Developing good clients

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Become your market's dominant house cleaning service!

In this part of the curriculum we share half a century of experience is marketing experience, including 20 years in the residential cleaning industry.
If you want to build a $1 million cleaning business, you're going to need between 300 to 400 regular clients. This program will show you step by step how to accomplish building a substantial and profitable client base.

We all know that just because someone builds a better mouse trap, people won't buy it if they don't know about it. Effective and efficient marketing and advertising is key to your success in this -- and any other business for that matter.

People often ask me, what advertising media works, what doesn't? The fact is, it all works and that's not the question that should be asked. The question should be, what is the most effective and efficient media for me and my business right now? For example, the electronic media -- radio and television -- are powerful advertising media.

Over the years I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on radio and TV advertising and generated millions of dollars in sales. But even if you could afford this media, I can tell you that in most markets it would not be an efficient way to advertise your service. In fact, while we look at the various options open to you for advertising your cleaning business in session 5 of this part of the course, we don't even address radio or television as an option. In fact, one of the least costly advertising methods has proven to be the best for businesses in this industry. Don't waste buckets of money trying to figure it out on your own when we've already done that for you.

But advertising is only part of the marketing mix. There are four primary elements in marketing. Promotion (advertising) is one of them. Another one is Pricing, an area that is the Achilles Heel of most house cleaning services. We'll address all of the elements necessary for your overall marketing efforts to help you become your market's premier residential house cleaning service.

Scroll down and click on any or all of the 10 PowerPoint sessions for a thorough overview of the topics discussed in this part of the House Cleaning Biz 101 course.

CD 4: THE 4Ps OF CLIENT DEVELOPMENT

Click on any title to preview the content of that particular session:

Session 1: THE 4Ps OF MARKETING (Run Time: 13 Minutes)
Session 2: PRICING FOR PROFIT (Run Time: 27 Minutes)
Session 3: ESTABLISHING THE PRICE (Run Time: 30 Minutes)
Session 4: SCHEDULING (Run Time: 23 Minutes)
Session 5: YOUR ADVERTISING OPTIONS (Run Time: 54 Minutes)
Session 6: A WORD ABOUT PUBLIC RELATIONS (Run Time: 9 Minutes)
Session 7: TELEPHONE TECHNIQUE (Run Time: 16 Minutes)
Session 8: IN-HOME PRESENTATION (Run Time: 11 Minutes)
Session 9: NURTURING YOUR CLIENTS (Run Time: 26 Minutes)
Session 10: YOUR MARKETING PLAN (Run Time: 15 Minutes)

THE 4Ps OF MARKETING
To begin this discussion, we discuss the 4Ps of Marketing

PRODUCT
PRICE
POSITIONING
AND PROMOTION

In this section you will learn:

What the Product you’re offering REALLY IS: The answer may surprise you
That consumers don’t really buy “price”; they buy “value”
How you “position” your company in the market place can determine the price you can charge for your service
Why the lack of promotion by most of your competitors opens up an avenue of opportunity for you
What activities fall under the “promotion” category

PRICING FOR PROFIT: THE POM=CP FORMULA
The cleaning price seems to be the Achilles Heel in the profitability of many, if not most, house cleaners. There seems to be no formula used at arriving at cleaning prices. If anything, house cleaners either shop the competition and then set prices to “underbid” their competitors, or establish arbitrary prices based on what the market will bear. Little thought goes into what it costs to provide the service they’re selling.

You ARE in business for yourself and you may choose any method you wish to determine what you charge for your service. However, we’re going to share what we feel is a very viable way of pricing for profit. We call it the POM=CP Formula

In this section you will learn:

What elements go into the “P” part of the equation
What elements go into the “O” part of the equation
How the “M” part of the equation can virtually guarantee a predetermined profit on every cleaning job you do, provided the “P” and “O” portions are properly determined
Detailed examples of how the POM=CP formula works
Another look at the “Team Share” compensation method and why it helps make this formula work so well

PLUS an Internet hyperlink to the following Web site:

United States Directory of Workers’ Compensation resources for all 50 states

ESTABLISHING THE PRICE
You now have a formula for pricing the job that allows for adequate compensation of your employees, factors in overhead expenses and provides for a predetermined level of profit for you and you business. What we’re going to be discussing in this session are all the elements that need to be considered in order to determine how much work is involved and the amount of time it will take to perform the work.

