HOW TO START YOUR OWN
CARPET CLEANING BUSINESS
There are two very important conditions in today's world 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 walltowall carpeting. Secondly, the high
replacement costs of carpet have caused people to want to make what they already own last
longer. These two factors can aid you in getting your carpet cleaning service off to a
fantastically rapid beginning.
Most businesses employ janitors or janitorial services to vacuum their carpets after
hours daily, and then hire "master" carpet cleaners to deepclean them every
three months or so. Homemakers also generally vacuum their carpets several times a week,
and then hope to deepclean every spring or fall, depending on the amount of household
traffic and their budgets. It's true that people everywhere try to save money by handling
these jobs themselves. However, a wellplanned advertising campaign combined with a
fair price and guaranteed service will compel most consumers to try your offer out at
least once. After that, your proven reputation as an honest dealer will win their loyalty.
Most people are just too busy to handle all their doityourself projects. They
continually put off until later any chore that requires special equipment. This is
especially true with carpet cleaning. Deep down, most folks are fearful of botching the
job. Thus, they're more than willing to pay an expert or specialist to do this kind of
work for them.
It doesn't take any special education, skill, or experience to operate a professional,
deepcleaning carpet cleaner. Yet, from your first job onward, you should project the
image of a thoroughly experienced expert in your field. 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!
An important part of this business--or any other business--is the operator's marketing
skill and salesmanship. Make no mistake about it, all businesses ultimately succeed or
fail upon the salesmanship of management. Although you won't be selling a product with
this business, you'll be selling a service. And selling a service is no more difficult
than selling a particular product.
Your final success will be predicated upon the sales effort you put forth. Getting your
business off the ground will require a great deal of work on your part, but will pay off
handsomely. You'll have to sell yourself AND your services. Therefore, it will be to your
benefit to learn all you can about selling. Continue to add to your knowledge with an
ongoing program of learning. Keeping up to date and aware of successful selling ideas and
methods will add to your total success.
Before you acquire any 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 to
set up an appointment for you to do the work.
We have found that the least expensive and most productive method of reaching these
people is with flyers or announcements delivered doortodoor by hired agents or
the members of youth organizations in your city. These flyers announce a "Carpet
Cleaning Special" and can be printed on 5 1/2" by 8" sheets of paper
inviting 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 excellent
capabilities to do the job. Then take your ideas to the advertising class at a local
college. Explain your project and ask for volunteer help in designing the ad. 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 this, it will be very
reasonable.
Contracting with an advertising agency to develop your ad will probably take longer and
will cost a significant amount of money. However, you might be able to contact a staff
member who does freelance work on the side and who would be interested in taking on your
job. 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. This will
encourage the ad designer to make your work a top priority.
The next step is to take the original of your flyer to a printer and have prepared
whatever number of copies you'll need to get started. Most quick print shops can print up
to 20,000 copies and deliver them in a short time at 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, line up your delivery people--local Brownies, Cub
Scouts, or Boy Scout Troops. Perhaps a local church youth group would be interested in
helping. 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
group leaders. Arrange to pay these groups $20 for each thousand circulars they hand out
doortodoor.
Before you start handing out your flyers, be sure that you have someone available to
answer the phone and set up appointments for you when people begin calling in response to
your advertising. You can pay an answering service to handle these calls for you, but if
your spouse or a friend is available, that would be even better. It is imperative,
however, that a "live voice" answer your phone. People want to arrange matters
when they are thinking about it, and prefer not to wait around for a return phone call.
Your "secretary" should have a set pattern of answering your calls, and should
use an appointment book to line up customers.
Usually, your flyer will advertise a special such as the one below:
Work generated by this special offer should take you no more than a half an hour in
each customer's home. Your secretary can book appointments for jobs at the rate of one
every sixty minutes, depending on the travel distance between appointments.
By setting your first appointment for 8:30 in the morning and working through the whole
day, allowing thirty minutes between appointments, you'll be able to handle eight
appointments per day. At $35 per call, you will gross $280 per day. Your secretary should
book you solid from 8:305:30 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
sites--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 rentall store, or even some super markets and rent a
steamclean carpet cleaner. Most of the time, you won't have to pay until you return
it, but even if you must pay at the time you take it, the cost is usually $25 or less for
twentyfour 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.
Bear in mind that carpet cleaning is a 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. Go out of your way to be polite and friendly, 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. Conduct yourself in a business like manner at all
times. Dress neatly. One of the best ways to get off to a fast start and make a favorable
impression is to purchase a working uniform from a major department store. 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.
Keep your equipment clean, properly maintained, and operating smoothly. Have your
supplies organized and within easy reach in your vehicle. 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 jobs gained through your advertising specials, concentrate on doing the
job and moving on to your next customer. If the customer questions you about the cost to
do additional rooms, give an estimate and set up a tentative appointment, which you should
later confirm with a callback 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 and phone number of your company.
Your service is deepdown 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.
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. A group of satisfied customers is the key to your becoming wealthy in
this business, so be sure and make every job your best yet.
The average price to the customer to have three rooms and a hallway cleaned is $35 to
$50. Your materials to do that size job will cost about $5, your labor less than an hour.
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. As you can readily see, if you earn $2000 per week,
you'll gross over $100,000 per year.
We've described to you how to get started with virtually no 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. Most equipment manufacturers have financing plans available.
It would be well to check out several of these plans before making a purchase. Even better
than the financing plans offered, some of the manufacturers have business startup
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 insurance agents to arrange
for complete business insurance against damage to any of your customers' carpets or
accidents occurring 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.
As long as you don't erect a sign on your front lawn or your roof proclaiming to all
the world 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
pay for 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.
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, run a regular ad in your newspaper, possibly in the television guide. This
should be a display ad at least two columns wide by four inches deep, and should appear in
your Wednesday and Thursday papers. As you become established, it won't be necessary to
run more than one ad every other week. Advertise in the Wednesday edition of the
newspaper, and before the holidays such as Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas, when folks
always want to spruce up before or cleanup after family gatherings and parties.
It's recommended that you join your local 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 and
participating in their causes and events will also result in added business income for
you.
When you begin your business, get the word out about your being available to serve the
needs of the people in your area. Ask the Chamber of Commerce to mention you in their
newsletter; send blurbs about your business to all your area newspapers, TV, and radio
stations; arrange to put on an allday demonstration of your work on the carpeting in
the covered shopping malls in your city and to 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 or 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 not. Accept it as a part of life. 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 do fine.
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--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, 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.
There is no need to consider buying a franchised operation. There's so much help
available for the independent businessman, enabling him to make his own venture a success,
that he needn't go to the considerable expense and obligation of a franchise. Starting
from scratch as an independent is a lowinvestment, lowoverhead type business. We
recommend it 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 startup costs well within your reach, and the margin
of profit most astounding! It's an easy business to operate, yet one that is absolutely
necessary to today's standard of living. Carpet cleaning services carry a very high rating
on all business stability evaluations. It's a business that will grow rapidly to bring you
the monetary rewards you desire.
