Posts tagged "start a window cleaning business"

How To Adopt The Business Mindset

Hi Everyone,

This morning I just released the manual How To Adopt The Business Mindset. If you’re a past purchaser of my window cleaning program, you’ll be able to download it for FREE at the materials webpage here.

This 41 page manual discusses the “Business Mindset”. Actually there are 20 business mindsets that I talk about. Each and every one of them are important to adopt and to live by if you want to experience the ultimate success in your window cleaning business.

Chapters include:
Read more…

Grab A Spot At The Next Home Show!

Hi Folks,

I received an email last night from a window cleaner who had a booth at a local home show last weekend. I’ve posted the email below. He also was kind enough to send over a photo of what his booth looked like…

Hey Steve

I just thought I would drop you a line. I just finished with our home show this last weekend and it was a tremendous hit. I have exactly 100 estimates to do in the next few days and I can’t wait. I enclosed a picture of the booth. You might want to remind people of the post you had last year from another window cleaner. These things really work. Have a great day.

Regards

Kelly Matteson

Notes: Just imagine for a moment having 100 estimates to do in the next few days. That can be a life changer. This is what home shows can do. They can be prospect magnets and literally put you on the map in a single weekend!

The blog post Kelly was recommending in his email is located here, so you may want to read/reread that. In addition though, there is a specific newsletter dealing with “home shows” over at the right under the “Newsletter” section. It’ll give you some additional pointers and ideas on how to conduct a successful home show. Oh…and here’s the photo kelly sent over…

Have a great day!

Steve
256-546-2446

Be Aggressive…Make Offers!

Hi Everyone,

I hope you’re having a fine day today. This is just a quick post to let you know that over in the right column of this blog under "Newsletters", you’ll see a new newsletter posted that is entitled "Be Aggressive…Make Offers!". So click that link to read it. Or  you can click here.

Please let me know if I can assist you in your window cleaning business. Take care for now.

Regards,

Steve
256-546-2446

Reestablishing Relationships…and some SEO.

Good Evening Steve,

This is a super important issue for me and something I want to do wisely. I have a customer base of almost 450 clients, a percentage of which are residential clients. Coming to the Customer Factor from a progam like ShineSC that has a very difficult to navigate reminder program, I am even more clearly aware how I have not established solid relationships with my clients.

Honestly its been because there hasnt been any good way to really keep track of who needs to be called when before The Customer Factor and it is EXTREMELY time consuming to do the same things Factor does for you automatically.

With that being said, I want to start immediately with re-establishing strong relationships with my customer base and really would like advise on which way you would suggest. I am thinking about either using Factor to send them all a letter or maybe using Send Out Cards.

Either way, I want to begin now to re-establish those relationships BEFORE I start making courtesy reminder calls that they are due for services here in the Spring. Please let me know your thoughts.

And this is another subject completely, but I really would like to visit with you because of all of your experience in this area. I am completely redesigning my website, from the ground up. I "settled" when I first had it created and ended up with a product I wasn’t happy with.

What is worse, even when I try targeted and specific keywords for my website searches to see how I am ranked in the search engines, I am always listed about the sixth or seventh page. I don’t have to tell you that they are probably not going to browse through six pages of results to find me.

I know the vast majority of searches end after looking through the first page of results. This brings me to my need for your help. I want to set my website up in such a way as to make it EXTREMELY search engine friendly and make it so that more and more potential clients are able to visit my site and are at least given the opportunity to see what we can offer. So I mean this very literally, ANY and ALL help that you can offer to help my website would be much much appreciated. This is highly important to me and since you have lots of knowledge in this area, I know you could really help. Thank you again!

Sincerely,

Nicholas

My Response:

Hi Nicholas,

Good morning. 

If you have not contacted your customers on a regular basis in the past, then my recommendation would be to send them a personalized letter first.  The prob with making a phone call right off the bat is it comes across as too "telemarketerish" if you know what I mean. 

My philosophy over the years has always been to reach out to my customers multiple times and not just when I wanted to do their job.  So I sent out on average of 6 greeting cards per year per customer, with most of the cards just saying general type things like "I hope your summer is going well" to give you an example.

This worked to not only generate immediate referrals and plenty of customer goodwill, but when the time came to follow up for an actual repeat appt. via a phone call, it didn’t seem like I had my hand out just looking to take more money from them.  I really think most service businesses get this part of the process wrong.  Follow up is great and is obviously necessary, but it’s important to plant seeds throughout the months following a job.  It makes the actual callback a whole lot easier for you.  And it makes it very difficult for your customer to take a chance with another window cleaner, no matter if he’s a bit cheaper or not.

