Winter plan.

Let's face it, winter is right around the corner and it's a pita for carpet cleaners, do you lower your price a bit to compete with other companies ? Or you just chill until spring ?
In my experience adding advertisement doesn't really help but I'm open to someone that can prove me wrong and show some advertisement plan that works good in the winter.

People are spending their money on gifts and there isn't much left for things like carpet cleaning....unless it is for a gift.

The only 2 sales approaches that I can see being successful is offering gift cards for cleanings and ads that emphasize the health benefits of cleaning.

Since people spend more time inside during the winter, the fact that cleaning can help reduce exposure to flu and colds while introducing valuable humidity to the home, can help generate new interest in your services.

I actually prefer to clean in the winter when the temps are near freezing or above. Some of these homes have such dry air that your hair will stand on end and there are many that are burning wood, so the soot is everywhere. Both conditions are easily corrected in a carpet cleaning...at least for awhile.

Discounted cleaning doesn't work this time of year around here, but I think that if your approach is gift cards and ads pitching the health benefits, you can have a pretty good season.

How do you produce gift cards ? Is it just a certificate that you design and print ? What if it has certain value that the customer don't use all up in one visit ?
Do you also give them up as Christmas gifts to certain customers that use your services often ? I used to give $ 50 certificates a long time ago and thinkin to start doing that again and may be add an expiration date of April or May in there ?

The first time that I tried the gift voucher, I just assigned a value and issued a voucher for it. For example, $175 for a sectional cleaning or $275 for a home clean up to certain size restrictions. It worked out some times and not so much other times.

It would probably work better if you just assigned a dollar amount to the voucher and they could use like any other gift card.

It is a good method which works pretty well for the slowest time of year (January) when nothing else seems to be happening. Your gift certificate idea in $50 dollar increments along with a deadline sounds like a winner.

I really don't lower my prices, just to compete with the lower priced cleaners.  But I honestly can't say, I don't sometimes quote jobs a little lower when I'm slow, to increase the odds of getting the job........especially on larger jobs.

And usually in the winter months the increase in flood work I get helps make up for the slow down in cleaning........I just finished two floods this week, and yesterday started another one.  It certainly helps, but the real question is how long it will take before I'm paid on those jobs. ;(

Catch 22, offer a lowers price to keep busy or charge a little more for the inconvience of going out in the cold.??
Upholstery in Jan/Feb is the way to go.
Years ago my brother offered to take away the Christmas tree...when he was in there to clean.

Temp hijacking!
I have tried 3-4 time over the weekend to post a new thread under 'ask the mech'.
Yet I can post comments .

Matt; My carpet cleaner wrote:Catch 22, offer a lowers price to keep busy or charge a little more for the inconvience of going out in the cold.??
Upholstery in Jan/Feb is the way to go.
Years ago my brother offered to take away the Christmas tree...when he was in there to clean.

I couldn't agree more on the upholstery plan during the winter. I would love to have my heated shop back and just pick up the furniture and bring it back for cleaning. Offer a full living room set deal, pick it up in the morning and have it back in the afternoon squeaky clean and dry.

I hate dealing with Christmas trees so I wouldn't want to get into the disposal job, but yes, furniture all the way.

Matt; My carpet cleaner wrote:Temp hijacking!
I have tried 3-4 time over the weekend to post a new thread under 'ask the mech'.
Yet I can post comments .

I just tried it....no issues found. Make sure you are using the right URL, sometimes I have run into that problem when on an older link.

milspec6 wrote:

Matt; My carpet cleaner wrote:Temp hijacking!
I have tried 3-4 time over the weekend to post a new thread under 'ask the mech'.
Yet I can post comments .

I just tried it....no issues found.  Make sure you are using the right URL, sometimes I have run into that problem when on an older link.

https://thecleanerslounge.forumotion.com/post
This the one I'm on when trying to do a new topic.

Or go to "ask the TM mechanic" section first and click on new thread, did you try that ?

There is something wrong on your end Matt, the system seems to working correctly. Don't know what it is, but I would try turning off you security program and try it again....something is blocking your action.

Matt; My carpet cleaner wrote:Temp hijacking!
I have tried 3-4 time over the weekend to post a new thread under 'ask the mech'.
Yet I can post comments .

Matt to the home page and scroll all the way down to the bottom click the delete forum cookies link.

Try www.thecleanerslounge.com

Delete your browsers cache

Try a different browser Firefox, Explorer, Chrome seems to be glithchy on the site

Restart your PC

Test

I'm a$s out too.

Pop ups everywhere on this site and haven't been able to post.

Surprised the test one worked above, tried it all and still being asked to install a vid player and pop ups all over. And it's ONLY on thisw site!

That is odd....not running into that at all.

Then again, I'm running on a new install, so there is no junk built up in the system yet. Not sure what the deal is.

Think I *might* have (so far so good) fixed the problem by running spy and malware software and removing all questionable crap........guess we'll see.

Yup, all is good.

Davey Cracker wrote:I really don't lower my prices, just to compete with the lower priced cleaners.  But I honestly can't say, I don't sometimes quote jobs a little lower when I'm slow, to increase the odds of getting the job........especially on larger jobs.

isnt that the same thing

ACpower1 wrote:

Davey Cracker wrote:I really don't lower my prices, just to compete with the lower priced cleaners.  But I honestly can't say, I don't sometimes quote jobs a little lower when I'm slow, to increase the odds of getting the job........especially on larger jobs.

isnt that the same thing

NO

My "Quoting jobs a little lower", is still no where near the prices "of the low ball cleaners"..........They can have the volume with their cheap prices, I don't want it!!