I need help....

[joey895]

Something has got to change.

Last month I signed up with Full Circle. I used the opportunity to switch to square foot pricing at the same time. What I believe to be a very modest .25 psf. Well I just sat down to look closely at what has happened since then. In the last 3 weeks July 3rd- 23rd Full Circle has received 62 calls (this is after backing out toll free #s, restricted #'s and out of area numbers, multiple calls from one number). They have managed to book 15 jobs from those 62 calls. 4 of the 15 jobs were repeat customers. So in reality that's out of 58 calls from potential new customer they were able to book 11 jobs and I should mention that 6 of the 11 were for my minimum charge ($75)

Now let me start off by saying of the jobs they have scheduled I have asked each customer after I did the cleaning how the phone service was and EVERY ONE of them said the person that answered the phone was VERY friendly, professional and helpful so I'm NOT BLAMING the lack of bookings on Full Cirlce AT ALL.

What I'm looking for is how can I help them to book more of these calls?

Would offering packages help?

Or maybe I need to encourage the Full Circle girls to just try to book price quotes instead of jobs? Right now I told Full Circle I'm willing to go do a price quote if the customer insists but I want them to try to let the customer know I'll give them a price when I arrive and if it's acceptable I'll be ready to do the work right then.

Maybe my area just will not support sf pricing and I should just go back to by the room?

I don't know I'm out of ideas. I would like to stick with the sf pricing but I feel like I'm losing a ton of potential jobs/money and if I just landed 50% of those calls I would be sitting pretty. Thank goodness I have some commercial work and some of my regulars called me directly on my cell or I'd really be having a crummy month.

 

[Mikey P]

Who is calling you?

where do these people come from?


website, print ads? YP?

that is a lot of calls to just be looking for cheaper than .25



What are the girls themselves telling you?

Who is in charge of your account?

 

[joey895]

Who is calling you?

where do these people come from?


website, print ads? YP?

that is a lot of calls to just be looking for cheaper than .25



What are the girls themselves telling you?

Who is in charge of your account?

Becky is in charge of my account.

The girls themselves aren't telling me anything yet. I plan to call them Monday to talk about it.

I don't do any advertising besides my website and a small in column ad in 2 of the 3 yellow page books in town. It's hard to say exactly how many came from each source but I'd say the vast majority of those calls came from the internet, I've had an adwords campaign going for about 6 weeks now. Typically I get about 8-10 calls a month from the yellowpages so my guess would be everything above that came from the internet.

My new website should launch early next week I'm also hoping that will help move some of these potential customers away from the price shopping.

 

[Mikey P]

show me the page people find when they look for you

 

[joey895]

This is the adwords page right now. I know it's ugly as hell. http://panamacitycarpetpros.com/

or they could find this page it is typically in the 1-3rd position in the organics. Again pretty ugly and plain. http://allstarsteamcleaning.com/

This is my new site that will launch next week sometime. http://clickscrazy.com/client/allstarst ... g.com/dev/

I hope my web guy doesn't get mad for me showing the new site already.

 

[Mikey P]

We pride ourselves on offering our customers the best possible service at the best possible price,

"best price" in Florida must translate to less than what Cole is charging.


Sounds like the people you are attracting think you charge too much.

 

[daniel@procarpet]

What was your FC bill for this described month?

 

[joey895]

Re: Re: I need help....

What was your FC bill for this described month?

I haven't gotten it yet.

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

 

[daniel@procarpet]

I think this is a good thread.

Lots of opinions on the subject.

 

[Brian R]

With anyone other than you answering your phone you will need a pretty good script and some well thought out price answers.

I would tell FC to tell the customer a ballpark. If you're doing .25 sqft then that's going to be $25-$35 per room on average.

Why not let them say that to the customer.

"We never know the exact price until we see the areas to be cleaned but it's usually around $30 per room depending on the size. Once the Tech get's to your home he will give you a quote in writing and that price won't change unless you add other services like tile cleaning or scotchgard.

