Hey Folks:

Sorry for not updating the blog more often in the last couple of weeks, but between The Customer Factor and the new soon to be released window cleaning directory, I just haven’t had the time. The directory hopefully will be announced monday or tuesday. We’ve had a couple of delays, but that’s normal when it comes to programming. This isn’t your typical directory, so it’s a bit more involved. Anyway…please stay tuned. As soon as it’s launched, then I can get back in the groove of updating the blog and writing a newsletter. I have a good newsletter planned out. I just need to write it all down.

Below are a couple of emails I received recently. Maybe they’ll help your groove. 

Steve,

Dale

My Response:

Hi Dale:

Ah…good ‘ole pollen.  I know what you mean. It’s annoying. And it will put a little dent in the business because some people will want to wait until it’s over.  Makes sense too.  I faced that issue, but overall, it really didn’t affect the biz that much because of the activity and customers that were on the books.  This ensured that not everyone was going to wait until pollen season was over.  There were always going to be folks who said "come on over" when I called ‘em for their semiannual or annual follow up call. 

As far as suggestions, I don’t know of any way to motivate someone to use your service now if they want to wait.  Are they bringing up the pollen issue or are you?  I mean I can’t think of one good comeback if they happen to say "Call me in 2 weeks when pollen is over". But I would however try and secure the appt. on the phone for when the pollen is estimated to be over.  You have ‘em on the phone so you may as well try and set the appointment at least.  Other than that though, I don’t know of any other way to motivate someone to act now before pollen is over if they’re concerned about it.  I definitely wouldn’t motivate with a cheaper price.  That’s the normal motivational method, but it would be a bad idea in our business.

Um…I’m not sure if the above helped much, but I don’t have any clearcut answer on the "motivation" question. If someone is intent on waiting, I can’t think of any way to change their mind. Even if you were successful though in changing their mind, they’d probably get mad at you once pollen makes the rounds and dirties their windows again.    So it’s probably best to not attempt to motivate ‘em too much.      

Take care for now and have a great weekend.

Regards,

Steve   

His reply

Steve,

Dale

My Response:

Hi Dale:

Good morning.  Hope your weekend is going well.  Right…exactly, I would also wait until pollen is over.  But schedule as much as you can now for sure.  It’ll set your schedule up nicely for when the yellow blows over.

Flyers will work best when folks are ready for your services.  Sure…you’ll get a percentage hold on to the flyer and call you when pollen is over.  But I would personally hit it hard and heavy when pollen is over. 

You know what I would do now?  I don’t know if you’ve made this attempt yet, but I’m hearing from lots of window cleaners about what kind of results they’re getting from joining forces with maid services.  Spoke to a window cleaner yesterday and he said he just joined up with a cleaning service run by a lady who hates doing windows.  She has 160 customers who need their windows cleaned in addition to their house cleaned.  Bingo.  Nothing quite like walking into a ready made customer base.  Even if only 20% (I’m staying really, really conservative) say "yes", it’s not bad securing 32 regular customers in one fell swoop.  This can be really lucrative.

There are other service businesses out there also that’ll work well as far as us joining forces with them.  In another blog post, I wrote about a window cleaner who connected with a window treatment company. 

So this would be a great time to work on some of these relationships. 

Hope this helps.  Take care for now. 

Regards,

Steve 

Hey Guys and Gals:

Some talk about different networking groups…

Hi Steve-

Regards,
Patrick

My Response:

Hi Patrick:

Good to hear from you.  Sounds good going day by day.  )

My own personal view point as mentioned in chapter 7 is to skip the chamber and join forces with a group like bni or letip.  In my town I was part of an organization called the breakfast club which resulted in a lot of business coming my way.  I much preferred being part of a group that was dedicated to helping/supporting other business owners in the group.  I didn’t feel the chamber did that. 

And I can’t really see the advantage of the bbb.  If you have the extra money, it certainly can’t hurt.  But if you’re watching your money, I feel the best groups to invest in are bni and letip. I know the bni prices vary from chapter to chapter, but it’s probably close to or a little over  $300, right?  So that would be a wise investment for sure. 

Hope this helps.  Take care for now and please keep in touch. 

Regards,

Steve

An email recently received:

Yes I went to Calgary today (I live about an hour south) to see if I can find a job fast and even the skilled positions like plumbers etc are only commanding $30 to $40 and hour and thats after 3 years experience and certificates etc.
 
At my "unskilled" level its crazyness, I dont know how anyone can live on $15 and $20 an hour with a wife and son + mortgae etc to support. No wonder mum and dad has to work these days. Sad.
 
Anyway, the point is I REALLY REALLY need to make this work fast. Tomorrow I’m getting some flyers done, and I’m going to try to put out 1000 with the help of my wife. We’ll see on that one. If you can suggest any other tips that could put some work my way fast, I’m all ears.
 
I will keep you posted.
 
- Mark

My Response:

Hi Mark:

Good morning and that sounds great that you’re hooked up.  Right…I did see your name come through as being in my database now.  So we’re good to go.

I know what you mean about needing experience for many trades and jobs.  That’s where window cleaning will come in and save the day.  )  No certificates, essentially no training, and good profits from day one.

With that said though, it does take a little time to gain the speed necessary for the average pay to reach the $40 to $50 per hour mark.  So I always tell window cleaners when they first start out not to worry so much about what they make per hour.  Just get your techniques right while you’re doing the first few jobs.  It’ll all fall into place. 

