Steve

Hey Steve,

I just bought your program and I’m excited to start using the materials, I’m starting my 2nd window cleaning business. My last one was back in 1992-93. Anyway I’ve been looking at what some of the people are pricing in my area now. Back in ’92 I was pricing @ $2 per pane. I’m wanting to price now @ $3-4 dollars. My concern is that guys in my area are pricing @ a BUCK yes a buck per pane!

How are they making money and how am I going to be able to grow my business to do this full-time when my competition is shooting themselves in the foot along with dragging the whole market down with them. Any help would be great. Thanks

Ron

My Reply:

Hi Ron,

Good morning and it’s great to hear from you.

So you were a “per pane” pricing window cleaner?  I didn’t focus so much on panes as I did on the entire window.  So for example, my pricing was $5 for a regular double hung window with a top and bottom sash.  So to equate it to your pricing, it would be $2.50 per pane.  Keep in mind that this pricing doesn’t include screens.

I just didn’t feel it would be worth the extra time counting each individual pane vs just assigning a price to the entire window.  So I encourage you to focus more on “per window” pricing instead of “per pane” pricing.  It’ll help you complete estimates much faster. 

I’m not sure what area you’re in as far what subdivisions or developments you’re focused on, but there will always be the low ballers out there.  I had ‘em too.  Every window cleaner has to put up with ‘em.  And yes we’ll all lose a few jobs to them.  But we can still carve out a nice customer base by keeping our prices inline with the value we provide.  Most of these low ballers have no insurance, do windows with poles, don’t scrape the glass, and have a lousy image.  So if someone wants to have that kind of window cleaner in their home, then there’s nothing we can do about that.  But the good news is that there are many, many, many customers who want a professional to clean their windows, not some yokel off the street.

I get this “competition” question a lot.  And there are lots of ways to bury the competition.  First of all you can never compete on price, so there’s no point in even trying.  It just turns your business into another cheap commodity.  So you need to differentiate yourself from them.  It’s easy to do.  Simply create a rock solid company image and make sure you present each estimate in person and on an estimate package (don’t forget to provide references w/phone numbers).  You’d be surprised at the number of prospects who will say yes to you if you’re presentation is high quality even if your pricing is slightly higher then another bid they may have received.

So again, every single window cleaner out there in window cleaning land has to deal with low ballers.  That doesn’t mean they rule.  They’ve carved out a niche where they run around all day doing houses quickly for low money.  You can carve out your own niche where you do less houses, but make more profits.  I’d rather follow the “less houses/more profits” business plan myself.   It’s more fun and much less stressful.

One more note to make is if you take a proactive marketing approach (flyers, postcards, door hangers) to your business and take your message directly to prospects in upper income areas, you’ll generate a steady stream of phone calls and jobs (at the pricing you want to do them at) simply by being consistent with it.  Low ballers have no consistency.  At the prices they charge, they really can’t afford to be consistent with any kind of quality marketing message.  So this gives you a definite advantage.

I hope the above helps.  Take care for now and have a great day today.  I’ll talk to you soon.

Regards,

Steve
256-546-2446

A recent email from a fellow window cleaner:

Hi Steve,

Cheers,
Jim

My Response:

Hi Jim,

Good morning and I’m glad everything arrived safe and sound. I look forward to working with you as we build you a successful window cleaning business.

That’s great that you have the ability to put non postage items in mailboxes. Excellent. That’s actually better than what we’re able to do here in the States. We have to walk to their door which adds additional time to our marketing process.

I personally would not offer a deadline when you’re first getting started with your first batch of flyers, postcards, etc. The reason is because you want to go back into the exact same neighborhood multple times. This is where you will see the most success. One time flyer distributions/mailings simply won’t generate the highest rate of return. People need to see your message multiple times. So if you put a deadline on your first flyer/postcard, what will you put on your second? See what I mean? You’ve kind of hurt your marketing efforts into that area again because I’m not sure what you can do to top the previously offered discount/deadline unless it’s a bigger discount or an extended deadline. So for now, I’d recommend that you don’t use a discount/deadline.

