I had a telephone call like this recently. The well-spoken lady on the end of the phone had no time to spare. She wanted an answer to her question and she wanted it quickly. Her question was not about crocodillians at all but it was simple and to the point. "How much to clean a square metre of carpet?"
I deferred in a weak and defensive manner. "Err.. well its not quite as simple as that!" I have heard the question before and usually I express our firm policy in a more forthright manner. This lady was quite bullish though and she did not take fools like me very kindly. She repeated her question.
I explained that rather than give an outright price per square metre we would be more than willing to pop around at a time to suit her to do a survey of the carpets that needed cleaning.
This was not received with anything other than what I can only describe as frosty exasperation. She did not have time to do this and she just wanted to know how much we charged - yes you guessed it - per square metre.
I tried to explain how we did not like to operate like this as the condition of the carpet was important when considering how much time we would take to clean the carpets. As the operator of two, high-end premium value systems we believe that we provide a much hotter and deeper clean than most of our competitors and that our cost base is different from an operator using an electric system.
Quite frankly I think this picture has been retouched - what do you think?
I quickly tried to explain how much better our clean was going to get her carpets and how we would not be using her electricity or water or venting the stale damp air from her carpets all over her house - all in vain as she was much too busy to let us quote properly, she just wanted to know - yes you guessed it again - how much per square metre.
By this time I was losing her - if she had been in the same room her eyes would have glazed over - she was busy, she didn't have time for all this unnecessary detail. We lost the sale because I was unable to convince her that it was not as simple as she was making out - I hope she got a similar response from other carpet cleaners but I doubt it!
At the risk of mixing my animal metaphors I hope she was able to pay peanuts (as that appeared to be her mission) and I hope she got a monkey with a Rugdoctor®...
