Posts tagged "window washing business"

Marketing Your Window Cleaning Business On Craigslist

I recently received a question from someone asking if it’s a good idea to market their window cleaning business on craigslist. He went on to ask if anyone else is doing that.

My response to this is to absolutely give craigslist a try. Any kind of marketing is worth a test to see if it brings in any business. Of course it does depend on what kind of investment is needed to run the test, but since craigslist is free to list your business and service, then you should definitely post your business information there.

I do know window cleaners who advertise on craigslist and they do receive calls. Understand though that it should never be your main source of marketing/advertising. The quality of the prospects aren’t the best, and you’ll get more price shoppers vs if they were responding to a flyer or postcard, but again, you’ll get some business from it.

For those of you reading this who aren’t familiar with craigslist, go to http://www.craigslist.org. On the right will be a list of cities in your State. Choose the city where you are doing business/want to get prospects from. Then look for a “Services” section.

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Putting Your Window Cleaning Business On The Web…

Hey All,

I’ve decided to start posting content to the blog that deals specifically with how to make the most from a window cleaning related website and/or how to get a website online if you haven’t done it yet.

This came about as a result of talking with many window cleaners over the last few months and also from listening to my hosting customers at 5.88webhosting.com. There is clearly a need for information on what steps people need to take in order to get their websites online.

The first thing I’d like to mention before we do anything is that I don’t think some folks realize how many window cleaning customers they can secure by having a website for prospects/customers to find. I know window cleaners who rely only on the internet to generate phone calls from interested prospects.

Here’s an email I received the other day from a window cleaner in new york:
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Which Flyers Work The Best…

Hi All,

I hope everyone is having a super day today. Below is an email I recently received. Thought you might benefit from the question/answer. Take care for now.

Regards,

Steve

Hi Steve

Mike

My Response:

Hi Mike,

Good morning.  And it’s good to hear that you’re ready to roll.

And that’s a great way to start as far as hitting 1500 homes a week.  Make sure though that these homes are in your target market.  I’m not sure what other business you’re doing, but if the markets aren’t the same, then you could run into some issues with not getting the proper amt of response from your window cleaning marketing to those 1500 homes.

As far as flyers, have you downloaded the flyers yet from the “materials” webpage?  You can visit http://www.yourwindowcleaningbiz.com/materials.htm and download some flyers for editing.  You were previously emailed the username/password. If you get the flyers printed up in bulk like maybe 1000 at a time, it shouldn’t cost you more than 4 to 5 cents each.

Oh…I see your second email where you found the flyers already.  Cool.  )

Right, my philosophy in my business is that I didn’t want to make it about price. You need to be careful that you don’t turn your business into Read more…

From the Mailbag…and Some Motivation!

Hey All,

First I’d like to say that I hope you are enjoying your memorial day weekend. We’ll be having our traditional cookout later, so that’ll be a fun time. But before focusing on fun, I figured I’d post a quick post to the blog with an email I recently received from a window cleaner. And below the email and my response to the email, I’ll explain why I posted it. Here it is:

Steve,

Looks like you have been a busy guy! Just wanted you to know that I intended to read a few pages of How To Adopt The Business Mindset last night about midnight last night… Finished it about 1:30! It was fantastic! I really think that if every person were to read this manual when entering into any small business and followed it, there would not be the fallout with small business start ups that there is. Great work, I like seeing all the places that I am doing things right as well as being reminded of the few areas that I noticed I’m not following so closely.

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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:
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The Importance of Yard Signs…

Hey All,

I hope you are having a super day today.

I love talking to window cleaners on the phone for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons is because I get some great ideas to talk about on this blog. Recently I spoke to a window cleaner who is really seeing excellent results from his signs in his window cleaning business, so I thought this would be a great topic to talk about.

He bought 100 signs for $544 which is an excellent deal. $5.44 per sign? Whew. Each sign even comes up with a stand. The signs themselves are the kind that the politicians use. Not too fancy looking, but for $5.44 per sign, it’s a wise investment.

Anyway…what he does is he asks every customer who he does a window washing job for whether he can keep one of his signs in their yard for 5 days. He hasn’t had a customer say “no” yet. He even had one customer tell him they were having a party so they’ll need to take the sign down during the party, but they’ll put it back up the day after the party. And lo and behold…they did! Brian went cruising by the house the day after the party and there was his sign.

After 5 days he’ll go to the customer’s house and pick the sign up. But just imagine the exposure that he is receiving during this 5 day stretch. He said he’s growing his customer base nicely just from his sign efforts. He is doing no other marketing method at all currently. I really don’t recommend just relaying on signs as you’ll certainly see more results from taking a more proactive approach (flyers, postcards, etc). And brian will be the first to agree with that. But the point is that using signs in your business work!

