The next VDTA/SDTA Convention & Show will be in
New Orleans, LA
February 27 - 29, 2012
at the Ernest Morial Convention Center

Beyond Vacuums:
Chemically Altering Your Bottom Line

I like to sell cleaning materials and supplies. In fact, I love to sell cleaning materials and supplies so much that now nearly 40 percent of our sales and profit come from the sales of cleaning materials and supplies – exceeding that of new vacuums.

Like many in our industry I started out selling door to door back in 1976. While my contemporaries were using steak knives and free drawings as a door opener, I used a cleaner called Poly 300. My girlfriend (now my wife) who “sucked” me into this crazy business mixed it up in the basement of her parent’s house. (Her dad, Winston Baer, was the distributor.)

A funny thing happened, I never had more than 30 personal sales in a month, but I did sell a lot of my door openers. In fact, I made more money selling Poly 300 than many of the other salesmen did who concentrated on just vacuums.

As our door-to-door business changed (first to a bo-jack shop with just used machines and repairs, and later in the early 80’s to a vacuum specialty store primarily selling new vacuums of all types, to a full Jan-San division in the late 80’s) we have always stocked and sold cleaning supplies and materials specifically for household customers.

Before mission statements became popular we set a goal of “Helping our customers have a clean home and carpets with the fastest and most efficient materials and supplies available.” Thirty years later that is still our goal. Over the next few months I hope to share some of the things we have learned from trial and error, expensive mistakes, hundreds of hours for classes and training, and even blind luck -- just being in the right place at the right time.

We have, I’m sure, all added a “Super Razoo Spot Terminator” and enjoyed some great profits and success in selling it as long as we remembered to show it and demo it. We have all put a display of “Stinkum” by our cash register and enjoyed add-on sales and profit, but as with all things when our enthusiasm wanes, so do the sales.

When someone like me starts to talk about the potential of these kinds of items in our stores, common responses include: “I added Spot Bazooka and it sold for a while but now I have 47 dozen cases sitting in the back I can’t do anything with! No way, no how, am I going to do that again!” or “I brought in Beady Eye Odor Sucker Upper and it sold well until the BBS store up the street brought it in. Now I can’t make any money on it. No way, no how, am I going to do that again!”

The most common is: “I love add-on sales, BUT they are only good when I remember to show my customers those items. No way, no how, am I going to devote much of my space or my inventory dollars to this stuff.”

Dennis Prine from Macs Vacs in Lewiston, ID, asked me in a recent e-mail: “I have always wanted a complete lineup of chemicals for years. My question is how will I most efficiently train and demo the products to make it a big part of my sales? I am going to admit with some other lines I used to do the demos all the time, but like most, I get lazy and then quit. How do you keep your drive and interest going so you keep on demoing?”

What I am talking about when I talk about these programs is not adding a few nifty products and super Razoo items, looking for demos, and waiting for the sales. That won’t work because we all get lazy and quit demoing. Take it from a guy who has $5,000 worth of Anti-Graffiti Coating left in his basement. (It was hot for a while. I still think it should sell, just no one is asking for it anymore and I forget to mention it.)

What you do need is to add a program -- not just a product. Next you create the right environment to sell that program. That requires making some changes, first with your store, then with how you and your employees work and most importantly the attitude you present.

There are tons of nifty neato products out there, but please resist the temptation to start looking at individual products. I’ve been there, done that, and all that it has accomplished for me is a temporary spike in sales and left-overs when the hype is gone. The cleaning industry is very competitive. Today’s exclusive star WILL unquestionably be replaced with a new star tomorrow and leave you holding the bag, with a big bill for filling it.

What will work is a program. The program must be complete. It must offer a broad range of carpet care products, hard floor care products, and daily cleaning products, preferably all with the same brand name. With such a program you will have increased branding for your store, repeat sales, consistency, and piggyback sales, not to mention fewer training issues.

Your cleaning products brand will work best if it is an extension of a brand you have already established in your store or if it is a brand already cemented in your customers mind. If it happens to be an extension of a vacuum brand you sell, so much the better. Customers who have bought that company’s vac and are happy with it will be an easy sell for those same brands cleaning products. If they have bought one or several of that brands cleaning products from you they will be an easy sale for that company’s vac when the time comes.

As your customers become familiar with your cleaning products and start using them on a regular basis, the fact you have a established a brand in their mind not only helps ensure repeat sales of the first product they bought, but makes additional products easier to add to their cleaning arsenal. I can’t tell you the number of times I have had a customer walk through the door looking for some off-beat specialty product and say, “I thought I bought this here.”

Now if they did it’s a repeat sale. If they didn’t, it’s a sale opportunity. But, without specific brand in mind they are just as likely to think they got it somewhere else and go there to get it. Who gets the sale opportunity then? Once you have established your brand, you are now their cleaning source. They visit your store more often, and create for you -- even more sales opportunities.

