[Terry_Burrows]

that was leaflets,in total we did 20,000 not bad response not great

[bennymon]

hi terry how many jobs did you get from 20.000 leaflets   im thinking of putting some more out the trouble is finding someone to deliver them i can do it myself at the moment as i have very little work [but i hate doing it] but when i pick up its not easy finding someone you can trust 

[Liahona]

Del, it was good talking to you the other day, best wishes with what you are up to, best, Dave.

[Terry_Burrows]

the first 10,000 was our first,we ever done got about 4,£500 of work,the next lot was nil,we had a company do the first they put the leaflets in envelopes,which looked much better,we are going back with the first company,and will do a massive drop in may it is a gamble

[bennymon]

hi dave  it was great to speak with you and i will be in touch soon 

[the red carpet]

Terry iv never got less than 1 job per thousand leaflets ever, and iv tried a few different styles over a year and a half period

name rank serial number types, special offer types, info types etc

in my opinion 1 job per thousand is terrible and i dont belive for one second that those companys delivered your leaflets as if you put any leaflet out in those volumes you should get calls, they probably done 2000 and binned the rest.

if you just wrote i clean carpets and your phone number on 10,000 bits of scrap paper you would get 4 jobs

my advice to you is dont ever use that company again, have you tried delivering some yourself to see what sort of response you get when you know they are getting posted?

[the red carpet]

Anyway back to door knocking, spoke with 78 people now

And booked one small job £54.99
And booked two quotes for Monday

[Terry_Burrows]

yes it has crossed my mind did they all go ,but the first lot did get posted by the royal mail :-\we did do some ourselfs some time back got one job out of a lot of walking around :-\did not seem worth that effort,we do lots of adds,its still to slow on the carpet side as to what we advertise ,starting to scratch our heads

[Steve Chapman]

Red,

I know you got set up with a T/M around the same time as us, and what we did to ensure a bit of extra work coming in, was to get a free editorial done for us in the local paper, and it was fabulous, the phone didn't stop ringing for days

It's Here on a post somewhere

On top of that we copied the feature and sent it out to most of our big customers and this has seen us through January and Feb with the most work since we started.

We are looking to do another feature (free of course ) in another couple of local mags.

The secret is to make it sound like news, i.e. new product, service, in our case a new van and truckmount.

I think free advertising is an avenue that gets overlooked sometimes, so we are concentrating on that for a while now.


Hope work picks up for you soon, I normally find if you have a quiet spot it last no more than two weeks and then things get started up again!


Regards
steve

[the red carpet]

Terry, The only way to do it is do some yourself and monitor it.
you need to do about 5000 yourself and write down what this brings you in.

You will find whatever response you get the next 5000 and every 5000 after will get about the same (unless you change something)

So if you get a decent response, all you have to work on is finding a reliable distributor and they should get simular.
And if the response isnt good its back to the drawing board designing a new leaflet.

That is the only way to do it if your paying somebody to deliver 10,000 leaflets and you dont even know what 10,000 leaflets should bring you back on average then you are just leaving yourself wide open to being had over unfortunatly.

[paul wright]

red yes u can sometimes get zil  responce to leaflets   in the many years i hav done leaflets  sometimes my self and put out 5000 and got nil responce     then ive done another 5000 and got 10   and from the same half price leaflet, its a numbers game with luck chucked in

[Terry_Burrows]

yes I do agree with  you    100% it could be a costly learning curve
but I fink luck and where you live counts

[paul wright]

done a plush houseing delv once  houses  150000-400000  about 1500 houses  got nil responce   done it 6 weeks later same leaflet got 15 jobs   its all about luck

[Terry_Burrows]

tell you what paul its bloody depressing to fink its costing and nufings going on

[the red carpet]

Iv never in a year and a half of doing leaflets had a (5000 leaflet drop), that didnt make a profit

My worst ever drop that i know were delivered, brought in around 6 jobs at around £100 a piece

Dont get me wrong iv had drops done by companys and got very little if anything back but in my mind thats just because they have binned them.

If i deliver them minimum 1 job per thousand
If i get my brother in law and his mate to do it minimum 1 job per thousand
If i get a guy who works with me out doing it minimum 1 job per thousand
A guy i use at the moment gets minimum 1 job per thousand
And there was another guy who used to do it but became ill who got minimum 1 job per thousand
And iv started a new guy with 1600 this week and booked in two quotes from them allready and he only started Monday

And i think this is possible even with a not great leaflet all i had on the leaflet i got 6 jobs from 5000 was my logo, carpet and upholstery cleaning, quick drying, competitive rates, and my phone number.

If you aint getting one job per thousand then your leaflets aint getting delivered, i bet nobody can tell me they have posted 5000 thereself and got no response its imposible

[Kinver_Clean]

In the early days for me (17 yrs ago)I did a leaflet drop of about 2000 on a large estate near us.
I got 1 reply, and ..... I had never heard of Belgian Wilton. After a light prespray it pulled the gripper out of the concrete, shrank 9 ins on 9ft  and I had the first and only insurance claim for carpet.

Trevor

[prodry]

Leaflets do work. Keep them simple to the point. Pose a problem offer them a solution and then give them a reason to call straight away. People who call from leaflets are impulse buyers or need a carpet cleaner.

Dont baffle them with trade talk they couldnt care about. they only want to know things like their carpets are not going to take days to dry, that you are not a traveller, they are getting a good deal etc.

Before and during being carpet cleaning I was an estate and letting agent for 9 years. Another leaflet driven business. The leaflets that worked were similar and very simple. Also local driven  eg. property sold in your nieghbourhood, similar properties required.

I use a simple leaflet similar to the one below. we print ourseves onto bright yellow A4 paper from an old B&W laser printer that we have refilled then cut into two A5 leaflets. Cost around £6 a 1000 to produce.  We change our prices depending on the area you are going to hit and put out a few with no price list just 20% off to the up market and village areas, however calls from these are never that good and the difference between the better price we might get is often lost in the increased cost in getting each job.

We spend min. £200 on delivery every week, using parish mags, delivery firms, free papers, local kids. Been stung so many times giving big amounts like 10k to one firm, person.  Also between three of us deliver 200 each, each day, four days a week.

last months average of 5 jobs a 1000. Average Residential ticket price £70.00. Our residential leafleting also leads to commercial work. We also quote over the phone on most jobs saving more time and money.

There are many on here that will call the leaflet splash and dash rates or bait and switch. I sleep well at night and all our custys are aware what they will be paying when we arrive and happy with the results. I could not see the point of going to see some young family on a modern housing estate and quoting with a laptop and trying to get £100 to clean a synthetic lounge carpet. That is going to take around an hour to clean. 

I couldnt sleep at night if I did that. Thats called premimum selling . Over selling something for much more then its worth and illegal in some industries. How many people who bought a Kirby vacuum years ago for several thousand pounds bought a second one?

[the red carpet]

I reckon you could double most of those prices whilst still getting the same ammount of work, you will still be classed as competitive and i dont think you would be ripping anybody off, farr from it if you do a good job.

Why not stick them up 50% for a month and see how you get on you might be pleasantly suprised.

[prodry]

The prices are only a bait, they always pay more then what is written. Or get more done then they first wanted. The prices are still afordable to most and we get most of what we quote. We sell deoudourise, stain guard, spotters etc on most jobs to also get price up.

More jobs = more referals and more repeat work.

As I said also the prices are changed from area to area. We are lucky to have about 10 towns in a 20 mile radius of us.

[prodry]

Just to add to previos we have two company names, one using price list one not.