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Jeff,
I have had my business for 1.5 yrs now and it is in South Carolina. I carry $1m each occurrence with $2m aggregate liability. I also have $10,000 property for my equipment. My carrier is Nationwide (one of the few that would take on a new business), my premiums are $177 a quarter, with a deductible of $500. After my 2 yr mark, I may shop around again to compare rates.
Dan
Is there an easy way to identify suede from micro-fiber? I have done the micro-fibers, but haven’t come across actual suede yet. I have a job coming up next week and the client doesn’t know if it is suede or micro-fiber. Not sure if suede feels much different.
Dan
I find the whole encap thing very interesting. If this is the case, this allows us to further educate our customers on the difference between us and the soakers.
Wow!, That is a great account to have. I will need to touch base with the Embassy Suites here. I will also contact corporate to see if there are any possibilities for a national account…
Thanks
One more thing, what do you normally charge for residential in your area? I want to get a feel for the cost of living differences from there and here.
Dan
Welcome aboard. I think BNI is a good way to network. However, your situation does sounds a bit awkward with the Chem-Dry person. Not knowing what kind of relationships he/she has with the group on the carpet cleaning side, I would think it would be a good idea to go as a guest a couple of times and feel it out.
Also, the Chamber has been very good to me here. But, you must attend the business before hours, etc. By staying some what active with them, business will naturally start to come your way. Building relationships and trust in networking takes time, so don’t get discouraged if not alot comes your way early on in the network arena. It is great for long term growth of your company…
danbo
I have tried Franchise express a couple of times early on, but got a very little in return. I have just had some post cards made (Vistaprints.com). And I will be mailing these to specific targeted homes over the next several months. To help spread out the cost of postage, I will probably mail about 50 or so every week.
I am looking at purchasing a mailing list for only those homes valued over a certain limit in this area (say $400,00 and above) and use that list to make labels. In the sort run however, I can get good address info off of the County web site for those upscale neighborhoods that I know about. In time, I will ensure that I have gotten an individualized piece of info on us to every high dollar home in this area and at a manageable cost since I will mail these out little by little each week.
If you are interested in using Vistaprints, they are very reasonably priced (much lower than any printer here locally). I just gave them access to our AD site and had them edit the text on a specific post card that I wanted to use. Total cost, including their creative work, came to around $180 for 2,000 post cards, full color one side and with return info on the rear. I received them in about 5 days after the order.
If you are interested in mailing lists, D&D was about the least expensive out of about 12 that I checked out. They cost about $50 per 1,000 with a minimum of a $150 order.
Danbo 8)
I assume that you do several rooms at a time? Also, are they individually owned or is their carpet cleaning a corporate decision? Possible national account opportunities????
Guardsman has been good to me as well. For the most part, they are pretty easy jobs and pay much more than what I would normally get if the customer were paying…
You can get the green stripe stair pads from Corporate. Just let them know if you want the green striped ones or the regular ones.
We started offering house cleaning services as well (my wife handles most of that). It has been pretty good, and we have had quite a few customers hire us to do a complete house and carpet cleaning (mainly folks moving in or out). They like the fact that they can get a complete “One stop shop” type cleaning service…
I have used Money Mailer (similar to val-pack) and have received decent results (nothing earth shattering, but did get a little more that my investment back). The thing about Val-Pack to watch out for is that they do not limit the number of competitors that may be in a single mailing. If they put three or four different carpet cleaners in there, it just becomes a low-bidders war.
If there is just one competitor in there it may be worth trying. I am sure it has worked for some areas and not for others… You may have to try it to see if your area is receptive to it. The good thing is that it is new in your area, and the folks there may more inclined to check it out once it arrives in their mail.
Dan
