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I would like to see everyone in our company quote all of your cleaning jobs with stain protector included in the price. Try this for one week and watch your income rise. If you are quoting a sofa, “Maam, to clean and stain protect your sofa, we charge $XXX.XX.” or “Maam, to clean and stain protect your LR, DR and Hall, we charge $XXX.XX. I have never had anyone ask me if I wanted a new oil filter installed on my van during an oil change. Why? Because it is included in the price!
True your average ticket price would rise but are you accounting for all the jobs you lost because you were too expensive? Consumers like options. If you included protector in your pricing you would be pricing yourself out of the market. Give the consumer the option; don’t force it upon them.
I lose less than 2% of my jobs do to price. I lose nearly 10% because I can’t fit them in. I’m not concerned about being too expensive.
You are right in thinking so. I have increased my charges by $25/hour within the last 6 months. I am the second highest priced company in my area, generating $150/productive hour on most jobs. My goal of my posting was to try to motivate others in becoming more profitable by simply trying something that I do every day. It has worked for me from the beginning when I was begging for work and it still works today.
Great idea Brian. I usually do that in higher end homes but maybe should try on all jobs. Another way to sell protector is to always ask them if they would like protector reapplied after cleaning. I also show them them the kleenex with protector on it and dump some water on and that usually does the selling for me.
Had a customer call because her child had done his business on the carpet. We cleaned it about a month ago and had applied fabric protector. Well, I couldn’t get the stain out. In fact here is a question for all of you. I got the brown out but what was left was red! I thought for sure red dye remover would finish the job but was mistaken. I’ve never seen this before and was wondering if anyone else had and if there was something that would work on this type of red stain. Of course this is on berber carpet. There were a few other spots that came right out. The ones that didn’t come out had been treated with our HB spotter solution. The ones that came out had not been treated with anything. The spots that didn’t come out were the first ones and the largest. Any help would be appreciated. I will also post this in another section since this doesn’t have much to do with the fabric protector. But back to the protector, I was very disappointed that it didn’t work again.
Just a guess. The customer may have over scrubbed the stains that didn’t come out, wearing off the stain protector. The stain then wicked back to the unprotected carpet. The red dye removal may fade the spot away as time passes.
i have found some customers have totally unrealistic expectations of what the protector can do.
There are many factors that affect our success as we all know. I’m pretty sure that I only get about half the truth from my customers about what the stain is, how long it’s been there and what they have used on it.
One of the things I remind my technician of all the time is to shake the product before they use is. A lot of the ‘good stuff’ settles in the jug.
7 weeks ago, on this thread, I made a suggestion to include stain protector in your pricing. Has anyone tried this that has not priced this way in the past? Since my post 7 weeks ago, I have had one customer out of 150 ask me what the price would be without protector. I told them it doesn’t make any difference, it’s the same price. They said, “Oh, okay”. In the past 8 years, I was unable to sell protector to less than 10 customers. Since I began my company 8 years ago, I have applied over 1000 gallons of stain protector. If my calculations are correct, that is a NET PROFIT of over $200,000 in 8 years or $25,000/year. If you are not selling protector to every customer, I suggest you try this approach. These numbers were achieved primarily with a 1 man/van operation
Brian, what do you charge per sq. foot. I’m leaning toward that starting Jan 1st.
Brian- I guess i’m confused. How do you know what you’re profiting on stain protector if you’re including it in your price?
I charge approx. 10 cents/sqft. Sometimes less. Evan, I add the sqft cleaning charge together with my sqft stain protector charge, using the sum as my “all inclusive price”.
Don’t be too concerned how much some one else can charge for the same service in a different part of the country. Take a close look at your area, you overhead and your profit expectations. Where I live the avg cost of a house is $300,000 Where Kevin lives its $700,000, we live 100 miles apart and our cleaning prices are different. Heaven’s Best is a high end cleaning company offering a high end service catering to high end clients. Our prices should reflect that. (Not all high end clients live in high end homes. And vice versa.)
Make sure your prices are in line with the client you are trying to service and your area.
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