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Important Message From The UK’s Very First IICRC Master Cleaner…
“They Laughed At Me When I Said I Was Being Coached In Business, As I’m ONLY A Carpet Cleaner!”
In less than two years I have gone from being a broke Carpet Cleaner, always chasing low priced jobs, working seven-days a week and still living-off-credit-cards to make ends meet, to becoming a businessman with my own £85,000 a year business, a new van with a £12,000 Steam Way Truck Mount, a brand new car and a plan in place to increase the business to £250,000 by next year!
Plus now, I take my two sons to school everyday, I’m home before they have tea, we go out every weekend, I’m able to enjoy my hobbies, go to the Gym three times a week and by the time you read this I will be on my second holiday this year (the first was three weeks in Florida with the family.
OH, AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, MY FRIENDS DON’T LAUGH AT ME ANYMORE!
Hi Fellow Carpet Cleaners,
My name is Andrew Walker and yes I’m a real carpet cleaner - probably like yourself, a one man operator and work out of a “normal” town called Bradford, in West Yorkshire. I can assure you I am not a fictious puppet character made up to make you feel comfortable. I am as genuine as you can get and want to share with you what I have achieved and so can you.
I want you to join dozen’s of other cleaners and I on a very exciting journey. You see I haven’t ‘changed my life’ over night – or done it all by myself, but with some very good information and the help of like-minded-cleaners that are pulling in the same direction. You’ve heard the saying two minds are better than one! Well it’s true…especially if you can use 40-50 minds - you don’t have to do everything yourself.
I’m sure like me over the years you’ll have ignored similar letters of this nature thinking “yeah yeah, I’ve heard it all before” we all have our little comfort zones we live in and as soon as anyone even suggests you can do better…well…we all disappear back into our shells. Because it’s warm, not uncomfortable and not threatening.
So what made me get out of my shell and look for something new? Well that’s easy…
My Child-Minder Was Spending More Quality Time With My Kids Than I Was!
If you’re like me and have young children you’ll understand what it’s like rushing off early in the morning – only to come home once they’re tucked up in bed. I decided the quality of my children’s life was the most important thing to me.
I made the decision to alter the way I ran my business – or get out of the business. I have never regretted it.
If Only I Knew 5 Years Ago What I Know Today… But You Can!!!!!
Ok, bold statement, but it’s true. If I was starting from five years ago today, I would be five years from retirement, or selling my business for a very handsome profit. But I don’t want to look back. The reason being, that in five years I KNOW what I will be earning. I know what I will be doing ON my business not IN it.
Please don’t think I’m one of those guys that doesn’t give a hoot about the technical side of cleaning and just want to grab all the money I can and run! I have had all the training imaginable, I attended the first IICRC carpet school in the UK. I was even the first IICRC Master Cleaner/Restorator in the UK. I have had the Chemicals, including signing up for all the protection systems. I’ve had the Machinery from tiny portables – to ‘miracle’ dry cleaning systems – and now run a large truck mounted system!
I’ve tried all the normal types of advertising and glossy ads. After several years I achieved the level of 300 to 400 quid a week. It was Ok - Or so I thought! I don’t mean to upset or offend anybody, but I have charged £30, £40 and even the heady heights of £50 to clean a suite and nearly as much as £1.50 a yard for carpet cleaning. Now I look at those days and laugh embarrassingly.
If you would like to learn how to charge as much as £0.81p per sq foot (yes per foot, that’s £7.29 a yard) for cleaning and protecting then have your client write you a testimonial saying “What great value your services are” and go on to recommend your services to friends and family. Don’t you think you should respond to this letter this time?
Are You Charging What You Really Deserve?
I provide the best all-round service in my area. I provide my clients with a “Mercedes” style service – second to none! And my clients are happy to pay it. For example, lets say if I’m cleaning and protecting an average size room of 200 sq foot of carpet. It would take me about half an hours work (remember I have a Truck Mount). So 200 sq ft x £0.98p = £196.00 What are you getting?
