one of the things I'm hopeing to use when I open my biz is a referal benift

something like "for every person that you refer I'll give you %15 discount of their carpet cleaning cost towards your next carpet cleaning."... or maybe just to make it easy %15 off?

anyone tried this?... I'm thinking it would help generate extra customers and the cost vs income ratio should be fairly good vs typical fliers (which I'll be doing anyway).

A referral program is of paramount importance. It is the best way to build repeat business and to grow your business. Once you have enough loyal customers referring you it will greatly reduce your advertising expence.
We send out a thank you letter after every job. In the thank you letter, you know its late so I think I'll just copy and past our referral program. Feel free to use what info you want from it.




November 2, 2006


Dear Ms. Purchase,

We just wanted to take a moment to thank you. We, at CLEANTECH, cleaned your carpets or furniture a few days ago. As you probably know, cleaning your carpets and furniture every 6 to 12 months greatly extends the life of them. That means you save a lot of money because you don’t have to buy new expensive carpet or furniture as often. Your existing carpet and furniture looks great year after year.

Plus, cleaning your carpet and furniture greatly reduces indoor air pollution. You know you track in dirt from the outside. Well, you also track in cigarette smoke, car exhaust, tar, chemicals and all other outdoor pollutants. These pollutants get lodged in your carpet and then when you walk on it, they get redistributed into the air. You and your family breathe these pollutants over and over again. That’s why indoor air is more polluted than outdoor air. (I’m sure you’ve heard about this on TV.) Cleaning your carpet and furniture regularly cleans your air!

Now you have great looking carpet and/or furniture and cleaner air! We sincerely appreciate your business. Thank you.

If for some reason, you have any questions or are not happy in any way with our work, please, please call us immediately. We’ll take care of it right away.

Thank you very much,


Jim England
Joe England
Owners

P.S. We’ve also enclosed some information about our referral program and other services.



REFERRAL PROGRAM letter


As you probably know, advertising is very expensive. Instead of paying the newspaper or other venues to advertise, we’d rather pay you. So we are enclosing 3 referral gift cards that you can give to your friends and relatives. They will be rewarded 3 free gifts explained on the gift cards for using our service. The gift cards are from you to them.

For every referral that uses our services, we’ll pay you $10 in cash. It’s that simple, and frankly we’d much rather pay you then those advertising media.

Please be sure to print your full name on each gift card so we know who the referral is from. Your referral simply gives us the card at the time of cleaning.

Remember – we will give your referrals the same unconditional guarantee – if it’s not the best cleaning they have received, it’s FREE! You can be confident that your referrals will be treated with the same courtesy and have the same thorough cleaning that you received.


Thank you very, very much!


P.S. If you need more cards please call us at 441-8631.


These are business size cards we enclose in the above letter

Gift Card:____________________________________________
Referred by: (Please Print)

Please present this card at the time of your cleaning to receive:
Free room of carpet protection or 5% discount on cleaning
Free application of sanitizer/deodorizer on all rooms
Free bottle of professional grade spot & stain remover


Thank you letter for the referral


A Sincere Thank You,

Thank you for referring _____________________________.

As you know our motto and guarantee is “if it’s not the best cleaning you’ve ever had it’s free” At CLEANTECH we strive to perform the best customer service in our industry. We promise we will take every effort to do as good of a job for them as we did for you, so you can feel confident in your referrals.

Enclosed please find $10.00 for the referral. We hope there will be many more.


Again Thank You!


With business people that refer us like realtors, plumbers, decorators, painters, etc. we give them 10 percent of the job. They are in a position to refer a lot of people to you, so you should contact these type people.

A variation of the cash discount for referrals approach is to reward customers who send their friends & family members to you is to give them such desirable items as gift certificates to good restaurants in their area. Everyone likes to eat out, especially women, if otherwise they would be at home cooking (again!). I obtain restaurant gift certificates in 2 ways; via the trade (barter) exchange I belong to; as well as via direct barter, where I deal with a restaurant directly, cleaning their carpets in exchange for gift certificates. Since the cost of food in a restaurant runs about 40% of the total bill, I am able to charge a somewhat higher rate to the restaurant than if I were performing the same service on a cash basis.

very nice... i realy like the "thank you" mailer approch... reminds them to look at the carpet again and sounds like a much smoother approch to pluging the referral.

my only personal thought is I'd prefer to push the referal as a credit as it means you are still holding some of the cards, to get that $$$ they have to come back to you... also a women hears %15 off and all is good ;-) (sorry i'm married haha)

thanks for the responses guys... i'm getting very excited.

Thankyou Jim, and Mark. Seems to me this would work great, Quick question for Jim, you said "Free application of sanitizer/deodorizer on all rooms"
It this something that you apply after cleaning, and what product do you use for this? Thanks

We use whamm for our cleaning agent most of the time. Whamm has a sanitizing and deodorizing agent built into it. If we are using another chem like tsunami we will add Tea tree oil which is a great sanitizer and deordorizer.
Be careful to say sanitizer and deodorizer applied. Do not say carpet will be sanitzed, because you cannot totally sanitize any carpet.
People like the fact that you are not only cleaning there carpet, but trying to make it as healthy as possable. Many cleaners charge extra for applying a saniitizer or deodorizer, we think you should be doing this anyway, and its a great marketing tool.

Some hospitals clean with tea tree oil, as it is a natural alternative to harsh chemical disinfectants.
But technically, you cannot refer t.t.o as a disinfectant.

thanks for the reply, a few more questions , where can I get tto? I asume I could add it to outsolve or another natural cleaner? why can I lable it as sanitizer applied, but not a disinfectant? is this a legal issiue? Thanks again

Just Google "tea tree oil" and 1,290,000 results will apprea, many selling the product. I think disinfectants are governed by the FDA, which stipulates what can, and what cannot be described as a disinfectant.