Research Report: Readers’ Survey Shows Increased Market Interest in Green Cleaning

Thank you to the nearly 1,000 DestinationGreen subscribers recently shared their views, experiences and concerns with us through our first online survey. Here are a few of the things we learned from you:

About the Market for Green Cleaning Products:

  • For more than 75% of you, Green Cleaning is very important to your business; another 20% thought it was somewhat important. Additionally, more than 81% of you said that in the past year, Green Cleaning has become significantly more important or a little more important.
  • According to our sample, customers are very interested (40%) or somewhat interested (54%) in Green Cleaning, and sales of Green Cleaning products have increased significantly (34%) or somewhat (51%) in the past year.
  • According to the respondents, the top five factors that limit sales of Green products are services were:
    • Quality/performance concerns (54%)
    • Confusing definitions of green (53%)
    • Decision-maker skepticism (43%)
    • Low awareness (42%)
    • Price concerns (38%)

More than half of respondents provided specific examples of how these factors entered into selling situations.

About DestinationGreen:

Readers turned to DestinationGreen to increase their green expertise (52%), keep up on green news (31%) and learn sales tips and techniques (7%). More than 75% of readers thought that Green news was most valuable, along with articles by Steve Ashkin (61%) and sales how-to’s (46%). In addition, in our readers’ view, DestinationGreen rated significantly higher in credibility, and somewhat higher in depth, relevance, timeliness, value to your job, readability and format than other industry sources.

A large number of you provided specific examples of how DestinationGreen has been a helpful resource. For instance:

 

“ When you are informed about the subject you are presenting the better you educate the customer which relates into sales and doing what is right for all concerned.”

“I have learned more about green and what it takes to become green by reading the articles. It helps me in the field selling and educating our customers.”

“This has helped me to be on the cutting edge of technology. I speak at the RPA class on Cleaning. Working only with Class A office buildings and a couple of leaders in the contract cleaning industry, my customers expect me to keep them up to date, run classes for their staff.”

“You can see the look on peoples faces when you talk about the impact of using micro fiber toweling and using less product, removing up to 75% more dirt. The use of the proper vac system and not spreading the dust from the floor back in the air and how it impacts the air they breathe in their home and work place.”

About Green Cleaning training:

About 65% of you had taken a training class on Green Cleaning in the past, primarily through a professional association or in-house training seminar. More than 95% of those who responded to this question are very interested or somewhat interest in receiving more training in Green Cleaning. You would prefer to participate in training at a specialized off-site seminar (39%), online (28%), at a trade show (19%) or at your office (16%).

The top three factors in choosing a Green Cleaning training program: Respecting the source (68%), immediate applicability to your job (60%), convenience of time/location (47%) or part of a certification program (44%) and availability online (36%). [If you’re interested in pursuing more training online, don’t forget to check out Green Cleaning University!]

Thank you again for your participation, and we will be using the data to make DestinationGreen and our other services more helpful to you in the future. Please feel free to contact me with any comments or additional thoughts at steveashkin@ashkingroup.com.

 

Copyright (c) 2006 The Ashkin Group, LLC.. All rights reserved.