Posts tagged "window washing business"

A Good Budget?

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

More Talk about Direct Mailing…

Steve,

I am in the process of having your marketing materials modified by the source that did yours , with my own contact info. Here’s where I have hit my stumbling block. I’ve never done a direct mailing, I didn’t know if you had any idea of what is the best way of selecting your target addresses to mail to? Income? Property value? I’m trying to figure out what’d be best. I was looking to mail to each potential client 6 times a year minimum so at least every other month. I know massive action is the best way to go, so I’d like to try and get out at least 50,000 postcards or more if I can afford it.

Luke

My Reply:

Hi Luke,

Good morning. Barbara is a great person to pick for doing design and edits, so she’ll treat you good and make sure you’re happy with everything she’s done.

The first thing that I would recommend that you do is go back into chapter 7 again and reread the method of mailing that I did.  Because I didn’t do any specific mailings to homeowners based on income, property value, or any other criteria.  I kept it real simple by doing "carrier route" mailings.  When you mail to a carrier route, you’re mailing to each home in the route.  So the postcard would be addressed to "Postal Patron", not to the individual homeowner.

The key is to do some initial research by driving into various subdivisions and deciding whether they are your ideal prospects. But it’s really easy to decide that though.  As soon as you enter the subdivision, you should have a pretty good idea whether it’s your target market or not.  Then using either a local direct mail house or dick tudor (the person who did all my mailings…info. in manual), you give the mail house a street number, street name, and zip.  From there they can determine what route number the home is in.  So that particular home and all the surrounding homes in the route will receive a postcard.

I had the advantage of being able to walk into dick’s business and see an actual map on the wall of all of the carrier routes in my area.  So I could see for example that "haile plantation" was in route 67.  So I would instruct Dick to mail postcards to route 67 since I knew haile plantation consisted of homes that were in my ideal target market.

Once you’ve done your initial research and you pretty much know what routes are good routes, then it’s just a matter of routinely mailing to those routes.  A couple words of advice though: First, try and mix into your mailings some flyer distributions.  In addition to all the postcard mailings I did, I also distributed flyers every single saturday to various routes.  So the homes were getting hit from all angles.  Pay a couple of kids to do this for you and they’ll be able to pump ‘em out quickly. 

And the second bit of advice would be to not make the mistake of pumping out 50,000 postcards to 50,000 different homes.  You need to take advantage of the repetition factor, so it’s important to space those postcards out and hit homes repeatedly. 

You do mention about "if I can afford it", but the thing to do is to mail to just two to 3 routes at first.  This might be maybe 1500 to 2000 postcards initially (depending on how many homes are in each route).  You’ll get calls from this mailing which will turn into jobs which will provide you the dollars to reinvest. 

Now keep in mind that the first mailing gives you the lowest response.  So those 2 to 3 routes need to be mailed to again about 3 weeks later.  See how this works? So I wouldn’t look at it as 50,000 postcards at once.  I would buy 5000 postcards at a time, mail to a few routes, reinvest some profits back into buying another 5000, and then continue on. 

As a side note, a window cleaner recently mentioned a great printing source to me.  They offer a quality postcard (14pt thickness and UV coating), but their pricing is the best I’ve seen.  It’s http://www.gotprint.com  I was about to say it’s $105 for 5000 postcards.  That’s what it was the last time I checked.  But I just checked today and they have the pricing listed at $99.55 for 5000 postcards, color front/black back.  Unbelievable pricing. There’s not really any price break by buying more cards like 10,000, so I’d simply buy 5000 postcards at a time. 

If you have any questions on this, let me know.  It may even be better with a phone call. 256-546-2446.  But check out Chapter 7 again first though.  The next step is just deciding who to use for the mailing process.  You certainly don’t want to have to buy postal permits and do all this mailing stuff yourself.  So look for a local direct mail house to work with or contact Dick.  Again, his info. is in the manual. Take care and have a great day.

Regards,

Steve

Think You Can’t? You Can! Watch…

A Mighty Cool Story…

Hi Steve,

Got to tell you a story and I’ll keep it as short as I can. I had a good friend come in the store yesterday. We both had limo companies and were doing good when things were good. Then he sold his business and got into concrete pumping. Now as there is zero construction in this area he’s hurting. Anyway he came by the store and we shot the s… for a while putting the world to rights.

He’s obviously concerned like me that at his age, 51, who would employ him. He was late on his mortgage and he was very
scared. Here’s a guy who is a great role model for any kid, extremely professional, has a great family, is a really nice guy and terrified about what is going to happen next. I had to tell him my tale and my plan to start a window cleaning business. I showed him your course, that I have in a very nice binder, and he was impressed. Like me I think he thought window
cleaning meant throwing some water on the window and squeegeeing it off. I now know it is quite a science.

Stewart

Limited Time To Work It…

Hey All,

Received an email below from a window cleaner who faces a time crunch like most window cleaners do when they first get started in the window cleaning business. I thought other window cleaners may benefit from it. Take care for now.

Regards,

Steve

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your email. I did receive all your information and have been reading through it very diligently. I have some business cards on order from PS print and hope to get those in the next few days.

