You’re not the only one, try this…
More than one person who has called for support today has said their phone is dead this week. Now I know it’s no consolation but it’s not just carpet cleaners, it’s locksmiths, oven cleaners and even a florist friend of mine said she has hardly had a call this week. That means it’s possibly down to things outside your control. That just means you have to take more control of what you can affect and, to steal a phrase from Nike, Just Do It!
Just Do It!
It doesn’t have to be anything expensive but if you use the quiet spell as an positive opportunity to do some of those things you keep promising to do.
There are loads of virtually free things you can do…
One of my favourite is always Doughnut Friday, which I’ve blogged about before so I’ll not repeat it here.
Follow up on some of those commercial clients you’d like to work for, offer a free demo while you’re quiet (don’t tell them though obviously)
Door knock your BEST area personally. Drop off a sample spotter. Have copies of testimonials from people you already work for in the area. If you have them saved in the client record of your database you should be able to filter them out even down to street level and print out a copy. Take a softly softly approach and you’ll be surprised how effective this can be. Don’t look desperate for the work now. Give the impression you’ve been working locally and politely ask that if they ever need carpet cleaning in future they ask their neighbours if they use you. Then walk away, you’re not trying to sell them now, you’re tying to just show people who you are and how professional and friendly you are.
Email and offer to your short notice list, you have been keeping a short notice list haven’t you? Don’t know what a ‘Short Notice List’ is? See my recent post here, it’s at the bottom.
Look into how to join those associations you’ve been meaning to join. The NCCA or TACCA. It might not generate any work immediately, but it’s a badge of honour you can add to your paperwork and adverts and a sign you’re committed to those hight standards. Plus they have forums you can share ideas on, and they’re usually free of the ‘nutters’ and ‘doom mongers’ on some other ‘open’ forums.
Teach yourself about Google Ad’s with Google’s own help files. Some people aren’t going to like this, but hey, why pay an agency a fixed monthly fee to manage a five or six very broad expensive keywords? You could do it yourself, and have HUNDREDS of very targeted keywords, spending less to generate more work. You can have the ad’s running today, and you’re in control. Turn ’em off when you’re too busy, back on as it starts to quieten down. One tip I would give you though is in the early stages make sure you turn off the Display Network ads (don’t worry, you’ll see where that is as you create ad’s). Oooh, I almost forgot. As I got into doing our own Google Ad campaigns for our carpet cleaning business’ I decided to do Google’s ‘agency’ training course, to get access to all the tutorials the agencies use. As i’m now qualified Google give me £50 vouchers to pass on to people to encourage them to get started using Google Ad’s. There’s no catch, or kickback to me, they are genuinely from Google for me to pass on to NEW advertisers. If you already have an account but you’ve never really used it (I probably shouldn’t say this) you could always forget about that one and start a new Google account fresh, then you could use one of the vouchers 😉 . Google are also really good at spotting those who are trying, so don’t be surprised if you get an email from one of their people asking if they can help you. Verify they are Google first of course but those guys are very patient and will have you going in no time. If you’d like a voucher just drop me an email to allanjnr@getbookedup.com and put Voucher please in the subject line. I’ll email a voucher back to you as soon as possible.
Phew! That is all I have to say about that.
Allan.