METROPULSE™

Hello Rusty Jones, Goodbye dusty homes!

Like many of us, Rusty Jones, president of Elmr’s Vac Shack (spelled correctly) in Walterboro, SC, started out selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door. During those years he developed frontline selling techniques that would prove invaluable to the success of his retail business later on. He also realized at that time that there was a large, relatively untapped local market for used vacs. This got Rusty’s “wheels” turning and, since money for retail space was scarce, he decided to convert his living room into a repair shop and sell reconditioned units out of his home. Business took off so fast that he could hardly keep up with it and six months later, in September of 2005, he opened his new store in town.

Shortly after he opened Elmr’s Vac Shack, Rusty began seriously looking for a brand of new, premium-quality vacs to become his flagship line. He knew enough from his door-to-door experience that he needed something unique -- something his customers couldn’t get at the local discount store. He also wanted a line that would fill a gap in the up-scale market for people who were fed up with the “plastic monstrosities” and wanted a simple-to-operate, tough, powerful, canister vacuum cleaner “like the one they grew up with.” And finally, he needed that line to be priced at a point that would allow him to sell competitively and still make a good profit. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like anyone made a line like that any more…until he saw an ad in this magazine for the Metropolitan Professionals!

As a new dealer, we were interested in Rusty’s fresh slant on Metro’s main selling features and his unique way of combining and demonstrating them to generate quick sales, beginning with the legendary power:

“There’s no doubt that, although these units really display beautifully with that sexy stainless-and-chrome finish, the awesome power is far and away their number one selling feature. No other product anywhere near their price point even comes close. I usually start my sales pitch by placing the unit on a special section of linoleum-covered floor I keep in the shop just for this purpose, switching it on and watching the astonished looks on the customers’ faces as the 4.0 Peak HP exhaust ‘rockets’ it across the floor. Then, if I want to close the sale in 30 seconds, I simply do the now famous, ‘Metro stick-to-the-wall’ demo. I’ll never forget the first time I tried that. The machine literally sucked the paint right off the wall!”

When asked about the all-steel construction, Rusty said:
“This is a big point with customers who have been burned once or twice by plastic products. As was I, they are usually surprised to discover that there is still a company who makes high-quality steel vacs designed to last a lifetime instead of a year or two. I have one commercial customer who has torn up every vacuum cleaning system he’s ever had...except the Metro Professional system I sold him. No matter how hard he beats it up, he can’t seem to kill it! The best part, however, is that these units are not only steel-tough, but also surprisingly lightweight and easy for anyone to handle. That combination of toughness-to-weight is very important, especially for petite gals or older people.”

With all the hoopla lately centered around health issues, we asked Rusty to rate the Professionals’ 4-stage HEPA-certified filtration system:
“The Metro system is as good as any available on any vacuum cleaner marketed today. Properly maintained, it traps 99.9 percent of all airborne allergens, dust and animal dander. That’s close enough to ‘all’ for me! Even more important than how effective the filtration system is, however, is how effective it is without sacrificing cleaning power. Anyone can put a combination of filters into a machine and eventually get it to pass HEPA standards, but doing that while maintaining 95 inches of water lift is the trick! That’s where Metro’s new technology really shines.”

During our interview, Rusty’s eyes lit up when we asked him about the new power nozzle assembly Metro introduced last year:
“That’s one of the greatest home cleaning improvements the industry has ever seen! From its ergonomically correct pistol grip to its ultra-bright ‘dirt-seeking’ headlight, to its unbeatable, all-steel beater bar, right down to its convenient, toe-touch floor/carpet switch, everything about it is strictly top-of-the-line! It’s also a great closer. If you’ve got a rare customer who’s still sitting on the fence after your whole pitch, that power nozzle will, nine out of 10 times, get him/her to jump off onto your side!”

Our July 2006 and March 2007 MetroPulse™ articles featured product lines that most floor care professionals wouldn’t immediately think of as targeted to their core markets. These were our Metro DataVac® Computer Maintenance and Vac’N Blo® Car/Garage Care Systems. In these articles we showed Floor Care Professional readers how these diversified cleaning products might be converted into sources of additional income with virtually no additional overhead. Here are Rusty’s comments:
“It’s not likely that a person will walk into my store off the street looking for a computer cleaning system or a vacuum/blower for his car and garage. But, it is very likely that one of my regular customers could be easily sold on a follow-up visit...especially if they are pleased with their initial Metro purchase! Commercial customers are a natural for follow-up DataVac sales and any customer who may be a car nut will ‘drool’ over the Vac’N Blo automotive systems. I plan to display these lines in the very near future. They appear to have excellent potential for generating some low maintenance/low-cost ‘bonus’ profits.”

Reprinted from Floor Care Professional, April 2007