I am really excited about starting my window cleaning business but right now have a bit of a dillema. The company I am working for just switched my schedule from not working weekends to working every other saturday in addition to working monday through friday. With my wife also working on saturday it only leaves me 1 free saturday to pursue my window cleaning business. I was hoping you could provide me with some strategies for this type of situation as tough as it seems.

As much as I would love to walk away from my current job and focus my 100% attention on building my window cleaning business, I do depend on the income to pay my bills at the moment. I would appreciate any ideas you might have or any words of encouragment you have to offer.

Thanks again for putting together such an awesome business package, you truly are a pioneer for this industry and I am sure many others have you to thank for changing their lives for the better through your knowledge and your willingness to help. Hope to hear from you soon and if you dont mind I would love to give you a call in the next couple of days to talk to you for a bit.

Thanks,
Christiaan Marais

My Response:

Hi Christiaan,

Good morning and it’s good to hear from you.  Um…that is a tough schedule to try and also build a window cleaning business.  It can be done, but since there are only 24 hours in a day, it may take some sacrificing on your part to see it all come together.  So at some point, you do plan on taking window cleaning full time, right?

If I understand correctly, you have 2 free saturdays each month?  Do you have any time after work at your full time job?  Or is that an all day thing?  I’m trying to figure out if you have any small chunks of time that would allow you to actively market your business (flyers/postcards/door hangers), and then that would free you up to do window cleaning jobs only (no marketing) on saturday.

If not, and you only have saturday to market and perform your window cleaning service, I would consider hiring a part time person who wants to make a few bucks on the weekend.  Your focus should always be on the marketing side of things.  Without that, you’ll never get any calls.  So I would focus your 2 free saturdays on flyer distribution.  It’s inexpensive and generates almost immediate responses/calls. 

The reason for a part time helper is because some jobs are lengthy.  If you market from let’s say 9am to 12pm on saturday, and then do a job after that, you might run out of daylight.  Plus when you really get going, after 2 or 3 saturdays of continued marketing, you may start filling up your schedule nicely.  But since you only have the two saturdays per month to do jobs, you might find yourself needing to knock out 2 jobs after your marketing time (9am to 12pm). 

So a parttime helper will really be a must almost from the beginning of your business.  Just be willing to not as make as much per hour for each job you do.  The goal during this time is to not necessarily to make a financial killing, but to build a customer base that’ll cushion your business when you walk away from your full time job.   

These are just some thoughts above.  And when you feel like you have some consistent calls coming in and the jobs are starting to stack up, at that point, it might be good to walk away from your full time job.  I really am not in a position to say when you should do it though because I don’t know your current finances and debt load, but I do know that if you market your window cleaning business actively (9am to 12pm every other saturday), you’ll eventually have a really nice customer base that’ll continue to grow due to your continued marketing and the referrals coming in from satisfied customers. 

I hope the above helps.  Thanks a bunch for your comments also.  And feel free to call anytime at 256-546-2446.  Take care for now and I’ll talk to you soon.

Regards,

Steve

An Ireland Visit…

An Email From Ireland:

Hi Steve, 

Postcards, Addresses, and Demographics

Steve,

I was wondering if you might know the answer to a question. I live in a small affluent area maybe 10,000 people living here.
Do I have to purchase a mailing list in order to direct mail out postcards? Would it be possible to drive around writing down addresses and simply compile my own list of addresses of specific homes I think would meet my criteria as far as target market goes?

Maybe a program that you type them into that can be submitted when you go to mail them? I have some friends in the real estate business maybe they have some sort of access they could pull some strings on to get addresses based on certain demographic factors like home value?? I am gonna probably try and get a batch of postcards printed up soon and shipped out
very soon. I am gonna sit down and try modifying one of the postcards that you included and using that.Talk to you soon.

Luke

My Response:

Hi Luke:

Good morning.  I would follow what I talk about in chapter 7 as far as using the "carrier route" method. The problem with driving all over the place copying down addresses is that it’s way too time consuming. It would take a long time to come up with a decent list and then have to write each address on a postcard. If you look at my postcard file that I sent you (the "pdf" version), you’ll see it says "Attn Postal Patron". So every homeowner within a carrier route will get one. This is much easier than having to address each postcard.

And the problem with mailing lists sometimes is that yes…you can target the lists by income, by home value, etc. but the homeowners may be spread out all over your town.  You want to use laser focus and target specific areas of people that are close together.  That’s what carrier route mailings do.  Each route consists of a group of homes (usually in the same subdivision).  So this works to your advantage because once you start getting jobs in an area, other folks in that area will see you, they’ll be receiving postcards from you, and you’ll be getting more exposure vs if you bounced from one area to another area to another area to another area, etc. etc.  Make sense?  So I personally focused on few areas and spread out from there. 

If you have any questions on this, let me know.  And I’d recommend going back and rereading chapter 7 also to catch up on what I’m talking about as far as carrier route mailings.  Take care for now.

