Soliciting business from friends

Social networking is the rage right now. Be careful not to get caught up in the idea that it can replace your advertising program. No matter how large your circle of friends, go against the trend and don't openly try to interest them in doing business with you. If they do it on their own that's wonderful, but otherwise you'll only give them a reason to avoid you.

Establish a regular mailing program. Don't include extra zip codes when sending out brochures to increase the radius of a campaign. For example, it's better to target the same 5,000 households in select zip codes on a regular monthly schedule than to blow an entire budget on a one-time mailing to 60,000 households in a much larger area.

Assume no more than a 1/2 % response on a mailing. It will probably be less than that the first time. After you're profitable in your primary target area, expansion is fine. Sadly, you can spend 100% of your ad budget and have no idea how effective it is. It's important that advertising efforts be measured. Always have an expiration date on special offers and coupons.

Be sure to ask when a prospect calls for a quote, "How did you choose to call us for service?" Most important, keep a record of their response.

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One nation under God!

An e-mail was sent to me by a customer who said this prayer was written by 93 year old Billy Graham. He added this note:

"With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation so we once again can be called One nation under God!"

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, "Woe to those who call evil good," but that is exactly what we have done.
We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values.
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery.
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.
We have killed our unborn and called it choice.
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.
We have neglected to discipline our children and call it building self esteem.
We have abused power and called it politics.
We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and call it freedom of expression.
We have ridiculed the time honored values of our forefathers and call it enlightenment.
Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today; Cleanse us from sin and set us free.
Amen!

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I get this eerie feeling

History shows war is a good way out of depression, recession or virtually any other political mess. Woodrow Wilson ran as a strong anti-war candidate and jumped right into WWI (The war to end all wars). Franklin Delano Roosevelt solved the great depression with WWII. Harry Truman, avoiding a post-war economic down-turn, gave us the Korean War. John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson opened with the Cuban missile crisis and orchestrated the Viet Nam War.

In some ways 2012 reminds me of 1936. The country had gone through four years of hard economic times and a liberal president was re-elected. As soon as the '36 elections were over we started getting ready for war even though the country was overwhelmingly isolationist. It took a third term for FDR to get us into World War II, the worst war in history.

Like '36, the 2012 election followed four tough years and a "very" liberal "anti-war" president has been re-elected. A Russian nuclear sub has been spotted off our coast, China has built a new war plane suspiciously like ours and North Korea is rattling sabers. The crazies in Iran are building a nuke and the whole Middle East is a tinderbox of Muslim fanaticism.

The guy in the White House is supposed to be anti-war like Wilson. Just like Roosevelt, he's been re-elected after four hard years and he has something else in common with our other war-time presidents. He's a Democrat with a big mess on his hands. This may be over-simplifying it a bit, but there are other similarities, too.

Bankers are sitting on cash they'd rather lend to warring nations than to small businesses. During the Vietnam War, the Rockefellers, who control Chase Bank, owned a metal processing plant in North Vietnam. They supplied the Russians with weapons and the North Vietnamese got most of their weapons from Russia. And they weren't the only bank making money off that war.

The 22nd amendment was passed to prevent a repetition of the Roosevelt travesty of being president for life. Jose Serrano, D NY, has introduced a bill in the house to repeal it. I have this eerie feeling that a real war may not be far away. The next one could really be the "war to end all wars" and, coincidentally, all of us. Pray for peace.

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More on ICS's 50th

There have been quite a few e-mails from customers, and even from some who are not, about the 50th anniversary issue of ICS magazine. Thank you for the many congratulations on being nominated as the industry's most influential person of the past fifty years. Evan Kessler, the publisher of ICS, had some nice things to say that were appreciated, too.

ICS mentioned the "Great Steam Controversy" and one of the e-mails asked, "Why did you fight so hard for the use of the word "steam" and you don't even use it?" So many in the business today never even heard of that era in our industry's history. For the complete story on "steam" click on the "History" link on our home page and scroll down.

It's true that competitors like Deep Steam, Steamex, SteamMatic®, Stanley Steemer®, Steam Services and Steamway benefited from our winning that battle. I'm glad we were able to help because in the free market system no one, not even competitors, should be harassed with threats by the BBB® and FTC when the charges were so inappropriate.

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News from the carpet industry

David Kolb is retiring and has notified the company he will not serve another term on Mohawk Carpet's board of directors. Mr. Kolb did us the honor of stopping at our booth at Surfaces in 1996. I'll never forget it and how we talked for more than an hour. He was president at the time and later became board chairman before retiring in 2004. All of us throughout the Bane-Clene system extend our best wishes for a happy retirement to this friend and fine gentleman.

