Small comm. quote

[Bud B]

    Was at local barbers today, he has 105 sq. ft. of entry carpet he wanted cleaned every month, twice a month in the winter.

        Its small, really not worth it?       At my comm rates it wouldn't even make 30 bucks.   Even at 30 a cleaning its taking more

 time to get there, set up , then cleaning the place, but looking at different perspective , it adds up over 300+ a year.   

      I'm still not into cleaning full time, but I think I could find enough time to get this every month.         

• 

[Mike M]

Something that small would be a minimum charge job.

You do have a minimum, right? It cost money to go out and do work. Figure your costs and set your charge accordingly. You could say minimum charge is $50 for instance.

Our commercial minimum used to be $100 but we didn't do much for small work so it rarely came into play.

[Bill Martins]

When people say they will do it bi monthly that should be a red flag that they are expecting a cheap price, they tell you that from the get go so you think oh wow great!

Like Mike said, it's a minimum job at the very least, I would still charge double my minimum the first cleaning, than a minimum once a month.

$300 a year is DEFF not worth the trouble.

[TimO]

I do the same as Mike with a minimum charge. We don't get out of the truck for less than $125. Just doesn't make sense w/ drive time, set up, break down and clean time not to have one in place. The fact is that it is still a slot that is taken up on your calendar and you need to make it worth your while.

[scott rogers]

You may be missing a opportunity here. Yes I agree with a minimum charge, say 50.00 or what ever you think is fair.

But the opportunity is advertising to new potential residential customers. put a sign up These carpets maintained by XYZ Carpet Care, Leave a stack of 10% off your service cards for their customers to try your service.  Barber shops have a steady clientele, this can help you become branded in their customers minds so when the time come to pick a cleaner for their homes you are the number 1 choice.

[CACBServices]

I agree with the last post, and be clear with the owner. "This is below my regular minimum, but if you will allow me to promote my
business to your customers by ________________, then I'll give it a try for 3 months. Then we can reevaluate." Set a time frame that
will allow you to evaluate how effective this is in your market. 

Also set a trigger that ends the agreement amiably. I was working with a restaurant that I advised monthly cleaning. They wanted quarterly cleaning. I agreed, provided it happened every quarter and not just four times per year. Sure enough, they kept rescheduling one of the cleanings so there was a five month gap in service. Then they complained about the next cleaning. I pointed out the 5 month gap in service they scheduled and I ended th agreement.

This might also be a good opportunity to barter. See if the owner will throw in hair cuts for your entire family when needed and when
it doesn't interfere with his cash customers.

[greenclean]

i know this is old but i just wanted to add to the bit about asking to advertise in the store. this is a great idea and one that i highly recommend, but only as long as can get the carpets clean. you don't want to leave a load of cards there and then not be able to get a good enough job to warrant a recommendation. this is coming from experience. we did a real dirty place at a lower then normal price and had a load of cards for customers. the carpets could never come up looking clean and the work we did only lasted a week. we never got a call from the cards we left there, which i suspect is because the customer would look down and think they can't be very good when in fact it's just dirty horrible carpets i wouldn't want to put my "seal of approval" on.