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How to start your own carpet cleaning business
HOW TO START YOUR OWN CARPET CLEANING BUSINESS
There are two fairly new, and very important conditions existing in
the world today that have not only made the carpet cleaning industry
a "billion dollar business," but also practically guarantee your
success as an entrepreneur in this field.
First, almost all homes and office buildings built since 1960 have
wall-to-wall carpeting. Secondly, the replacement costs and the
cyclical faltering of the national economy have caused people to
want to make what they already own last longer, especially in the
case of carpeting, which is a sizeable investment.
Most businesses employ janitors or janitorial services to vacuum
their carpets after hours daily, and then "master" carpet cleaners
to deep-clean them every three months or so. Homemakers also
generally vacuum their carpets perhaps several times a week, and
then hope to deep-clean every spring or fall, depending on the kind
of household traffic, and on their budgets.
It's true that people everywhere try to save money by handling these
jobs themselves. However, empathy with the people, and an
understanding of this trend, should be neither cause for alarm nor a
deterrent to your success in this business.
Most people are just too busy to handle all their do-it-yourself
projects. They continually put off until later any chore that
requires special equipment . This is especially true with carpet
cleaning, because deep down, they're fearful of botching the job.
Thus, they're more than willing to pay an expert or a specialist to
do this kind of work for them
It doesn't take any special education, skill or experience to
operate a professional-type, deep-cleaning carpet cleaner. Yet,
from, your first job onward, you should project the image of a
thoroughly experienced expert in your field. And, we're going to
show you how you can get started in this business, and make $300 or
more per working day, with virtually no investment!
The important part of this business - or any other business - is the
owner-operator's "sense of marketing" and salesmanship. Make no
mistake about it, all businesses succeed through marketing
strategies and salesmanship. You won't be selling a product with
this business; you'll be selling a service. And the selling of
services is often more difficult than product sales.
Your success in this business will be predicated upon the sales
effort put forth. Getting if off the ground will require a great
deal of selling expertise on your part. You'll have to sell
yourself AND your services.
Therefore, it will be to your benefit to learn all you can about
selling. Then, you should continue to add to your knowledge through
an ongoing program of learning. Keeping up to date and being aware
of successful selling ideas and methods will add to the total
success of any business person.
Even before the acquisition of equipment, you need customers. Your
prospects are all the businesses and homes with carpets in your
area. Your problem is going to be in reaching these prospects,
impressing upon them the benefits of your service, and getting them
set up with an appointment for you to do the work.
We have found that the least expensive and most productive method of
reaching these people is by way of neighborhood "hand-out" flyers or
announcements, delivered door-to-door by Brownies or Cub Scouts, or
members of other youth organizations. These flyers are
advertisements or announcements of a "Carpet Cleaning Special,"
printed on 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 sheets of paper that invite the recipients
to call you for an appointment.
Study the carpet cleaning service ads in your local newspapers, the
yellow pages of your telephone directories, and any similar flyers
you may have received or seen. Make a pencil sketch of your own
flyer, emphasizing customer benefits and your capabilities of doing
the job take your ideas to the advertising class at a local college.
Explain your project and ask for volunteer help. In most cases,
you'll be favorably impressed with the work, and will only have to
pay with a copy of the finished flyer for the student's portfolio,
and a recommendation or testimonial about his work for you. Even if
there should be a charge for the work you have done at the college,
it will be a reasonable one.
Contracting with an advertising agency will probably take longer and
will cost a significant amount of money. However, you might be able
to contact a staff member who does free-lance work on the side. But
you should set a specific date for completion of the project, and
agree to pay no more than half the total estimated cost until the
job is finished, and meets with your approval.
The next step is to take this original of your flyer to a printer,
and have printed whatever number of copies you want to start. Most
quick print shops will be able to print up to 20,000 copies, and
deliver in a reasonable time, with nominal costs. If you decide to
start with more than 20,000 copies, you will do better by going to a
regular commercial printer. Larger quantities that would take a
quick print shop all day can be handled by a commercial print shop
in a few hours.
While your flyers are being printed, you should be lining up your
delivery people - local Brownie or Cub Scout Troops. No big problem
here. Either look up their local headquarters office in your phone
book or call a friend or two with children about the right age and
ask for the name and phone number of troop leaders. Arrange to pay
these scout troops $10 for each thousand circulars they hand out
door-to-door.
One other thing before you start handing out your flyers - be sure
that you have someone available to answer the phone and set up
appointments for you. It's usually best to have a woman do this; it
makes the caller think of your service as an established business.
