How to Start and Grow Your Own Cleaning Business
 

Use 21st Century Technology to Improve Efficiency and Profit
By Gary Goranson

THE COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION

When the world rolled into the 20th Century just over 100 years ago, we were in the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. Electricity, the combustion engine, machinery and assembly-line manufacturing began to obsolete coal oil lanterns, horse and buggy transportation, and the availability of lower-cost products made possible through a more efficient and profitable assembly process.

As the century matured, we saw tremendous strides in the way people communicated with one another across the country and around the world. The speed at which mail traveled accelerated from weeks (and months for international correspondence) to a matter of days, thanks to advances in the aeronautical industry. Thanks to Fred Smith and his Federal Express initiative, during the last quarter of the 20th century we were able to send correspondence from New York one day and have it arrive in Tokyo the very next morning. Now we can send mail, photographs and other attachments from Los Angeles one minute and the recipient can open it the next minute in Paris.

When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in the late 19th Century you can pretty much bet that he never foresaw his invention being used to send documents by FAX, let alone the advent of the wireless phone.

INSTANT COMMUNICATIONS WITH MOBILE STAFF IS IMPORTANT

When hand held cellular phones were first introduced some 20 years ago, they were big, bulky, had limited coverage, cost up to $2,000 and could perform only 20 minutes or so of talk time between charges. Furthermore, the per-minute cost and roaming charges made use of these phones somewhat impractical for casual or frequent communication.

With the cost of today’s cell phones generally averaging $50 or less (and often free when you sign up with a wireless carrier) and the affordable rate plans being offered by today’s carriers, even kids have their own cell phones now.

In lieu of the above, it behooves you to consider equipping every team with a cell phone. When Mrs. Smith calls in to cancel an appointment at the last minute AFTER her team has left the office, how else can you reach them to tell them to skip Mrs. Smith that day? If a customer calls in and asks if you can do her house today, and you see that team two could fit the job in, wouldn’t it be worth it to be able to call team two immediately? If a team leader has a question for the office or needs to report a problem, if she has a cell phone it makes it much more efficient if she doesn’t have to drive around looking for a pay phone or calling in from a client’s home (many people object to their home phone being used by anyone working in or around their home).

One alternative to providing cell phones is to provide pagers. However, with the low cost of cellular phones and rate plans, it’s almost as inexpensive to equip your teams with cell phones, which give you the added capability of two-way conversation. Some owners provide both pages and cell phones to their employees.

If you’re concerned about personal use of company-supplied cell phones, you might consider reimbursing team leaders for use of their own. However, to minimize abuse of company cell phones you can obtain plans that don’t come with long distance privileges, track the numbers to which calls are made, and charge employees for other time used, and you can require that all phones be returned to the office along with the rest of the cleaning supplies and equipment and then picked up again the following day.

Cell phones can definitely improve the efficiency and profitability of your residential cleaning business.

EVERY BUSINESS NEEDS A COMPUTER

The world’s very first totally electronic computer, nicknamed ENIAC, was built in 1945. By today's standards for electronic computers, the ENIAC was a grotesque monster. Its thirty separate units, plus power supply and forced-air cooling, weighed over thirty tons. Its 19,000 vacuum tubes, 1,500 relays, and hundreds of thousands of resistors, capacitors, and inductors consumed almost 200 kilowatts of electrical power. Yet, it could not perform a fraction of the functions you can today using a tiny laptop computer.

You need a computer in your cleaning business today for accounting and payroll purposes, word processing, getting directions to clients’ homes, scheduling, and generally managing your customers and staff. There are scheduling programs that can manage your scheduling extremely efficiently and that will quickly recoup your investment in this kind of software. Owners who have made this investment say they could not have grown their business to the volume they have without it. It can definitely save a lot of time compared to doing the same job manually – and time is money.

Another excellent technology for which you need a computer is to run GPS tracking software, which we discuss at the end of this article.

While its almost impossible to go into any type of business today and not see computers populating almost every horizontal surface of office space, its almost as impossible to go into private residences and not see at least one computer set up somewhere in the home. People use computers for varied purposes, including keeping in touch with friends and family by email, playing computer games, online banking and bill paying, word processing and accounting functions, getting directions to destination points, and more. The one use that you should be most interested in is online research and shopping.

YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS AN INTERNET PRESENCE

As of March of 2004, there were an estimated 43 million individual Websites on the Internet. Current estimates are that this figure may now be approaching 50 million worldwide.

The estimated number of people using the Internet as of March 2004 was 300 million worldwide, with the largest concentrations in the United States, Europe, and parts of Asia. Of those, 144.4 million were users within the United States.

A survey of 3,000 adults found that online research led to $180.7 billion in offline retail sales, 70% more than the $106.5 billion in direct online consumer spending, according to an October 2004 report from the Dieringer Group’s American Interactive Consumer Survey. "The data confirm that the Internet’s role as a consumer product information utility is much larger than its role as a direct selling medium," said the group’s senior consultant Thomas E. Miller.

The survey, conducted during the 12-month period ended June 30th this year found that consumers spend at least $1.70 offline after online research for every consumer dollar spent directly online. These are the number that should bring you jumping into the technological age if you haven’t already done so.

The survey also notes that the Internet influences nearly 15% of total U.S. retail spending (excluding gasoline and food services). It adds that Internet-influenced sales grew 31% last year, while direct online sales grew 14% and total retail spending grew 5%.

