One of the good things (of the many) of having several service offerings is to have the ability to decrease price for the customer while on site. We do it all the time - upsell another service for reduced price while we are already on premises.
Here in about a month or so we will hit the “lull” in the summer where things slow down. I generally pile up a few deck restoration projects to fill some of the gaps and also come up with some creative marketing to help fill the gap.
This year I’m going with my B.O.G.O. Sale! You all know the much played out phrase used by many companies meaning - Buy One, Get One. (Free) I am sending out e-mails and cards to my existing customer base along with selected others offering the following: Use any service we offer for over our minimum of $100 and we will offer you any of our other services free up to $50 worth of offering for that service thus they will be buying one service and getting one for free.
Just another way to be different. While it isn’t original, I have not witnessed my competition using a similar plan. I’m confident it will at very least boost sales during the slow period and help get us through til the fall rush.
What plans do any of you have to creatively boost sales through the slow period?
I feel we are sometimes like car salesmen. We sometimes have to “sweeten” the deal. If its really slow, and we get a bid on a sweet house, If we dont get a “yes” right away…I will throw in a “free” gutter cleaning. We are there already…Ladders out…its usually a lock then. Then you can get them as a gutter customer
Do you actually have any services for $50.00? For us that would never work, we would have much better luck doing a buy one get one half off as opposed to a BOGO, because we could not do any of our services in full for $50.00.
Essentially, no. So it really boils down to being $50 dollars off the additional service. I did something similar and it actually was better than a set percentage discount because the jobs we got from it were big ones that $50 off them wasn’t much.
The BOGO thing is just a catchy gimmick to grab their attention with.
I’d be careful with the BOGO because you aren’t able to provide a service for Free. You may find people who actually want a service for free. Basically I think what your BOGO is, is essentially false advertising.
You may want to come up with a service that you can actually offer for free.
this spring we did free mirror cleaning with an interior/exterior clean as well as $20.00 off interior/exterior cleaning and we got great reults from that. People LOVE the free mirror cleanings.
