If you check the sample S/B contract under Paperwork and in the System marked “Stay Beautiful” you will see Point #7 “Termination or Modification of the Program” it allows you to change the program at any time. However, the obvious caution to this is the customer also has the right to terminate their participation too!

I would be cautious about two things:

1. You wouldn’t want to lightly raise their monthly price because the beauty of this program is they become used to the same monthly price. If you change it you WILL see some people dropping off the program.

2. On the other hand, I don’t think I would lock myself into t a “same price for life” guarantee. You just never know and the people that will want the program will go for it without the guarantee.

Thanks for “holding my feet to the fire”.

Steve

We are in the process of evaluating the SB program for our company to determine if it would be a good fit.

One question that we didn’t see addressed in the special report…. (and no, I didn’t go to my SFS manual to see if it was there).

Since the monthly payement is based off the initial cleaning price, how would we deal with yearly price increase? We raise our prices every year. Do we raise the 10% we are “billing” each month?
Or allow them to stay at the initial rate? You noted that you had some customers on the program for 10 years. Did they stay locked in to the rate from 10 years ago or did you charge them 10% of your current rate to do that scope of work?

We can see another selling point if the rates are kept 10% of the initial cleaning. Telling the customer if they sign up for the SB program today, the will have this ‘rate’ for the life of the agreement and won’t be subject to price increases! We think this could work from a business persepctive since the profitability of the program is so great that even if you don’t raise the price for the SB customers, you’d still be ahead of the game (that is…if your pricing is profitable to begin with). And it’s a win for the customer. What an incentive! It sounds great to them to have no price increase when in actuality, while we raise our prices each year, it’s not so significant that it would make a big impact on the 10% they are paying each month. 10% of the price increase would only be cents or a couple dollars in thier monthly payment – but they may not realize it. It certainly does have emotional impact to the customer to never have a price increase while in the SB program.

Your thoughts on this are appreciated!

Meg

Steve

PS Do not postpone SFS, Cathy, and don’t wait too long to sign up. For example, our Roselle class in mid-March is already over-booked and with 20 people on a waiting list to get in.

I told my husband that we MUST attend. We’ve decided that I will continue to “lord over” the house cleaning portion of the business but he is going to take control of the carpet cleaning portion.

I know the house cleaning portion like the back of my hand. My goal now is to master carpet cleaning knowledge….but I cannot do it all. So I’m getting hubby on board with this.

He is going to get certified and we will start searching for a tech who can also get certified….so that we can work ON the business, not IN the business (E-Myth).

I’ll keep you posted!

Cathy

Steve

PS Now when will we see you at a SFS, Cathy? You are just the sort of member we want in our select group.

Thanks you sooooo much for this great idea! Wonderfully written article!

Cathy