I am not bait and switching, I’m not tricking the clients – it’s just that I’ve learnt how to communicate VALUE – and not selling on PRICE. Clients tell me I am the most expensive, but they want me to do the work. Now wouldn’t this kind of information help your business? Let me tell you it has helped mine incredibly.
A few of weeks ago I was speaking with a cleaner from Hertfordshire. He said it must be hard for me to get work and charge a good price in “your area”. I asked why? He said he has a friend that cleans near me and was struggling to get work and was reducing his prices. He was shocked when I explained what I charged – (as it was more than what he charged in the south!) – and when I explained I did most of my work in the same area as his friend.
Take That Leap Of Faith…
True, it’s a learning curve. You may be asking yourself why should we have to go through that learning curve. Well, it’s just like going to the gym – it’s hard at first – it may go against everything you’ve ever done, but once you get in to the routine you’ll find it easy – in fact enjoyable.
It has been no big secret, but time and time again you ignore these letters. Why? I know you feel sceptical about anything not “the norm”, but take that leap of faith.
Do You Feel Confused? - Do You Feel Lost?
Would you try to drive to your next carpet-cleaning job without a map if you didn’t know the area – would you?
Well you could get a map – or even better a detailed A-Z street map. Alternatively you could ask someone who knows which direction to go in and you can listen and take down notes. Better still – ask the person to accompany you on this journey – to give you step-by-step directions so you never get lost again!
It is the same in business, you can think you are doing really great and then realise you are 10 years older and a one-man show, who is earning exactly the same as you were 10 years ago.
We ALL need direction and this is the best opportunity you will be offered. Why? You are a carpet and upholstery cleaner; this is designed for carpet and upholstery cleaners only. It has information from the most successful cleaning companies from around the world with proven marketing and sales materials including, letters and adverts that work here in the UK. Yes you can buy books and listen to general marketers, but this is purely for our industry. How easy can it be?
Break Away From The Maddening Crowd
An Advertisement, which is being run by the Royal Marines at the moment, always makes me smile. It is a true statement, which reflects business people committing themselves to improving their businesses. The closing line of the advert is something on this line “99% of people please do not reply”
This is probably the figure of carpet cleaning companies who do not work anywhere near to their potential. Even people who are getting excited by the figures I am giving you now, sadly won’t even make it to the telephone to make a commitment to themselves, their wife or children, to go that last mile and really become that business man and entrepreneur. Now it’s your turn to free yourself and enjoy life and work to live not live to work.
Why don’t you become part of the 1%?
Yes, we all want the big house. Yes we all want the luxury holidays. Yes we all want to spend more time with our families… But what do we do when offered a solution or a helping hand? Nothing. “No it’s not for me”, or “I am too busy to do anything like that”.
That’s the precise reason why we are always working the 24/7 life wondering why at the end of everyday we are back to square one. But some days we are a few steps forward only to go back 10 steps the next day. WHY?
Don’t Listen To “Old Wives Tales”
How often do you hear family, so called ‘friends’ AND business associates, around you tell you the following list of absurd statements: -
“You can’t just start a business and expect to make
any money for at least the first five years.”
“Don’t do any of that kind of Advertising,
it will never work”
“That kind of Marketing is too American,”
“Carpet Cleaning, there’s no money in that get
yourself a real job”
“You can’t charge that much – people only
want the cheapest jobs done!”
The list can go on and on. But can you tell me how successful those people are? We see on the news old WELL established firms going under. Why? No vision of the future, just relying on the great old past. But we ALL need to move with the times. Most people live the TV dinner lives and as consumers ourselves we want things NOW! NOW! NOW! People are willing to pay excellent money for a excellent service!
What Do You Really Want?
Think for one minute now, about what your business was like 2 –3 years ago, even 4-5 years ago. Are you really where you want to be? Have you reached the goals you set? Yes, you probably have had a small price increase every year (although I bet a lot haven’t), but are you working harder, or are you working smarter?
