Service contracts: good, bad, or what?

[Barrie Heaton]

In message <950919075335_23277171@emout04.mail.aol.com> MHoffman11@aol.com writes:
> Hello all,
>
> Here's a couple of questions I'd like to ask our experienced and seasoned
> technicians\business owners on the list.
>
> How do you deal with teachers that have multiple pianos?
>
> My situation is this:  I tune for a teacher that has three pianos in her
> studio, which she tunes twice per year. (They all have climate controls, so
> the pitch level stays fairly stable ).  She has now asked if there is any way
> to tune them more frequently, say monthly(!) so that they sound good all of
> the time.  Needless to say, she's thinking that the money will be about the
> same.
>
> So I've been considering a monthly service contract idea.  Have any of you
> had success with this sort of thing?
>
> Any help would be appreciated and many apologizes if a newcomer to the list
> has asked a question that has already been talked to death!
>
>
> Stay Tuned!
>
> Mike Hoffman, RPT
>
The method I use for music teachers is quite simple I say to
them I pay yellow pagers for advertising my services so I will
enter a contract with the music teachers like this they shall
have their pianos tuned three times a year and I will only
charge them for two visits this is on condition that they pass
my name around and it brings in more work especially rebills I
monitor my new customerts very closely and slways interrigate
them to where  they received my name from and I enter this in to
my data base along with the music teachers name or who ever
reccommended me.  At the end of the month my data base
calculates where I received all my new customers from, this helps
me to keep a tract on expenditure for advertising and of course
the freeby tunings to the music teachers and if i feel the
teacher is not performing I drop them of the freeby tuning. I co
not give reduced rates as I find that when pupils ask the
teacher how much is it to have your piano tuned they just
remember the price that they are paying.

I use Dbase three for my customer data base.
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                   Barrie Heaton
           Email piano@forte.demon.co.uk
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