In 1983, J&J Industries became the first carpet mill to endorse the Bane-Clene system. J&J has just named Bill Crosley as corporate vice president of sales. His responsibilities will include selling efforts and the oversight of the commercial carpet brand, J+J Invision. Congratulations to Mr. Crosley who has been with J&J for more than 35 years.

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Attracting new business

A bulletin from an advertising advisory group on how to attract new customers suggested the creation of an eye catching, effective business card. They said the design should be based on the nature of the business and should use bright colors to attract attention. An unusual shape to make the card stand out was also part of their plan. That's good advice.

They get paid for it, too. As I read the more than 700 words on the subject, I realized that we've been using a card like this for more than 35 years. It's available for our Bane-Clene customers to use and it's very inexpensive considering that it's die-cut. As we get back to basics in these troubled political and financial times, sometimes we don't see the forest for the trees.

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Jimmie sez: "Happy St. Patrick's day!"

We're often asked about the origin of our leprechaun as the company logo. In 1969, my wife and I were in Florida and sent a St. Patrick's Day card featuring a leprechaun to her folks in Philadelphia. When we arrived in Indianapolis, the exact card was in our mailbox. At first we thought her folks had sent the card that we had sent to them. The identical card was addressed, signed and postmarked the very same day we had mailed their card from Florida.

We had been looking for a cartoon type character for our logo and this seemed to be a good omen. A commercial artist sketched a leprechaun for us; we liked it and named him "Jimmie" after Elizabeth's father. Jimmie's been mighty good to us all these years.

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Carpet's wild ride

This was sent to me by Dan Willis, manager of our service company in Indy. It's another view of what has caused carpet to drop in popularity. Dan is optimistic about carpet's comeback and here are his reasons:

Reading Floor Covering News recently brought back memories of my youth. In 1969 my dad worked for West-Point Pepperell as a Mill Rep in Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois and later for Cabin Craft, Galaxy and Patcraft. Our family car was a station wagon filled with carpet samples. People were covering hard floors as fast as carpet could be produced and sales were thriving thanks to new housing construction.

Why were people covering up those hard floors? Simply because wood and tile were slippery, cold and loud. Carpet was inexpensive compared to hard floors and shag carpet became popular because it was soft, fuzzy and warm. Have you noticed that the new word in the carpet industry this year is "soft?" And have you looked at the price of hard floors? These are signs that carpet is coming back. People are tiring of dust bunnies, scratches and noise.

The Baby-Boom generation wanted change from their parents’ carpeted homes so they bought hard floors. Now they're caught up in nostalgia and are looking for things that remind them of their childhood. As they age, they don't want to be shuffling around on noisy, hard, slick floors. And the Boomer's children want to break away from the hard floors of their parents' homes and are starting to seek the warm, quiet environment that belongs exclusively to carpet.

As an industry we've been putting a lot of time and effort into learning how to maintain all of the popular hard floors on the market. That's a good thing, but don't forget where we came from. We're carpet cleaners first and foremost and don't let our customers ever forget it. The tide is turning and we'll have more carpet to clean than hard floors at some point in the near future. Everything happens in cycles or trends.

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E-mail about bait and switch

Bill,

Just read the monthly newsletter and unfortunately in Nashville we have yet another of these fraudulent cleaners. It seems this person came into some money some time ago and can afford to keep buying new equipment, advertising, etc. to keep new customers coming in, but as is obvious, cannot get repeat customers.

After being found with numerous addresses for his business over the years, one would think the state would step in, but so far he is still feeding the same lies of "being sorry, and making things better," to the public. I cannot understand how he keeps IICRC certification after so many complaints. (This is just another reason most don't lend credibility to the IICRC).

Here are the links to local TV news special reports on this scam company.

www.wsmv.com/video?clipId=8466854&topVideoCatNo=213562&autoStart=true

www.newschannel5.com/story/21311778/bbb issues warning about carpet cleaning company

Maybe one day all these frauds can be weeded out and let the honest, hard working people do their jobs without unnecessary problems to battle such as these.

Roy Adams, Nashville, Tennessee

Thanks Roy. Every week I get stuff like this. It won't get better until the following list of MIA organizations make a concerted effort to get rid of BS. The list of scofflaws are ICS, CF, FCN, FCW, CRI, RIA, CFI, CCINW, NEIRC, NYRC, MSPCA, MCRA, LMCCA, CCII, TRSCA, SCRT, PACR, FIO, CRA, PACR and probably a few others I missed.