What these numbers reveal is that, even though you don’t sell a physical product, you really need to have an online presence for your residential cleaning business because consumers spend more money as a result of online research leading to a purchase than they do actually buying goods online.

If you don’t have a Website for your residential cleaning business, this is something you really need to put in place ASAP. Having one created for you is relatively inexpensive and there are thousands of Website developers to choose from. The cost of having a Website developed for you can be as little as a few hundred dollars, plus the cost of obtaining your domain name and having it hosted.

Of course, having a Website on the Internet isn’t going to make your phone ring off the hook. There are tens of millions of Websites competing for visitors. You have to drive traffic to your Website. On the search engine Google alone, if you search using the term “house cleaning” you will see that there are over 8 million results for this keyword phrase alone! So, how do you get people using that search term in to find your website?

Surveys have shown that most searchers don’t go past the first 10 or 20 listings; and if you’re lower than 30, you can pretty much forget about it.

Firstly, all your literature and advertising materials need to include your Website address. This includes your flyers, brochures, newspaper ads, Yellow page ad, business cards, and stationary. Every form of advertising you do, even radio and television (if you ever use those media).

However, the best way to market on the Internet is to subscribe to pay-for-performance listings on major search engines like Google, Overture, and LookSmart. These search engines partner with others like MSN, Yahoo, Lycos, AOL, Ask Jeeves, Earthlink, CompuServe, AT&T, RoadRunner and others.

The way the pay-for-performance, actually called “PAY PER CLICK” (or PPC), works is this. You create a list of key words or keyword phrases associated with your business. You would, for example, want to include such key words as “house cleaning”, “house cleaning service”, “cleaning service”, “cleaning services”, “maids, “maid service”, “residential cleaning service” and so on.

You then bid for position for each of these keywords with the various PPC search engines you subscribe to. Minimum bids can be as little as a few cents up into several dollars, depending on the industry and the competition. In our industry, bidding for top position can run from as little as ten cents up to about $1.00.

You only pay when a surfer actually clicks on your listing and goes to your Website. If your average PPC cost is one dollar, and it likely to be lower than that, if 50 people from your market click on to your Website, that’s $50. If 50 people visit your website after SEARCHING for a cleaning service in your market, do you think it might result in some new business? I would say so and more than likely, at a very attractive client acquisition cost. I have talked to folks who do use the Internet in this manner to market their business and they say their CAC has dropped dramatically – down to as little as $12 to $15 per new client. I would say that is VERY cost-effective and efficient!

“Ahhh,” you may say, “but since the Internet is international, might I not end up paying for scores of clicks from would-be clients far out of my market area?”

That’s the best part! You can now restrict your reach within a market radius that you specify. In other words, you can limit click-throughs by city, ZIP code, county, or a specified radius from your office. You will only pay for traffic generated from people clicking through within that specified geographic area.

There is even one search engine, FINDWHAT that offers a “pay per call” option AND YOU DON’T EVEN HAVE TO OWN A WEBSITE TO UTILIZE IT! Your listing appears along with a toll free number for the prospect to call, which is routed to your business phone number. On this program you pay $2.00 but only when someone from your market actually calls you. Again, if you get only one new customer from ten phone calls you’ve generated a new client for a CAC of only $20. Very cost effective.

KNOW WHERE YOUR TEAMS ARE EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY WITH GPS TRACKING

Have you ever wondered if the time for travel, cleaning, lunch, and other reported activities is accurate? Did the team actually spend 20 minutes driving from Mrs. Jones to Mrs. Harris’ home? Did they only take 15 minutes for lunch? Did they really spend three hours at the Campbell house?

Answers to these kinds of questions can now be determined precisely and immediately using the GPS satellite navigation system that was originally developed by the US Department of Defense at a cost of $10 billion. Vehicle tracking is one of the fastest growing GPS applications. GPS equipped vehicles use receivers so that their locations can be monitored at all times.

There are two main differences in the format of GPS monitoring systems. Passive units are installed in vehicles where they collect and store the travel information about the automobile. Active units are able to combine GPS satellite technology with cellular phone signals to send information about a vehicle’s location instantly.

An issue that involves safety and accident prevention is that of your drivers speeding. GPS tracking will report the speed of the vehicle throughout the day and if it’s been tracked that the 55 MPH speed on a particular route was not on an expressway but in a residential neighborhood, you’ll know about it. Knowing her speed is being tracked throughout the day will also serve as a deterrent to the person driving the vehicle.

There are some systems that operate by tracking the employee’s cell phone rather than installing a tracking device on the vehicle itself. This may be a good choice if your people are using their own transportation rather than company-supplied vehicles. The one drawback to this system is that the employee must have the phone on in order for the system to be able to track the location of the team at all times.

If you use the Internet to search for “GPS tracking systems” you will find a variety of vendors. You may wish to check out a company called NAVTRAK at www.navtrak.net. They will send you a free demo CD with more information about their particular system. However, as we said, there is no shortage of companies and tracking systems out there.

USE 21ST CENTURY TECHNOLOGY TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

Just as the 20th Century introduced the industrial revolution, which saw more inventions and progress in 100 years than mankind had experienced since the beginning of time, so the 21st Century is giving birth to the technological and communications revolution. This century will see advances in this area far greater than anyone could have ever imagined. The industrial revolution made it possible for businesses to mass produce goods more efficiently and profitably; the communications revolution will have an even greater impact.

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