In this section you will learn:

Two homes could be identical in size, layout and design but one could require far more time and effort to clean than the other
There’s a big difference between “old” dirt and “new” dirt accumulations, and how to “look for” dirt when creating your estimate
The difference between pricing a first-time or onetime cleaning and routine weekly, biweekly or monthly cleanings that follow
The danger in under pricing or “low balling” your first-time cleaning price
How to justify a higher first time or one time cleaning price to your prospective client
The first steps in pricing the work
Using your Cleaning Worksheet to come up with both the first-time and repetitive cleaning prices for your clients
Factors that tend to increase the price of your regular, routine cleanings
Factors that tend to make cleaning a home easier
What to do if you price the job incorrectly
Beyond the “numbers”

PLUS the following printable PDF document:

Cleaning Worksheet

SCHEDULING
Inefficient scheduling of client cleanings will have a major negative impact on your overall efficiency. It makes absolutely no sense to fine tune the cleaning skills of your employees and then turn around and lose it all through inefficient scheduling of your clients.

In this section you will learn:

An illustrated look at how inexpensive, off-the-shelf software ($40) can help you schedule more efficiently and prepare in advance for your cleaning consultation appointment
How to establish the most efficient routing
Why the order in which you clean for a group of clients on any given day is so critical to your bottom line and to employee morale
Why you need to clean on days and times based on your cleaning schedule
It’s important to know your teams’ schedule BEFORE visiting a prospective client
Why you may need to schedule a client’s first-time cleaning on a day other than that which will become her regular cleaning day
Options for fitting in first-time or onetime cleanings into a busy team’s schedule
How to use a Map Grid in planning your advertising activities

PLUS the following Internet hyperlinks for:

Sites offering software programs designed to help you schedule and manage your business

YOUR ADVERTISING OPTIONS
A solid investment in consistent, relatively intense advertising can get your business to a weekly sales volume and client base that would otherwise take many years to achieve through lesser efforts. Actually, attracting new housecleaning clients is the easier part of the equation (it is much more difficult to attract and keep good employees). It is basically a numbers game — the more advertising you do, the more clients you're going to attract — but it requires you to commit the necessary financial resources to make that happen. You are in a marketing-driven business.

In this section you will learn:

What you can anticipate investing on advertising to obtain a client
Factors affecting your “Client Acquisition Cost” (CAC)
Door hangers: what they are, how effective they can be; and your options for using this method of advertising
Factors that can influence the effectiveness of a door hanger campaign
Direct mail: your options for using direct mail advertising, and how the direct mail compares with door hangers in terms of cost and results
Information on mailing list companies, list costs and demographic features you can choose to obtain when selecting a list
Web site marketing
Information on “co-op” or “marriage" mailings where literature is distributed to homes in a “packet” with other advertising literature
Factors affecting direct mail response rates
Yellow Page advertising; what to consider about this media
Factors affecting Yellow Page response rates
Newspaper Inserts: what are they and are they worth considering?
Classified newspaper advertising
Newspaper Display advertising: what you MUST KNOW
Factors influencing newspaper advertising response rates
Cross promotion opportunities with other non-competing merchants in your market
Referrals: how valuable they are and the best way to get them

PLUS the following printable PDF documents:

NEVER CLEAN YOUR HOME AGAIN brochure
Sample display newspaper ad
Sample newspaper insert or flyer
Sample Yellow Page ad
Sample neighborhood flyer
Sample Referral Post Card
Sample referral solicitation letter

PLUS the following Internet links to:

USPS Direct Mail 101 site
Mailing list site (get free demographic information and household population numbers for your area) as well as cost figures for conducting a direct mail campaign
Links to Web site developer directory
Poly bag ideal for delivering door hangers

A WORD ABOUT PUBLIC RELATIONS
Have you ever wondered how local businesses and business people manage to get articles written about them in the newspaper? Do they pay for this publicity? Do readers pay attention to what’s written? You bet people pay attention, and it’s better than free advertising. Depending on the slant of the story and the way it’s written, it often comes across like a third party endorsement. So, how can you get in on some of this free publicity, too?