Anyway…with all this said, back to your original question, I would send out a personalized letter to your customers using The Customer Factor.  In that letter, mention something like: The last time you’ve been serviced was on <insert token for "last job date" here>, so I’ll be calling you in a few days to follow up with you to see if you need to be serviced again."  Keep in mind that you can use tokens for further personalization like a "job type" token, "job price" token, etc.  It would actually be better to do this only with the customers who currently show on the quick summary screen as customers needing to be tentatively contacted now otherwise you may mistakenly send letters out to customers who you may have just completed jobs for and who aren’t quite ready to be serviced.

For the customers who don’t fall into the category of "tentatively scheduled now", I would start planning some greeting card campaigns.  And yes, that’s where Send Out Cards would come in handy.  They can put it on autopilot for you.  There is some initial work up front in selecting the cards from their card database and inserting the wording into each card, but once this is done, it really is on autopilot.  As a side note, once Send Out Cards is up and running, it’s not necessary to send out any personalized letters from The Customer Factor except the thank you letter after a customer’s initial job is completed.  Some members may also send out personalized "reminder" letters when customers are ready to be serviced again, but I just preferred to pick up the phone and call ‘em.   

I hope the above helps in planning your follow up.  I talk about follow up a lot on this blog and within my manual because it’s the one piece of the puzzle that I think separates the truly successful window cleaners from the not so successful window cleaners.  Oh…and speaking about follow up, the key is to just make sure to try and have both customer categories ("tentatively due" and "callbacks") display "0" on the quick summary screen within The Customer Factor.  If you can do that, then you’re well on your way.  I’ve had conversations with some members who let these numbers build up too much, and this is just leaving money on the table. 

As far as search engine optimization, this is an entire industry in itself. Professional search engine optimization firms charge upwards of $1000 to establish top website rankings for their customers.  So that’ll give you some indication of how involved search engine optimization is.  But I can definitely give you some pointers to get you started.  And feel free to also call me on this for further info.  Again…there is just so much to it. 

First off, I would go to my window cleaning directory and create a premium listing if you haven’t yet.  And when doing so, view the video.  I provide some detailed information on some search engine optimization aspects like meta tags and keywords.  And then reverse engineer the actual webpage (premium listing) you’re creating in the directory. 

Ok…so to back up for a sec, there are 2 ingredients to ranking well in the search engines.  The first is what keywords are used on your web page ("on-page" optimization), and the 2nd is the websites/links you can get pointing to your website.  This is called "off-page" optimization.

Most webmasters put all their energy into on-page optimization and getting their keywords correct, but this is actually only about 15% of the work required for good rankings.  A full 85% of your effort has to be spent on link building.  Sounds complicated, but it’s really not. 

I use ezinearticles.com to submit articles to.  Each article allows for an article resource box where I can link back to my site.  You can also submit a press release.  This is a wise investment. Webwire (http://www.webwire.com/) is a good place to go.  For $19.95, your press release will be distributed to multiple press release services and get you many links back to your site.  There are a whole bunch of different ways to get links like submitting to social bookmarking services, directories, etc.  I can provide you other resources if you’re interested.  But the main thing to take away from this is that getting your website ranked depends on much more than just having the correct keywords on the webpage.

As far as keywords though, what keyword do you want to rank for?  You need to make sure that that keyword is the first phrase in your meta title. If you want to provide me your website address, I’ll take a peek at it.  Most webmasters make the mistake of putting their company name in the meta title which does no good when it comes to trying to rank in the search engines.  Again…reverse engineer the 3 bears window cleaning directory and the premium listing you create for your company, and you’ll walk away with some good ideas.  Currently the directory is ranked #3 for "window cleaning directory" (search with no quotes) in google, so it’s ranked high.

I hope this provides you some initial info. to chew on.  If you have any further questions, let me know.  I’ve been thinking about putting together a video series on how to rank well in the search engines.  But just keep in mind that there are so many variables that go into it.  Another variable of course is competition.  Ex: Ranking for "window cleaning springfield missouri" is a whole lot easier than ranking for "window cleaning".  

Take care for now. 

Regards,

Steve

Note To Everyone: If you have an interest in viewing a tutorial on search engine optimization and how to get your website ranked high in the search engines, let me know. I won’t do it if there’s no interest, but if there is, I’ll be glad to put one together.

