Cleaning Business………Need Help

[Lawson]

Hi all,
I’m new to cleaning business. I have cleaning offices from last year but I am not getting the right response and unable to earn the expected profit. That’s why I am looking for some suggestions to boost my income. Please give me some suggestion which will help me professionally and economically. Any help will be really appreciated.
Thanks a lot for future help!!

[henry20us]

Hi, you just need to find out strategy of your competitors and see what they follow for their business OR you can also get help from Internet research. I have searched a source for you called Cleaning Business. It’s an easiest way to learn all about Cleaning Business including office and house cleaning. Try it hope this will help you.
Best of luck!

[shaddai]

Lawson-
I used to do granite & marble installations & found the same troubles as you. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, and I finally discovered that it was "income was tied to my time". The more I got done, the more I made. Sounds good until you're clearing 60 hours a week & there's no more time to make more money. You've hit the end of the road.

Unless you raise your prices of course. And then what I found is that the competition starts to look a little more attractive to customers, so the hours start to fall off. More time, but no more money at the end of the month. Now you could feasibly get around it by building incredibly solid relationships with your customers, but that takes time..and you can't work in that time, so you take a shot in the wallet by doing it.

And that's the circle service based businesses are constrained to. Until you throw employees into the mix, which just makes sure that you are working the same circle, but at a lower profit margin and on a bigger scale.

If you do decide to bring on employees, you will have to know how much workload to jump up to at first. Too much work, you'll burn them out and they'll quit, leaving you holding the bag on so much work you'll never finish it all. Can you say: really pissed off customers? Not enough of a jump, you'll be wasting their time because you'll have to let some go, and you'll screw your month end because of the lower profit margins. This is a really tricky spot to navigate...one that almost crushed my business in the height of the building boom.

Anyway, I'm not trying to discourage you from a service based business, and I don't have some course I'm pushing either. They can be very effective if managed right. Look at Stanley Steemer.

If you want some pointers, I'll give you a few that I've learned but are generic enough to work for you too:

• Get the right kind of marketing to the right people. Look at the desks you're cleaning. Is there a lot of paper? Then maybe a mailing would work better. If there's no paper but a computer there, electronic would be the idea.
• Read Triggers by Joe Sugarman..then keep it with you. Read the book from beginning to end, then keep the book with you. When you're out and about, read 1 chapter again, and then purposefully experiment with 1 tool in the next conversation you have. You'll find yourself subconsciously using all of the tools eventually. There's a link to the book in my blog if you'd like.
• Look for ways to cut expenses, and keep cutting until it messes with the quality of your final product. Evaluate the costs of rags vs paper towels. When rags are cheaper in the long term, you aren't finished, you need to find the cheapest supplier. Once that's done, see if they have cheaper rags! Look for outside stuff the customer will never see as well. If you're driving a Chevy, find a 4 cylinder Toyota instead..the fuel savings means more $ in your pocket. Shop your insurance policy, set your cleaning jobs up on a route so you can get more done in less time by driving less...etc etc..
• Take an account you like and they like you, and strike up a conversation with them. Let them know you're looking for more work in a casual fashion. Guide the conversation until you find a natural spot to straight up ask them for referals. If they give you one or a few, try the new one out by squeezing them into your schedule. Move your pricing up 10% and if they turn out to be a good fit for you, and they're satisfied with the pricing, quit your least favorite account! You're now working with people you like & making more money. Continually repeat this process :-)

Holy Smoke! I wrote a book...

Todd