As I have explained, I bought the piano tuning business of a tuner who died. Well, I need to clarify that. Shortly after we moved here, another piano tuner told me this lady wanted to sell her husband card file. Which is exactly what it was. A box full of 3 x 5 cards with the names, addresses and phone numbers of all his clients. (On a side note, since he was born and raised on this island, he knew all the streets, and he never sent any of them any mail. So there were no zip codes on the cards. I had to look up each customer's address and cross reference it with a map and zip code directory. It took me almost 24 hours to enter all the cards in the computer.) About 450 were "active" clients. he had been tuning some of them for over 20 years. Then there were about 200 inactive customers, who he had tune only once or twice, as much as 10 years ago. They all got a letter of introduction. More than 100 came back. I now have 460 customers, of which about 2/3 are from this tuner, the rest from a combination of advertising, a store, and word of mouth. The only people I sent a card to were the once that had never contacted me, and about 80 for whom I had tuned only once. Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician Mililani, Oahu, HI 808-349-2943 Author of: The Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -----Original Message----- From: Tom Sivak <tvaktvak at sbcglobal.net> To: pianotech at ptg.org Sent: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 3:35 am S ubject: Re: [pianotech] Tuning in a down economy im How did you get 550 customers? I thought you just moved to Hawaii last year. t took me 6 years to get 550 customers. Tom Sivak -- On Wed, 3/18/09, wimblees at aol.com <wimblees at aol.com> wrote: > From: wimblees at aol.com <wimblees at aol.com> Subject: [pianotech] Tuning in a down economy To: Pianotech at PTG.org Date: Wednesday, March 18, 2009, 12:04 AM Tuning in a down economy A little while ago we discussed our work during this slow economic time. While some of you are busier than ever, there are quite a few who are experiencing a significant decline in income. I wrote that I was considering lowering my tuning fee by 40% in an effort to get more business. Some of you stated that I shouldn’t lower my rates, and that I should only charge what I am worth. That’s fine, but exactly what am I worth? I know what I should be charging, but I also know what the other piano tuners in Hawaii are charging. Although my “normal” rates are more than the others, I wasn’t getting enough business to pay the bills. So I had a choice to make: starve, or lower my rates. I chose the latter. On Good Morning America last week they interviewed a couple of people who had been laid off from their high paying corporate jobs. These people were now flipping hamburgers, walking dogs, and doing yard work to help pay the bills. The money they were earning didn’t come close to what they had been making before, and they were obviously way over qualified to do this kind of work. But the alternative was not to pay to bills. That’s kind of how I feel. My tunings are as good, if not better, than the other piano tuners on this island. Although I have had some clients tell me they have never heard their piano sound this good. for the most part , I know I am way over qualified to work on the majority of pianos. But, I have bills to pay, and if the only way I can do that is to tune a spinet for less than I am worth, then that’s what I have to do. Two weeks ago I sent out over 550 post cards to customers who hadn’t had their piano tuned for a year or more, announcing a 30% discount. In two weeks an ad will appear in several community magazines offering the same discount, and even free estimates. Although I have had about a dozen call, I have not had the number of appointments I anticipated. I even had some clients who asked what the discounted price would be, say thank you, and hung up. I guess it wasn’t “low enough”. But if I don’t try to get some business, it will be a long dry summer. This is my way of telling those of you who are seeing a decline in your business that there is nothing wrong with offer ing your services at less than what you are worth. Hopefully the discounts will only be temporary, and we can all go back to charging what we are worth. Wim PS: Despite the decline in income, I was able to save up enough money to book a flight to Grand Rapids. I might wind up sleeping on a park bench, but going to a PTG Convention is not an option. It’s a requirement. I hope to see all of you there. Willem (Wim) Blees, RPT Piano Tuner/Technician Mililani, Oahu, HI 808-349-2943 Author of: 0AThe Business of Piano Tuning available from Potter Press www.pianotuning.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech_ptg.org/attachments/20090318/d6c5e393/attachment.html>
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