If you don’t have any website yet, then it’s important that you get one online as soon as possible. There are prospects right now looking online for window cleaners in your town. It’s just another way to bring in jobs. If you already have a website, great. The next step is making sure it’s not buried on page 20 of the search engine results where no one can find  you.  So let’s get it ranked high. Call me for pointers and/or once again, please let me know if you’d like to receive a tutorial or two on these all important ranking strategies. 

A No/Low Cost Marketing Method…

Hey All,

This email came in the the other day from a fellow window cleaner, and it contains a mighty cool marketing idea to implement in your window cleaning business as soon as possible. Enjoy!

Regards,

Steve

Steve,

A friend of mine and I were brainstorming this last week end and I think we have found a way that we will NEVER want to stop flyering!

How many flyers would a person want to put out if they were averaging $30.00 per hour just for putting them out? I talked with a handful of business owners (some I do their windows, some I don’t) and offered to distribute their flyers for them at a rate of $5.00 per hundred. 6 of them said yes immediately!

They said that they could not hire someone at minimum wage to put them out at that rate, which is true. I have door hanger bags that I use for my flyers, and it is not much trouble at all to put a few more in the bag along with mine. I get the bags for about $60.00 for 5000 of them. I think this is a great way to keep a little revenue coming in to pay for my own campaign as well as pay for my time doing it. I thought you might want to pass this idea along to the rest of the gang.Have a great day.

Regards,

Kelly Matteson
Window Pros

My Reply:

Hi Kelly,

Good morning.  I think that’s a great idea for sure.  A great way to save some serious flyer distribution costs or maybe even break even with no costs out of pocket. Love it. There’s nothing quite like marketing for free.    Very cool.  What I would do to carry it a step further is to hire as many people as you can that allows for you to break even which will allow you to get out some tremendous numbers. In other words, I wouldn’t look at distributing flyers for other business owners as a way to make money. I would take whatever money you receive from them and invest it into however many people you can until you reach breakeven. Bottom line…zero out of pocket costs that generate jobs and profits for you. Can’t beat that.

Ex: If you’ve done the math and have 6 fellow service business owners who are interested in using you for distributing their flyers along with your own, and you can get 3, 4, or 5 people pumping ‘em out for you at a breakeven point, then that’s what I’d do most definitely.  You’ll be way ahead of the game for sure.  Obviously time is money as we all know, so in addition to the marketing costs, I’m always looking at any way possible to avoid having to spend the time hoofing it through neighborhoods myself. 

Anyway….just a thought.  And thanks so much for the idea and your email. I’ll post this on the blog so that other window cleaners can see it and possibly benefit from it.  Thanks again.        

If any window cleaner is part of an organization like bni.com or some other networking group in their area, I would think it would be very easy to come up with a few small businesses willing to pay a few bucks to get their flyer distributed.  Everyone is looking for low cost advertising.  Especially in this economic climate.  

Take care for now and have a great day.

Regards,

Steve

Web Hosting News for Window Cleaners…

Hey All:

Over the last few years, I’ve been asked many, many times about online related stuff like websites, what hosting companies are good, where to get domain names, etc. etc. As far as hosting and domain names, they have come way down from what they used to be priced at.   I remember when domain names were $70 for the year. Yikes. Now you can get ‘em for $6.99 per year. Cool.

And if you’re about to get a website online, one of the hosting companies you should look at is ipower.  Visit their page and bookmark it so that you’ve got the info. available when you’re ready to launch your website. They’ve got a super inexpensive hosting rate ($4.95 per month) and their uptime is close to 100% (99.9% to be exact). This is important because you should consider your host as a business partner. If your site is down or offline on a regular basis, it doesn’t make you look good. 

I mean if visitors visited 3 Bears Window Cleaning Directory only to land on a "page not found" page, it’ll make visitors not visit anymore. If The Customer Factor window cleaning software was offline or "down" due to the ineptness of my hosting company, that would result in many upset members as it should. They need access to their business data all the time ’round the clock. So the bottom line is to make sure that if you have a website, you need to get yourself a hosting company which has great "uptime". And when you combine the uptime found at ipower with a cheap price and 24/7 phone/email support, you’ve found the perfect hosting company to host your website. If you have any questions on this, please let me know. I’ll be glad to walk  you through the "techy" issues that some folks have when getting their hosting company set up.

