Clean It Up
UK Floor Cleaning Forum => Carpet Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: vangaurd on June 20, 2007, 10:13:17 am
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2 jobs yesterday,
first job 15 milea away
the customer said, oh my carpet just needs freshend up
got there, the carpet was bleached all over
from the dog, urine stains that had been there for over 4 years.
walked away,
2nd job carpet was trashed, due to 7 students living together
this morning called to a job, my your early sd customer iam due at 9am
oh no you said 2pm as i have to go to yoga!
i will get someone else she said!
weres that rope i keep in the shed i may use it!
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Van
thats why you go and seem them, takes all those problems away for an extra hour a day.
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I can beat that Tony! I went all the way to Ryton - way out of the area I prefer to work in. Job was worth £100. Took 45 mins to get there. I was 5 mins from her house when she called to cancel. She said "she could not get anyone to cover her shift". I asked if she wanted to make another appointment which took her off guard! She stuttered and said oh no ive left my diary at work. So I said in other words no you dont and she then put the phone down on me! Niiiicccceeee
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Don`t you just love em......... ::)
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My girlfriend just laughs when I threaten to put dog turds thru their letterboxes!!! Problem is where will I get all that dog crap from?
Maybe thats going a tad too far?
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We send invoices for £99.99 per missed apointment. Yes they go crazy - real crazy with us but after much battling thay do pay in the end. ;D Easy money.
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Yes we have had shire of annoying customers like that, so what we do now is when ever we go to price a job, when they agreed with the price, we ask for a deposited up front, that way they make sure they will be at home when we turn up. and avoid disappointment.
Bosh
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I know the feeling, priced up a 3 bed flat on Monday, cheap trashed carpet inhabited by 3 students moving out, 25 miles away, so 50 mile round trip.
£150 job, reduced down to £115 if he signed up and booked a date which he duely did.
Got a call from him today, found someone who will do it for £50 :o
Explained that it will probably be a slap dash job at that price but he says hes going with them anyway.
Think I will add a disclaimer to the bottom of forms that if they cancel for no valid reason then they will incur a penalty.
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i think these things come in patches, i go months without a hitch and then bang! in the last 2 weeks i must have had about 5 cancelled jobs, some good excuses and some obvious lies, hey ho, there is always some paperwork to do or sit in the sun for a change!!
colin
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Does anyone have an example of a survey form with a cancelation section on it please?
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Hi Colin,
Hows things?
Cheers
Justin
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hey justin, didn't realise that was you, yes very well with me, as above reply, up and down but mainly up, teething trouble with the new machine but sorted now, hope your well and keeping busy, call anytime.
colin
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Does anyone have an example of a survey form with a cancelation section on it please?
How does: "You cancel, I break your arms and legs" sound..?
Only joking :)
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I wont even bother posting the details about a problem customer i had last week, but lets just say it ended up costing me 4 trips to the house, 3 and a half hours work time, around 20 phone calls which involved the customer, the daughter and the son in law and a cousin ???
The threat of trading standards :o
And a full refund on my part, and they still were not happy >:(
But you know who i have decided to blame = (myself)
And you should do the same, if you dont want these customers (and who does?)
Change your marketing, also concentrate your efforts on past customers and be selective only chase the jobs that you know you wanna go back to, and allways quote first
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Tony last time I saw you posting you had more work than what to do with, it's funny and I used to be the same villain. When I was full with work my marketing machine stopped rolling and hey presto after the feast came the famine. Now I do steady marketing all year round nothing too hard and tedious and the phone keeps ringing.
Shaun
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Booked a job in last friday it was a smallish rug the customer was an 87 year old man he also looked after his son who is handicaped so i gave him the price £30.So i booked him in the monday afternoon when his son goes to a day centre the guy couldnt of been nicer.Turned up on the monday the old guy opens the door dont want it done the daughter says i cant afford they prices iam a pensioner i was about to say could you not of phoned and let me know and he just slammed the door in my face. charming
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which proves my point, why book £30 jobs over the phone ??? dont get me wrong i aint one of these people to slag you of because i have done it myself.