We always give you the best price possible once we see the areas to be cleaned. For the price you pay, we get the carpet completely clean and we don't try to charge you for every little thing."


What do you think?

 

[Mikey P]

cOrkie is the new Nicole.

 

[joey895]

Brian, that's pretty close to how I answered the phone. I was under the impression that fc didn't really work with scripts but figured they take a lot more calls than me so they must do know the best way to handle the calls.

I also thought of maybe a 3 room for $99 special with about a 450 SF limit, I figure that would give the customer a good baseline.

At least we are in agreement that they should be booking a higher percentage of those calls.

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

 

[davegillfishing]

.25 a sqft..wow. i can honestly tell you that i have no idea how you are going to survive..
i think most of your problem is you are attracting price shoppers. even though .25 sqft is
super low in my opinion it is no where as low as the hacks around you. i say raise your prices and advertise
quality, local business owner and attract a higher clientele. i amnot trying to be a jackass i am just saying
i am in the jax, st aug area and i get .45 all day long for carpet and .65 for grout cleaning with 100 people
in my back yard charging .20-.35 a sq..i just raised my prices to .45 8 months ago and will be jumping to.50
early next year..
the non booked jobs in my opinion are just price shoppers..only way to fix it is to get away
from them.or lower them a bit and go for volume.
good luck
dave

 

[daniel@procarpet]

.25 a sqft..wow. i can honestly tell you that i have no idea how you are going to survive..
i think most of your problem is you are attracting price shoppers. even though .25 sqft is
super low in my opinion it is no where as low as the hacks around you. i say raise your prices and advertise
quality, local business owner and attract a higher clientele. i amnot trying to be a jackass i am just saying
i am in the jax, st aug area and i get .45 all day long for carpet and .65 for grout cleaning with 100 people
in my back yard charging .20-.35 a sq..i just raised my prices to .45 8 months ago and will be jumping to.50
early next year..
the non booked jobs in my opinion are just price shoppers..only way to fix it is to get away
from them.or lower them a bit and go for volume.
good luck
dave

Most cleaners here hack jobs out for 60-80 dollars for three rooms. I can understand the porty guy working from a pick-up having that pricing, but not someone with a nice rig (40k). It is sad to see people run around like chickens with their heads cut off because they do not know that they can get 150 or more to clean three rooms. Instead they price in line with everyone else using inferior equip, training, and procedures. Tons of cleaners like that here.

You are only averaging two money calls per day. Just answer the phone yourself.

 

[Brian R]

cOrkie is the new Nicole.

Awe, you're just saying that.



My script was only based on what you said.

Price where you can make money and not kill yourself. If that price works for you...then go for it.

But more money is nice.

If you have a $40k rig....Yes, then you need to make money to cover it.

It's not what you make...It's what you keep.

 

[Doug Cox]

.25 a sqft..wow. i can honestly tell you that i have no idea how you are going to survive..
i think most of your problem is you are attracting price shoppers. even though .25 sqft is
super low in my opinion it is no where as low as the hacks around you. i say raise your prices and advertise
quality, local business owner and attract a higher clientele. i amnot trying to be a jackass i am just saying
i am in the jax, st aug area and i get .45 all day long for carpet and .65 for grout cleaning with 100 people
in my back yard charging .20-.35 a sq..i just raised my prices to .45 8 months ago and will be jumping to.50
early next year..
the non booked jobs in my opinion are just price shoppers..only way to fix it is to get away
from them.or lower them a bit and go for volume.
good luck
dave

I, for one agree with Dave, but the fact that he has only been in business for 4 years and not knowing the quality of work he provides, it would be hard to tell him to raise his prices. They may very well be too high.

 

[davegillfishing]

didnt think about that point..he may be better off looking for the lower end work with lower
expectations and shoot for the volume.
good point.