Oh…and if you have a website and you already have a hosting company, then take a look at what you’re paying. ipower helps move website owners over to their plan all the time from hosting companies charging too much. The problem is that some website owners have had the same hosting company hosting their website for a long time. And as pricing has come down, the hosting company may not tell you about it.  So you might be stuck paying a higher rate then new customers who are signing up to that same plan. So again, if you have a website, look at the hosting company pricing that you’re paying. If it’s more than $4.95 per month, then give ipower a look.

Note: For obvious reasons, the websites I own which require more power, more space, more bandwidth, more features, etc. are not on the $4.95 plan. I have special servers for 3 Bears Window Cleaning Directory and The Customer Factor due to their special requirements. But for a basic static html window cleaning website, the ipower $4.95 plan is all you need.

Sincerely,

Steve

Batting One Thousand in the Window Cleaning Business!

From the window cleaning mail bag. 

Hi Steve:

Matt (the weatherman as primary job) writing from North Carolina. All is going well.  Batting 1000 so far with estimates- getting all jobs (7 for 7).  Doing them during afternoon and weekends.  Average house is on a lake and costing 250 to 350 bucks.  I’m spending 3 to 5 hours cleaning outside and screens first day and 3 to 5 hours the second day doing inside and putting screens back.  I spend a lot of time on a ladder as these are home from 3000 to 5000 square feet. 

Frankly, those darn screens can eat up to 3 hours of my time taking them down, cleaning and reinstalling!  I charge 2 bucks a screen now after initially charging 1 buck.  Most homes have had 35 or so screens.  No advertising so far- just putting the sign at the curb and most times someone walks buy and asks for an estimate, or, they find my website.

Matt

My Response:

Hi Matt the weatherman:

How are you doing this morning?  How’s the weather over yonder?  Sorry…couldn’t resist.   

Fantastic on batting a 1000.  Cool.  A couple of things to talk about along with some suggestions.

First off, you may want to look at your pricing.  It may be a bit early to do this since it’s only been 7 jobs, but my rule of thumb was if I closed 100% of the jobs I presented, my pricing was too low and it needed to be boosted up.  If you close around 85%, your pricing is perfect. If you close a low 50% or 60%, then you’re pricing is a bit high.  Just some thoughts to keep in mind. 

Again…it’s still a bit early yet though, so you may want to wait a bit.  But if you do 20 estimates and you close all 20, that’s not necessarily a good thing.  I know that sounds strange, but if everyone is saying "yes", price needs to be looked at.  Of course it could also mean that you’re a heckuva of a "closer".   You just want to make sure you’re making the profit per hour on each job.  

But the reason why I’m talking about price is that you mentioned houses are going between $250 and $350.  A $250 house should take you no more than 6 hours tops, inside, outside, screens, etc.  So 2 days on a $250 to $350 house is a bit too much time.  So I’m suspecting that maybe your pricing might need to be boosted.

I do need to say though that you will be slower now then someone who has been in the biz for awhile.  So keep this in mind as I talk about speed above.  I think maybe we should talk after you’ve done 20 or so jobs.  Because at that point, you should have most of your internal systems ironed out and humming along, and you should have picked up some real good speed.  Screens for example should take no more than 30 to 45 minutes at most.  If you have any questions on this, call me.  But definitely not the 3 hours it’s taking.  This’ll also be one of the things that you’ll get faster on over time though. 

Cool on the sign.  Yeah, a yard sign is a great form of advertising for sure.  And word of mouth will spread nicely for you too.  Hopefully soon you can step up your advertising although I guess you would need to be careful there due to possibly getting too many calls.  I suppose that could interfere with your day job or you’ll be forced to schedule customers a few weeks into the future.  This is not a bad thing necessarily, but some customers don’t want to wait 6 weeks to get their windows cleaned. So if you do get started with flyers for example, maybe you could test the waters by putting out 200 at a time.

But to your main question.  I personally was not a member of MWCA, but an organization like this certainly can’t hurt you.  Right…there is some material benefit and of course you’ll be able to use their logo on your marketing materials. But the main benefit to me would be that extra online exposure like you mentioned.  So it’ll be a worthwhile investment at only $50. 

I think a better investment would be BNI.  Not sure if you would be able to invest the time into it though.  It’s a super organization that’ll bring you plenty of business. It’s a bigger investment than the $50.  But of course the returns are much greater too.  The cost depends on the chapter in your area.  In order to make bni truly effective you need to show up every week at their breakfast, so I’m not sure if you’re able to do that in your current weatherman position.  If you can’t, then it’ll be a wasted investment.  But it’ll give you plenty of jobs and customers if you can manage it.

