Soap Warehouse Blog

One item that is your best spent money for the dollar is your business cards. They are the least expensive way to get your name out and get jobs. Make it a goal to hand out at least 10-20 cards a day to people you meet, or leave them where ever you go. True many will just get tossed out in the nearest garbage can but you never know when someone will need your service and dig out that card "That guy gave them". Or when they will hand your card over to someone else that mentions they need to find someone to wash their house. You can expect less than 10% of any type of advertising including business cards to generate a call. Then it is up to you to land the business.

It is a known fact that people need 3-5 contacts from someone before they may buy. Also it takes someone to hear or read something at least 3 times before it sinks in. And the number one way to get business is by referrals. So how do you get those referrals? Leave your customers at least 10 cards with their name on the back and ask them if they liked your service to hand them out to their friends. Also make an offer to them, ex: you will give a discount off the next job for them or even send them a gift card worth $25. And that if their friend calls and uses their name that you will also give the new customer the same offer. Make it what ever you want but keep it the same so you will remember what your offer is all the time. You will find that if you change offers, one person will talk to another and may not be happy to hear the offer was not the same for them, a sure fire way to loose business. That is why referrals work, people talk! And remember one satisfied customer will normally tell two friends while an unsatisfied customer will tell at least 10 people they may not even know. So increase your number of good referrals and work extra hard never to have bad ones.

Since exposure is the key to generate new business. Post your cards everywhere you can. On subdivision notice boards, dry cleaners, the corner pub, just about anywhere in areas you like or want to work. Do not put them in locations where the type of customer you want probably does not go, like a Laundromat. If a client does not have $300 to buy a washer to wash his clothes why would he hire you to wash his house? But drive out of your way and post on the club house bulletin board in a upscale subdivision where you want to work, where you know the disposable income level is high and esthetics are important to the potential customer.

Good Luck and keep passing out those cards.

I meant to ask this open ended question yesterday for anyone to answer as to what is the best way you personally have found to get new business? And where have you found it?

Was it by a traditional method? Or have you stumbled on a great but unique angle?

Please feel free to tell everyone here what you have found. Remember Soap Warehouse sells all across the US and this will not be like giving away your best kept secret. Most of our customers will never come in contact with each other or even work in the same area. Although some of you do live in the same part of the country and have even referred other local pressure washers to us for which we are very grateful. We only hope to make everyone’s business better with this blog and not try to take business from each other. That is one reason we have a link to other open sharing sites with forums like The Grime Scene and Power Wash Network.

What job or type of work is your most profitable and why?

This will probably have a lot of answers, maybe as many as there are companies. I have heard from some clients that state they will only do fleet washing because that is the only place the money is and then the next week I will hear the same thing from a Hood Cleaner.

We also ask for anyone that has a web site to please forward it to us for us to link to you from our web site as one of the bonuses for being a Soap Warehouse customer.

Hope to hear from someone soon.

Good Morning and Welcome to a new month, June!

I can not believe half of the year is almost gone. How many of you have been making the goals you set for this year? How many of you even set goals? Goals are a very important part of business. If you are spending all of your time working and no time building your business, you will soon be out of business. You can not just sit back and expect the customers you currently have to always be there to meet your obligations. It is said that if you do not spend at least 20% of your effort; meaning time and money, to increase your business you will not be able to sustain it for long. Most new, independent or self owned businesses are out of business in the first 2-3 years. All businesses loose at least 10-15% of their customers each year for what ever reason. And in these tough economic times let’s face it, that percentage is probably higher. Keeping your clients equipment or property clean is not going to be a top priority for them when they have other bills to pay. So if your client base is shrinking or at least dragging right now what can you do to fill in the gaps? How do you find new customers? You need to look in places you may have not before.

For example, since the housing market is slow in most areas right now, many times the difference between which house sells is its curb appeal. Contact realtors in your area and give them special pricing to give to their sellers for you to do exterior cleaning. Sometimes just a freshly cleaned roof or front walk and driveway will make a new buyer like the house and think that the property looks great and that it will not need maintenance any time soon. Also contact new home builders about after construction clean up in a development. With so many homes sites out there they need to make their subdivision look the best to new home buyers. Also look for maintenance contract work that won’t dry up with the weather. For example I recently had a funeral home owner contact me looking for a referral for a company to do his three locations. He told me "No one has ever come by to see me about starting a monthly contract to clean my buildings, hearse and limos." He reasoned that most people including pressure washers do not like to call on funeral homes. But this is a business where image is key and they always have customers. There is never a slow month for a funeral home.

Have a good day and keep looking for new opportunities.

Save more per gallon when shipping as much weight as possible for the same rate.

Example: 2 kits of Brown Derby weigh 200 lbs, but you can usually send 1 extra kit for the same freight fee with most carriers, lowering your freight cost per gallon by 1/3.

Buy as large a quantity as you can at one time to save on product costs.

Example: If in the past you have used 5 pails or more of Mighty Max during the year at $35 per pail? The cost of a kit is less than the cost of 6 pails. $205/35=5.85 pails. You won' t have to worry about rising product or fuel rates, you pay just once and you also get over 5 extra pails of product for the same cost. Thus lowering your overall product costs, insuring your supply and when stored properly most products are good for two years.

These ideas could possibly insure that your rates will not increase to your customers when your competitors might and may actually bring you more business.

Call 800-762-7911 and have us run a quote for you today.

I hope this effort will give our customers information and education from us and from our many customers that work with our products every day.

Please feel free to make comments, ask for information, answer questions or respond to previous information put on this blog. If we feel an answer should be elaborated on, changed or corrected we will be monitoring the advice given and make changes as soon as possible. But we caution everyone that unless it is advice the staff here at Soap Warehouse has given ourselves we do not stand behind the advice and can not be held liable for anyone following any advice a third party makes on the blog since it will be open for all customers to use and view. We reserve the right to remove, restrict or change anything an outside party puts on the blog and will not allow any foul language, hateful comments, derogatory or non factual material on our company blog.

I will begin by posting helpful hints and asking for any questions you may have about our products.