The post below was actually sent to me in an email by a successful window cleaner named Deland Moghimi.

There are all kinds of ideas, strategies, ideas, etc that we can share with one another to make serious profits in the window cleaning business. So if you have something of value to share that works in your business, please contact me and I’ll post it on this blog. 

And finally…the following post needs no response although I’ve interjected a few comments throughout. Enjoy!

Hi Steve,

To date, looking at the customer factor, on the "Customer/Search/follow-up" screen I have 393 residential customers (commercial has not been updated because of the automatic scheduling feature. We are waiting until September to upload everything to make it easy on us.) and two employees and a business partner that controls all of our commercial clients. I’ll tell you it would be a horrible time trying to keep a paper trail on all of those customers, not to mention all the time to search a filling cabinet to update records, yuck! Thank you for inventing the customer factor!

My Comments: You’re very welcome Deland . And almost 400 residential customers in under a year and a half? That is super. Keep it up my friend.

My Comments: Since deland wasn’t familiar with area, the postcards may have been sent to an area that didn’t contain his target homes. And Signage works! Also…remember to reinvest, reinvest, reinvest as deland mentions.

My Comments: Deland has this game figured out. Marketing=Jobs/Profits which allows for more marketing which brings in more jobs and more profits. One big snowball of a business that is always getting bigger.

Final Comments: It’s important to recognize that deland is willing to invest and reinvest. This is what it takes to see serious growth in your business. So don’t take the money from each job and run. Set aside 20 to 25% and put it back into the business so you can build it wider and deeper.

Have a profitable day!

Steve

The post below is actually based on a comment left here. I thought just in case you didn’t see it, I’d make it into an individual post along with my reply.  Pricing seems to be a hot topic lately so here we go…

Hello,

I run my operation in the Chicagoland area and competition is fierce. There are dozens if not hundreds of window washing companies. Plenty of good, well established ones and numerous small ones. In this market it would be very difficult to charge more than $6 per window. My pricing is anywhere from $3-$5 per window and there isn’t really any more room for an increase. Just something to think about; Depends what market you are operating in.

Luke

My response:

Hi Luke:

You are certainly correct. I mean you can’t just walk into any market, pull a price out of thin air, and just go with it. When I was brand new, I started with pricing of $7 a window. But when I wasn’t closing that many prospects, I had to drop to $5 per window. It still put me in the higher end pricing market, so backed up with an impressive presentation, prospects now closed fairly easily even though  I was still higher than some of my low-ball competitors out there.

Anyway…you do have to do your research and find out what per window pricing will fit in your area. Call 2 or 3 window cleaners, invite ‘em over to your home/friend’s home and ask them to give you an estimate.  I wouldn’t take what they say as gospel though. Because most window cleaners do focus on price. And you really don’t want to do that.

I think the focus of the post here and subsequent comments from people is about "presentation". If we focus on a rock solid presentation,  will prospects pick our pricing over some average window cleaner who has little or no presentation? Absolutely. Not all prospects obviously. Especially the yellow page callers since the majority are price shopping. But the beauty of it is we don’t  need all prospects to say "yes".

The bottom line is that we should never make the focal point of our window cleaning businesses all about price. If we do, we are just like most other window cleaners out there that are cut from the same cloth. Sure you have to adjust to your market. But don’t match up your pricing to your low ball competitors. You’ll get plenty of business if you stay above the fray.

Look at the mariott hotel chain. And now look at super 8. There will always be the people who are cheap and looking to save money so they’ll stay at the super 8′s of the world. But do the mariott hotels suffer because of this? Absolutely not. They thrive because they’re providing a better "experience".  At a higher per room price I might add.

So carry this philosophy over to your window cleaning business. Don’t be a super 8. Be a mariott. People will pay for a quality experience.

Take care luke.

Steve 

An email received recently:

Hi Steve,

Joe

My Response:

Hi Joe:

How are you doing?  It’s good to hear from you and thanks much for your comments.

You bring up a good point. I’ll include cold weather talk in my next manual update.  So thanks for mentioning it.

Actually though, you can do cold weather cleaning.  All that is required is some extra solution in your bucket.  In normal weather situations, you have water and glisten in there, right?  When the weather is below 32 degrees though, include a little bit of the blue solution that is designed for your window washing reservoir under the hood of your car to clean your car windows.  It’s great stuff.  You don’t need much added to your water and glisten…maybe a 1/4 of cup.  And it should keep your water good to go (prevent it from freezing) throughout the job.

Then you can go ahead and pick up a pair of gloves to provide warmth for your hands.  You can find gloves on page 32 in ABC’s catalog. 

Although down in florida, we generally didn’t have the below 0 days, it still did get cold some mornings in dec/jan.  So I used gloves myself on those occasions.  As far as the blue window washing fluid, I didn’t need to use that, but this is what window cleaners up north in colder climates use. 

And it won’t affect the quality of your job at all.  The glisten will still do it’s job and make the windows sparkle.

Hope this helps and thanks again for your comments. Have a profitable week.