But theres no money in it "FACT"
Untill you realise it you will allways struggle
You will get let down from time to time
You will have days when your van wont start
You will have days or even weeks when your ill
you will have days when the machine packs up and as well as costing you a days work it could easily cost a couple hundred to put right.
You will get days, some people get weeks where there is no work, the phone just dosent ring.
And if everything does go right and you do actually take the grand old sum of £30 you will have to take into consideration your advertising costs and time be it yp or flyer or whatever. The ware and tear on equipment, the diesle for the van and the ware and tear on the van. Becuase if you keep driving it back and forth to £30 jobs it will within a few months be asking you for new brakes and a new clutch and new tyres and the unfortunatly do not cost £30.
You have gotta pay the line rental on whatever phone they are calling you on, and you should be paying public liability, treatment and van insurance.
Then you gotta put chems in the machine.
If you sat down and worked it out it would probably cost you money to do the job for £30 ???
So you would need to charge a bit more just to just to turn a profit, so say £40-£50? but then what happens when you waste a morning like you have with this customer, any profit you thought you made goes out the window.
I charge £59 minimum charge, and everytime i go to one i kick myself for it because i know i havent earned a penny >:( the trouble is what do you charge because if you took time to work it out on these small jobs you need to charge £80 -£100 to remove say just a small wine stain to be profitable.
And try telling people that there 20 second drunken mistake is gonna cost them £100 and your fighting a loosing battle :(
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By Joe Red, I think you've got it. Its true minimum charge jobs are a pain but I only do them if I am quiet or I try and get them to have other things done as well.
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And the real reason they are a pain is because they can lead to anything.
Today your the herro removing the red wine stain after a drunken night, and tommorow you find out he's the md of a big firm and your quoteing for a 12,000 square foot office block.
Bet you wish you just done it for £30 now ;D
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Thats why they are worth doing me thinks, anyway must go.
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I could have minimum charge £50-£60 but i would be sitting on my arse a lot.The job i was talking about was less than 2 miles away so whats that cost in diesel as to the other costs wear and tear of van brakes ect what a load of crap thats what your vans there for.I also do window cleaning got the odd £20 house here and there so what would you sugest not bother doing them to save a few miles on the van.Some of the prices you charge down south are a complete joke £250 for 2 hrs work is that the norm or do yous always get that i get a few jobs like that my self but not very often.As for my over heads advertising yellow pages and local paper gets about 10 jobs a week thats plenty for me considering 60% of my work is still domestic&commercial window cleaning.
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Red carpet i think i read in one of your earlier posts you got a new van and truckmont good for you the only thing i would say is after 6 months and if you need new brakes and a clutch i think you have to look at your driving mate.
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Well done Red, now you see what you are really worth.
People cant make a profit doing rugs or anything for £30.00. Wear and tear, diesel etc etc very well put.
Custy rang yesterday 'Can I have a quote to clean my house?' 'Well How big are the rooms' 'Dont know' 'Well we dont give quotes over the phone really, can we come and look to see it' 'No. Everyone else has quoted' I said 'Well you had better let them do it then' and I put the phone down.
They dont want the job done properly, just cheaply.
Murky
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Murky
And what do you do, when you want a service or task carried out or consider buying something ?
What you do, is the same as 90% of the population, you phone around, or trot around for prices, then you make an informed decision. THAT IS WHAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE DO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If you want to work part time, like so many others and kid yourself on, that you are " above " the busy guy, who averages £60 to £90 per job, but gets through 2 - 3 of these per day and is happy in his work then that's your choice.
Another point that's frequently raised, is the presumption that QUALITY COMES WITH A HIGHER COST and this is certainly NOT the case with many, in this industry.
Big machine ..................Big price..................does not necessarily mean Better result !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Have to go, as I have a regular client to do, light coloured carpets throughout the house, so they get cleaned three times per year, now in my 10th year with her.
Four bedrooms, hall stair landing, about two and a half hours and I only charge £120, but, I do it three times per year and have gained at least a dozen other clients through this client.
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Three jobs yesterday 2 no access for t/m,1 builders had not finished(why they could not ring ::)).
