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. 

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

Good day Steve,

I am building a budget for the business. I would value your opinion and experience. In the beginning as a one man band, I am estimating $100 per month for supplies and $500 per month for advertising. I expect to follow your strategy of hitting an area on Saturdays or nights to minimize mailing costs and blanketing everything with a piece of glass. How’s that for a gung ho attitude. Both of these amounts assume that I have your reccomended advanced supply list from ABC, incuding the setups in 1/4" increments. I also am assuming a well stocked supply of postcards, business cards and flyers that would already be on hand.

Doug

My Reply:

Hi Doug,

Good morning and it’s good to hear from you.

Actually I think $100 a month for supplies is too much.  I mean after your initial purchase, there really is no supplies that are needed on an ongoing basis. Towels get rewashed/dried, the glisten lasts a long, long time, etc.  The only supplies you’ll need is probably new blades for your scraper in about 4 to 5 months.  And if you hire someone else, then you’ll have to buy ‘em another bucket on a belt, another scraper, etc.  But that’s really about it.  So again, there’s no ongoing supply expense.

$500 a month advertising is perfect.  But don’t limit this to just yellow page advertising or community newsletter advertising.  Take a proactive approach and spend the bulk of this $500 on hiring a couple of guys/gals to distribute flyers for you regularly.  Purchasing flyers is inexpensive as you know, so you’ll be able to literally get out thousands of flyers for a good amount of money.  This’ll generate immediate calls since you’re taking your message directly to the homeowner. 

I love the gung ho attitude.  )  That’s the way to do it.  During your first active 90 days in the business, really hit it hard.  It’ll provide you a real healthy customer base that you’ll benefit from throughout your entire business.

I’m not sure what your financial position is now, but keep in mind that the ABC Basic package is more than enough to get anyone started.  I’d rather see someone put their money into flyers and go with the ABC Basic package, and then reinvest into more squeegees (for additional sizes) and towels with the profits made from doing jobs generated from the flyer distributions.  But if you have the finances now for the ABC Advanced package, great.  It has everything you need.   

And having yourself 1000 business cards on hand would be great.  We can talk more about postcards later when you’re ready to apply ‘em.  But I’d go back through chapter 7 to read about how I distributed postcards.  Postcards work great, but for the best bang for your buck, it’s important to hit prospects over the head multiple times with postcards just like with flyers.  Postcards though are a tad more expensive, so it might be a bit tough to do both postcards and flyers and meet that $500 monthly goal. I personally would crank it up with flyers and then branch out into postcards after a few months once the profits are coming in regularly.  Just a thought.  But initially the goal is to go after as many numbers as possible for the lowest amount of money.  And flyers allow you to do that. 

I hope this helps. Have a great day today and I’ll talk to you soon.

Regards,

Steve

Doug’s Reply:

Steve 

I have been reading your success tips. You are a huge help for a new  small business starter. You get me thinking and focus me on the goal and help me avoid getting wrapped up in the process. The process is a  means to an end and I see it sometimes as quick sand. You need to get  through it but if you spend all your resources on tweeking the process  you will sink. You help me    with your stategies and tips. I read and  reread them.

I will keep you posted on my progress. I will give it  everything I got…..period. No shortcuts or excuses. When I get going  it’s like playing poker on tv  i am all in.  I am working ok my start  date which is coming slower than I hoped but It is tied to a family  move. Excuse my spelling and grammar. I am typing on a small handheld.  Thanks for listening. I believe you understand.

Doug

My Reply:

Hi Doug,

Good morning.  And I’m glad you like the tips.  Right…the process can sometimes drag people down if they let it.  Sure…some time initially needs to be spent on the process, but I’ve seen people spend way too much time on the "process" and "getting ready".  It’s kind of like "ready, aim", "ready, aim", "ready, aim", but there’s no "fire" in there.  So they end up on this hamster wheel going round and round.  This could be for a number of reasons with "fear" being probably the biggest.  I think that’s the number 1 reason why people will hold back and not go petal to the metal and gung ho in their business. 

Other folks just want to make sure the time is right.  Well…there is no perfect time.  No such thing.  Still other folks want to become a master window cleaner before they do their first house for a customer.  To these individuals I say that it’s necessary to allow for some learning on the job.  Because as you do house after house after house for your customers, there will be adjustments that you’ll make along the way.  So "Just Do It" as the nike commercial says. 

Anyway….if you do the initial work and go through the process (getting your supplies in order, practicing on a few homes, etc.), you’re ready go.  Just hit it at that point and understand that you’ll be fine tuning your own technique that suits you and your business.  You’ll make a few mistakes, but we all did.  This is all part of the learning on the job process we all have to go through.  Learn from ‘em and move on.  Just keep on moving.  I can’t stress that enough. 

Don’t be one of these window cleaners who stays home waiting for the phone to ring from a yellow page advertisement.  Always be proactive in your approach.  If you do, and you do it consistently, you’ll create a snowball that couldn’t stop if you wanted it to.  And there is no better feeling my friend than looking at your schedule seeing that your next few weeks on your schedule are filled with jobs.  That’s one mighty fine position to be in.  )

Take care for now and please keep me posted.  Have a great day.

Regards,

Steve