 

[idreadnought]

The real question is.... What was your conversion rate? And I do believe that a 3 room introductory price is a good idea.

 

[Brian R]

How many jobs/calls were you getting before Full Circle?

 

[Bjorn]

he could close more doing his own phone is the point

many of you guys tend to hype things up a bit

 

[Ken Snow]

62 calls in 21 days- less than 3 per day. Not sure why you would want to use them for that low volume.

 

[joey895]

I appreciate all the input.

For the record my quality I believe is second to none, at least in my area. I pre-vac, mechanical scrub, spot, etc. whatever necessary to get the job clean. Regardless of what I price my work I'll never be able to give sub-quality work, it's just not in me. I've been hammered on price before and I caved thinking I'd just give them a basic pre-spray and extract and half way through when I knew the job wasn't coming as good as it should be I stopped re-presprayed and scrubbed and finished the job. I refuse to leave any job half assed.

Back to the problem at hand. It's seems I've gotten 3 suggestions so far.

1. Raise prices- I get the idea behind this. Maybe I would have landed the same jobs at the higher price and made more money on the jobs I did get. My concern about this is that I believe I'm already top 2-3 in price in my area of 35-40 cleaners that I'm aware of.

2. Lower prices and go for more volume. I know most of the cleaners here are at about $25 per room with some being $15-$20 per room. I'm certain that I'd book more of the jobs at that $25 price but the margins would be slim because I'm not much of an up-seller.

3. Get rid of full circle. I'm not ready to do that just yet. I don't feel they've been given a fair shake yet. I did book a higher percentage of calls but keep in mind I made the switch to sf at the same time a went with full circle so I only booked more because I priced $30 per room. I know it's not a huge volume of calls but keep in mind the number of times the phone actually rings is more than double that 62 if you add back in all the sales calls. I also work alone so sometimes I can't get the phone if I'm talking to a customer and even when I can answer it the truck mount is screaming in the back ground. Not to mention it really is quite a relief to not have to run to the phone everytime it rings.

If it helps my overall goal for the company would be to eventually have 2-4 trucks running a high quality focused company. I absolutely do not want to stay an o/o forever.

Oh, One person mentioned that an introductory price would be a good idea. How about packages would that help the phone closing?

Well I'm going to call Full Circle in just a little while and see what kind of input they offer. I'll let you guys know.

 

[davegillfishing]

I appreciate all the input.

For the record my quality I believe is second to none, at least in my area. I pre-vac, mechanical scrub, spot, etc. whatever necessary to get the job clean. Regardless of what I price my work I'll never be able to give sub-quality work, it's just not in me. I've been hammered on price before and I caved thinking I'd just give them a basic pre-spray and extract and half way through when I knew the job wasn't coming as good as it should be I stopped re-presprayed and scrubbed and finished the job. I refuse to leave any job half assed.

Back to the problem at hand. It's seems I've gotten 3 suggestions so far.

1. Raise prices- I get the idea behind this. Maybe I would have landed the same jobs at the higher price and made more money on the jobs I did get. My concern about this is that I believe I'm already top 2-3 in price in my area of 35-40 cleaners that I'm aware of.

2. Lower prices and go for more volume. I know most of the cleaners here are at about $25 per room with some being $15-$20 per room. I'm certain that I'd book more of the jobs at that $25 price but the margins would be slim because I'm not much of an up-seller.

3. Get rid of full circle. I'm not ready to do that just yet. I don't feel they've been given a fair shake yet. I did book a higher percentage of calls but keep in mind I made the switch to sf at the same time a went with full circle so I only booked more because I priced $30 per room. I know it's not a huge volume of calls but keep in mind the number of times the phone actually rings is more than double that 62 if you add back in all the sales calls. I also work alone so sometimes I can't get the phone if I'm talking to a customer and even when I can answer it the truck mount is screaming in the back ground. Not to mention it really is quite a relief to not have to run to the phone everytime it rings.

