Is Window Cleaning A Luxury?

Steve,

Cari

My Response:

Hi Cari,

Good morning. The first thing I’d like to ask is where are you spending your time marketing? Because $130 is super cheap for a home. The typical home on average (if you’re in the right markets) should be between $200 and $250 on average. There are always exceptions of course, but this is usually the size window cleaning job you’ll do as far as residential goes.

Flyers work well as long as you’re in the right neighborhoods, but the key is to hit ‘em over the head multiple times with multiple distributions. Repetition is important in order to receive a good response rate. The first time you do a distribution, that’s the lowest response. It’s usually their first exposure to you, your company, and your service. Some times a window cleaner may bow out of that neighborhood at that point. And that’s a mistake. Because the calls start trickling in more and more and really start gaining a head of steam after 2, 3, and 4 distributions.

So I know you’re in a great market out there in california. I know some window cleaners out that way who are truly cleaning up. So if you’re in the right neighborhoods and do repeat flyer distributions/repeat postcard campaigns to these neighborhoods, you’ll see results.

To answer your question, I definitely wouldn’t lower your base rate. Not at all. And I have to disagree that window cleaning is considered a luxury. For the average family, it is. But our target market is not average families. We’re going after the above average family which ensures that our window cleaning service is not a luxury, but a necessity. When they have a nice home, and they do all the other things to keep it up like having a maid service come in and clean, have their decks and driveways power washed, etc. etc., they certainly don’t want to leave their windows dirty. It detracts from everything else they’ve done to maintain the appearance of their home.

I’ve spoken to window cleaners who charge special pricing like what you mentioned. It’s a good door opener, but the only way they can be profitable is to upsell like crazy. So $99 gets ‘em in the door, but that’s just a basic window cleaning. They’ll then offer to scrub and clean each screen, they’ll then offer to clean tracks and sills, and whatever other upsell they can think of. I’m a fan of upsells within reason. I made a lot of profit cleaning ceiling fans by upselling it over and above the window cleaning job that was being done. However, I don’t think the actual window cleaning should be broken apart like that where the basics are in the price, but if the customer wants a better window cleaning, they have to pay for it.

What I would do is make sure to use the estimate package with the cover letter that was originally provided to you. If you don’t have it, I’ll send you over the info where you can access it. Then I’d revise the cover letter where you include a blurb about these $99 specials. You don’t want to bash the competition, but just let the prospect know what they’re really getting for that $99.00. Then transition into the kind of full service that you provide.

As far as building a monthly base with small businesses, that’s definitely doable. It can be slow going though because typically these types of businesses just don’t have a large amount of glass, so you may end up charging $10, $20, $30 or some small amount like that. And you always have to be on the lookout for other window cleaners willing to charge the business owner less so that they can get the account.

Can you apply some massive action in the next 30 to 60 days? Pretend that you’re starting out brand new. I know it’s a bit more challenging now since you also have to complete jobs. But if you can set yourself a goal of walking into 10 to 15 businesses per day asking them if you can provide them a free estimate to clean their windows, that will result in lots of businesses coming your way. It’s a numbers game, so 15 a day is 75 a week which is 300 a month. Bottom line is that if you approach 300 businesses a month and expose your business/service to them, you’ll end up with a bunch of customers. And even if they don’t become a customer right then and there, at least they’ll have one of your flyers or business cards where they can contact you when they become unhappy with their current window cleaner.

This really works, but it’ll require at least a 30 to 60 day commitment. No distractions (except for doing window cleaning jobs of course). When the dust settles at the end of this time frame, you’ll be well on your way.

And this can also be repeated on the residential side of things except the numbers have to be bigger. 15 houses a day isn’t enough. But you need to scale it up and get 2 other flyer distributers to distribute flyers for you. However, it should be no problem because now you’ll have the commercial jobs coming in regularly based on the 30 to 60 days of massive action that you just took. So take a small portion of the profits coming in from these jobs and reinvest in scaling up in marketing for residential jobs.

I had 2 to 3 flyer distributers distribute flyers for me every single saturday and they typically got out around 1000 flyers distributed. I can tell you first hand that 4000 flyers a month results in a large number of calls and jobs. But you can’t do it all yourself. There is only so much time in the day. So it needs to be scaled up by using at least 2 other individuals to distribute flyers for you. Then you can reinvest, scale up some more, and you’re well on your way.

I hope the above helps. If you have any other questions, please let me know. Take care for now and have a great day.

Regards,

Steve