I had a conversation with a window cleaner a couple of weeks ago who basically said that he doesn’t have any yard signs because he has a magnetic sign on his vehicle. He went on to say that since he parks his car in front of customer’s house while he’s working on the window cleaning job, that’s good enough. I respectively disagree. 

Have you ever heard of banner blindness? This refers to when a visitor to a website tunes out any banners or advertisements on a webpage. They just flat out ignore the ads and focus on the content. Banner advertisements don’t work as well as they did back in the 90′s because we’ve become so used to them that we don’t even see them anymore. Thus the term “banner blindness”.

This is what happens when someone drives down the street or walks down the sidewalk and sees your magnetic sign on your car. It’s part of the vehicle and they don’t pay a great deal of attention to it. It blends in. On the other hand, with a standalone yard sign sitting in a front yard all by itself, it’s noticeable. Way more noticeable than a vehicle magnetic sign.

Picture yourself driving down the street. You see a car in the street in front of a house which happens to have magnetic signs on it. Which signage do you think you’ll notice first? The magnetic signs as you’re driving by or a standalone yard sign by itself in someone’s yard? The yard sign is an item that doesn’t belong there, so therefore it stands out more. Make sense?

So the long and the short of it is that having some yard signs is one of those important “must have” silent advertising partners.

Contact some local sign shops and see what kind of pricing you can get. Buy a few dozen signs with the goal of using the “leave behind” strategy for some great yard sign exposure. Not every customer will say “yes” to you leaving one of your signs in their yard, but no biggie. It only takes a few signs to experience a higher call volume. Literally hundreds or perhaps thousands of potential customers could be traveling past your signs.

Another thought to keep in mind here is that let’s say the actual sign doesn’t generate the call, but they receive a flyer from you shortly after they see one of your signs. This is what exposure will do for you. Again, they might not call as a result of your sign, but because of the sign, they may be prompted to call you after receiving one of your flyers because they have been exposed to your business more than once which is ultra important. As I’ve written about before on this blog and have mentioned to folks in phone calls, the response rates increase with the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and up exposures.

So yard signs are a great way to get that exposure w/o a lot of effort on your part. Take care and have a great day.

To Your Success,

Steve

Should you be knocking on doors?

Hi Everyone,

Hope you’re having a fine day.

I received a call a little while ago from a window cleaner and I thought it would be a good subject to discuss on the blog.

This gentleman was distributing flyers (good), but he was knocking on doors (not good) to distribute them.

It’s really, really important to make sure that you “play the numbers”. Many of you have heard me talk about this a few times, so I’m sorry to sound like a broken record.  

But it’s about getting out as many flyers as you can in the shortest amt. of time. It simply takes too much time to knock on doors, wait for the person to answer, talk to them about your service, leave them a flyer, and go on to the next person.

I don’t know the exact number of prospects you can talk to in 3 to 4 hours, but does 50 actual conversations sound good? Maybe 100? I’m thinking that if each conversation lasts just 5 minutes, talking to 50 prospects takes more than 4 hours. In that same 4 hours, I can get out 1000 flyers which I can guarantee you will get more action, more phone calls, and more jobs than talking to 50 prospects.

I actually call ‘em “suspects” initially because you have no idea if they’re even a prospect yet. A prospect is someone who has at least expressed some interest. Someone who has requested an estimate.

So keeping everything extremely conservative, a 1% return on 1000 flyers distributed to 1000 suspects gives you 10 phone calls from actual prospects. These 10 calls should turn into 7 or 8 jobs when presented correctly. Read chapter 8 in my manual for more information on this.

Now if we apply the 1% return to 50 suspects who we talk to, what does that give us? A half a call. 

Some window cleaners may argue that if you’re actually talking to them in person, then you’ll see a higher interest level and get a higher return. Maybe. But I’ll still take 1000 flyer delivery suspects over 50 talked to suspects any day of the week. So please understand that it is truly about the numbers. Nothing else matters. And anything that slows you down (talking to people) in achieving those numbers should be avoided at all costs.

To clarify something…as I wrote about in a recent blog post, an excellent way to close jobs is to do a face to face presentation. But I’m referring to a presentation to someone who has expressed an interest in your service. I’m not talking about doing a presentation to someone who you don’t know if they have any interest or not. You have to let the flyer do the work of determining for you who has any interest or not. If they don’t have any interest, no probs. They’ll throw it in the trash and you’ve saved yourself some time. Maybe when they receive a 2nd or 3rd flyer from you, they’ll start to take more notice about your service. They may or may not. But again, who cares?

Some window cleaners get too hung up on the people who don’t call instead of the people who do call. Don’t even give a second thought to folks who don’t call. It just doesn’t matter. Just make sure to distribute plenty of “numbers” consistently and as fast as you can, and you’ll have your hands full with people who DO call.