With that said though, I would encourage you to test this concept out in the future. It’s definitely worth a test for sure. Each area is different. So if you have a twist that you’d like to add to your marketing message, you should always test it out and see if it works for you. But I wouldn’t recommend it right out of the starting gate. I would recommend that you simply use the materials that I’ve provided you “as is” (change the company name/phone number of course) and run with ‘em. They’ve all been proven to work over and over again.

I agree that you will most definitely get a better response generally speaking when there is a deadline to an offer. People are procrastinators by nature, so they need to be motivated to act. Deadlines will typically make someone take action. I use deadlines all the time on my websites. The problem though is that if you have picked out a few ideal areas to market your window cleaning service and you focus your efforts in those areas, I’m not sure how you can continually mention a deadline. After awhile, people won’t take it serious because they’ll know the next flyer/postcard you give them in 3 or 4 weeks will have another deadline on it. Just some thoughts to think about.

Take care for now and please keep in touch. I look forward to working with you once again. Have a great day.

Regards,

Steve

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Hi Steve,

John Blystone

My Response:

Hi John,

Good morning. Ah…the good ‘ole rain question. ) This can be a tough one to address and I don’t think there’s any right answer, but I’ll explain what I did when it rained in my area. Keep in mind that florida had lots of rain in the summer, so it was a situation that I had to contend with also.

Anyway…what I did was go to the job as planned regardless what the forecast may say unless I woke up in the morning and it was pouring out. The reason is because you can still clean windows if it’s raining. The homeowner will still have clean windows after the rain stops. The only difference is that if it’s raining, it makes it harder for you to double check your work after cleaning each window. So all you’re really able to do is wet, scrape, rewet, squeegee, towel, and move to the next.

As a side note, if I was at the job site and it really started coming down in buckets, I would move my operation inside the home. Hopefully it would stop raining by the time I was ready to do the outside again. It didn’t always work out like that though, so on occasion it would be necessary to pack up with plans to come back and finish the job the next day. What determined this was how hard it was raining. I really didn’t want to come back and finish up, so it would have to be raining really hard for me to abandon the job and come back the next day. Sometimes there wasn’t any choice though.

I’m not sure if any of the above helps, but that’s how I approached rain. So again, regardless what the forecast may call for in terms of rain, I still showed up at the job unless it was really, really raining hard in the morning before I started my day. Rain showers are no big deal. It’s the torrential downpours that’ll put a crimp in your schedule.

Sometimes of course the homeowner may not want their windows cleaned if rain is in the forecast. I would try and talk ‘em out of rescheduling if they called me in this situation by explaining to them that their windows will still be clean. I mean rain or no rain, they’ll still end up with clean windows. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn’t. I will say though that my work week was monday through thursday with friday set aside for estimates, so if my schedule needed to be juggled due to inclement weather, I could finish up a job on friday if I needed to.

Thanks for your offer on a testimonial. I appreciate it. A few sentences would be super. Thanks again. Take care and have a great day.

Regards,

Steve

In Response to a recent newsletter sent…

Hi Steve,

thanks for the inspiring e-mail.  I love to learn and your motivation keeps me going.  Just knowing you are just a phone call away gives me all the strength i need to keep moving forward.  I have a few questions and are as follows:

1.  I’m assuming the only way to clean a huge picture window on a 2 story house is by using an extender pole but how do you scrap with a razor blade to get all the bugs?  I’m attaching the blade to the end of my pole with tape and it works, not super great and probably not the safest so do you have any other suggestions?

2.  I’m brutal at estimating(although i just started and i am starting to get a tad better).  Apparently here in BC we make a killing.  I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it.  I estimated one house and i bid $125 the lady called me back and said i’d never get any jobs being that low cause people would be leary as to why.  She said she got 3 other quotes and the next one was $175 then $250 then $275.  I nearly dropped dead i can’t seem to grasp this. I also want the work so i knew i was a bit low.  Any tips?

Thank you very much Steve,

Maria

My Response:

Hi Maria,

It’s good to hear from you and thanks much for your comments.  I appreciate ‘em for sure.

–As far as scraping with a pole, I would advise against this.  There is too much room for error which means that the scraper could end up on an angle that would end up digging into the glass.  This could create some scratches.  You should really only scrape if you are directly on top of the glass because then you have full control over the scraper.