Regards,

Steve

Talking to Prospects…

Hey Steve,

This is Nathan. How are you?  I had a question or two for you.  I had my door hangers and business cards printed up, and delivered them to some higher end homes in my community around a golf course.  It would have been better to have flyers but I didn’t have them yet so if the people were home I gave them a business card and explained who I was and if they weren’t home I left the door hanger.  I got lots of people that seemed interested, but unfortunately I did not take a record of which people I talked to and which ones got a door hanger.  My question is: do I go again and deliver flyers or hangers again, some of which to people I’ve already talked to or should I get postcards made and sent?  Also, can postcards just be sent to the golf course area or not?
 
Also, I was in town the other day in my truck with my lettering on it and I knew there was one other window cleaner in this community that walked down the streets doing store fronts and some houses.  Anyway, I have never met him but when I parked my truck on the street he was doing the store fronts right there.  He came up to me and wanted to meet me.  It was a little akward I must admit. 

Anyway he was polite, gave me his card and wanted mine, and was more than willing to tell me how successful he was.  In my opinion, he also hinted that he was the "Window Guy" in the area and surrounding areas, but tried to be encouraging.  I couldn’t quite tell what he was saying except that he said he is 70 (I’m only 26 so you can see it was a little akward) and going to be significantly reducing or quitting the business in a couple of years and when he does, he’s not selling it he’s just letting it go.  I obviously want those jobs but I also don’t want to wait 2 years.  I don’t know all of his customers  and I’m not going to take his, but what is my best option for now without stepping on his toes for the possible future jobs.  I need to build my business and yet it appears maintain a good relationship with the other guy. 
 
My last question is that I’ve gone to the fast food places to inquire about window cleaning.  I think I need those kinds of jobs to keep going in the winter.  Most of them say that their employees do it.  Is there a tactic in getting them to accept being put on a weekly or bi-weekly route?

Sorry so long but I love hearing your suggestions.  Thanks
Nathan 

My Response:

Hi Nathan:

How are ya?  It’s good to hear from you.

I can appreciate what you did as far as business cards, door hangers, and "if people were home", but there are a few probs with this kind of marketing attack.

1- I assume you’re saying that you knocked on doors since you mentioned "if people were home".  This is really, really time consuming to do, so I recommend window cleaners not knock on doors.  The goal is to get out as many marketing pieces as you can in the quickest amount of time.  Knocking on doors simply takes too long.

2- Using a business card as a marketing piece to tell your prospect a story about your company/service isn’t going to work.  There isn’t enough room on the card.  A nice 8 1/2 by 11 flyer is an excellent size and can tell a complete story.  Flyers are inexpensive to print up.  Much cheaper than business cards as a matter of fact if you have the slightly more expensive quality business cards printed up (recommended). 

Anyway…I would absolutely distribute again to the same area. Makes no difference if you talked to them, gave them a door hanger/business card or whatever.  But this time go in with inexpensive flyers and go in quick. Just swoop in and swoop out.  )  Don’t talk to anyone at all because it’ll slow down the process.  Just distribute as quick as you can or better yet get a couple of kids to help you out.  

Postcards can absolutely be distributed in golf course areas.  I had a number of different postcard campaigns I conducted which happened to be in golf course communities.  When you’re cleaning the windows at a home on a golf course, make sure you have a yard sign in the front for street traffic and a sign in the backyard for the golfers going down the fairways.

That sounds like a great guy you met.  This is the way I wish more window cleaners were.  For some reason, some window cleaners feel "threatened" by another window cleaner.  There’s no reason for it.  First, there’s plenty of glass to go around.  And second, you can really help each other. Maybe he needs help with a job. Or visa versa.  Or maybe he’s too busy and can’t get to a job for 3 weeks but the customer needs it done right away.  So it would be smart to maintain a relationship with this guy.     

You wouldn’t be stepping on his toes by simply marketing your business like I talk about in chapter 7.  Not at all.  In other words, I wouldn’t give much thought to his customers.  There’s not much you can do now since he’s "letting them go" in 2 years.  It’s definitely not worth waiting around for 2 years for them.  So continue to build your business.  And then in 2 years when you have your own solid customer base, you can maybe make him a deal where you pay him a small percentage for each job done.  Not a bad deal for him since he was planning on making nothing from his customers.  I would pay him this small percentage (10 to 15%) for 2 years or so.  So maintain the relationship for sure.  I would take him out to breakfast and pick his brain.  He may be able to impart some helpful tricks.  Be careful though…some window cleaners who are older and have been in the business for awhile are really set in their ways.  So they may not think out of the box too much when it comes to marketing.  As a matter of fact, they might not even be in the box because they might not be doing any marketing at all.  )   

As far as the fast food places, if they have their own people in place, there’s nothing you can do to make ‘em change their mind.  So no worries.  Just move on to other storefronts.  There’s lots of them out there.  Besides, having these fast food/franchise places as customers is not all it’s cracked up to be.  I spoke to someone yesterday who told me he knows a window cleaner in his area who had 37 Boston Market’s that he was doing.  And he lost them all.  Not sure of the reason.  Probably heavy competition and another window cleaner was willing to do it cheaper.  So fast food/franchises come and go.  Can you imagine losing 37 stores in one fell swoop? 

I hope the above helps.  Take care for now.

Regards,

Steve