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I will try to get a full report by the end of the weekend. Sorry it has taken so long. I just came back from my tour of duty in Arizona a week ago. I did not like what I saw out there and it will take a bit to figure it all out. We have only 5 operators in Arizona, and only 2 actually took the time to meet up with me over a 4 day stay (Thursday AM to Sunday PM) 3 of them are now behind in there payments, and that is probably the reason they seemed to miraculously fill there schedule up and had no time to meet. Maybe I am just good luck by gracing my presence in the state of Arizona and the phone rings off the hook when I am out there. The state is still being hit hard by the economy and it is effecting the operators. I saw new houses that were selling from the mid 300,000 now being sold for 89,000. I have one guy trying to sell that is so backwards in his thinking he wants me to buy the business from him for $18,000. By the way he has not signed the new contracts we sent out over a month ago and is now $1200 behind with me. For the most part we are in survival mode as a state owner, and the operators.
Dave is right about van space. It takes a lot of space for the equipment that you need to do just dryer vents, and even more for A/C ducts. I have owned a separate business that does dryer vent cleaning and I could not imagine trying to put all of the equipment into 1 van. We have 4 ladders just for the dryer vents alone. A dryer will only take 30 minutes to clean if you know what you are doing. The problem is that most companies have know idea what they are doing and in most cases can cause more damage and raise the risk of fires. This equates to more liability if you mess up. If I make a mistake and it cost me a couch or some carpet that is pretty minimal. If a house burns down do to my negligence it would be a disaster. As far as A/C ducts I talk most of the customers out of having them done. I rarely come across any Ducts that are half as bad as the scary pictures you see in advertisements. Dave also hit the nail on the head when he mentioned he Already got enough services on our plate that I am not marketing properly enough. I have not got into tile cleaning yet and the new market that it will open up. The reason is we are to busy with the others to start a new service. The dryer vents were around way before tile and grout cleaning was offered and we have to much invested in cutting back that business.
Here is a list I had. I don’t know what areas or cities you are targeting. Copy and paste the list in a word Document. There is a Replace tab that will let you replace any word in the document. I put Steve as the replace word so that all you have to do is click on replace. It will ask what word to find (Steve) replace with ( your City) then click replace all. This can be done for every city you are targeting. Once done copy and paste in keywords with google. I would check over the list to make sure they are the what you are looking for.
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Seal tile shower SteveAs Cody stated there are precautions that are associated with Ozone machines. If you do decide to purchase one don’t buy a cheep one. Home depot supply and a few other places sell them for $200-$300. These will break and stop working after a few months to a year. They don’t put out a high enough volume to work in large areas. A good ozone machine will run between $800-$1200. We rent ours out to customers for $85 a day/or job depending on our schedule, and convenience for picking it back up. We never leave it in an occupied house/rental. When using Ozone machines the place has to be vacant of all people and pets. If you do a lot of commercial work and rentals it can be a good revenue generator. We probably rent ours out 40-50 days of the year. We have had the same machine for the last 7 years and it just went in for service for the first time($347).
We are still in the process of getting the facebook in order. If I can suggest something it would be to share informative postings that can be cut and pasted to other social medias. I have been following a business for sometime now that does just that. They are a franchise called vent wizard. From what I take on the company they are very good at blasting press releases, blogs, and social medias with information. When I look at the info they submit I can tell that it is not the work of just the local owner. It looks to me that it is a cut and paste with some changes to the city. I have pulled up the same article that looks like it was locally written in several other cities and states. If Google is going to recognize this then we should be thinking of doing the same thing. The organic rankings will start to rise, and if done right we could have multiple rankings on the first page locally. Would love more input on this.
Ron,
I just read over what he has down for property management. What he is referring to is that he works for property management companies/apartment complexes. I work with about 8 different management companies and some manage rental homes, some apartments. The only thing that I saw that could be a conflict was janitorial service. I don’t know if he does the clean outs, or has a business that he networks with. If he was in AZ I would not have a problem with it. I think that the buisness go hand in hand sometimes. If it were a painting company or roofing I would the question it. That is just my opinion.
GregRon I talked with Mark today and will be looking into this web designer in the morning. The good news is he is in Florida. I will let you know what I find out.
Ron brings up some great points with this. I wish that I had re-read this post right before the phone conference. What we need is a list of the things that every new operator should have when buying and existing franchise. The example of quick books leads to other things. If I was to ever sell off some of my territory I always thought that I would sell a new set of equipment schedule A with it. This means that I have to sell for the price I want plus $14500 or what ever it is. I would do this because I am a state owner and know the importance of everything that it includes like new shirts, quick books, spotters, digital tape, ect… I would not want to buy him a years supply of 101, but I might want to reduce it down to 5 or so, If you would have asked me what I thought 3 years ago I would have said probably the basic $4500 package. I might have even tried to sell him all of my old equipment and bought new stuff for myself. Call me greedy, but if a guy was willing to pay more for the business I would have wanted to put it in my pocket, and not corporate. Now like I said that was how the operator in me would have felt. I think that if and when we do move forward with this we need to include some training to the operators who are looking to sell, or piece off territory. Show them how best to do so, and why turning over a plan to be successful will help them sell and possibly have better neighbors in the future. Weather you agree or not Ron I hope the response starts the conversation going
OK I spent 45 min. on the phone with a rep yesterday. I am now more confident then before. Don’t give this company a dime, or waste any time with this company. It is a multi level marketing company. Every representative has tried to recruit me. I am shocked that they would even ask after I let them know how flawed this company is. The sales rep makes 40% the rest goes to adzzoo. They do guarantee first placement on all these sites. What they don’t explain is that you may only show up a few times, and once your budget is gone (probably 1 click) you are gone. The landing page is horrible and leaves a lot to be desired. If you are looking for a web presence do it your self with Google Adwords. By the way they talk a great talk about how they get you on all of these other sites and AdWords does the same thing.