In this section you will learn:

How to look for PR opportunities
What business reporters and editors look for in Press Releases
How to generate FREE publicity by doing good deeds for others

PLUS the following Internet links to:

Software designed to produce professional Press Releases
A resource site on How to Write a Professional Press Release

TELEPHONE TECHNIQUE
Generally, the telephone is the first personal contact you will have with your prospective client. The impression made at this juncture can impact your overall marketing effort positively or negatively, depending on your customer’s perception of the experience.

In this section you will learn:

That important “First Impression”
What to do when you’re not there to answer the phone yourself
Professional telephone procedures
Sample Telephone Presentation
Typical questions you’ll be asked, and how to handle them

PLUS the following printable PDF document:

Telephone Log Form

IN-HOME PRESENTATION
By the time you arrive at your prospective client’s home, she has pretty much made up her mind that (a) she is going to hire a residential cleaning service and that (b) your service is in the running for consideration.

To this point, you are still a “voice on the other end of the phone”, representing a company the client may or may not know very much about. Obviously, your customer’s inclinations are positive or you wouldn’t be invited to make a quotation or presentation in her home. All you have to do now is reinforce the fact that your company will be her best choice.

In this section you will learn:

How to look and act like a professional
The Presentation Procedure
Issues to cover during your visit
The significance of tracking your conversion ratio of leads to appointments and appointments to sales
Typical questions you’ll be asked, and how to handle them

PLUS the following printable PDF documents:

Client Profile Form
Cleaning Checklist
OUR FIRST CLEANING VISIT brochure
Quality Control Checklist
Client Invoice
HAPPILY EVER AFTER client relationship ground rules booklet

NURTURING YOUR CLIENTS
It’s amazing how some companies will focus all their time and resources on finding and selling new customers, and then spend little or no time and effort on keeping them.

In any business – but in this business in particular, it’s more important to focus on developing clients than on selling customers. What’s the difference? A customer is somebody you sell ONE time; a client is somebody you sell time and time again.
For all the time and effort it takes to find a new client, it’s critically important to nurture that client once you’ve got them. And it’s a whole lot cheaper, not to mention easier, to keep an existing client than it is to go out and replace her with a new one.

In this section you will learn:

Guaranteeing satisfaction and reliability
“Little things” that can go a long way to maintaining client loyalty
Making and keeping commitments
Access issues: clients’ keys
Keeping accurate records can keep clients happy
Negotiating price
Dealing with client complaints
Dealing with the "client from hell"
How to deal with clients who want a specific day or time
How to handle clients who expect a certain amount of time spent cleaning in their home
Clients who want to “trade cleaning jobs”
How to maintain a client’s cleaning schedule even while they’re on vacation
Using due diligence with respect to client’s property

PLUS the following printable PDF documents:

Client Satisfaction Survey Card
Series of sample letters to clients about various issues

YOUR MARKETING PLAN
This session will give you guidelines for using all the information in this course to assist you in developing a workable, manageable and effective marketing and advertising strategy to get your business off and running and to keep it growing as you progress.

In this section you will learn:

The importance of establishing objectives
What you need to do before establishing your game plan
Understanding the objective of your advertising – HINT: it is not to make sales
Advertising response expectations
Rating your advertising’s effectiveness
Lead cost versus Sales Cost
Consider “investment advertising” to launch your business

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Boynton Beach, Florida 33426
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