[pianotech] repeat business

[Susan Kline]

>My best results have always been post cards, followed by a phone 
>call, asking if they received it. The post card breaks the ice, and 
>it will be much easier to get an appointment. But again, if they say 
>no, be gracious and say thank you, and go on. Don't take it personally.
>Wim

When I was just beginning, the first year or two, I put a tiny 
classified ad in a local paper. It was a weekly in a tiny town, and I 
bought their minimum ten word ad. Let's see if I can remember -- it 
was thirty years ago, and time flies. "Good piano tuning, [price]. 
Call Susan Kline at ...-...." -- something like that. The ad was dirt 
cheap. I got quite a few tunings from that, eventually, because there 
was something physical to remind people, but no demands to decide 
right away, which would have been turned down. Several said that 
they'd clipped out the ad and had it on their kitchen tables for six 
months. A card would be that way, too. No demands to do something, 
just a reminder, and there's an action in between buying the tuning 
versus throwing away the card, in case they are hanging on the fence, 
feeling like maybe they MIGHT want a tuning, or maybe not, or maybe 
later, so they keep the card. Eventually all the stars and 
constellations are in alignment, and then they call. Or not. Some of 
those cards are probably cleared out when the heirs get the house 
ready for an estate sale, 35 years later.

Another little thing worked well for me, and it was just an accident. 
When I got to the Corvallis area, I went and put a classified ad in 
the Corvallis paper (a service directory, they had), like that first 
newspaper ad when I was up in Canada. But in the Corvallis paper, the 
minimum ad size was three lines. I wrote out my little spiel just 
like before, took it to the window with the lady typsetting it into a 
computer of sorts, and it came up short. I had just a little more 
room. I thought a second, and then told her to add, "I love pianos." 
And she took the bull by the horns, and put it in caps with 
exclamation points. "I LOVE PIANOS!!" I thought that was sort of 
silly, but didn't have the heart to tell her to tone it down. A lot 
of people noticed those words and eventually called me because of 
them. In a way it was kind of a bona fide, because any tuner who 
really was tired of pianos and didn't want to fuss with their 
problems wouldn't have dared to put "I love pianos" in the ad.

And, "don't take it personally" is always good advice.

Susan Kline