Did you know that you can rest your ladder on a window/glass?  If you use a ladder stabilizer bar (recommended) on your extension ladder, you can rest the ladder right against any window or glass.  It’s perfectly safe because the weight is evenly distributed and you have rubber tips at each end of your stabilizer bar.

What this means is that with you resting your ladder against a large window, you should now have full access to be able to scrape without having to use a scraper at the end of a pole.  If you need to move the ladder to be able to scrape the full window, then move the ladder around accordingly.

–It can be a fine line between wanting the jobs and the proper pricing.  I understand what you mean though about wanting the work.  However that lady was right.  If you’re too low, folks will wonder why.  They’ll wonder if you have insurance, what kind of shortcuts you might take on the job, etc.

You mentioned you estimated one house at $125.  Was that based on $5 per window and $1 per screen?  Did you add a little bump up amount to the estimate? I talk in my manual about adding an extra $30 to $40 to the estimate to cover any unplanned situations or extra time spent.

When you first start out, you’ll need to make adjustments in your pricing as you go.  It’s important to listen to whatever feedback you get and make pricing adjustments accordingly.  So this is good feedback that you received from that lady.  If you were at the $5 per window/$1 per screen price and the house came out to be $125, then I would bump that up to $7 per window and $2 per screen when you estimate the next house.  Keep in mind also that if it’s a two story home, the windows on the 2nd story are generally $2 more.  So if you’re charging $7 per window, make sure to charge $9 per window for the 2nd floor windows.

Hopefully the above helps a little bit.  The last thing I’ll mention is that when someone first gets started in the window cleaning business, it takes time to gain the confidence that you need in order to effectively present estimates for large jobs.  But you deserve to get paid that kind of money.  You’re professional, you’re properly insured, you have business expenses, and of course you’ll take the care needed to do a great job.

I remember when I first started.  It was a bit difficult presenting an estimate for $200 or higher because these prices seemed high to me.  But keep in mind who your target market is.  Our market will gladly pay our prices if they can get clean windows performed by a professional.  So hold you head up high when you present a big estimate.      Be proud of your pricing and your prospects will pick up on that and agree to use your service time and time again.

If you need any other assistance, please let me know.  Take care for now and have a great day today.

Regards,

Steve
256-546-2446

Hi Steve,

I am starting to get ready for the season and have a few questions…

2. Can you give me a basic idea of when to change rubber in a squeegee? Let’s assume I am working every week day, using that squeegee. I would rather not wait until streaks begin to develop and then have to change them out on the job.

Thanks,

John

My Response:

Hi John,

Good morning.  I hope all is well.

–Right…these anderson windows and some other windows that have similar designs end up trapping the water in the dividers, and then it slowly but surely drips down the glass. I’ve found the best way to handle this is to do one of two things:

1) Squeegee from left to right or right to left vs top to bottom.  This will eliminate you “pushing” the water into the divider when the squeegee is coming down.  And also make sure to squeegee only one pane at a time.  If you do this, then you should be able to catch any water dripping down the sides from getting into the divider.  You have to move fast though.

2) The 2nd method is to use a spray bottle. If you haven’t already, I would recommend mixing some glisten and water in a regular spray bottle because it’ll come in handy. I used a spray bottle all the time when doing french doors.  And then I would dry immediately with a towel after I sprayed each pane. So you spray a pane, wipe the pane, etc.  Spraying isn’t an ideal solution though if you know that the Sun will beat down on the glass.  Sun can be very unforgiving as you know when it comes to showing streaks.  So if you feel this’ll be an issue, use option 1 and you should be good to go.

–As far as changing the rubber, I generally went 3 to 4 months before changing rubber. So if you’re working every day with the same squeegee, I think every 3 months would be good to do a rubber change.  Keep a close eye on it though.  Sometimes if the scraping isn’t done perfectly, the rubber might catch some debris on the window as your squeegeeing and put a little nick in the rubber.  Once this is done, it needs to be replaced right away.

Hope this helps. Take care for now and have a great day.

Regards,

Steve