Hi All,

I hope you are having a fine day today.

I  haven’t posted to the blog in a few days due to a few other tasks needing to be done. For example, over the years I’ve realized that window cleaners really need some good low cost webhosting for their websites, so I finally decided to put together a hosting package specifically for window cleaners and other service business owners. Stay tuned as more news is coming soon.

Anyway…I recently received an email from a window cleaner with some questions. I thought it would be good to post here.

Steve,

It’s been a while since we’ve actually spoken, this is Peter. I’ve been in college and doing window cleaning in the summers, I purchased your package about two years ago. Needless to say business has been great, and I’ve built up quite a customer bank over the last two summers.

This summer I am planning on bringing on help because of the workload, and am looking generally to expand a bit, so a few questions. I’m looking for general ideas about the following, there may be nothing to say, but you may have heard that “this works” or “this doesn’t” Thanks for your time. . . .

1. What is the most important thing to look for in hiring someone new?

2. Is there a preferred age for employees?

3. What is the best way to train someone new? (speaking of which, I want to have them read through your book before they start, something to do to get excited untill summer officially hits)

4. Provide a car /use their own

5. concentrate on current area again with mailers/flyers etc. or expand?

My Response:

Hi Peter,

How are you?  Long time, no talk.  )

It’s good to hear that your business is doing great.  Very cool.

–The most important thing to look for in an employee in my mind is appearance.  If you’re working the residential market, your customers really need to feel comfortable with who is in their home. So whenever I hired someone, I always looked at their appearance first.

–There is no preferred age for a quality employee.  I had men and women of all ages work for me.  You’ll run into a dud young person just like there will be the occasional dud older person.  )  I did find that college students made good employees for the most part because they liked the flexibility of the work and I didn’t need to commit to using them for 40 hours per week.  So it was nice for both them and me.  Older folks are nice though too.  They’re definitely more stable, but they also might have more demands (need more money and work hours) since they usually have more responsibilities to fullfil.

–I always put a new person through a 90 day probationary period.  They worked side by side with me or a crew leader.  Don’t let any new person run loose or go to jobs by themself until they’ve at least gone through this 90 day period.  Sure you can have ‘em read my manual (only chapter 5 because if they read more than this, they might get ideas to start their own window cleaning business) for window cleaning techniques.  But I personally would just train ‘em for a couple of hours.  Hands on training one on one.  Cleaning windows is easy, so it shouldn’t be that hard to train someone one on one.

–I wouldn’t provide them a vehicle.  Let them use their own from job to job.  But I would cover some of their expenses depending on the work they did for me.  If they did a real quality job or did a job in a speedy fashion, I paid them extra.  You can call it a bonus, a car allowance, etc. etc., but whatever it’s called, it was over and above their hourly pay.

–I’m not sure if I can answer your last question w/o knowing how hard you’ve marketed to the current area already.  Have you spent some good quality time marketing to your current area?  I mean really, really hit the area up multiple times?  If so, then definitely expand outward for sure.  Tried and true Flyers work very well.  I got an email from a window cleaner recently saying he went out for 3 1/2 hours with his 2 sisters and mother and generated $1700 in estimates in that time from just under 1000 flyers distributed.  So I always advocate using flyers in your business.  I did this every single saturday and it generated excellent activity.

With that said though, at some point you’ll want to integrate some postcard mailings into your marketing efforts too.  You can read more about this in my manual.

Hope the above helps.  Take care for now and keep in touch.  Have a great night.

Regards,

Steve

Steve

A quick question.  I noticed on 3 bears that there is only one other window cleaning company besides mine listed for the <area deleted>.  I googled and found that around 15-20 have listings on the internet.  The pages look pretty bad (some are okay), but my question is this:  Is it possible to make this work with that many in the <area deleted>?  I think I know the answer, I just wanted to know your thoughts…

Thanks,

Chet

My Response:

Hi Chet,

Absolutely w/o question it’s more than possible to make it work in any area with 15 to 20 (or more) competitors.  And I’ll explain why. First and foremost, if you break through the surface of these window cleaners, they’re not really apples to apples competitors.

–Many window cleaners have made commercial window cleaning their focus.  Sure, they may do a residential account every now and again, but their preference is commercial. I have no idea why because residential is way more profitable in my opinion.

–Most window cleaners will not present the estimate properly.  That’s a fact.  You’ll see this yourself when you get out in the field.  They’re not going to present an estimate package to prospects with references.  It just doesn’t happen.  They usually give the prospect a verbal estimate or scribble a price on the back of their business card. I’ve had many, many window cleaners call and tell me that they had prospects accept their window cleaning bids even though they might have been $20 or $30 HIGHER than their competitor’s pricing.  So it’s all in the presentation.

