Soap Warehouse Blog

Continuation:

Our third suggestion is to stretch your cleaner as far as you can to still get the results you need. Most people, pressure washers included, tend to think more is better. Twice the dirt means you should use twice the cleaner, and that is just not true. Many times the more soap you add the harder it gets to get it clean. Sometimes all you need is hotter water to make the soap you already have do the job better. That is why our dilution rates are doubled with cold water. Turn up the heat and you will increase the cleaning power of the soap you already are using. Always first start a job with the least amount of chemical you think it will take and work up. Do not start high and think you can work down. Most operators will never dial it down to the same lower level that they could have cleaned with had they started the other way. This has also been proven in washer tests.

Sometimes all you need for the soap to work well is softer water. You can spend pennies per gallon on a water softener like our “So Soft” that will help your soap work better. It will also promote the sheeting off of water for vehicles and houses to dry faster. Or our "Booster" that will stretch the amount of soap you use. Adding "Quick Dry" to rinse water also aids in the sheeting action or our "Spray Wax" to leave cars or vinyl siding with a nice shine.

Please add your comments on how you save on product cost, additives you might put in like bleach or any other suggestions. Also if you have any questions about these suggestions as to how we can help you save money, just ask.

Continuing from yesterday, June 6th:

Second use as few products as you can for as many different jobs as you can thus reducing the number of different products you have to buy, allowing you to buy in bulk, making it easier to store and manage. I have some customers that will use, say Mighty Max for almost all of there exterior cleaning jobs. They will buy one 55 gal kit in the beginning of the year to use at different strengths with different additives during the year thus saving money since they got one kit and saved on shipping the water weight of pails. So if you are buying over one year even 10 pails of Mighty Max, two at a time every other month, that would be $350 plus the shipping costs five times, where as one kit is only $205 and shipping one kit is less than even one set of two pails. Saving you hundreds!

Tell us your best all in one product? Is it Brown Derby? Mighty Max? Smoke House? We would like to hear from you and let everyone know what you add to these to give you the best results for the jobs you are doing. Maybe if enough of you like a certain product with a certain additive we can have it made that way and possibly save you even more.

Most of your expenses fall into one of three areas; supplies, fuel and labor.
Labor is the only near constant you have. You either work for yourself or you have a crew that work X number of hours a week for a certain amount. The next expense is fuel and we all know that is rising out of this world making everything else go up. So that leaves your supplies as the best place to be able to cut costs. So how can your chemical supplier help besides lowering their prices? We can make suggestions.

First, as we spoke of earlier at the start of these posts: Buy as much product as you can at the best freight rate you can get. Paying $50 for a single pail of 5 gallons of product and spending $50 to get it there costs you $20 a gallon. But if you bought 4 pails ($200) for the same $50 in shipping, your cost per gallon drops to $12.50. 

If you had bought all four of those pails separately even over just a few months time and freight rates had stayed the same, you would have spent $400 on the same amount of product you could have spent just $275 on, for a savings of $125. We here at Soap Warehouse are always ready to calculate rates for you with different carriers or amount of product that can be shipped. We are happy to help you get the best $ per gallon rate you can get.

To help you with this we have posted in our archives the weight chart for our products on our website that you can go to at any time; Product Weight Chart. Of course freight prices will always be changing but you will be able to see what pails and drums vs. kits weigh.

Let us know what your suggestions are as to how to save on product costs.

Next to business cards post cards can be money well spent it just depends on how you use them.

Spending hundreds on bulk mailings in mailers or on post cards can be great for the large companies that are building and maintaining name recognition, but for the little guy this kind of marketing expenditure can be out of reach.

But don’t give up on post cards yet. One thing they are great for is repeat customer business and to build customer loyalty.

Say you have a customer that gives you a referral, but you do not have a referral business card program in place like I spoke of yesterday. You can use a post card as a thank you for sending you business and list an offer on it as your thank you, such as $20 off your next visit or for a free added service. You would be surprised to know most people like to see a concrete figure instead of a percentage, even when the percentage off may have been greater in the long run. For example you offer $20 off of your next service instead of 10% off, which they perceive as less value, and their next service call costs $300. You have saved $10 but they are happy they got the $20 off. Also discounting lowers the percieved value of your work. That is why the free added service offer works best.

Post cards are also great for recouping lost business. Say you see April that a loyal customer that calls every year in March has not called you yet. First send a kindly reminder card that their service is due, it may have just slipped their mind or they have been busy and have been meaning to call you. Remind them your days fill up fast this time of year and to call now for the best times, they need a reason to call you. Then if in a few weeks still no call, you may want to extend an incentive offer to them. Always make a definite offer with a definite dead line. Like you have an opening during such an such week and can do it for X amount but only if they call by a certain date. Also never have an offer cost more than 10 or so percentage of what you are making for the job depending on your expenses and mark up rate. You are trying to get back business you've lost not give it away just to have a job to do.

One more important thing is for your card to have your customers name on it. Do not use the standard Dear loyal customer. Your customer needs to feel like they are important to you not just a number. That salutation may be fine for a general card you are sending to all of your customers to make an announcement but not when you are trying to win back a customer, and hand signed is best.

Good Luck

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.