Your branding will create consistency in your customer’s buying habits. They need no longer wonder when they purchase if they have the right product, a similar product, or the wrong product. By having a branded cleaning program this confusion is greatly reduced. They know you offer a glass cleaner, a carpet spotter, a floor cleaner etc. They no longer need to wonder if you have what they need; they know you do. Eliminating this confusion offers additional sales opportunities. It also increases their satisfaction with what they buy from you. They are satisfied in the brand not the individual products. This creates loyalty.

A single program allows for more and broader sales appeal and piggyback sales. A customer buys a carpet spotter; it becomes easy to add to the sale because your brand also offers, a spotting brush, micro fiber blotting cloth and several other spotters/cleaners. A floor cleaner allows you to add a micro-mop, restorer, and so on. Each product you sell (or the customer chooses) leads to the possibility of another and another. A carpet cleaner rental offers many product sales opportunities, and of course, the opportunity to talk about their vacuum and either servicing it for maximum efficiency or replacing it for maximum results.

With a branded line of chemicals training becomes a snap. Your sales people can easily flow from one product to another without having to have a starting point. This is transitional selling at its best. Instead of planting products, your sales peoples’ goal becomes helping their customer achieve success with whatever product they buy by selling the tools, materials and additional items to make the initial product work. There are a few tricks to all of that, and I’ll be sharing some of the ones that work the best for me.

You can spend hours (or in my case years) pulling together all the products to accomplish what I have described OR you can adopt a single brand program that has already accomplished all of that for you. Which do you think will yield the best profit for you? There were several manufacturers offering a branded program at the VDTA Vegas Show this year. Call one of them today. There is money on the table; you need only claim your share! Some of these programs and Planogram Displays take up no more space than a couple vacuums and could enhance any size stores bottom line -- chemically, of course!

It is not simply adding the products and they will sell. You must create the right environment in your store to make them sell. What is your store’s environment like? Do you have a store that invites your customers to browse, be inspired, and spend? Or is your store essentially a sales counter where the customer enters your store and is greeted by your smiling face and immediate offer to take care of their stated need? You may possibly posture for a product demo, but you still get them taken care of quickly and out the door. Some call this customer service. I call it sales abuse; you have denied them the opportunity to take advantage of all the other wonderful things you have to offer by denying them a shopping experience.

Tech Question: Terry Nybakke of Nybakke Vacuum Shop in Bloomington asked in a recent e-mail: “I would like to know about wood floor cleaners. I assume most are ph balanced so not to leave a residue behind. Is there an advantage to have vinegar in a floor cleaner? I have some customers that say they use just vinegar and water. What do you educate your customers on what they need to use and why to keep their floors looking great?”

I gave up a long time ago trying to answer the vinegar question. The Internet is loaded with what I largely call “Urban Myth” about vinegar. I even read on one site how the acid nature of the vinegar ate away the coating on the floor making them “dull.” Vinegar comes in a plastic jug that is much softer and more susceptible to chemical action than the polymer coatings on most floors and yet we don’t find leaking vinegar jugs in all the stores, do we? What vinegar does do is prevent water spotting and scaling on floors. What it doesn’t do is clean them. It just spreads the dirt out more evenly leaving the floors dull and gray looking.

While it may be possible to build a case against vinegar, it’s an uphill swing because so many flooring manufacturers recommend it. Presenting an anti-vinegar “pitch” means you not only have to convince the customer its bad, you also have to discredit the floor manufacturer. This is a battle you need not fight. I recommend you tell your customer what vinegar does and what it doesn’t do (clean.)

There are, today, several manufacturers who offer a vinegar based wood floor and laminate cleaner. It prevents water spotting and it contains a neutral cleaner to remove the soiling on the floor, which is the real problem. Such a product is not widely available except in vac shops, so by offering it you solve the Vinegar Debate, acquire a new customer and avoid a “problem” discussion, by not trying to discredit the manufacturer. By adding to the knowledge the customer already believes they have, you establish yourself even more as an expert and problem solver.

Customers love to be smart and they respond to being told they are. The really great thing is they are very likely to pass their newfound knowledge on to their friends -- new sales for you!

Next Month: “Creating the Right Environment” and “Tom’s Rules for Selling and Chemically Altering your Bottom Line.”

Coming Soon: “Wet Carpet Cleaning or Dry Carpet Cleaning.” “Toms Favorite Spot Demos,” “Developing Product Sales Blocks” and more.

E-mail any questions or comments you may have to toml@a1vac.com, I’ll try to answer them personally or include them in future articles.

Tom Lambdin and his wife, Tenia, a retired middle school teacher, own A-1 Vacuum & TnT Supply in Missoula, MT. Tom in a number of false starts while trying to become a Jesuit priest has Major or Minor degrees in chemistry, mortuary science, education, business, respiratory therapy and speech pathology. All of which seem to uniquely qualify him for the cleaning supply and vacuum business. He is currently completing lo these many years his MBA at the University of Montana. Completion planned when he can replace his student insurance with Medicare. He’s closer than you may think (to Medicare).

Reprinted from Floor Care Professional, June 2009