I will wager that you have heard comments similar to the following from someone on your staff, or perhaps these thoughts surface in your own mind as you face financial decisions with customers:

"I couldn't add anything on, those people couldn't even afford to spend what we charge."
"The customers already complain that our prices are too high."
"The customer only wanted a few area rugs and a little bathroom cleaned while I was there, and I couldn't charge extra."
"I can't sell them carpet protector, it just costs too much for most people."
"I can't charge them extra for the time it took to work on that urine problem, they can't afford it."
"I told them to call us if the spot comes back and we would come back and re-clean that area at no charge."

These comments and others are symptomatic of deep-seated subconscious "money beliefs" or "money habits." These beliefs or habits are developed in early childhood, caused by seemingly traumatic happenings based on money that couldn't be comprehended by a child.

Another source of these beliefs is being raised in a DIY-type home, where the "we have to do it ourselves because it costs too much to pay someone else to do it" attitude reigns supreme (this particular money belief crosses all income barriers). A large percentage of your employee pool may come from homes where professional cleaning was never considered affordable, or even necessary.

It has been my experience that a fairly large percentage of people entering this industry have never paid anyone for professional carpet cleaning, and that includes those starting a new business. These new business owners may have rented equipment or worked for a carpet cleaning company, but have never purchased carpet cleaning on their own prior to starting their business.

This very common background explains why there is such confusion about pricing and service values in our business arena today.

Every one of us has developed beliefs or habits of one type or another. This is not to say that habits are bad; in fact, habits are not only helpful, they are extremely valuable to us when they are properly developed. Habits save us enormous amounts of time each day. Without habits, we would waste large amounts of time each day figuring out what to do in every situation. But not all habits are beneficial, especially some we learned about money in our childhood when our reasoning capabilities were limited. But what can be done about them?

You can develop a training session where people discuss the feelings that cause them to have negative money beliefs. The key to re-training starts with recognizing why people feel the way they do about money. Once a person recognizes why they feel the way they do, change can take place.

You have much to do to train your staff in the basics of why you charge the prices you charge. Perhaps you need some financial updating yourself. But whatever the case, do it. All the marketing and technical skills you can muster will not enable you to reach your goals until you become the master of your money beliefs and develop the ability to help your staff develop good money habits when dealing with your customers.

There are a variety of excellent literary resources available, such as "The Nine Steps to Financial Freedom" by Suze Orman. They are very valuable, and I strongly recommend you look into obtaining at least one of them.