleaners struggle with the fact that they can’t seem to get paid enough to make upholstery cleaning as profitable as carpet cleaning.  Its easy to say that you should just “raise your prices”, but if you do so without recognizing that some furniture can be replaced for not much more than you might have to charge to clean it, you will likely become frustrated with your prospects objections to your pricing.

You need to find customers such as the lady that I know who is having her furniture reupholstered.   People who see their home furnishings as a long term investment, and who are more concerned with décor than function are very often your best prospects for “fine fabric care services”, as well as related carpet, rug, and hard surface care in their homes.

When you seek to establish your pricing for “fine fabric care”, bear in mind what your service is worth, and what profit you deserve.   That price will be one that will be very well received by the type of customer who values their belongings, and wants to preserve their investments for years to come.

MYTH : Does High Quality Always Beats Low Price

You will become frustrated, and finally, very bitter, if you believe this myth. You will waste valuable time and energy trying to convince unqualified prospects to spend more money than they expect to for a level of service they neither desire, appreciate or can afford.

If everyone bought quality over price, all restaurants would sell steak and lobster and all car dealers would sell Rolls-Royce automobiles. You’ve probably also noticed that McDonalds doesn’t sell prime rib dinners at a reduced price; they sell production line hamburgers.

If you want to sell a high value, high price service, you must market it to people who are willing to pay for it, rather than try to sell your service to those who won’t appreciate, recognize or pay a higher price for premium service. If you’re still not convinced that some people will never be prospects for your service, consider this example:

You are on vacation & your rental car has a flat tire. What good would it do the tire salesman to tell you that his highest price tire will last for several thousand miles more of use than his cheapest one? Matter of fact, his additional sales efforts will just irritate you.

In this situation does this attitude on a your part prove you to be uninformed or just plain cheap? No. You simply don’t require the highest quality product in this case. Think about this the next time you get a price objection from someone moving out of an apartment who just needs any cleaning job to get their security deposit back.

On the other hand, would you pay more for a tire for your own car? Probably. Or, what if you had the flat late at night and one store offered to send someone out to change the tire at your hotel? You would pay more for quality if it was important to you; as you would also pay more for a higher degree of service.

REMEMBER THIS:

#1. People will only pay a higher price for your service if that is their buying style and if they value their property enough to invest in high quality work.

#2. Quality is sometimes hard to measure, but service isn’t! Every one of your competitors will say that they do a quality job. The problem is that you can’t measure quality as easily as you can measure service! Make sure that you can explain all of the things that you do that your competition doesn’t do, or charges extra for.

If this extra service is meaningless to your prospect, don’t waste his or your time any further; this person simply doesn’t qualify to be one of your customers.

Response to Last Weeks FAQ

A comment on last weeks CleanTip:
From: Mark Violand
Subject: Re: Pembertons CleanTip – Customers Asking for Price Cuts?

“Some of my commercial & residential customers are starting to ask for price cuts“. So, as you suggested in your CleanTip article about reducing the service offered is excellent advice.

However if the cleaner truly does follow the S100 Standard for cleaning and truly does dry soil removal prior to cleaning and suggests to his customer that to save money — why don’t you do the pre-vacuuming?

HAHAHAHAHAHA, have you seen the vacuums people use in their homes? I can guarantee you 50% of the vacuums in our customers home do not work, ask me how I know?

I know because I inspect them every time I go into a home inspecting a carpet for shedding or loss of texture.

People don’t vacuum as they should, they are too busy. You know the rule of thumb, one time per week per occupant in the home (and that includes dogs and cats).

Either the filter is ready to blow, the brush is worn, the belt is broken or the vacuum is simply not suitable for deep, thorough dry soil removal like a good commercial vacuum that is meant to handle the heavy soil.
can do.

One idea that I would suggest (as I have done), is that the more furniture you have removed from the areas we are cleaning means the faster we can clean, and the less it will it cost you.