You can pay an answering service to handle these calls for you, but
if your wife or a friend is available, that would be even better.
It is, however, imperative that a "live voice" answer your phone.
People have some strange ideas about answering machines, and most
businesses find they do much better not using them.
Your "secretary" should have a set pattern of answering your calls,
and an appointment book. Usually, your flyer will advertise a
special such as "Your living room carpet deep-cleaned for just $20.
Get all the ground-in dirt and unpleasant odors out. A professional
job by experienced master carpet cleaners, and we can do it all for
you tomorrow. Give us a call; set up a carpet cleaning appointment
with us now; and we'll have your home sparkling clean, ready for
company in no time at all!" This special offer should take you no
more than an hour in the customer's home, meaning that your
secretary can book appointments for you at the rate of one every
ninety minutes or less, depending on the travel distance between
appointments.
By setting your first appointment for 8:30 in the morning, and
working thorough the whole day, allowing 30 minutes between
appointments, you'll be able to handle seven appointments per day.
So at only $20 per call, you will gross $140 per day, but read on,
this is for starters - it's really better than this. Your secretary
should book you solid from 8:30 through 5:30 each day. Naturally,
some people may want you to stop by at a certain time that's already
booked. In that case, you set them up for their requested time on
an open day. You'll also find that as you gain experience, you can
cut down considerably the time it takes you to handle each job, as
well as your travel time between jobs, enabling you to book more
appointments.
Just as soon as you have job appointments lined up, hurry over to
your local carpet cleaner distributor, your local rent-all store, or
even some super markets and rent a steam-clean carpet cleaner. Most
of the time, you won't have to pay until you return it, but even if
you do have to pay at the time you take it, the cost is usually $25
or less for twenty-four hours. Read the directions and make sure
you know how to operate it. Then load it into your car, van or
pickup, and set out for your first appointment.
You should bear in mind that carpet cleaning is a type of service
business that takes you into the homes of your customers. Therefore,
how you look, dress, and handle yourself - particularly in the
presence of your customers - will have a direct bearing on the
success of your business.
Be clean, and conduct yourself in a business like manner at all
times. Dress neatly. In fact, one of the best ways to get off to a
fast start is to purchase a working uniform from Sears, Ward's or
Penney's. Drop by a "pennant shop" and have them make up a special
oval name tag which can be sewn over the left breast pocket. At the
same time, have them make up a large oval with the name of your
business and your phone number to sew on the back of the uniform.
When you hire people to help you with the work, outfit them
similarly.
Go out of your way to be polite and friendly with your customers,
but refrain from being fresh. Avoid getting involved in extended
conversations - if you are to keep on schedule, you won't have time
for a lot of talk.
Keep your equipment clean, properly maintained, and operating
smoothly. Have your supplies organized and within easy reach. Don't
allow yourself to be caught in a position where you have to make
excuses because the equipment won't function properly, you can't
find what you need, or you suddenly find yourself out of certain
supplies.
When working these advertising specials, just concentrate on doing
the job and moving on to your next customer. If the customer
questions you about the cost to do the other rooms, give an estimate
and set up a tentative appointment, which you should later confirm
with a call-back after checking your schedule. Don't try to sell
your complete carpet cleaning services on this first call, but do be
sure to leave a business card with the name of your company and your
phone number.
Your service is the "deep-down shampoo cleaning" of carpeting in
your customers' homes or places of business. Always strive to use
the best equipment that's available. Later on - possibly in a month
or six weeks - you'll want to buy or lease your own equipment. Your
business will grow and flourish as a result of your doing a good and
complete job every time. It may take you a few minutes longer -
especially when you are learning the equipment and establishing a
procedure - but in the end this will pay off with satisfied
customers; and a group of satisfied customers is the key to your
becoming wealthy in this business.
You want your customers to call you again and again to clean their
carpets. Being pleased with your work, they'll spread the word
about your service for you, free of charge! And this, of course,
will generate an almost unlimited amount of ongoing work for your
new business.
The average price to the customer to have a 12 by 18 foot
wall-to-wall carpet "shampoo cleaned" is about $50. Your materials
to do that size job will cost about $5.
The typical job involves more than just one room, and the average
period of time spent on the typical job is about two hours, with an
average billing to the customer of $75 - materials for each $75 job
cost you about $10 all of which means that with just five
appointments per day, five days per week, your gross income before
expenses will be approaching $2,000 per week.
Most people who set up carpet cleaning businesses manage to gross
$50,000 or more the first year. We've described to you how to get
started with virtually no real investment. However, we do advise
you to either purchase or lease your own carpet cleaning equipment
just as soon as you can possibly afford it.