First job this morning kitchen fitters not finished unfortunately this lady got it with both barrels why wait till I turn up to do the job such things as telephones to change day >:( >:( >:(
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Quite right too.
I would charge about the same, you have regular money coming in, its generally a maintenance programme. Thats regular work, the best kind.
I have a few regular custys now, doing things for them 3 or 4 times a year sometimes, keeping in touch all the time.
You go back to a good garage all the time because they dont rip you off and give a good service.
Or I can go to 'Kerbside Motors' and not know if he knows what he is doing or actually done anything at all.
Murky
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I have just had a cancellation for this morning, 3 piece and lounge carpet, first one I've had in ages, luckily it was quite local so no real hassle.
Steve, interesting your comment about not being able to get access for your TM. John Kelly gave me an excellent and impressive test drive of his Prowler TM yesterday, a mighty fine machine and the airflow on it is phenomenal and instantaneous.
My only lingering reservation with any TM is on the access side of things. How many jobs do you get where you need to get the porty out?
I did a hotel last week and had to go through 6 sets of fire doors and up two flights of stairs to get to a bedroom an hallway carpet.
Anyway, enough of this sitting around, I've got another 2 jobs to do today!!! :P ;D
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Lionheart
One was in Fenham where all the hospital staff park so even with the portable it was a canny hike back to the house going back on Saturday.
The other was a flat in Kingston park where there was no road leading to the door just an alley between garages could have done it if I really wanted to 200ft of hose would have got there but its a bit rough up on the darkside ;D ;)
Never get the porty out as the t/m makes you lazy :-[
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just my opinion but i think there are too many people living in cloud cuckoo land, we all get outrageous prices now and again but some like to tell it that it is the norm for them and quite frankly, i don't believe them. i have done work for some very well off people and they still turn their noses up if the price is to high, everyone wants a good price no matter what money they have and the customers who will pay the earth are few and far between.
colin
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CBT
your right
i have always tried to give value though offers, and some really good ones from free rooms to free stain pro. but as you say it pound notes that people respond to. offers in money terms work better.
respect
Ian Harper
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Colin in Blackpool does regularly get the best prices mind you he does an excellent job no short cuts what so ever but I bet his average job ticket will be £200 and he goes out to quote all of his jobs however big or small.
Offering discounts and money off doesn't have to sound so bad if you exagerate the price of the 1st carpet, ie to enhance the 1st carpet to be cleaned and give value for money try offering,
"have your carpet cleaned and scotchguard protected and get another carpet cleaned for free"
This increases the value of your 1st carpet say as a figure £90 then you have the oppertunity to sell scotchguard on the 2nd carpet say at £30 = £120 for a job and if you wanted you could then offer every carpet cleaned and scotchguarded at half price thereafter.
Upselling is the key to bigger tickets and less jobs and with a TM it is made for it.
Shaun
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thanks Shaun for your'e vote of confidence
CONFIDENCE thats an interesrting word!
i always go and see the job im quoting for, but i do have a minimum charge
if the job is only small ,it is really easy to upsell once your client has met you and feels CONFIDENT in your abillities
some people cant be bothered to go and look at the job, then complain that the client did'nt want to pay
price shoppers nearly always back out when i say i need to look at the job
genuine people who want the job doing properly will nearly always book the job
but only if it has been explained properly and they feel they can trust you to provide and excellent service
or when the feel CONFIDENT.
p.s really busy here in blackpool
my best year ever so far....i love my truckmount
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quoted by someone else
"it is far easier to reduce a high price than to ask for more when you start low"
Shaun
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you are Sooooooooooooooooooooooo right
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all i was trying to say is that i don't believe that anyone, however good at sales you are, can get top prices on every job, some like to give the impression that they do, if you haggle for top dollar and can't get it and walk away, i can accept that, if you are a door-stopper and wont leave until you get a sale, good luck to you, i can't do that.
colin
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my quote take less than 20 minutes, they are informative but straight to the point, nobody says you cant haggle but some guys just DO NOT CHARGE ENOUGH
it is only their business that they are harming
too many people go in with i want to be "Your best Mate" attitude and activley cut their prices just to get the job
thats fine as long as you make a good profit on the job and dont cut corners to reflet the price, if it aint worth doing, don't do it
this "i cant get those prices where i live" is a load of bull
its all down to confidence,
chemical and machine suppliers don't charge people in less in certain parts of the country, so neither should we.