I call this mess of alphabet soup the DNPA. (Do Nothing Publishers and Associations.) Everyone making a living from carpet should put their shoulder to the wheel. BS causes carpet sales to slump and the carpet mills won't even try to help. Go figure!

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De - selecting* carpet

Thinking about the Charles E. Young School project the other day reminded me that many schools are going back to hard floors. But what really caused carpet to topple in popularity is another question. The carpet industry has some old problems that are hard to live down. I believe they're paying for them now.

Bad business practices have finally caught up with them. Shoddy installation is the worst offender. **Failure to power stretch caused seams to peak. In our service company in Indy we've seen bad installation jobs that have puckering ridges an inch high and up to eight inches wide running down the middle of a room. Some of these were caused by poor underlayment and its installation. They not only look bad, they can cause trip and fall accidents.

Both CRI installation standards and CFI's educational programs can't seem to find a cure for laziness and dishonesty. A few years ago, I paid full price at a local store for a big name brand and had new carpet put all through my home. The carpet looked nice, but I wasn't there when they put it down and within two years, every seam had peaked. They just kicked it in. When I went to complain, the retailer was out of business, so I had no recourse.

On the sales side, delivery schedules gone awry and warranty papers not being delivered have caused consumer discontent with carpet retailers. Product substitution, a variation of bait and switch, offends carpet buyers and should be a crime. But the worst culprit is the retailer who takes a deposit after filing bankruptcy and does not deliver the carpet. That really makes people angry and there have been many of these cases during this protracted recession.

Mills that produced fiber blends for economy rather than performance have left many ugly memories for the consumer. And they don't forget or forgive readily. Carpet makers' greedy preoccupation with the CRI's SOA program has attempted to profit from the sale of equipment and chemicals. Consumer complaints don't involve equipment, chemicals or methods used by professional cleaners. This fact causes me to doubt the validity of their testing program.

In cleaning and maintenance, bait and switch advertisers have caused more ill feelings toward carpet than any other cleaning related complaint. Consumers will stop "De - selecting" carpet when the whole industry starts treating them right and when cleaning industry associations finally tackle bait and switch advertisers.

* A term coined by CRI to explain the fall in carpet sales.

** Complaints found and researched in one year: Installation - 314, Sales - 253, Cleaning - 131. Professional cleaners' complaints were about bait and switch advertisers. Not one that I found mentioned a cleaning chemical, cleaning machine or cleaning method.

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Schools again

Dan Willis, manager of our service company, called me about a trade magazine Q&A on the cost of maintaining carpet in schools. Apparently none of those asking the questions were around in the late '90s when CRI took on a project of carpeting and maintaining the Charles E. Young School in Washington DC. Carpet, installation and maintenance for a year were donated.

If you still have the fall, 1999 issue of our Cleaning Digest® there is a story about Bane-Clene's participation in the project. It has the complete cost analysis of maintenance labor and material for the full year along with eye-opening comments by Ron Rhine, who did the work.

This issue is not on line. I'll try to get it posted soon on the Digest site. But the Winter issue of 2005, also has an article about cleaning carpets in schools and the Charles E. Young School project is mentioned, even though not in great detail. It is on line at:

www.baneclene.com/cleaning-digest/Winter2005.pdf

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In Memoriam

Jim Roden, of ProChem® fame, passed away in February after a battle with cancer. Jim was one of the pioneers of gasoline-powered truck-mounted carpet cleaning systems. I had the privilege of meeting him on several occasions and always thought of him as a fine gentleman.

Jim was in Philadelphia in 1977 at the SCCA meeting that ended the great steam controversy and that was the last time I remember seeing him. Our condolences to Jim's family and to all of the folks at ProChem. Our industry has lost a gentleman and an innovator.

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RIA® sues industry supplier

The Restoration Industry Association (formerly ASCR) has filed a federal suit in the state of Washington against Thermapure® to invalidate patents which have been used to sue RIA® members and other industry companies via "patent trolling," according to an RIA press release.

RIA says these suits are without merit because the patents involved assert claims that have been known industry standards for years. RIA has developed a strategy to stop the patent trolling. They claim it has a detrimental effect on RIA members and the entire restoration industry.

I hadn't heard about these suits until recently and am reminded of others like the "glide" litigation of a few years ago. In these trying times it might seem that the last thing we need in the industry is an outburst of legal gymnastics. On the other hand, GO RIA!

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