Mark Violand
IICRC Certified Senior Carpet Inspector
IICRC Approved Instructor
CFI Inspector/Technical Certification
ITS HardSurface Inspector (wood, laminate and resilient)
CTEF Ceramic Tile Inspector

FAQs – My Customers are Asking for Price Cuts, What Can I Do?

Q – Hey Jim,
Some of my commercial & residential customers are starting to ask for price cuts because of the current financial situation. I only factor in a modest profit margin to start with & really can’t afford to cut my price.

What can I do?

A – Trust me, you are not the only one facing the same situation. With the recession, and budgets being tight, customers, including yourself, want to find a way to get a better deal.

In this current economic climate, many of us would find to find a way to knock off a few dollars, go the extra mile and hope this would translate into more work down the line.

But this would be a serious business mistake.

Here is something I learned from surviving years in business. If you are asked to reduce your price, you need to make a corresponding reduction in the value you provide.

It is that simple! Reducing service hours will translate into cost reduction. However, cost very carefully to make sure you are reducing cost areas that are labor intensive rather than product intensive.

Only the reduction of labor costs will allow realistic price reductions.

How Do Your Stats Look?

Hi Jim,

I share the following in case it would help your CLEAN TIP, blog, or a workshop. It shows; where my business came from in 2008, that I must do the job right, and what I need to “sell” when at the job.

71% were repeat clients
26% from referrals
3% new clients from the phonebook
Average per customer $306.85 (minimum service charge $150, .40 sf for carpet clng)

52% carpet cleaning
11% upholstery clng
11% carpet repair
11% odor control
11% floor care
4% color repair

I did not use a marketing program last year (and still had a decent year) but plan to go back to the postcards as these have always paid off with one job, (less than $100 to make, print, and stamp my own) AND I will not be in the phonebook this year and from now on. As recent CLEAN TIPS have used the word “trust”, in our current world of fruits & nuts, “I” don’t know if I can trust most of the strangers calling from the phonebook. Besides, my muscle and bones are getting older and I feel that my clientele is well established. I can survive without the 3% by using the postcards again constantly putting my name in front of my client’s face that will remind them to have me and/or refer me.

This decision to discontinue the phonebook is partly from the suggestion made by YOU to keep such statistics as above, the recent CLEAN TIPS, and the YOU TUBE video you sent (thanks). I know that it is the right thing to do.

AGAIN I thank you for your commitment to the industry and helping the “rookies” to make it in this business.

See ya soon,
Ken
—————————-
Hi Ken

Thank you so much for the statistics. They parallel the experiences that other cleaners like you have shared with me over the past year.

Of course, there are not a lot of cleaners like you, so it has been a unique minority of owner operators who have built their businesses “a mile deep an inch wide”, rather than the majority who have built their businesses a “mile wide and an inch deep”.

Those latter types have not done as well as “your type” has.

Jim

Is Your Service "Worth It"?

Most marketing programs designed for the cleaning industry at the end of the last century (seems odd to read that, doesn’t it?) focus on helping cleaners convince prospects to pay a higher price for cleaning services than they expect to pay.

These programs have often helped cleaners who would otherwise not survive in the competitive world of cleaning. With higher prices, these cleaners have met professional and personal financial goals and many have become leaders in their market places.

I’ve noticed, however, that some cleaners have learned to “market” a higher price, but are not DELIVERING a higher value. This short sighted practice results in declining repeat business, and little, if any referral business.

How can you be sure you are not “overselling and “underdelivering”? Here are a few points to consider:

Do you list several “cleaning steps” that might not truly be beneficial to your customer, or should be expected without “selling them” (“soil level testing”, “demonstration of (add on service), etc).

Do you list cleaning steps in your sales material, but fail to do them?

Look for an article exploring this trend and how it can hurt your business in an upcoming article in Cleanfax Magazine.

Ok Jim, I’m Interested