I have been using the water claw since the first time they came out. We have two sizes small and large. The small for doing urine spots and stain extractions. The large for doing flood work. I have seen almost every tool there is and by far I am still a believer in the claw. When you used the claw did you push down on the claw? This will get it to suck the moisture out of the pad and the backing. When ever I use the large I always do a quick extract with a wand first then follow with the claw. The last step is to go over with a wand again. The water claw will pull up water to the top and get the pad extracted very well. What it does not due is get the last surface moisture up. I would suggest as Cody stated leaving it on longer, or finishing it up with a few dry strokes of the hand wand. I had the chance to demo a $2500 extraction wand that was more like a small robot that you ride, and the water claw outperformed it hands down. With any new equipment it takes practice and patience to learn how to get the most out of it. By far you are ahead of the learning curve from posting on the Forum.
We are still old school and use the paper schedule that corporate sends out. All of the calls go to my office and I have Robin the office manager answer all calls during normal business hours. At night and on weekends they get forwarded to my wife. Our schedule gets crazy and jobs tend to add and move on a hourly basis. Robin types up the schedule every night and sends me an email. In the morning she finalizes it and prints out a copy for all the vans and myself. Again she sends me an updated email. I use a blackberry and always have the schedule at my finger tips. If there are changes she send me updated schedules throughout the day. I know that there are more updated ways then on paper, but I like to be able to flip around and see what is expected, and what we did on any given day. She uses the schedule book to mark off invoices as she enters them in to our accounting programs. This way nothing gets slipped through the cracks Hopefully.
Just a quick reminder of the power of facebook. When I came to the office I had a message on facebook for a job. She wanted a quote from me on some upholstery and an area rug cleaned. She sent me an instant message on Facebook.
Now for the disclaimer
WARNING * WARNING* WARNING
If you set up a fan page it should be used for marketing and sending info out. Overdoing the facebook post will actually turn people off. It is best to post Pictures/Videos and helpful tips. Exchanges that are of a business nature are great also. Anything that gets posted goes out to all of the fans. That means that they see every time you are building a barn in Farmville or playing Mafia wars ect. ect. I have some business that we became fans of that were sending to much stuff out. It was filling up the pages and looked like a giant add forum. I have blocked them out. I due ask my customers if they are on facebook, and to check us out. This has been going well so far.Loren sorry to disappoint you but I was referring to the large bottles. Your cost is actually $3.77 each on the large spotters. You need to ask yourself why you are selling them to the stores. If the answer is to make a new revenue in selling spotters then I would try to sell for more. If the answer is to really become a household name in your area I would sell for less. If this is a small family store, or a local carpet store then yes a larger profit would be fine. When I was doing my research on this I was looking at a major grocery chain store called Nugget Market. They were just in the news for making Forbes top companies to work for. They are a high end grocery chain. They would never stop selling resolve, due to that being a staple low cost product. They have very good margins on the product and the manufacture promotes it with TV, Radio, and newspaper. If you are to high then people are not going to buy do to competitive pricing. By coming in higher then the lowest and less then the most expensive it gives a broader market share. Once again I would sell it at my cost just to get it on the shelf if I could. I want that logo in front of all those women walking down the aisle. If you were to look at our closest competitor in that kind of market it would be Folex and our product works better, and more important to the consumer it looks better. Think about the satisfaction of every carpet cleaner in your area seeing that on the shelf.
This is an example of what resolve is going for from Lowe’s
Resolve 32 Oz. Spot & Stain Carpet Cleaner Item #: 102573 | Model #: 97402 I Price $5.88
Folex is more in the $7.99 rangeI did look into this last year. It is not dead, but I have been very busy and don’t have the time to set it up. For me it was something that they wanted it by the pallet and I would have to fill and deliver. With what you are doing it should be much easier. I am assuming the store is in your area. If this is correct then you cans sell as much as you want. My issue is that it would cover multiple territories and I had to get permission from everyone, and if I go through with it I would get it in writing. You will have to sell them for 35% less to the store so that they can hold their markup share of 35%. When I do it I would sell for around $5.19 per. This would give it a retail price of $6.99 per bottle. Before you get down on your profit margin on this look at the upside. They are paying you to advertise for you. This will be great branding of your business. You may be able to add an address sticker with your number to the bottle as well. You will have to buy a unique upc code, and put them on every bottle if they are scanning them, but again it is cheap and easy to do. This will run less then $50 to have them printed a good site would be http://www.barcodes-usa.com or any other bar code reseller. Just google bar code for sale. I also would try to set up demo days where I would show up with free spotter bottles and give them out as samples. Once again this is all about advertising and little with making money on the bottles for me. Any questions call me. I would be glad to go over all the info I found out when looking it to this.
I have been working on this for a day now, and it has been great. I was able to get a facebook tag on my landing page. I have also set up a link to my landing page with facebook. I will try incorporating a newsletter to the facebook page. I do a lot of commercial work and some of the fans that we have are both property managers and portfolio managers. This is keeping me in front of them all of the time.