And stay tuned to 3 Bears Window Cleaning Directory. We have some really exciting things planned.  Did you create a premium listing or a standard listing? If you only created a standard listing, we’re removing all requirements for a premium listing so that everyone can get one.  We’ll be announcing that later.  And I’ve hired a couple of folks who are going to  work real hard on getting 3 Bears boosted in the search engines.  So this’ll be great for all window cleaners who are listed.

Take care for now.  Have a great day.

Regards,

Steve  

A follow up:

Steve:

I do have a premium listing with you in 3 Bears Window Cleaning Directory and it’s listed under 3 cities.  I love it!

Matt

My Response:

Hi Matt:

Good morning.

Sounds super.  Wow…2am for the primary job.  That’s a toughie.  Sure….after a few more jobs, things will be a bit more streamlined.  I think a lot of the time savings come from just not having any wasted steps. It’s seems like at the beginning we spend time looking for stuff or having to think about what to do next.

 But over time we know immediately when we pull up to the house what we need to do…step 1, step 2, etc.  It’s all 2nd nature after awhile which really helps our job speed. 

Sounds good on the internet discount.  I think 30 bucks an hour is super for someone who is still relatively new.  Right…casements with no screens are cake. 

Super hourly on that job.  Yeah…the mwca is a wise investment at only $50.  Right…give me a call anytime.  We haven’t spoken yet, but I’m always available by phone 7 days a week.  Window cleaners call me all the time, so definitely no probs on calling for sure.  256-546-2446.

Take care for now and thanks for the "infinite wisdom" comment.  )  Have a great day.

Regards,

Steve

Leaving Signs Behind…

Hey All:

Received an email and I thought I’d share it.

Hey Steve! How are you doing? I hope all is well. I have a quick question,,, I notice that one of our competitors sometimes leaves his yard sign in the front lawn of a clients house for days . I’ll notice the sign, and 4 days later it’s still there. Do you recommend this technique? I thought maybe he knows the people well so they let him use their lawn for advertising…I can’t imagine asking strangers to let us do that? Personally I feel that through proper marketing and great referrals we should not have to leave the sign behind. Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Beth

My Response:

Hi Beth:
 
It’s good to hear from you.
 
I’m not a big fan of the "leave yard sign in customer’s yard for days" technique because if you’re in the right target market, how many customers will allow you to leave a sign in their yard?  I know my customers wouldn’t have liked that.  They wanted clean windows and when I left, they didn’t want any reference that I was even there.  Plus homeowners associations would surely frown on that too. 

There is one technique that works fine when using signs, but it involves placing signs around the entrance/exit ways to nice subdevelopments.  They can be put up on friday night and taken down sunday night.  It’ll give you some good exposure (and get you some calls) over the weekend without upsetting your current customer base.  Anyway…I would not do what this competitor is doing.   
 
There are absolutely times when a window just can’t be reached safely.  In that case, you really have no choice but to whip out your trusty pole.  It won’t do as good of a job obviously as if you were right on top of the glass, but it’s better than nothing.  I don’t see any other options except to not do the window at all. And I don’t know if that is really an option.
 
Hope this helps.  Take care for now and have a super weekend.
 
Regards,
 
Steve

Beth’s reply:

Steve   

Beth

My Response:

Hi Beth:

Right…houses are all different for sure.  Absolutely there were jobs I didn’t want to do.  I remember early on I did this 3 story house. I had to rent a 40′ extension ladder to do it.  Whew…that was the scariest thing I ever did.  So I vowed right then and there to never do 3 story homes again.  I also mention in my book a story about this one lady who called me to do her windows, but the screens were all screwed in.  So it would have taken me forever to remove the screens just to get to the windows.  When I saw this I politely declined to do the job. 

I really think if it’s done right, it won’t sound bad to the homeowner.  One way to not get a job is to simply way overprice the job keeping your fingers crossed that they don’t say "yes".  That’s the easiest way out.  But you need to be careful here too.  Because that homeowner could mention to other people that you’re too unreasonable in your pricing.  I personally preferred to tell them that I don’t have the equipment to get to this particular window or that particular level so it may best to call another company who does.  I think that sounds professional and you ended up politely declining a job for a very good reason.  For example, when I received a call for a 3 story home, I told them I don’t have the ladders to get up that high which in fact I didn’t.  Of course I could have bought one if I was interested in doing 3 stories, but they don’t need to know that.  )

Hope this helps.  Have a super weekend. 

Regards,

Steve