If you are honest you are not anywhere near as far on as you should or could be. I wasn’t, but that has all changed now. It’s not rocket science, or micro technology, it can be uncomfortable initially, but you have a lot of support, plus people like myself to tell you of how I did it successfully, i.e. you miss all the hardship I went through and others do the same for me even now.
Do you really know what you want? If you’re happy being a one man show fine. If you want to be a multi truck outfit fine. You can be what ever you want as long as you know what you want to be.
What amazes me is that after getting involved with Piranha Marketing, and the ALLTEC FastTrack Programme everyone seems to take a quick look and just say “Too American……….it won’t work here!!”
Now before you think “Oh no not that again” I will tell you a story that happened to me, regarding that Joe Polish and his “American trash”. Because that’s what I thought of it!
I bought the ‘Piranha Marketing’ pack. I read it and put it on the shelf, because I was too busy to do any of that “marketing” stuff. Guess what? About six months later business dropped and I thought, “hmmm I have parted with a few hundred quid, maybe I should do something with it?”
I was looking for something quick and easy to do. The pack recommended the “I Miss You” letter for a quick start. But it said to send the letters out to all the clients on your database!
But I didn’t have a database. So I managed to find all my old diaries and scraped together 118 addresses and offered previous clients a “Free room of Carpet Cleaning”.
I can tell you I was very worried, I was going to get “Taken to The Cleaners” I imagined myself doing 118 free rooms of Cleaning and going bust. But seeing as I was dead in the water anyway I thought what the hell.
Well guess what? I gave away 41 Free rooms
of Cleaning. Disaster??????????
No, over that period of the mail shot (which only cost me £38.70) I was given additional work worth £3042.50. The work was carried out when the free room was done. I now realise it is a very good way of getting back in front of your clients. I have got to admit I never had such a good return as that again, but it is always a very profitable way of smoothing over the “famous “ quiet season. Yes it does work every time and it is also a very good way of sorting out your database, regarding clients who have moved.
Childs Play For Everyone
This is just one of the many simple strategies you can implement. And how easy is it made? Very. You get all the materials and letters - all you have to do is just drop your name and number in at the appropriate point put it in an envelope, put an address on it, a stamp, post it and wait for the telephone to ring.
And before you say you have no money for this kind of marketing, how many of you spend fifty quid a week on a lineage ad, for a pittance return? All you need for 100 letters is £19 of stamps and £1 worth of printing off your computer. To be exact £20 and I would expect 3 phone calls and to book at least 2 jobs at an average of £170 each – not bad is it?
Not Just Dead Beat Ideas
Another example of how well the strategies can work is the “Commercial” letter. I regularly pick a group of businesses like Solicitors, or Accountants and mail shot all of them in my area.
Don’t laugh, but my most recent mail shot was to 48 Funeral Directors. I only got one job. Do you think I was happy? I was very happy at 2% return. But not only did that job bring in £425, the mail shot only cost me £10.50. That is a 40 to 1 return. What do I mean by that? Well for every pound spent I got 40 pounds back. So if you do a meaningless ad in the paper costing just £50, do you get £2000 back? Probably not and if you do, can you send it to me!
And a big bonus is, I gave my great presentation to the Funeral Director – who was so impressed he told me he was part of a 26 Funeral Directors Franchise, so guess who is going to be referred at the next meeting - yours truly, so guess what that £10.50 mail shot is going to bring in over the years.
Pink is More Than Just A Pretty Colour!
We all think we are in a big butch mans world, well would you believe pink is now my favourite colour. Why? Because it makes me money. Another strategy is called “The Pink Flyer” – it’s an A3 size leaflet full of text – it looks like a board sheet newspaper. And it has been tested and proven to work best on pink paper! Again, this strategy is available to everyone and what amazes me is how simple this is - but it’s not used to it full potential by everyone.
This is a powerful tool and does cause a lot of talk. But most important, high ticket value jobs. The amount of jobs say from ten thousand, can be very low, but you must look at the pound for pound return. This has been a slow working plan, but with over lapping can keep a steady flow of high-ticket value jobs. When I refer to high-ticket I mean anything over £275. I also have an A4 version, so I can vary my message from time to time, but again it’s Pink!!
