Scaling Up Your Window Cleaning Business

As I look back over the years, one of the biggest things I see window cleaners do is do what everyone else does. Generally speaking when window cleaners are going in one direction, you want to go in the opposite direction. If they zig, you zag.

There are an incredible amount of average window cleaning businesses out there just plodding along from one window cleaning job to the next. They are technicians who think like employees instead of treating their window cleaning business like the business it is.

So if you want to rise above the fray and build a really successful window cleaning business, it’s about scaling up. All the big window cleaning companies have done this and continue to do this. They certainly don’t grow their companies by waiting for people to call them.

The only way to scale up is to take a percentage of profits from each and every job and invest it back into your business. There’s no way around it. Back when I launched The Customer Factor, as new members joined up a large % of their subscription payments went to my programming team for more and more features. As a result, the software grew with even more members signing up. Today I do exactly the same thing but on a bigger scale and it’s accelerated the growth even more.

That’s the way it works. If I would have horded the subscription payments instead of reinvesting, I’d own a software product that is stale and our members would be leaving in droves.

To scale up, it’s important to set up some automated processes that are totally hands off. Yes, it’s necessary to do the initial set up type work, but then pull back and automate it. Proactive marketing combined with an auto pilot process is the absolute best way to scale up. Just remember to reinvest or you’ll be scaling down real quick.

To give you a real world example, I spoke with a window cleaner yesterday about mailing postcards. He was under the impression that it would be too expensive for him to do it, but I showed him how he can get 1000 postcards out the door for $270 (postage and printing). You can go to gotprint.com and get 10000 postcards for $208 (just over 2 cents a postcard…the lowest price I’ve seen online). Add another 25 cents per postcard for postage and you’re off to the races.

Read chapter 7 of How To Start Your Own Residential Window Washing Business for the exact processes I used for postcards.

I like to say conservative with my response rates so I’m thinking in my mind that I’ll get a 1% response from each mailing. I’d recommend staying conservative when it comes to your expected response rates. The last thing you want to do is be expecting something like 2% to 5% response and end up disappointed. Yes, I’ve received those kinds of responses on occasion, but they’re not the norm. If that sort of response does happen, great. But consider it gravy.

So 1% of 1000 postcards mailed is 10 calls. If you present the estimates properly, you should have no problem closing at least 8 out of those 10 callers. But let’s say for argument sake that you get fewer calls or you close less jobs, so we’ll say you only end up doing 4 jobs. That should at the very least double or triple your initial investment of $270. Again…keep in mind that I’m staying real conservative here, but even with a conservative mindset, you’re still in profit.

So now take 20% to 30% of anything over $270 and invest back into additional mailings. After 2 mailings you’ll never have to reach into your pocket again because you’ll be able to expand and scale up to multiple mailings and always do it from profit.

While this is all going on, you’ll literally bury the “average” window cleaners in your town because they’re all running around here, there, and everywhere trying to find their next customer and their next job. There’s no better feeling knowing that your day is going to be filled with phone calls from interested prospects wanting your services.

You can take this approach with any marketing method you want to. There are just so many ways to scale up your window cleaning business. It takes a little bit of an investment initially, but the willingness to make an investment in your business shouldn’t even be an issue. And if you do it properly, it gains a head of steam that can’t quit if you just give it a little bit of a push every now and then (from your profits).

It resulted in my own window cleaning business enjoying a back log of window cleaning jobs 5 to 8 weeks out and I know many others are experiencing the same. Just don’t listen to the naysayers or the “technicians” out there who say it can’t be done because of “competition”, “the economy”, or whatever other excuse happens to be the flavor of the day. Remember…whatever they do, you do the opposite and you’re the one who’ll end up reaping the benefits while their still spouting off excuses.

And don’t think too much about it. Sometimes people can think themselves out of what they need to do to realize maximum success. They might start out all excited but then they start thinking about reasons why this won’t work or that won’t work. This will then eventually have you running in lockstep with everyone else.

For example, I could have easily nixed the development of The Customer Factor because I could have thought things like: “well service ceo has been around a long time, how can i compete with them” or “quickbooks has the market sewn up, there’s no way i can sign up any clients because everyone uses quickbooks” or “i’m not a software developer so therefore i should never develop software”. Well…fast forward 7 years and The Customer Factor has become the “go to” software for window cleaners and other service businesses because we carved out our own unique niche.

So again….as long as you do things that are different then your so called “competition”, you will stand out from the crowd and build a successful window cleaning business.

Best Regards,

Steve