FAST QuickTIP: 1) Charge more. 2) ‘Casually confirm’ their price at booking. 3) Increase your wages to compete for better employees.
I doubt president Franklin D. Roosevelt was ever a carpet cleaner! And yet in his first speech Mr. Roosevelt perfectly summed up our industry’s biggest problem:
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself!” Yep, most cleaning and restoration business owners (and probably you too!) are terrified to raise their prices!
And yet, now more than ever it is ESSENTIAL to ‘charge more’ than you are now. WHY? Because in my 40+ years in this industry I have NEVER seen such a tough ‘Hiring Environment’! Translated? Decent (much less great) front-line workers are almost impossible to find!
But wait! Capitalism’s immutable principle of ‘Supply and Demand’ states: “When the supply (techs) is low then the demand (and prices!) will go up.” In other words, to successfully ‘compete’ for good employees you must offer higher wages/better benefits! OUCH!
RESOURCE #1: Get 100’s of new hiring ideas and systems in our 3-hour, online SFS: Hiring the Very Best! LIVE seminar. To learn more and/or easily register online click HERE.
REMEMBER: When you offer new hires more money then your existing staff will expect their wages to go up too! (You would too! Right?) And yet, to build a Critical Mass Business (CMB) that will run smoothly without you will need a great team of the Very Best People! And all this will need lot’s of MONEY!
So your SFS QuickTIP for today is to…
“Suck it up, Buttercup” and raise your prices NOW!
Any yet… I know. You’re scared you’ll lose past customers spoiled by your low prices. Here is HOW to ‘charge more’ without losing a single previous client:
1. Remember, most of your clients don’t remotely remember what they paid last time! So every year slightly raise your prices. (The previous year’s CPI increase is a good place to start.) Then when a past customer calls to schedule again…
2. Never call attention to your recent price increase. Instead, just look up your client’s previous work order, routinely verify what they want done this time and then (hopefully without your voice trembling!) calmly state, “So the price for everything I have on your work order will be 328.40.” Most will simply say, “OK!” but for the (very few) that reply…
3. “Wow, isn’t that more than I paid last year?” just smoothly answer, “Yes, Mrs. Jones, on May 1st of this year we were forced to raise our prices by 8.3%. (An “odd percentage” is more credible than 5 or 10%.) If we need to meet a budget maybe we could skip some of your less trafficked areas …” (Now let your voice trail off!) Almost always your repeat clients will say, “That’s OK, just do the same work you did last time.” But if they say…
4. “I don’t know… I see ads for $99.00 for my entire house…” You reply with “Feel-Felt-Found”, “I understand how you feel. A few of our clients have felt that way and tried the low priced operations. However, they found that the carpets just didn’t get clean and came back to us. I do have an opening next Wednesday at 10:00 with Charles and Tommy…” For the very few that insist on leaving…
5. Be gracious yet firm. “I understand. We look forward to serving you again very soon…” Your end result? You’ll make more profit while working less and/or have the extra funds to compete for the ‘Very Best’! Sounds good to me!
RESOURCE #2: Receive the complete phone script for the above exchange in our 3 hour, online SFS: Winning over your caller! LIVE seminar. So, Click HERE for 100’s of ‘Lead Conversion’ ideas and systems easily book prospects who use text, email, Facebook, website chat or even… the phone! HERE are our upcoming class dates…
Steve
Great advice.