Thanks for  the replies, I'll take it all in.

I'm still in the process of trying to get a steady stream of work coming in, and I'm willing to try anything--except spending more $ on ads.

oh, also,

about frequency of cleaning, that depends more on your effectiveness as a salesman than on the "needs" of the customer.   If profit is your priority, than their carpets "need" cleaned as many times as they are willing to pay to have them cleaned.  Especialy where commercial contracts are concerned, they seem to have their carpets extracted once or twice a year, but this can be moved up to quarterly or monthly.  Also, commercial places often have the janitorial service or in house cleaning spot-clean their carpets weekly. 

You might want to consider contacting some local janitorial companies and offer them a referal program.  You refer all the janitorial work from your commercial accounts to them and they refer all the carpet cleaning from their janitorial accounts to you.  Subcontracting is further step in this direction, but of course, you make less.  I know from experience as a long-term janitorial contractor that we have given a ton of carpet cleaning work away and have gotten some janitorial work from carpet cleaners as well. 

Hokie,

  You want to make sure you have your speil all together before you call- that speil should include an opening line that captures their interest and leads them to ask questions which you already have answers for.  Write down your selling points one by one then, practice putting them all together in a single opening sentence.  Less is more, and totaly avoid any negative words like can't, don't, no, etc.  There is always a positive way to state a negative thing.  

  What your speil is depends alot on what image you want your business to have.  It can be very agressive or not.  Agressive will get you more business but you might not like the way it makes some people veiw your company.

Hey,

I was told by an old carpet cleaner to forget the phone book because it never paid for itself, and that the only way to get  ANYWHERE was referrals and cold calling.

Given my experience of weak returns from advertising, and the fact that I have gotten a good chunk of my work from referrals, I'm going to increase my cold calling.

Can anybody provide some pointers here? (useful only, please.)

What's your 30 second phone pitch?  For residential, people say clean once a year-- How often to you recommend cleaning for professional?  For restaurants?

Maintenance contracts may be another issue, but I'm interested in how you all address that as well.

Thanks