Regards,

Steve

Note to other window cleaners: Although the word from northern window cleaners is that the vast majority of them will use the "blue solution" talked about above, if you use a different solution, please let me know.

An email from a window cleaner asking about his yellow page advertising:

Hello Steve,
 
I just have a couple quick questions for you. I just placed a ad in my local yellow pages the size of a dollar bill which is going to cost me 675.00 per month and also they are trying to sell me a website for $130.00 per month which includes marketing and in search engines(but no guarantee on placement)and a minimum of 240 clicks to my website over the year. my question is I am wondering if this sounds good as far as the website price.The name of the yellow pages is dex online.Also I am wondering if I am getting a little over my head on the whole yellow page thing. Could you tell me what you think. Also I know you said you aquired alot of customers in a short period of time. Could you give me some recommendations of how you did it. Hope your having a great day!!
 
Thank You,
 
Bret

My Response:

Hi Bret:
 
Good morning to you:
 
I think you’re going in waaaaaay over your head at $675 per month.  You do realize that people price shop through the yellow pages, right?  My friend owned an insurance agency and he spent over $3k per month on a full page ad in the yellow pages, but for his business, that’s what he needed to get the phone ringing.  Our market isn’t like that.
 
My little $32 per month ad did me just fine with bringing in business, but it also left me lots of other dollars to promote my business in other ways.  So I would run a little yellow page ad like what I show in my manual and invest the rest in the numerous other techniques available to promote your window washing business.
 
$130 per month for a website?  It’s a ripoff.  Heck for $19.95 as a member of my software program, The Customer Factor, I used to provide each member a free website. It may not have had all the bells and whistles, but it did what it was supposed to do. It was a real deal. $130 per month is not.
 
As a side note, 240 clicks to your website is window dressing.  It sounds nice, but are they really "targeted clicks"?  How do you know that those clicks are from actual homeowners interested in your window cleaning services?  The answer is that you don’t.
 
And there definitely cannot be any guarantee on search engine placement.  Are you familiar with the search engines?  I spend quite a bit of time doing search engine optimization, and the vast majority of SEO is acquiring links back to your site.  Only 15 to 20% has to do with on-page optimization like keyword density.  The rest is all about off-page optimization like link building which I just mentioned.  So the bottom line is that when the yellow page rep talks about marketing in the search engines, they’re talking about including some keywords on your webpages.  Because they surely are not going to go out and get links for you.  So again…you don’t need to spend $130 a month for this.  Wow!  They are really ripping off an unsuspecting public.
 
As far as your last question about "getting customers fast"…my customers were acquired in a variety of different ways, anyone of them can result in "fast customers". I did a lot of postcard mailings to generate immediate phone calls.  I also went out every saturday morning with 2 to 3 kids and blanketed neighborhoods with flyers.  I also belonged to a business breakfast organization.  I also had maid services and other service businesses feed me business.  I also had newsletter ads placed in newsletters in certain developments.  Then I also had a yellow page ad-$32 per month, not $675 per month.  So as you see, it was a multitude of things that kept the phone ringing.

You can review chapter 7 in my manual and all past newsletters also for more information on this.
 
Hope this helps.  The stuff above may not be what you want to hear as far as your yellow page advertising, but I just don’t like it when a yellow page rep tries to rip someone off. They wouldn’t know what a window cleaner looks like if we fell on their head. What they do is make assumptions and assign those assumptions to ALL businesses when they try and sell you yellow page space. Therefore bigger must be better, right? Not true. Well…I guess I won’t be getting Christmas cards from yellow page reps anytime soon.  ) Oh well. 
 
Take care for now. Talk soon.
 
Regards,
 
Steve

Some more flyer talk…

steve- in order for me to have at least 3 window jobs per week, how many flyers should i send out a week? 

My response:

Hi Blake:

It was good talking with you on the phone today.

As mentioned, this is a difficult question to provide an exact answer to.  The reason is because of the fact that not everyone calls right away.  Whew…that would be nice.  )  Some folks will call you right away of course, but others will call you in a week, 2 weeks, or more.

If everyone called like we’d like ‘em to, then in order to get 3 jobs per week, we would need to distribute a measly 500 flyers.  This’ll turn into 5 calls.  And those 5 calls will turn into at least 3 jobs. 

To provide ourselves a cushion and to allow for the delayed callbacks, distributing between 500 and 1000 flyers per week should give you at the very least 3 jobs per week, minimum.  Absolute minimum.  Again, I’m talking about allowing for a cushion.  

And of course keep in mind that as you start growing and building your biz, referrals will come in, people will see your yard sign, etc etc.  So your distribution amounts can drop if you want ‘em to.  I personally stepped up my marketing campaigns because I wanted to grow and establish crews.  If you want to do the same, then step up your flyer distribution campaign.  If you’re satisfied just coming up with enough jobs to provide for you, then eventually you can ease off on distribution.

Hope this helps.  Take care for now.  And have a profitable week!

Regards,

Steve