A recent email from a fellow window cleaner:

Hi Steve,

Cheers,
Jim

My Response:

Hi Jim,

Good morning and I’m glad everything arrived safe and sound. I look forward to working with you as we build you a successful window cleaning business.

That’s great that you have the ability to put non postage items in mailboxes. Excellent. That’s actually better than what we’re able to do here in the States. We have to walk to their door which adds additional time to our marketing process.

I personally would not offer a deadline when you’re first getting started with your first batch of flyers, postcards, etc. The reason is because you want to go back into the exact same neighborhood multple times. This is where you will see the most success. One time flyer distributions/mailings simply won’t generate the highest rate of return. People need to see your message multiple times. So if you put a deadline on your first flyer/postcard, what will you put on your second? See what I mean? You’ve kind of hurt your marketing efforts into that area again because I’m not sure what you can do to top the previously offered discount/deadline unless it’s a bigger discount or an extended deadline. So for now, I’d recommend that you don’t use a discount/deadline.

With that said though, I would encourage you to test this concept out in the future. It’s definitely worth a test for sure. Each area is different. So if you have a twist that you’d like to add to your marketing message, you should always test it out and see if it works for you. But I wouldn’t recommend it right out of the starting gate. I would recommend that you simply use the materials that I’ve provided you “as is” (change the company name/phone number of course) and run with ‘em. They’ve all been proven to work over and over again.

I agree that you will most definitely get a better response generally speaking when there is a deadline to an offer. People are procrastinators by nature, so they need to be motivated to act. Deadlines will typically make someone take action. I use deadlines all the time on my websites. The problem though is that if you have picked out a few ideal areas to market your window cleaning service and you focus your efforts in those areas, I’m not sure how you can continually mention a deadline. After awhile, people won’t take it serious because they’ll know the next flyer/postcard you give them in 3 or 4 weeks will have another deadline on it. Just some thoughts to think about.

Take care for now and please keep in touch. I look forward to working with you once again. Have a great day.

Regards,

Steve

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Hi Steve,

John Blystone

My Response:

Hi John,

Good morning. Ah…the good ‘ole rain question. ) This can be a tough one to address and I don’t think there’s any right answer, but I’ll explain what I did when it rained in my area. Keep in mind that florida had lots of rain in the summer, so it was a situation that I had to contend with also.

Anyway…what I did was go to the job as planned regardless what the forecast may say unless I woke up in the morning and it was pouring out. The reason is because you can still clean windows if it’s raining. The homeowner will still have clean windows after the rain stops. The only difference is that if it’s raining, it makes it harder for you to double check your work after cleaning each window. So all you’re really able to do is wet, scrape, rewet, squeegee, towel, and move to the next.

As a side note, if I was at the job site and it really started coming down in buckets, I would move my operation inside the home. Hopefully it would stop raining by the time I was ready to do the outside again. It didn’t always work out like that though, so on occasion it would be necessary to pack up with plans to come back and finish the job the next day. What determined this was how hard it was raining. I really didn’t want to come back and finish up, so it would have to be raining really hard for me to abandon the job and come back the next day. Sometimes there wasn’t any choice though.

I’m not sure if any of the above helps, but that’s how I approached rain. So again, regardless what the forecast may call for in terms of rain, I still showed up at the job unless it was really, really raining hard in the morning before I started my day. Rain showers are no big deal. It’s the torrential downpours that’ll put a crimp in your schedule.

Sometimes of course the homeowner may not want their windows cleaned if rain is in the forecast. I would try and talk ‘em out of rescheduling if they called me in this situation by explaining to them that their windows will still be clean. I mean rain or no rain, they’ll still end up with clean windows. Sometimes this worked, sometimes it didn’t. I will say though that my work week was monday through thursday with friday set aside for estimates, so if my schedule needed to be juggled due to inclement weather, I could finish up a job on friday if I needed to.

Thanks for your offer on a testimonial. I appreciate it. A few sentences would be super. Thanks again. Take care and have a great day.

Regards,

Steve

Hi All,

The other day a window cleaner signed up for Send out Cards and as we talked about how it can benefit his window cleaning business, he asked me if I would send over some card wording that I used within the greeting cards that I sent my customers. I told him I’d send it on over to him, but I also figured I’d post it to the blog.
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Hi All,

Good morning. I’m back with you today to talk about the process of getting a website online for your window cleaning business.

We started this series of articles by first discussing domain names: how/where to buy it, how to save money (use a coupon code) when buying it, etc. That blog post is here if you haven’t read that yet.

Next we talked about editing the DNS information at your registrar (the place where you purchased your domain name from).

Today we’ll talk about the actual website itself as far as creating one. There are a number of ways to create websites all the way from free methods to paying for expensive web designers.
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Hey All,

Good morning to everyone. I hope you’re having a fine day. Today I wanted to post a couple of emails that I received yesterday from a window cleaner who is relatively new to the window cleaning business. Maybe it’ll inject an extra step in your walk as you go about building your own window cleaning business.

Email 1

Good day Steve!

I wanted to let you know how I am making out here with my new window cleaning business. Well, what can I say but that I am ecstatic!

I am starting to see how the business works and today I made more money today than I have ever made working for an employer ever. Two jobs today, $450 dollars, and I am not even 1 month into it at an official capacity (started on Jun. 1st w company name). I am getting referrals already, and happy customers all around.
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