–And finally, if you get right down to it, most services businesses and window cleaners really don’t take a very proactive approach to marketing their business.  They might put out a few flyers or maybe even send out a few postcards.  But a real, full fledged, repetitive marketing campaign?  It’s generally not done.

You need to understand that most window cleaners are “technicians”,  so they run their businesses w/o any long term, systematic, marketing methods or plan of attack. This leaves huge gaps in the market where a window cleaning business owner who has a long term strategy can sneak right in and control the market.

So I wouldn’t give one thought to competition.  Not at all.  A perfect example is this: If you go to google and type in “window cleaning software” (w/o the quotes), you’ll see my site thecustomerfactor.com as number one out of over 13 million results.  There have been companies selling window cleaning software way longer than me.  I’m the baby of the group because I’ve “only” been offering my product since 2004.  )  Yet I’m #1 in the results.

I mention this only to prove a point as it relates to your business.  Out of all the so called “competitors” out there, you’ll stand out if you offer a high quality presentation backed up by a quality product followed by outstanding service/follow up.  If I worried about my competition prior to creating my window cleaning software, hundreds of window cleaners wouldn’t be benefiting from using the software daily in their window cleaning businesses. So don’t give a  second thought to how many other “window cleaners” might be in your area. They won’t affect your business overall.

Take care and have a good night.

Regards,

Steve

Hey All,

I recently was asked by a window cleaner to create an intro letter for him to use as a door opener for prospects who have not requested an estimate from him. What he’s doing is gathering up prospect names/addresses, inserting them into The Customer Factor, and then he’s going to send each of them a personalized intro letter.

Before posting the letter that I created below, I did want to say that this method is one that I did not use, but it may be a method that’s worth testing in your area. Um…maybe if there is enough interest from software owners, I’ll create a prospect import feature so that prospect names/addresses can be imported in bulk. Anyway…just another way to get the word out to your prospects. If you’re interested, here’s the letter:

Have a great day!

Steve

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. 

Hi Steve:

I’m writing to let you know that I have finally gotten round to starting the business. In fact, I did my first residential job today. It went OK, except for the fact that I underquoted quite a bit, but I’m sure I’ll get better at the process.
 
I do have one big question to ask you. I have heard you give reference several times to the effect of winter and cold weather on window cleaning businesses. You have indicated that it causes business to drop. I’m curious – how strong is the effect? Is it stronger on the residential market than on the commercial market? I’ve very curious. You see, I live in Canberra, Australia. We experience a very long and cold winter here.
 
At present, since I have only just started the business, I still have my full-time job. I am hoping that I can generate enough business so that I can convert my job to part-time and eventually even leave it. But I don’t want to make any false moves, and the effect of winter on the business could prove critical.
 
I look forward to your response.
 
For your interest, I have attached some of my marketing material. You might find my business name and adaptations interesting.
 
Lou

My Response:

Hi Lou,

Good morning and it’s good to hear from you. Congratulations on doing your first job.

Right…there will be the slowness factor that you’ll experience with your first few jobs.  That’s only natural.  So I wouldn’t focus on the fact that you may have underbid.  As a matter of fact, since you’ll pick up speed over time, that same job which you currently think you may have underbid may actually have been bid perfectly once you’re at full speed.  So again the first few jobs will be a bit slow and you’ll make less per hour window cleaning pay vs the national average for window cleaners.  But that’s ok…you’ll reach that average soon for sure.  )

The cold weather does affect the residential market more so than the commercial market.  There is no doubt about it.  Commercial customers will always need your services whether it’s raining, snowing, or whatever because they constantly have customers coming in to their stores.  Residential customers on the other hand may hold off a couple of months until the weather turns a bit nicer.  They are not in as desperate of a need. 

But there are always other services you can provide through really cold months that’ll carry you through.  And this is especially true once you build a decent sized customer base.  You’ll find that customers will turn to you for other services once they begin to trust you.  So although window cleaning may not be at the top of their "to-do" list in the winter, they’ll have other services that are.

I can understand the point about not converting your current job to part time.  Absolutely.  I think you would benefit by reading other posts on my blog about this issue and lots of other issues. I talk about the winter time (and other services to provide), working the biz part time, etc. etc.

I love the marketing materials.  They sure do look familiar.  )  Thanks for sending ‘em.  Take care for now and if you need any other assistance, please let me know.  Take care for now.

Regards,

Steve