Ok, so we have been receiving questions with regards to “how to market Scratch Removal” or how do I make money selling window restoration services. While I will be going into some detail about this topic in an upcoming episode of Restoration Revolution I thought I would give some pointers here, and ask others out there currently offering this service to help your brethren with some of your tips or methods.
So to start out this thread…
Start with your exsiting customer base. If you are dealing with mostly residential, the service will be more focused on extreme stain removal (will be discussed in Episode 3 of RR). If you are dealing mostly with commercial accounts, Graffiti will tend to make up the bulk of your work. So over the next week or two, when you are out working jobs, or bidding jobs look for the damage. Believe it or not, I have NEVER seen a building that didn’t have some surface damage on at least 1 pane.
Specific opening lines that work on Residential customers
You have such a wonderful view, too bad there is so much damage on this glass…
I don’t know if your aware, but every ____ I clean these windows I am noticing that there is a lot of damage on your windows…
Specific lines that work on commercial customers
I wanted to talk to you about removing the graffiti on the front of your building…
As I was cleaning your windows I noticed that they are covered with scratches, did you know that I can get rid of that for you?..
I know this sounds a little like sales 101, but the sad truth is that the vast majority of people out there don’t know that you can resurface glass and bring it back to like new. Ok, this is a long post, so I will stop here. Check back for more marketing tips and tricks.
Todays topic in marketing window restoration/scratch removal has to deal with how to find new customers, (as yesterday we discussed farming your exsiting customers).
While traditional mass marketing methods are effective (fliers, direct mail etc) I have found that the best strategy to jump start this type of service is to:
A) Focus on commercial accounts to start
B) Pound the Pavement
So, out here in SF, when I first started grinding glass (pre-GlassRenu) the first thing I did was find a block that had solid anchor businesses with lots of graffiti tags between. (Anchor businesses are those on the corners, and I would look for businesses like Walgreen’s, Starbucks, Banks etc) The Anchor businesses were where I would start my sales pitch as if I could get the corners of the block, back filling was much easier.
Step 1 for Anchor Sales: Talk to the Manager and find out if they are aware of the graffiti on the front of their store.
Step 2: The will most likely not look at scratch tag graffiti as graffiti, as many walk right past it without noticing.
Step 3: If the Manager is not capable of making the decision find out who is, and ask if you can get their contact info to make a Demo Appointment, if the manager can make the decision move to step 4.
Step 4: For the demo (keep in mind, this method has resulted in greater than 80% close rate for me) I will identify the worst looking tag and remove the center of it. As I am only working on ~1 square foot, I can often get this done in around 5-10 min (new guys might take 15-20 min).
Step 5: Now that you have removed a “porthole” in the middle of the damage, it is time to hand over the estimate for the job and tell them to give you a call when they are ready to move forward.
This method almost always resulted in the Manager accepting the bid on the spot.
Once you have the anchors, then you move to the middle of the block. When talking to these stores I direct them to check out the anchor store demo, and let them know that I am either in the area to do the job today, or when I am scheduled to do the anchor. If they schedule on the same day or agree to do it today, I offer a 5-10% discount off the estimate.
This approach has lead to a lot of business for me throughout the SF Bay Area and Central Coast California. If you have any questions please post them.
In just about every city across America there are local business groups, many are called Business Improvement Districts (BID’s for short) and these can be an amazing resource for window restoration sales generation.
From speaking with our most successful users the best way to break into the BID’s is to find out when and where they are meeting and sponsor a lunch. Spending $200-$300 on lunch for the business owners can buy you premier access to offer up a demonstration and network with the business owners in your area. In the SF area we have had users not only gain access to large groups of customers, but win large graffiti removal and window restoration contracts that exceed $40-$50K.
The other place to look would be area’s in your market that are trying to become “trendy” or modern. An easy way to find these are to look for the parts of town that are now trying to rename themselves (in Austin TX, you get the SoLa for south Lamar, or in San Francisco CA you have SoMa for South Market). These are great places to not only offer window restoration / Graffiti removal services, not to mention window cleaning services, and most are setting up BID’s to help attract small business into the area.
If you have any questions on this please ask away, and again I would ask that if there are any of our users who would like to chime in with other marketing ideas that would be great!
Cody, I was wondering if when you do this, when you do your “test spot”…the “porthole”…are you polishing it all the way out?..like a complete removal, or are you just removing the scratch, then making your sales pitch…landing the job and then finishing up the rest of the glass.
So what I do is grind out ~ 1 square foot of damage, Pre-Polish a few inches larger and then polish the whole area out. I make sure that I am leaving the bulk of the damage behind, but I don’t leave any haze.
Depends on if I am scouting an area to sell or if I am going to make sales calls. When I am collecting data about damaged glass to generate estimates. When I am out selling I always make sure that if needed I can do a demo to sell the service.