If it helps my overall goal for the company would be to eventually have 2-4 trucks running a high quality focused company. I absolutely do not want to stay an o/o forever.

Oh, One person mentioned that an introductory price would be a good idea. How about packages would that help the phone closing?

Well I'm going to call Full Circle in just a little while and see what kind of input they offer. I'll let you guys know.

if you are better then everyone around you then why do you care to be close to the same price..
you think farrari (sp?) is worried about what toyota charges? if you do your best to be the best you
need to charge more to separate yourself from the others around you or you will always be considered
no better than them..
quick point for you..
i am a fishing junkie big time..my rod and reel combos run me about 1k each. i wont
even consider looking at anything less then 500$ because i assume it is going to be junk and
i dont fish with or want junk..
price yourself in the range of customer you want..less work more money.
if doesn't happen over night it is something you build..
when you buy something that you care about do you automatically look for
the cheapest thing? most people will spend the money if they know you are better than
the guy next door..but you better be or you will be short lived..
dave

 

[XTREME1]

Start pushing a ton of commercial work and if you do that good of work your current roster of residential will grow organically

 

[Shane Deubell]

Something has got to change.

Last month I signed up with Full Circle. I used the opportunity to switch to square foot pricing at the same time. What I believe to be a very modest .25 psf. Well I just sat down to look closely at what has happened since then. In the last 3 weeks July 3rd- 23rd Full Circle has received 62 calls (this is after backing out toll free #s, restricted #'s and out of area numbers, multiple calls from one number). They have managed to book 15 jobs from those 62 calls. 4 of the 15 jobs were repeat customers. So in reality that's out of 58 calls from potential new customer they were able to book 11 jobs and I should mention that 6 of the 11 were for my minimum charge ($75)

Now let me start off by saying of the jobs they have scheduled I have asked each customer after I did the cleaning how the phone service was and EVERY ONE of them said the person that answered the phone was VERY friendly, professional and helpful so I'm NOT BLAMING the lack of bookings on Full Cirlce AT ALL.

What I'm looking for is how can I help them to book more of these calls?

Would offering packages help?

Or maybe I need to encourage the Full Circle girls to just try to book price quotes instead of jobs? Right now I told Full Circle I'm willing to go do a price quote if the customer insists but I want them to try to let the customer know I'll give them a price when I arrive and if it's acceptable I'll be ready to do the work right then.

Maybe my area just will not support sf pricing and I should just go back to by the room?

I don't know I'm out of ideas. I would like to stick with the sf pricing but I feel like I'm losing a ton of potential jobs/money and if I just landed 50% of those calls I would be sitting pretty. Thank goodness I have some commercial work and some of my regulars called me directly on my cell or I'd really be having a crummy month.

The two do not seem to mesh too well, answering service with sqr ft pricing over phone. I dont think i ever heard anyone doing it like that before.

i would either set up in home estimates with FC or Room pricing
better yet ditch them completely hire someone to make outbound calls to local businesses inbetween.

 

[Mikey P]

The two do not seem to mesh too well, answering service with sqr ft pricing over phone. I dont think i ever heard anyone doing it like that before.

I use FC and charge by the SF.


Shop me and see how they do


831 476 9721

 

[Tom Mock]

You should definitely charge more. Go for a three room special, but don't compete with Stanley. Charge say, $120-$130 for 3 areas, no more than 225 sq ft each. Don't let people try and make you meet or beat coupons, etc. Tell them if they can beat your service then you might talk. If they book the special they you can ask for add ons once you evaluate on site.
Don't chase the multi truck companies. They have more money to spend on ads and less to spend on quality.

Just my two cents...