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i agree with every word you say, what i am saying is that you can't get top dollar every job as some like to give the impression they do.
colin
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Colin, I understand your comment but I think a lot of it is to do with the market we as cleaners work in. It is no different in someone always getting "top dollar" than someone else continually getting £25 a room or whatever is their norm.
Their market makes the pricing what it is.
I do get top dollar on every job but that is because of the market I target, nothing to do with the monies I charge.
I am fortunate that I dont have to sell the way you have suggested but again that's because of my market.
My suggestion to those who don't get the amount of monies for the cleaning they do is to change the market.
Cleaning is cleaning is cleaning. Who you clean for is the challenge.
Also I have found in teaching, not only in the cleaning field but other things too that most people get what they ask for. What I have found with cleaning is that most cleaners simply dont ask for what they want. They ask for what they think the "clean" is worth in their own minds.
Too many people on here are interested in what someone else charges for cleaning a carpet for example. Who gives a monkeys what anyone else charges?
We should charge what WE want not what anyone else is charging. If I charged the same as anyone else then I would be moaning too about not charging enough. I know the above is a sweeping statement but I am sure you get my point, best, Dave.
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dave, i understand exactly what you are saying, if you are selling rolls royces you don't expect to sell them at fiesta prices, the people who buy a rolls expect to pay the rolls price but when i see silly prices like 'i would charge £350 for a lounge' in a 'normal' 3-bed semi someone is, as it were, having a laugh. i get airiated (is that a real word?) that some will be reading that sort of thing and thinking that somehow they are doing something wrong, i think we should get our feet on the ground sometimes and realise that you can't get top prices all the time.
colin
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Dave/Colin
I get the feeling you guys are talking past each other because you both have a different interpretation of the phrase 'top dollar' and the context in which you are using it
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A long time ago some bright spark came up with the 'bell curve theory'. That you could plot the IQ of a sample of people and the results would neatly fit the shape of a bell, with an IQ of a 100 covering the centre section. Plebs and morons on the left and einstien types on the right.
Why am I telling you this rubbish?
Well someone told me that you can fit anything on a bell curve.
So think about potential clients. You get a few that are really really cheap, more who will pay something going on to average. The vast majority in the middle, the bread and butter, pay average.
But on the right of the curve you get those who pay a little more, quite a lot in fact. Then you get those who pay way above average and decreasingly so are those who pay just stupid money.
Where on the curve do you put your energies into?
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Mike, you need to ask? Best, Dave.
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Dave you are right on the money, 8 years ago I changed from £20 per room and £95 a full house including a 3pc suite to probably 3 times that amount overnight, I lost about 75% of my customers BUT the other 25% paid for my loss of income and I quickly se about gaining new customers who would pay my new price.
At no time was I ever out of pocket, when I advertised I got a slightly less job reurn but at 3 times the price, my ethics on trying to buy a customer and hopefully get a referal or repeat work to make a profit on the advertising was blown out of the water as I found I could make a profit on 1 customer alone out of that 1 job so advertising then became effective.
3 average jobs at £30 = £90
1 average job at £100 = £100
and it is easier finding 1 job than 3 and if you go out to see the customer as aposed to running everywhere for your 3 jobs then you have approx 9/10 chance of booking them anyway, took me a long time to work this out as all of my previous employers had and still do quote over the phone.
Shaun
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mike, i feel like i am hitting my head against a bell or something!!!! of course we would all like to be hitting the big payers and getting loads of money, ALL i am saying is that very few will hit that target all the time, i think that for every post someone puts on here saying they have had a bonanza price for a job they will have had 50 jobs that were average BUT what irks me is the implication that they achieve those big prices all of the time.
colin
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Shaun
You tripled your prices overnight, good for you. You lost half your regular customers but survived with the higher priced ticket. You built up new clients with your higher prices.