I have tried this method in sending out letters to businesses, (including the Funeral Directors) on Pink, Orange, Green and Yellow and from my tests at the moment Pink is still winning, but I do get work off the others, a bit of variety is the spice of life.
But My Ultimate Marketing Tool Is Probably The Easiest! Don’t Keep Yourself A Secret!
Do you keep in regular contact with your clients? I send every, yes, every client a Newsletter EVERY month.
I can feel you wincing; you have 100’s, maybe 1000’s of clients. All you are thinking is, that’s going to be expensive. Well this time you are right. It will be very, very expensive if you DO NOT send a Newsletter. OK just pin those ears back and open your eyes wide. This is my most profitable form of marketing of all. How simple can this be? You could just pooh pooh the idea but, this brings me in at least £18,000 a year. Does that seem like a good idea? You bet! And guess what? I don’t even write it, pack it or post it.
Every month – I get the professionally written Client Newsletter through my door. As part of the FastTrack Programme I receive this free every month on floppy disk and hard copy. This is great as all I do is read it once – make any amendments I feel necessary - add my name, my company details and include my picture. I then post it to the printer. He then delivers the finished items to someone else that folds, stuffs and posts them. So for half an hours input from me - I make about £1,500.00 a month.
Why should you do it? My database is only 700 clients, so if yours is bigger, hey you have a license to print money. All this is available to you and it is so simple. And I mean simple is the key word, but you wouldn’t believe how many people just turn their backs on this system. The system being on the FastTrack. But that I will talk about later after I have shared some more killer ideas, which basically make you money, easily.
Clients Forever, Not Just A Day.
Building relationships with your Client Newsletters, will enable you to get testimonials and referrals. Testimonials are something I used to get once in a blue moon. Now I get testimonials all the time, which are absolutely glowing. The poetic flow of my very happy clients is brilliant. How do I get them to do this? I wow my clients – not by giving them a good job BUT by giving them outstanding service. I always provide that little extra for my clients.
Then of course when I spend time with my clients, instead of running off to another £35 job. I talk to them, ask them questions about their furnishings and which other services I could give them. I always ask the client for referrals. I even ask them for testimonials. And do you know what, they give them to me, as they trust me – and they make my business extremely profitable.
How would you like to get £240 for an average job, instead of getting £50 per job? It is something you can do very easily. I know you are now thinking you won’t get that kind of money in my town, but stop and think a minute. I live in Bradford and we tend to have a low standard of living – which is not helped by a few weekly riots and destruction. For years I would tell myself I couldn’t earn good money because I come from a poor part of the country. We have very high unemployment.
However, it took a while, but I realised I shouldn’t focus on the poor people that can’t afford my services, but the rich people that can! Not far from where I live is the nice side of town and we do see Mercedes, BMW’s and Jaguars….once I recognised this, things started to change for me. So go and find your good side of town, as they won’t come and find you.
As you can see things are now starting to stack up and you could be losing the plot as this seems to complicated and you may be saying to yourself “I don’t have the know how”, or “I am too old and I don’t have a computer”. STOP the toxic thought now!!!!!!
Coaching Is Guidance
This is where the main headline at the start of this letter comes from. The first time I went to America to learn self-improvement I was laughed at. My friends, my clients and even my family laughed at me. I was told time and time again “But you’re only a carpet cleaner!” I could not have done any of this without guidance and coaching. You can’t and you won’t make it on your own.
Being introduced to the Piranha Marketing and then the ALLTEC FastTrack Programme by Robert Saunders has been the best things that has ever happened to me, my business and more importantly my family. What I have been able to do is maintain my income while having more time off from work. I spend more time with my family now, but more importantly, I earn more for doing a lot less. Hence the term “Working Smarter not Harder”.