 

[sam miller]

.25 a sqft..wow. i can honestly tell you that i have no idea how you are going to survive..
i think most of your problem is you are attracting price shoppers. even though .25 sqft is
super low in my opinion it is no where as low as the hacks around you. i say raise your prices and advertise
quality, local business owner and attract a higher clientele. i amnot trying to be a jackass i am just saying
i am in the jax, st aug area and i get .45 all day long for carpet and .65 for grout cleaning with 100 people
in my back yard charging .20-.35 a sq..i just raised my prices to .45 8 months ago and will be jumping to.50
early next year..
the non booked jobs in my opinion are just price shoppers..only way to fix it is to get away
from them.or lower them a bit and go for volume.
good luck
dave

Most cleaners here hack jobs out for 60-80 dollars for three rooms. I can understand the porty guy working from a pick-up having that pricing, but not someone with a nice rig (40k). It is sad to see people run around like chickens with their heads cut off because they do not know that they can get 150 or more to clean three rooms. Instead they price in line with everyone else using inferior equip, training, and procedures. Tons of cleaners like that here.

You are only averaging two money calls per day. Just answer the phone yourself.

My question is how many stops do You do a day? how long for a average stop? average ticket amount? and whats included?

What's your operating expenses? Cost of living where your at? like how much is a gal of gas where your at? What do You pay for traffic lane cleaner and business insurance? maybe Your making less on your P&L then a guy making $30.00 per room because advertising is 30 percent of what You do?

these were more for Daniel but anybody could chime in!

 

[floorguy]

.25 a sqft..wow. i can honestly tell you that i have no idea how you are going to survive..
i think most of your problem is you are attracting price shoppers. even though .25 sqft is
super low in my opinion it is no where as low as the hacks around you. i say raise your prices and advertise
quality, local business owner and attract a higher clientele. i amnot trying to be a jackass i am just saying
i am in the jax, st aug area and i get .45 all day long for carpet and .65 for grout cleaning with 100 people
in my back yard charging .20-.35 a sq..i just raised my prices to .45 8 months ago and will be jumping to.50
early next year..
the non booked jobs in my opinion are just price shoppers..only way to fix it is to get away
from them.or lower them a bit and go for volume.
good luck
dave

Most cleaners here hack jobs out for 60-80 dollars for three rooms. I can understand the porty guy working from a pick-up having that pricing, but not someone with a nice rig (40k). It is sad to see people run around like chickens with their heads cut off because they do not know that they can get 150 or more to clean three rooms. Instead they price in line with everyone else using inferior equip, training, and procedures. Tons of cleaners like that here.

You are only averaging two money calls per day. Just answer the phone yourself.

My question is how many stops do You do a day? how long for a average stop? average ticket amount? and whats included?

What's your operating expenses? Cost of living where your at? like how much is a gal of gas where your at? What do You pay for traffic lane cleaner and business insurance? maybe Your making less on your P&L then a guy making $30.00 per room because advertising is 30 percent of what You do?

these were more for Daniel but anybody could chime in!

ding freakin ding ding



I cant believe how many people ignore this plain and simple fact...

YOu got a 40k rug, yet dont pay out 3k a mth in YP shit.....

guess what???

you can afford to be a little cheaper...

 

[davegillfishing]

floorguy...you can never afford to be a little cheaper unless you want to work till you are 70 years old!!
anyone who is not getting every single penny they can is nuts..knowing your exact expenses are
important but the problem is most people that take the time to figure it out base their prices on
that number and end up short changing themselves..example
you run your numbers and see that you can make a little money and work for .30 a sq
and smile all the way to the bank thinking you are hitting it hard..however you are worth and can get
.50 a sq but dont..you could be driving to the bank in a sweet zr1 vette on the way to the beach.
what i am trying to say is why make some money when you can make a lot of money??
use the numbers as a basic start but dont limit yourself because you think you car paying the bills.
i am raising my prices again because i have been turned away 2 times out of over 400 jobs and am
booked out almost 2 weeks..i dont want that to go away and you have to watch things very closely
but i am losing money in my mind because i am not making as much as i can..
make sense?