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I have been seriously considering offering a fabric protector guarantee in all of my pricing. Right now I am 50 dollars/ room up to 180 sq ft. If over 180 I charge 35 cents per sq ft. What I want to do is price a room at 65 per or 40 cents per square foot if over 180 square feet. For this price I will come and try to remove any spill the customer has for no additional charge. If I can not get the spot out I will refund all of the money the customer spend on the guarantee or 5 cents a square feet. I will pay for those extra trips from the extra money earned in the initial sale. Probably 75 dollars a trip to pay myself. Here is an example of what the money would look like.
100,000 square feet at the normal price would be 28,000 dollars. That would be 200 customers at 500 sq ft per customer. I average about 28 cents a sq foot when I average in my commercial jobs.
New price would be 40,000 for cleaning the same amount of carpet. The statistics say that 5 to 10 percent of the customers will use the guarantee. That means 20 customers would call me to fix their spots. That is 2000 dollars taken away from the extra money earned. If I could get out 0 spots I would refund 20 customers at 500 square feet 5 cents a square foot. Which is another 500 dollars12,000 – 2000 = 10000 in extra profit.
10,000 – 500 = 9,500 in extra profit.
Let me know what you think.
JamieIf the customer does not want the guarantee i will clean for them at the same prices I have now with no guarantee. I think I will only offer the guarantee.
Come up with at least five ways this can benefit the customer and you may have something. If not it just sounds like chem dry’s cheesy way of sales above service. They have had one that the carpet must be cleaned every six months and exclusions that are more worthless than carpet manufactures warranties. They do charge allot for allot of hype. We need to be sales oriented servicemen, not salesman alone. “Over serve and under sell”. This is the key. Serve them with protector because they will benefit from it. So will we!
Cleanfax, or one of the other industry mags, has an article about this in their current issue. Don’t know if this is where you got the idea or not. Either way, it is interesting. Just make sure the customer knows you will refund the protectant money and not replace their carpet.
I stole the idea from one of the magazines. I am a teacher, so I am very good at applying other peoples ideas to what I am doing. I wonder if anyone has tried anything like this before. I have only had about 2 spots that I could not get out after putting down fab pro. My experience is limited because I have only been in business for a little over 2 years.
I read it and it had me thinking as well. It is a good idea. I have a friend in another city that uses someone that will return if an accident happens for $5 if you get fabric protectant, instead of whatever your service call minimum is. That idea intrigued me too. I don’t think they had a guarantee though.
I have had a few spots that I couldn’t get out after applying protectant. Dog spots and coffee are the two that immediately come to mind. Customer “interference” (resolve?) could be at fault for any of these though. That would be another thing that could make the guarantee tough. If they try and treat a spot and set it in, you end up giving them money back whether or not it was the resolve or the protector failing. Also, a time limit would be required for the guarantee. Lot of things to consider…..
I too read the column in my latest issue of ICS and found it interesting.
If anyone would like to read it, follow this link:
http://www.icsmag.com/CDA/Articles/Column
That link will list available columns, however, it will require you to register in order to read the entire article.
I checked their copyright rules and can’t paste it here for free.
FYI, you can also subscribe to their ICS hard copy issue and receive it monthly. They have some pretty good information.
Dave,
Do I understand your post correctly – your friend uses someone else who will return to work on a customer’s difficlut spot for only $5.00?Mike
Yes, this carpet cleaner has a deal that if you get protectant with your cleaning, if a spot/spill happens, they will come out and clean it for $5. My buddy has a dog, and gets it for the reason that if his dog has an accident, they’ll come clean it for $5. Now, I don’t know if there are other stipulations (time limit, # of spots limited, one time revisit only, size of spot, etc), but that is how he explained it to me. I don’t remember if he had actually used them for the $5 re-visit yet or not, so who knows if bait/switch or “read the fine print that’s not covered” dirty tactics are in play.
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