How You Can Get Route Customers Without Knocking On Doors For Your Dry Cleaning Business

Hi, my name is Greg Colosi and I’m in the dry cleaning business just like you.

First of all, knocking on doors is a great way to get route customers for your dry cleaning business. I got my first 300 or so route customers by knocking on doors. The only challenge with knocking on doors is finding the salespeople to do it. It was fine when I was doing it, but when I started to hire salespeople it was another story.

I’ve spent my entire business career previous to the dry cleaning business in sales or in sales related positions. I’ve owned 33 businesses and they were all sales driven. I was always hiring sales people. In those businesses, it was always recruit, train and motivate.

When I started to recruit for my dry cleaning delivery business it was another story. The hours I could offer a new salesperson were primarily nights and weekends. Who wants to work nights and weekends? I sure don’t.

So here’s what happened. I hired a bunch. Most only lasted a week or so. They needed a lot of babysitting. It’s a full-time job for the owner of a dry cleaning business to recruit, train and motivate salespeople.  And you must have a sales background to do it.

I’m not saying that it can’t be done, but it’s really tough.

So when I finally figured that out, I decided that I would come up with a way to get route customers without knocking on doors. I wanted to be able to get new route customers even when I was on vacation. I wanted to be able to teach my system in 10 minutes or less to an 18 year-old or someone that was retired. I wanted the system to get the customers, not the sales ability of the person I hired.

My system shows up for work every day without complaints. It never asks for a raise. My system does not need motivating. And it works like a charm week in and week out.

Before I get into one method on how I do this, I want you to understand that there are a dozen ways to get route customers without knocking on doors. Some of them are right under your fingertips. You just never spent the time to figure them out. That’s what I do. I get off on testing new ideas to get route customers. I’m always testing. My route business is my “marketing laboratory.”

With that in mind, here is a great way to get route customers WITHOUT knocking on doors:

The Bag Drop Method

There are several franchises out there that say they have a “bag drop method,” but they really don’t.  The last step of their method involves you knocking on your prospective customer’s door. I or my 160+ members don’t rely on door knocking using the bag drop method.

The first task you have is to purchase a bunch of counter bags with your logo on it. Don’t use a blank bag with no logo. It doesn’t work. You get fewer sales. Don’t use plastic bags to save money. Again, you get very few customers this way. The ONLY way to do it is with your logo printed on your garment bag.

Next, you create a sales letter to attach to your garment bag. Do NOT use a brochure, brochures don’t work.

David Whitehurst, before meeting me and using my system put out 6,000 garment bags in one year with a brochure. He only got 61 route customers!  It cost him over $300 to get each one of those route customers in garment bags alone. That didn’t include his brochure cost or the labor to drop the bags. He started using my bag drop system and his material cost went down to $21. It was $279 cheaper to get a route customer with a sales letter versus a brochure. Brochures don’t work.

Ok, you’ve got the logo garment bag with a sales letter attached. What’s next? Next is picking the right neighborhood. The ideal neighborhood is less than 10 years old and has lots of kids running around. The best way to find a good neighborhood is to get in your van and drive around. Go see what the neighborhoods look like. Are there basketball hoops in the driveways? Are toys scattered all over their lawns? Can you easily see the front doors from the road? Are the houses in medium to medium-high price range?

Now that we’ve got the garment bag with the sales letter attached and the ideal neighborhood, it’s time to start dropping bags. Friday is the ABSOLUTE best day to drop. You’ll get up to 50% more customers dropping on a Friday instead of on a Thursday.  Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday’s are the worst days to drop. If you want to drop on those days because it fits your schedule better, you’ll fail miserably. Saturday’s are good too, but Friday is the best day.

So it’s Friday and you’re going to make your first bag drop. I’d recommend dropping no more than 100 bags your first time until you’ve figured out this works. I always test first before I really role out my dry cleaning marketing programs and you should too. It only makes good business sense.

So you drop on Friday and inside your sales letter you tell them that you’ll be back on Monday (let’s assume your dropping for your Monday/Thursday route). When you go back on Monday, you’ll get some customers, you’ll get some bags back and there will be those houses with no bag out. They pulled the bag off their front door and brought it inside to take a look at it.

What do you do with then?

You leave a reminder post-it note on their door telling them that you’ll be back on Thursday to get your garment bag. Remember…this is the NO door knocking method. And this is where those other bag drop systems knock on the door to get their garment bags back.  We don’t do that.

So you go back on Thursday and you get some more customers and some more bags back, but there are still a few with no bag out.  What do you do? You leave another post-it note telling them that you’ll be back the following Monday.

If you do this correctly, you’ll get 3-10 customers for every 100 bags you drop. And you’ll get upwards of 75% of your bags back. Your percentages will depend on the competition that you have and the neighborhoods you drop in. Some parts of the country get higher percentages than others.

Your dry cleaning business depends on your ability to get a constant flow of new route customers in your door. Without a constant flow of new customers your dry cleaning business will eventually go bankrupt.

Getting new customers is the most critical task you have in your dry cleaning business. This must be your highest priority. Dry cleaner marketing must be your primary focus of your dry cleaning business.

I enjoyed sharing this with you.

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Greg Colosi shows dry cleaners how to get route customers WITHOUT knocking on doors. He has 160+ dry cleaners just like you getting boatloads of brand new route customers every week. If you’d like to find out how to get more route customers in a month than you get all year, go to Dry Cleaner Marketing.