I am canceling my deal with them monday!. Even though I sold 69. 10 or 11 are current clients and those jobs are at or less than the groupon!!!(=free for them,really bad for me) so 150, with discount, and groupons cut, i would get 23% of the 150…
but they said up sell them, they will be a client for the fall…bs…i got several calls from people and they were just one timers…I talked to about 3 who I felt would be a return client…
I didn’t think about it enough, I’m not naive, I thought it would be a good way to kick off the spring…my original deal was 50 for 100, which made more sense, because 99% of the homes are over that and i would get the difference…I have a great list of clients, I m not hurting for business, but groupon will hurt it!
It would definitely be a feather in someone’s cap to get something lastingly good out of Groupon. Chris and Alex have had some exposure to that deal.
I was called by a rep. last week. They are an hour and a half from me now and looking into Scranton which is 45 minutes away. I don’t know, to get 25-30% of your “MSRP” to start would really be challenging to overcome, what with the mentality that [I][COLOR=“blue”]Severn[/COLOR][/I] found most of these buyers have.
I crunched numbers left and right trying to figure out a way to make it work. The only methods I could see where I would not ‘lose’ money would be to compromise quality or get lucky with lots of up-sells.
Cheap window cleaning may be popular and you can get some exposure, but these are not the customers I want anyways.
I have been thinking and thinking and it is win win lose, win for groupon win for consumer and lose for me…Now my buddy who runs a pizza shop decent results…for services, and even if you had employees do the work you cant’ go a do a house for $34!!! Even if I did upsell them, it still would a loss and I bet one of them would be a fall cleaning…
Kevin, i told them no a few times, but they kept talking( anyone who knows me, Im not a push over!) I thought I could make it up on the back end…or up sell it…then I get the calls “so i can have you come out and use up the 150” etc…
Ryan, I would have to raise my rate on them LIE, and or do a crap job, basically go against every thing to kept from going broke.
It sold $10650 retail…I get $2414, goupon gets $1864, consumer “saved” $6390!
The “savings” would be my profit for the month, I am not working a month for free!! If all were redeemed in a month…
Here another thing if they don’t use it all you have to give them the cash difference back or credit on next service!!
Severn,
Thanks for sharing your experience on this. I signed up for the offers just to see if any of my competitors were doing anything with it. I was getting emails everyday at around 5:15 am in the morning. Every once in a while I would forget to put my Blackberry on the phone only setting and it would wake me up. I know that it was my fault for leaving my phone on but why take the chance and do a mass email at 5:15 am? This was one of the little things that turned me off about the service initially.
Wow! This thread was very informative. Thanks for all of the info. Is there a way we could come up with our own groupon type deal, but one that works for the vendors as well and then offer it on a national level and cut the middle man’s fees down to a minimum?
Yea, just advertise in the paper for a month giving a 50% discount. Except you’ll make 25% more not paying Groupon. You’ll be stuck with the same customer base though. I personally am not looking for price seeking customers.
I’m not much of a purse guy but my lady friend is.
Now when Gucci made this bag, even though it was for Groupon. They still used the finest materials on earth.(I’m for real you should smell this thing, if this wasn’t made from above I don’t know what was)
This is her first Gucci bag and the craftmanship is second to none, the stitching is flawless everything about the bag is perfect.(Even though they didn’t get retail, they understood the lifetime value of a client with a quality product)
From smell to touch to look.
Even though this was a Groupon deal, Gucci still had a representative call us the next day to ask us if we were happy with what we had purchased.
We were, absolutely thrilled with everything about it(Like I said above made from above). Couldn’t imagine going back to Target.
A few weeks went by and we got this little package in the mail, with the most beautiful crafted little tiny box, was a small glass bottle, with a note.
The bottle was a purse protectant.
The note read:
“We measure our relationships in years, not months. Use this bottle to extend the life of this purse and if there are any questions call Claude toll free at 1-800-435-2949 he’s already got your purse make and will be happy to assist with anything at all.”
4 months went by and my lady friend got a birthday card.
From you got it.
Our friends at Gucci.
Now this story isn’t true, I was just making the point that did Gucci lose any perceived value for offering a deal.
I don’t think so. What they did do is lower the barrier to entering their funnel to show us how great their product was.
Then by great customer service and a follow up system they showed us that they were more than a purse maker and they actually cared and turned us into clients where the barrier of entry maybe would have stopped us for a lifetime.
People don’t like cheap things, people like getting good deals on real nice things. But if the experience is remarkable(worth making a remark about) I will tell my friends and bite the bullet and pay full price(because of how fabulous my experience was and will continue to be.
New things like Groupon are easy to poo poo on and say that will never work for me. I think the best thing we can all do is embrace change and look for ways to benefit from it.
That’s just how I like looking at it.
(for a service business I would do new customers only, the point is to get them in your funnel to show your greatness)
So, that experience would cause you to pop for another bag at full retail next time? I doubt it.
If I had just bought a window cleaning for $188 instead of $375, and I was a member of Groupon, I could stand to wait another year or two until the next window cleaning deal comes into my inbox. People who use Groupon stay with Groupon. The amazing experience you’re talking about via service, Groupon’s users are receiving via price.
If a service was exceptional and I really liked it. Why wouldn’t I continue to purchase their product? Or maybe the next time I bought it I used a 25% off coupon or something similar.
I like how you commoditize it. A window cleaning is a window cleaning is a window cleaning.
The whole thing here is to have new people try your product risk free. To show them how great you are and have your systems keep in contact with them. I agree with you that there will be price shoppers, but I also guarantee in the mix that there will be some faithful clients that will stick with you for the long term, with great service and continuous contact.
I spoke with a Groupon representative and another big problem for me is you wouldn’t have to wait that long. They don’t give you exclusive rights to the area and another window cleaning company can jump in anytime. He said they usually wait 2 or 3 months before running the same deal. pffttttt - Poisen poisen…
Comparing Gucci to a randomn window cleaning company isn’t a very good example. So you would buy another expensive gucci purse if they gave you 25% off? That’s exactly what we are talking about, directly from the consumers (your) mouth. I am not looking to build a customer base that expect a discount everytime.
If you are fine with having a customer base built on this then, why don’t you do it yourself. You don’t need Groupon. Advertise in the paper and door to door, 50% off window cleaning. I bet you’d get more than the 100 Groupon will get you. The extra 25% you don’t give to Groupon will outweigh the cost of advertising I bet.
Let’s run some numbers - 100 customers at $50 - half you keep and the other half you give to groupon = $2500 - Man you could advertise in every paper in your city for a month, send 2 people out door to door for a week, and still have profit to show from the $2500.