My question. What made you decide to only triple your prices? Why didn't you go up four or five times what you were origionally charging? Is there a limit as to what people will pay? Of course there is. I work parts of Knightsbridge and Kensington in west London and it's quite staggering the wealth some people have. But they will question absurd prices for cleaning carpets. And in the end that is what we have to remember - we clean carpets and not matter what we might like to think , rocket science it ain't
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Colin I know what you are saying ( I think) but not everyone wants a full 5 bedroom house of carpets cleaning what I'm saying is that if you have your unit price high (sq ft etc ) then the job average will definately be higher than average, if you market that you offer volume discount then on the audit you can give the custy a price for 1 carpet and then say "you do know that there is a 15% discount on your next carpet or you do know that we are doing a 3 for 2"
I'm writing this as I think but to try and answer your question I think it's down to good old salesmanship and marketing.
But I must insist that you do have to go out and quote, I yesterday turned a price shopper who was only interested in having the cheapest quote for her carpets to be cleaned by showing her what I had to offer and what I did. (she wanted to pay £30 I quoted £123.20) As I said before it took me a long time to understand but it's finally sinking in.
Shaun
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Francis, I went on a IICRC course and most there were saying that they charged 3 times my prices that was 1999 so I just put them up to that amount, I found that package selling was a good way of selling 'value for money'
Shaun
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Colin, I don't want a ding dong with you ;D
But, the bell merely respresents what you are saying, the bulk is in the middle range and decreases either side. Some have a philosophy to go for this bread and butter group, in the middle others do council others the very well heeled.
Maybe there should be a rider for newbies, however I think all that people like Dave do is balance out the low fee mentality, which is not wrong, just another approach. Personally can't see the logic in doing five jobs a day when you can get more from one or two.
When I started I was desperate and would do any job at almost any price, but decided quite early on to put time and effort into getting Clients who are happy to pay more for more service.
Dave
It starts way before the ask.
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package selling three prices let prospect decide which one fit their budget.
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It is all well and good choosing to do 1 high price job per day than 3 lower priced jobs but i think you are also missing an opertunity, it is how you offer the lower priced work.
If you book and under take higher peice jobs but then offer lower prices to those customers who are price conscious, but are willing to fit in around you it fills the gaps in your day and develops your client base.
This benefits you 2 fold you gain a little extra cash and also another marketing point this years £40.00 could be next years £200.00 or recommendation.
My point is doing lower priced jobs isnt a bad thing for business it is how you go about it.
I have a customer that i charge £20.00 to clean her lounge carpet because each time she rings to book she has 2 or 3 friends who also want work doing. They all live close together and are all prepared to have it done on the same day. Whos the winner Everyone!
John
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people talk that's what recommendations are all about, if you charge 1 customer £20 the other 2 customers want it done for £20 which creates a false economy.
I have been at both sides of the fence and I get the same amount of recommends being higher priced than lower priced, I found that now people recommend me because they think I am an expert and they have to pay more, I get hardly any furniture to move and the carpets are light to mediumly soiled, before I was recommended mainly because people liked my price and I got very dirty carpets to clean with quite alot of furniture to be expected to move and loads of stains to remove from nylon or poly prop carpets and plenty of no show'ers.
I changed the way I though so I could change the way I ran my business, I ran flat out with a turn over of £42 000 when I was at the cheap end, a few years ago I ran flat out and did 3 times that, same amount of work approx.
I don't run flat out anymore unless I go running in the park which is a hobby of mine I tend to spend more time on here but I can afford to if you see where I am coming from.
Shaun
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You have slightly missed my point, it works because i offer this aldy an incentive to bring me work in ie she pays £20.00 but her friends etc pay my standard rates and generally dont quilble the cost as it is a strong reccomendation.
John
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John
I can see what your saying, it is actually possible to service low end and high end customers, it's just the way you go about it, and that can only be done by offering different packages and letting the customer choose!
At the end of the day if you give choice then the customer gets what they want and you can charge accordingly.
Some of our long time customers say when you get a flat period give us a call and we will have such and such done, but obviously at a lower price.
We are happy to do that because it fills in the gaps so that we're never sat at home waiting for the phone to ring,, but when customers want a specific date and a particular service then we charge a premium price to accommodate them!
Regards
steve