I hope this helps some of you who may have thought about doing some door knocking or for those of you who are currently knocking on doors. It’s a huge time waster.

Sure…you may make a friend or two along the way, but isn’t the goal to get as many phone calls and jobs as you can? You’ll be able to turn your customers into friends.

One final note to make on this is that my definition of solicitation is someone who knocks on my door. In the old days, I sold encyclopedias door to door, gourmet meat door to door, light bulbs on the phone, and lots of other items direct to the consumer via the direct selling method of door knocking. But there are plenty of “No Solicitation” signs nowadays that warn against solicitors.

Flyer distribution fast and easy under a door mat with half sticking out and moving on to the next w/o talking to anyone isn’t my idea of solicitation. You’re not bothering anyone. You’re not intruding on anyone’s day. You are simply using a “leave behind” to let folks know about your service. If they have an interest, they can then call you. If not, as mentioned above, no probs.

For those of you who have not heard me say this or write about this, my own method was to go out each saturday morning at 9am. I took 2 to 3 teenagers (usually 3) to my preferred subdivision, distributed 1000 flyers between them, and pointed them in the right direction with instructions for them to be quick, don’t talk, put the flyer under the welcome mat with a half of the flyer sticking out, and move on to the next home.

No more than 4 hours later, the vast majority of them (if not all of them) were distributed.

See how this works? It’s not rocket science. Serious numbers can be put out quickly for a minimal investment ($50 for flyers and no more than $75 total for all 3 teenagers).

So there you have it. JUST DO THE NUMBERS! Sorry to shout, but it’s that important.

Take care for now and have a super day today.

To Your Success,

Steve

Close the deal by phone…or not.

Hey All,

This morning I wanted to talk about what to do when a prospect calls you looking for an estimate. Should you visit them in person or should you try and close the person on the phone? This topic was brought up in a phone conversation I had yesterday with a window cleaner, so I thought maybe it could be expanded here on the blog.

As most of you know, I always did my estimates in person. I grouped them all together every friday and just went boom, boom, boom, right down the line. This worked out great because it allowed me to stay dressed in my nice company polo shirt instead of having to change into my work clothes. So the entire day’s focus was on estimating. The night before I would personalize and print my estimate packages and the next day off I went.

But…is this the only way to get it done? Of course not. Lots of different ways to accomplish the same end result (more jobs) that we all want. I know many window cleaners who prefer using the phone to close jobs vs. visiting the prospect in person. They save gas, they save time, etc. etc. I understand all the arguments for the phone method vs the “in-person” method.

Keep in mind though that one size doesn’t fit all. The window cleaners who are successful using the phone for estimating are generally ones who have been in the business for awhile and have a nice, healthy customer base. They have the confidence and the experience to be able to confidently close the deal right on the phone.

But there are different stages to any business. What about the new window cleaner just entering the window cleaning business?  When you’re in this “new” stage, I just don’t think the phone will give you the results you want. There’s no denying that a face to face presentation backed up by a high quality estimate package that you give the prospect will close more jobs for you than trying to close the jobs over the phone. It has to! You’re just a voice on the phone when they call you. They’re not committed to you in any way, shape, or form (unless of course the prospect is a referral), so it’s too easy for them to hangup and call the next window cleaner, especially if it’s a yellow page caller.

In person however, there is a commitment made. The prospect is listening to your explanation of the service that you’ll perform. Eye contact has been established. So whether a prospect realizes it or not, they have made a commitment to you. The most natural thing in the world after your presentation is for them to say “yes”.

Obviously not everyone says “yes” as we all know, but the percentage of jobs you close WILL be more when presenting in person vs using the phone. With that said though, do your own testing if you have given some thought to phone estimating.

I do think for the first few months, a new window cleaner should present estimates in person simply because he or she needs as many jobs and customers that they can get in order to build a nice customer base, but once you’re established, you might want to test attempting to close jobs on the phone. I do agree that it certainly saves you time. And yes, it certainly will save you gas. But after this savings is calculated, if you’re ending up with less jobs which is negating the savings, then go back to one-on-one in-person estimating. Or continue to test but maybe change up your phone script.

As mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, there are many ways to accomplish the same thing. And through all this, we obviously want the most jobs that we can get, whether it be by phone or in-person. So do what works the best for you. Some folks are simply smoother on the phone. Maybe their confidence level is higher since they don’t have to look the prospect in the eye. Different strokes for different folks.

I actually enjoyed going out in person though. Since all my prospects were all grouped together on fridays, it made for a nice relaxing day of presenting and securing jobs. Easy as pie. And at the end of the day, whoa mama! When you do 10 to 15 estimates in one day with an average price of $250 per estimate and close 80 to 85% of them, it sure was a sweet way to head into the weekend. 

Take care for now and have a great day.

Regards,

Steve