Speaking about time, I understand where you need this to work today.  And it will. I see it all the time.  But a word of advice though.  Some prospects will hold onto your marketing pieces for  weeks or months.  That’s just the way it is.  They’ll call when they’re ready.  It’d be nice to distribute 1000 flyers and get 10 calls within 24 hours, but that’s not the way it works unfortunately.  I talk about this in chapter 7 in my manual and how it important it is to keeping the pressure on and being consistent. 

With all this said above, you will most definitely get calls right away though.  Absolutely.  Just "do the numbers". It’s like I had a call the other day from someone who says he pops out 20 flyers a day.  That’s not even close to good numbers.  That equates to receiving a fraction of a phone call a day and that fraction may come today or it might come in 2 months.  So just get out enough numbers and the calls will come.  Whew..I sound like some new age philosopher. ) 

If I can say one more thing. I hope this is a business you can really sink your teeth into long term.  I know of course that you need cash now, but after that requirement has been fullfilled, I hope you stay with it.  It’s a profitable business as I see every day.  And there are so many other things you can do for your customers besides window cleaning. The potential is huge when you consider the variety of services you can offer!

As far as tips, I have a bunch. I would first recommend that you dig into all my newsletters.  And then tap into my blog. And reread chapter 7/chapter 8 a few times.  You’ll learn something new each time you go into the manual. 

Take care for now and please keep me posted.

Regards,

Steve

Hey Guys and Gals:

I was asked recently by a new window cleaner to put together a letter that he could send to his colleagues and acquantances announcing that he’s now in the window cleaning business. I put one together and emailed it to him, but I thought you would benefit from it, so I’ve posted it below.

One quick note first though…the window cleaning directory I’ve been working on for the past 4 months is almost complete. It should be ready next week. . This directory is the 300lb gorilla of directories. You’ve never seen anything like this. What makes it really powerful is the way we’ve made it so search engine friendly. Our goal is to have the window cleaners listed in the directory appear high in the search engines giving you more customers/jobs/profits. You’ll be able to read more about it when I launch it. So please stay tuned…

Ok, here’s the email with the intro letter that I sent to Bill…

Hi Bill:

Here’s the letter you asked about on the phone:

Dear John:

Making the transition to window cleaning was easy based on the fact that my research told me two things:

• People are looking for professional, trustworthy, customer oriented window cleaners who believe in doing quality work.
  
• And there aren’t too many of those kind of window cleaners around.
  

Please contact me if you’re interested in receiving a free window cleaning estimate. There’s no better feeling than being able to enjoy a crystal clear view again from your home or office.  

Steve Wright
Clearview Window Washing Service

I tried to visualize the person I was writing to, and the person I visualize is not really a close, close person to you.  So I suppose if you have a more chummy relationship, then the letter above might need to be "warmed up" a bit.

Take care for now. Have a great night.

Regards,

Steve

Although we’re coming up on prime window cleaning season, I wanted to provide you the lowdown on offering a gutter cleaning service to your customers. Actually it’s not me providing you the details, but a window cleaner by the name of Tyler Kirk. He’s been in the window cleaning business for about 3 years now. He’s pulling in some nice profits providing this service…$8,000 in profits in the month of January and over 5k in profits for february by the time we spoke feb 21/22.  This DOES NOT count his window cleaning jobs/profits by the way. 

His gutter cleaning service is promoted to his window cleaning customer base, so he’s not promoting this as a stand alone type service.  In other words, there is literally no investment. No advertising, no special supplies or equipment, etc.

The main services that I provided my own customers were window cleaning, ceiling fan cleaning,  mirror cleaning, and a few dozen christmas light installations around the holidays. But there are just soooo many more services you can provide. I think one of the best is gutter cleaning primarily because as mentioned above there is no initial investment in equipment and no ongoing cost for supplies.

Here is what Tyler had to say in our phone conversation:

"My gutter cleaning jobs range between a $100 and $150 per home. Each job takes me no more than an hour to do. If it’s a super large job, that might stretch into an hour a half.

It’s too dangerous to be on the roof walking around the edge of the roof line cleaning the gutters, so one of my employees or myself, if I’m doing the job, will go up and down the ladder and move the ladder around the house as we work.  Sounds like a lot of time spent climbing up and down the ladder, but it’s not.  

We tie a bucket around our waist and with gloves on, we’ll empty the leaves out of the gutter by hand. We don’t take the leaves out of the gutter and just throw them on the ground. This would create more work for us at the end of the job, so we found that placing the leaves in a bucket right away is best.

As our bucket fills up, we’ll empty the bucket of leaves into a trash bag during one of the times we’ve climbed down from the ladder. 

The final step in the process is to take a regular water hose with a spray nozzle, climb up the ladder, and spray the hose directly into the gutter.  We do this in 2 or 3 locations. This will force any left-over loose debris to run down the shute. 

And that’s pretty much it.  

Some additional notes Steve…Gutter guards can cost as much as $20 to $25 per foot, so in many respects, it’s more worthwhile for a homeowner to hire someone to clean their gutters than it is for them to invest in a gutter guard. Oh…and gutter guards do not work as advertised in all cases. In other words, leaves and debris can still wind up in the gutter. I tell my customers this even if they do have a gutter guard. It gets them thinking that maybe they should have me clean their gutters even if they have a gutter guard.

Talk to you soon.

Tyler"

My own notes:

To approach your customers about this service, how about sending ‘em a letter letting them know about it? Here’s one you can use:

Dear Mrs. Jones:

Steve Wright
Clearview Window Washing Service

Happy Gutter Cleaning!

Steve