I decide when I want to take the Kids to school or pick them up, not my clients. I don’t do jobs I don’t want to do. I am in control of the amount of time I work. This has all come through the FastTrack “Coaching Club”. How would you like to talk to a group of like-minded individuals on a regular basis on a conference call. Share your victories and mishaps. Having a bad day call someone to get you in a positive mode to re-direct your business. We share ideas that are working and enjoy “Brainstorming Days” together where we all meet face to face and the one-man show fades into the background and you can make your business grow and grow.
We test ideas so we all spread the cost of a mail shot idea. If we had an idea that had three or four different versions to it we would spread the load between ourselves and the testing becomes one and saves you and me lots of money in the long run.
3 Steps To Heaven
A good example of this was the 3-step letter. This is where a letter is sent three times over a 45-day period and this has many versions to it. But the load was spread between us all and proved you could share the work out successfully. This has turned out to be a very profitable way of making money and adding high-end homes to your house list. The reason being, you find where all those Mercs, BMW’S and Jags hang out and target that area. Yes they do respond and yes you make money on giving away free carpet cleaning. Oops I didn’t tell you that bit. Ah! Now there is something else you need to find out about.
Clients Pay Me Every Month Over £1500! How?
This is something you NEED to find out about and quick if you want a strong and secure business . Every Month I receive over £1500 guaranteed! Paid directly into my bank account. Next year it will be around £2500 a month and will increase every year. Eventually it will make my business very valuable when - or if I wish to sell it. How many carpet cleaning businesses do you know which have any value to them except good will?
Most cleaners are forever chasing that £50, £100 one-off job when they should be building their business. And what better way than getting your clients to agree to have you clean for them next year and to start pay you a monthly fee over the year, instead of one off payment every two years. People will pay you more if you make it appealing and are paying you £20, £30 or even up to £60 per month. Just stop and think. Just £20 a month is £240 a year! What would that do for your business?
This strategy is called the “Perfect Care” Maintenance Plan and is even easier to sell with the new FastTrack Audit Software! Yes I use a computer for my Audits (quotes). I have adapted the FastTrack PowerPoint programme which is great tool to show the client all my services and it includes before and after pictures of previous cleaning jobs.
This Is What Really Sets FastTrack Members From The ‘Ordinary Cleaners’
After the PowerPoint Presentation I ask just 18 quick and easy questions based on the occupants, the indoor environment, and the current condition of their furnishings. Each question is just a tick box or a number on the laptop computer, but I can then print there and then a complete three page Audit Report specific to that home. It also shows the level of soiling and cleaning recommendations for that home as given by the IICRC in their standards.
Just imagine being able to hand over a tailored-made report – showing the cleaning frequency as recommended by the IICRC!!! This has never yet failed to impress my clients and always helps to up-sell more cleaning or Maintenance Plans.
Do You Think This Makes Me Busy?
You bet it does! At this moment in mid August – I’m booked almost solid until mid September. I even have jobs booked in for October, November and December. In fact in November I only have 12 days left to fill and we still have 2 ½ months to go!
This year I became truck mounted and have now taken on my first employee – Chris. He’s been a great help as I’ve been able to get off the truck and really start to work ‘on’ my business.
Give Yourself A Fighting Chance And Say, “Yes” Now And Pick Up The Phone!
Do it now. If you wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow will never come. Here’s something I learnt on my first trip to America. “If you always do what you’ve always done – you’ll always get what you’ve always got!” In other words if you want to improve your business – you need to start doing things better than before – otherwise you’ll be in the same mess as your in now!
If you aren’t even remotely tempted by what I have told you, let me give you one bit of advice. “Stop trading now!” Why? Because someone else in your town will be soon taking YOU to the cleaners. It is powerful. It is simple to use and what more it even works in Bradford. So what more can I say except book your place on the September Discovery Days Now!
Best Regards
Andrew (Fluffy) Walker
PS. If you don’t act now someone else will.
PPS Piranha and FastTrack changed my business. It’s a simple plan to follow and if you follow it you’ll get there.
PPPS. If you join FastTrack I will personally help you – see the attached information regarding the FastTrack Seminars – when we can speak directly
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