Big Bang Marketing Group's

Marketing Bits eNewsletter

Free Marketing, Management, Cleaning & Equipment Maintenance Tips

Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Marketing Bits eNewsletter.

In this issue: 

Marketing in the Winter slow season. By Randy Rovang

Does your wand whistle while you work?  By Gary Heacock

Ask CleaningSuccess.com. By Ron Meyer

Special Features:

The Big Bang Bargain Bin - Special deals on featured products... only available to our subscribers!

Something for Nothing - A FREE sales letter, from CleaningSuccess.com

Marketing in the Winter slow season.  By Randy Rovang

Winter. To many carpet cleaners, the mention of Winter will send a shiver down their back, quicken their pulse and cause their butt-cheeks to tighten. Unless you're living in the sun-belt, Winter can be an extremely slow and stressful time of year for a cleaning company. Since we can't speed up global warming, we'll offer the next best thing - a few suggestions for increasing business in your slowest season.

1. Commercial work: Even though it's slow, you should still work a full week. Schedule your jobs so that you have blocks of time available to visit potential commercial accounts. Give yourself a set goal of X number of sales calls a day. If you keep at it, it WILL pay off. Commercial accounts are a lot more steady and can provide needed cash-flow in the slow season. Many companies also start their new fiscal year on January 1st, meaning they have new money in their budgets for maintenance items that they may have been putting off.

2. Work your customer list: Although the slow season is not usually a good time to try to attract new customers via traditional forms of advertising, it's a GREAT time to market to your existing customer list. I recommend giving your customers a special offer that is better than you would offer any other time of the year. Even 5-10% off of what you normally charge can make a big difference. People like to think they're getting a deal. It's better to make a little less profit on each job, then to sit and wait for the phone to ring. We've always told our customers that Winter was our slow season and we were offering the extra discount to help keep our technicians busy so that we didn't need to lay anybody off. After a few years of Winter specials, we actually had people who would wait until Winter to have their carpet cleaned, so that they could save a little money!

To  promote your services in the Winter, I recommend that you send out a newsletter, a postcard or a personal letter. We preferred to send a newsletter out the first week of January, followed by a postcard in early February and another in early March. If you don't mind the occasional rejection, you can get excellent results by also calling your customers on the phone to see if they want to set up an appointment before the Winter special expires. If you don't want to call them yourself, have a receptionist make the calls or hire a stay-at-home mom to call and pay her a commission for each job booked. 

3. Add additional services: Winter is usually a busy time for duct cleaners, since furnaces get more use when it's cold. Adding duct cleaning can help keep you busy in the slow season. Also, depending on the cleaning equipment you currently own, many companies sell "add on" equipment that can set you up to clean ducts for a minimal investment.

Water damage restoration is also an excellent service to add if you don't already offer it. Winter is by far the busiest time of year for water damage in most areas of North America. I've gotten some of my best nights sleep ever, knowing I've had drying equipment on the job earning several hundred dollars of rental income for me while I slept. 

If you are thinking of getting in to restoration work, a word of advice; don't even consider performing this work until you have completed extensive training. There are too many ways to screw up and too much potential liability to attempt it without proper training. Somewhere, there's an attorney waiting to sue you for everything you now own or ever hope to own. Water damage restoration can be very financially lucrative, but you must know what you're doing.

If you have any questions about database marketing, contact me by email or, visit our website, If you don't find the answer to your question on our website, post it on the Big Bang Bulletin Board 

A Clean Joke...

Each evening bird lover Tom stood in his backyard, hooting like an owl - and one night, an owl called back to him. For a year, the man and his feathered friend hooted back and forth. He even kept a log of the "conversation." Just as he thought he was on the verge of a breakthrough in interspecies communication, his wife had a chat with her next door neighbor.

"My husband spends his nights calling out to owls," she said.

"That's odd," the neighbor replied. "So does my husband."

They paused then started to laugh.

Does your wand whistle when you set it down?  By Gary Heacock

When a cleaning wand is not down on the carpet, is there a whistling noise coming from it? Does this drive you crazy, and annoy your customers?

The whistle is coming from the center of the vacuum orifice. If you look at it, you will see that the center of the vacuum orifice is narrower than the edges. This constricting is having 2 effects.

One is limiting the amount of air going through it, minimizing the air flow, which makes the cleaning and drying efforts less than the wand maker intended, and leaving the carpet wetter than it could be if the opening was wider, allowing more air, with it's load of water going through it.

The second effect is on your eardrums, and your customer's eardrums, with the whistling noise.

To correct this problem, simply insert a screwdriver, or similar object into center of the vacuum opening, and bend the lips apart. You will notice immediately a diminishing of the whistling, and you can readily see the difference in the gap at the center.

When the wand lips are sufficiently open, the whistling noise will be gone completely. The same process will work on stair tools, and furniture tools that whistle.

Gary Heacock, one of the most respected icons in the cleaning industry, can be reached by email at dfrif@juno.com  Visit his website - The Interstellar Crossroads of The Universe - at http://www.heacocks.com for Bio-O-Kleen products, and accessories for the professional carpet cleaner, and for expert cleaning advice.

A Clean Joke...

Jim Gardner goes to see his supervisor in the front office. "Boss," he says, "we're doing some heavy house-cleaning at home tomorrow, and my wife needs me to help with the attic and the garage, moving and hauling stuff."

"We're short-handed, Gardner," the boss replies. "I can't give you the day off."

"Thanks boss," says Gardner, "I knew I could count on you!"

Dear CleaningSuccess.Com,

“I’d like to expand my company and am considering taking on a subcontractor or two, but I’m afraid they’re going to steal my accounts. How do I prevent this from happening?”

Mike, West Hills, CA

Mike, There are a few ways I address this issue in my company. First, I make it pretty clear to the independent subs I give work to I don’t tolerate (funny biz) in any way shape or form. If they hand out their own business cards, or leave their phone numbers, call clients back at a later date, or somehow recommend to the client to somehow contact them directly, instead of through my company, then I immediately terminate my contract with them.

Every contractor that accepts work assignments from my company has to sign what we call an “Independent Subcontractor Agreement Form”. This form articulates the relationship my company has with the independent sub and explains all do’s and don’ts.

In addition to this agreement form I also have every contractor sign what I call my $10,000.00 insurance policy…it’s a “Non Compete Agreement Form.” The non compete agreement spells out what can and cannot be done with my clients, spells out exactly what we consider solicitation of our client, and spells out the remedy in the event we catch the independent sub ‘soliciting’ work from our clients.

What is the remedy? The remedy is a punishment and it’s pretty harsh…a $10,000.00 fine. Any contractor that works with us has to agree to sign our “Non Compete Agreement Form” prior to doing any work with us.

I’ve found these steps act to keep everything above board and has worked very well for me so far.

Ron Meyer
www.cleaningsuccess.com

Interested in attracting all the customers you’ll ever need for your carpet cleaning business? Click here…http://www.cleaningsuccess.com/page1.htm

The Big Bang Bargain Bin - Special deals on featured products!

Today's Specials:

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Something for Nothing - Marketing to Plumbers: Plumbers can be an excellent source of water damage referrals. For a free guide to plumber referrals, follow this link - courtesy of CleaningSuccess.com. Plumber referrals

How are we doing? How can we make it better? We would appreciate your comments - good or bad - about this e-newsletter.  Please send any comments and suggestions to: Randy@bigbangmg.com  Thanks, now go get yourself a cookie!