Summer 2019

Going
Great Guns
Kristy White builds her San Antonio-based pressure wash company
into a powerhouse -- after dark and one sales demo at a time
BY DREW RUBLE
in both Texas and the Southern United
a demo right in front of your face. And
Remember the old Febreze commercials
that aired during the 2012 London
Olympics? The ones where the aerosol
maker dangled treated jock straps from
the Azerbaijani Olympic Wrestling
Team under the noses of blindfolded
Londoners who were then asked to
describe what they smelled?
Responses ranged from “strawberry
milkshake” to “floral bouquet.” Future
product commercials utilized goats,
smelly fish, toilets, and body builder
armpits to prove a similar point.
Effective product demonstrations like
these have been around since the beginning
of sales history. They serve to make
clear to buyers that the product being
sold is worth the price. After all, what’s
more convincing than seeing it with your
own eyes? (Or, alternately, smelling it
with your own nose???)
Lucy Handley, writing in a 2014
article published in Marketing Week,
stated that “despite the digital age, the
saying that people buy from people still
stands – and they are more likely to do so
if they have an opportunity to try before
KRISTY WHITE
they buy.” According to Handley, 41
percent of shoppers who see a demonstration
of a product go on to buy it.
“That is why experiential marketing
and in-store demonstrating are growing
industries,” she concluded.
Kristy White, owner of Big Guns
SoftWash, is a big believer in the sales
demo. In fact, she’s ridden the method
(among other savvy business techniques)
to a spot among the most respected pressure
wash operators in the enormous
market of San Antonio, Texas -- the
seventh-most populous city in the United
States and the second-most populous city
States, with more than 1.5 million
residents.
“Yes, from time to time I even give
away services, and people are like ‘what
do you mean you give away services?’”
White said. “Well, frankly, I would rather
them see what I can do for them.”
White admits she relies heavily on
her instincts and emotional intelligence
before providing a free service, granting
them predominantly to prospects she
knows are highly likely to be closed.
“If I sense they are just trying to
get something for free then no, I don’t
do that; but when I know this might be
the sticking point on a sale, I’ll clean
something for free for them and show
them exactly what I can do,” she said.
“That live demo in front of them is so
impactful.”
White said she learned the art of
the sales demo from her mentor, Ron
Musgraves, who often reminded her
of the classic American door-to-door
vacuum cleaner salesmen now iconically
tethered to product demonstrations in
American lore.
“They would come in and give you
how many people would buy that vacuum
cleaner?” White said. “So it’s the same thing
with our pressure washing. And people can
understand that…That’s old school.”
Musgraves, a veteran pressure
washing contractor, owner of Pro Power
Wash of Mesa, Arizona, and controversial
past president of the UAMCC,
urged White go out and do about 12
demonstrations for clients, all the while
judging her results.
“I had to send videos of them to him
and he would say, ‘no, they’re not good
enough, you’ve got to practice more,”
White said. “’You can’t hit a homerun
if you’ve never done batting practice,’
he would say. He’s always quick with the
baseball analogies.”
Like Musgraves, White has also (in
recent years) significantly narrowed the
scope of her business. Said another way,
she stopped chasing every type of job
and instead got laser focused on a niche
– commercial sidewalk cleaning.
“I do nothing but commercial now,
and I’m emphasizing residual income,”
White said. “So I have totally changed
the model of our business in the last two
6 | PRESSURE WASH NEWS | VOL. 1, NO. 3 | SUMMER 2019