It’s a vicious cycle. A customer comes to you looking for an extractor to clean up his extremely dirty carpets (with the shortest dry time possible, of course). You set him up with the right machine for his needs. He takes it to his facility and uses it incorrectly, and on the same irregular schedule that led to the problems in the first place, and it’s not long before he is back, complaining that the machine doesn’t work quickly enough, and the carpets are still filthy.

Sound familiar? Unfortunately, it has happened to Tartan Supply Co. in Brookfield, Wis. The company sometimes loses these customers — at least temporarily — to distributors who promise that their machines will solve every problem.

“As long as someone else is there saying, ‘Yes, I can fix that problem,’ your customer will walk away,” says Tartan’s president Peter Deverey. “You have people that will [make] promises just for the opportunity to look better than the other guy. They promise that you just have to spray this on and everything is fantastic. But that just doesn’t happen. It’s like chasing your tail.”

Deverey has learned that the best way to sell extractors is to make a thorough assessment of a facility’s needs, budget, and maintenance schedule and then couple the sale with training and service.

Getting to Know You
To accurately assess a customer’s needs, a distributor must do more than simply find out what that customer is willing to spend. Budget is important, of course, but there are many factors that affect what type of extractor a customer should purchase.

The first step is to tour the facility. How many square feet are carpeted, and with what type of carpet? Is there much foot traffic? What are the turn radiuses? How heavily obstructed are the areas to be cleaned? Where is equipment stored? Who is using the extractor?

Then, find out the nuts and bolts of the facility’s cleaning program. Do they even have one? If so, with what frequency do they extract the carpets? When do they do the work, and how much time do they have to do it? How thoroughly do they train employees?

The answers to these questions will tell you what size extractor is needed, how much power it must have, and how complicated it can be to operate. You may also discover that the facility needs different machines for different jobs (for example, one with a 20-inch path for a large ballroom and a self-contained unit with hoses for a small reception area).

“You have to suit the machine to the need,” says John Kliphouse of Northeast Janitorial Supply, Pompton Lakes, N.J.

Spend some time talking to your customer about what they want in an extractor. Budget is often critical. Dry time may also be at the top of the list. For some, it’s an issue like maneuverability; petite operators must be able to handle the machine. Distributors usually find that outfitting a customer with an extractor involves compromise on all of these factors.

Such was the case recently for Brookmeade Hardware and Supply in Nashville, Tenn. A nursing-home client decided to begin extracting its own carpets after several years of contracting the work out. It needed a machine that could cover a lot of space, would be easy to use, and that would produce quick dry times. And, it had to cost less than the contractor’s annual fee.

Kevin Thompson, Brookmeade’s sales manager, knew that a cordless, battery-operated machine would be the best match for the facility, which has several wings with long hallways. But that ideal machine wasn’t in the budget, so Thompson and his client found the extractor that came closest to meeting the facility’s needs while still staying within the budget — a self-contained unit with a 75-foot cord.

“They have X dollars to clean with, and you have to adapt to it,” Thompson says. “We had to put them in a smaller machine so it’s a longer dry time. They know that going into it.”

Playing the Role of Teacher
Knowledge is key. Make the customer fully aware of the machine’s capabilities and limitations, if any. This is especially important in facilities where the carpets are in bad shape or there is a poor cleaning program in place. Don’t give them a reason to come back later saying the machine didn’t do what was promised.

“They look at the floor when it’s in deplorable shape and think it will get done overnight, then they lose faith in their supplier and think they will look elsewhere,” Deverey says. “You may have to extract a half-dozen times, and it’s difficult for them to accept that.”

Telling people how to use an extractor isn’t enough. You need to show them. Go above and beyond by offering in-house training to customers.

“I always tell my customers that we come with the machinery. When you buy a machine from us, you have us there to help you,” Kliphouse says. “Even when we have customers who buy the machines and change personnel, we go through it again.”

Use this time to help the customer correct some common mistakes:

  • Training? What Training?
    Tartan Supply offers in-house training to help its customers develop cleaning programs suited to their particular circumstances. A handful of clients take advantage of this priceless service. Many do not.

    “They just bump along as best as possible,” Deverey says. “It’s difficult to get an understanding [throughout] an organization that you have to do this on a regular basis.”

    Sadly, many customers don’t have the time or money to invest in training personnel. Be sure these clients know that “it’s not the equipment, it’s the training,” Thompson says. If the operator doesn’t know the proper way to use the machine, he or she can expect less-than-stellar results. Training must be ongoing, updated with each new machine or chemical and repeated when new employees are hired.
  • Put It On Your Schedule
    The biggest mistake distributors see their customers make is not sticking to a cleaning schedule.

    “We find that most people do not have a carpet maintenance program,” says David Allendinger, president of Datek Inc., Little Rock, Ark. “We try to encourage our customers to clean carpets on a schedule. In other words, don’t wait until the carpet is visibly dirty to clean it.”

    Sometimes there are practical reasons why a facility does not have a program (including budget problems or a lack of top-down support), but distributors should do their best to educate customers on the importance of routine cleaning.

    A good program, Allendinger says, includes daily (vacuuming and spot removal), interim (bonnet cleaning and fast extraction), and restorative cleaning (heavy extraction). Decisions should be based on traffic patterns; some areas may need to be extracted weekly while others may need it only quarterly.
  • All Wet
    What aggravates customers most is prolonged dry times. More often than not, the reason for wet floors is the operator, not the machine. Help them understand how to improve dry time by improving their cleaning methods.

    Stress the importance of frequent vacuuming and spot cleaning; doing these before extraction will cut down dry time. Also, be sure operators understand how much water to put onto the floors and how quickly or slowly to move with the machine.

    “A lot of people just go back and forth with the extractor, spraying water down, pushing back, and leaving it to go on to the next area,” says John Camara, president of Facilities Janitorial Supplies in Toronto. “I tell people to be sure they suck up the water well. Clean it once, then go back over it just to suck up water, not putting water down. The less water in the carpet, the better.”

    Finally, if the customer can afford it, try selling carpet blower/air movers to help with air circulation. There are also newer extractors that cut dry time to 15 or 20 minutes. These machines are best suited to carpets that are routinely cleaned, not those that have been ignored and are in poor shape.
  • Rare Repairs
    Finally, educate customers about how to keep their extractor in tip-top shape. Go over the machine with them, highlighting parts that need to be serviced and how often. Also, discuss how to solve common problems, such as clogged jets.

    “People will blame the machine,” Thompson says, “but have they been doing the maintenance we asked them to do?”

Making the Most of the Sale
Keeping in touch with clients for training and service are not just good customer-service principles. Frequent follow up leads to more sales.

“We follow up every couple of weeks or months,” Kliphouse says. “We stay on top of it. That way you get to sell the juice. The machinery is very important, but we want to sell the chemicals, too, because that’s where the repeat business is.”

Becky Mollenkamp is a Des Moines, Iowa-based freelance writer and a frequent contributor to SM.




POSTED ON: 5/1/2005