Several equipment manufacturers have financing plans available. It
would be well to check out several of these plans before purchasing
your equipment. Even better than the financing plans offered, some
of the manufacturers have business start-up programs to help you
along the way. They will provide you with a complete carpet
cleaning business plan, numerous advertising materials, a regular
newsletter featuring business ideas from all the buyers of their
equipment, and low cost supplies.
Before actually starting work in your carpet cleaning business, you
should register your business or company name with your county
clerk. The cost for this is nominal, and you will receive a
registration certificate or card, which you will need to open a bank
account in your company name. You should also talk to a few
business insurance agents to get complete business insurance
against damage to any of your customers' carpets or accidents in
their homes. Being able to state "All work fully insured," will
greatly add to your business image.
Think seriously about buying or leasing a van for your service
calls. A uniform with the name of your company emblazoned on the
back, plus a late model van with your company name neatly painted on
the side will do just about as much to build your image and your
business as a full page advertisement in the Sunday paper.
On the subject of advertising, so long as you don't erect a sign on
your front lawn or your roof, proclaiming for all the world to see
the fact that you're operating a carpet cleaning business, you won't
have any problems operating your business from your home. Sooner or
later though, you'll have to buy a City or county business license.
So, the sooner you do this and are approved by the licensing agency
in your area, the better you're going to feel and the more
confidence you'll exude in all your business dealings.
Definitely plan to run a quarter page ad in your local business and
telephone directories. You'll really be surprised at the number of
calls you get from these ads. At least in the beginning, you should
run a regular ad in your newspaper. This should be a display ad, at
least 2 columns wide by 4 inches deep, and should appear in your
Wednesday and Thursday papers. As you become established, it won't
be necessary to run more than an ad every other week in your
Wednesday papers and before the holidays such as Easter,
Thanksgiving and Christmas, when people always want to spruce up
their residences.
Radio or television advertising really doesn't pull that well for
this kind of business when you compare the costs to the number of
jobs you get from it. I would suggest, however, that you contact
these media and try for a trade or barter agreement. You clean
their carpets on a regular basis, and they allow you to store up
advertising credit to use in the spring and fall when people are
really serious about spring cleaning, and Thanksgiving and Christmas
preparations.
It's also recommended that you register as a "probationary member"
of your Chamber of Commerce. This will add prestige to your
business, and enable you to associate on equal terms with the
various other business leaders in your community. Joining and
attending civic club meetings, participating in their causes and
events, will also result in long-range business income for you.
Something else to keep in mind: Get the word about your being in
business out to the people in your area. Get the Chamber of
Commerce to mention you in their newsletter; send "blurbs" about
your business and service to all your area newspapers, TV and radio
stations; arrange to put on an all-day demonstration of your work on
the carpeting in the covered mall areas in your city's shopping
centers, and hand out brochures to all the people watching; rent a
booth and hand out brochures at all the home building, remodeling,
and home improvement shows. Do the same thing at your county fair,
and hold seminars on the care of fine carpets. The ideas for free
publicity and promotion are limitless, so use your imagination and
"push" to get your name in the paper and on radio and TV as often as
possible.
There's always going to be competition. Some of it will be good for
you, and some of it will be bad for you. Accept it as a part of
life. Just keep in mind that you're in business because you feel
you can do a better job; you can do it more efficiently; and you can
do it with greater satisfaction to your customers than anyone else.
Be aware of the competition, but don't worry about it. Just stick
to your own business plan, and you'll be okay.
Depending on the population of your area, you should be planning for
additional carpet cleaning machines and the hiring of people to do
the work for you within three to six months - that is, unless your
original motive for a business of your own was to see how fast you
could work yourself to death. Assuming that all goes well with you,
within a couple of years you should have "hired help" running the
business while you enjoy the fruits of all the hard work you put in
at the outset.
I personally don't see the need for you to even consider buying a
franchised operation. There's just too much real help available for
the "independent" to go to the considerable expense and obligation
of a franchise. Starting from scratch, and as an independent, this
is most assuredly a low-investment, low-overhead type business - the
kind we recommend for anyone and everyone who's determined to make
it on his own.
A carpet cleaning business of your own is one of the easiest of all
small businesses to start. You'll find the initial start-up costs
well within your reach, and the margin of profit most astounding!
It's an easy business to operate, and yet one that can be called
necessary to today's standard of living. It carries a very high
rating on all business evaluation stability charts, and it's a
business that will grow rapidly to bring you the monetary rewards
you desire.
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