Have you tried to make your cleaning business with email and failed?
Today's podcast features Pete Boland or Oracle Building Maintenance and his question on how to effectively use email to market his commercial janitorial services.
Cleaning Services Pricing
Profits, earnings and expenses are crucial to running a cleaning business. First thing business owners must have is patience in putting the pieces together from the ground up.
You must have a marketing strategy, strong core values, experience, and all other stuff that makes up a good and reliable business, but of course every business needs customers.
But the thing is, many businesses may charge their customers a little too much, or a little too cheap, not knowing that their gonna make a profit or not.
Of course business is business, but we tend to make a lot more good out of it, such as having fun, helping out and profit!
In today’s episode, Mike is chatting up with Jose Martinez the owner of Clean For You Service www.clean4uservice.com, about Cleaning Services Pricing.
BONUS TIP: Do not do sliding scale pricing
Your business must have a default asking price for each and every customer. That way you will not end up losing a customer or not being able to have a good deal.
Both sides must be a good fit to do good business. You can also offer different levels of service such as Good, Better, or Best service so that customers can have much more options with the services that you offer avoiding the perception of charging more or charging less.
To make sure that we are on the right track, listen in on Mike’s MAJOR coaching to Jose as they tackle the Tactical Piece on Pricing and on the last part is about Profits and Covering Expenses. Check out Mike’s exceptional strategies!
Needless to say but customer satisfaction is ALWAYS a must. What’s more important is that you should be able to SOLVE their problems, not just offer them a bunch of stuff they don’t really need.
Customers should be happy and employees must be happy as well and be productive, they must feel that they are being valued. Now, that makes a lot of sense!
BONUS LOVIN: Be clear on your bids
Do your bids at the very beginning. Be clear and specific on the things that you are gonna do for them and what’s not included in your service.
Once they ask for more service, then offer them another level of service and make sure that is spelled out in your contract and its cost, make
sure everything is covered in from the start, thus, avoiding misunderstanding, or upsetting your customers.
Jose gives back to the cleaning nation with his thoughts about the cleaning business in, THE LIGHTNING ROUND!
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Getting More Cleaning Business Clients
Growing your company is a real challenge to those who are just starting or even to those who already spent almost their whole life in the business.
What most business owners’ stumble on is getting more clients.
It’s an everyday challenge to business owners trying to find their ideal customers, keeping them, and much worse, losing their customers.
Today’s podcast is with Tory Crutcher of The Crutcher Group Inc. Mike coaches Tory on how to get more cleaning business clients.
The first and most important thing to do is really understand who’s your ideal clients are.
This way you can narrow down your search to a minimum, and then set a criteria for your ideal clients and select a business type that you want to service on. In short, pick an ideal niche market.
In doing so, you’re attracting the specific prospects and give them the right messaging that is specific for their needs, passion, and pain.
Get ready to blow your mind and listen in on what Mike’s sizzling words of wisdom that he shares with Tory and the Cleaning Nation!
BONUS TIPS: Start your DREAM 100
Focusing on the more profitable niche is not a bad idea, but Mike recommends the DREAM 100, it’s a strategy of growing your company by trying to get and have great customers up to a hundred that you’re gonna focus on. Now, that’s a game plan!
This portion is brought to you by: Mike and Tory! And welcome to the LIGHTNING ROUND!
Now, it’s time for Tory to share his thoughts about good advices, mistakes, personal thoughts and give back to the cleaning nation. Here it goes:
Do not buy franchise
Hiring your family is a no, no
Clean and not a Dream
Do real cleaning and do a great job
Visit our website at www.GrowMyCleaningCompany.com and enjoy all the free stuff you can find in there about growing your company.
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Cleaning Business Cash Flow
It sucks trying to process credit card info all the time, it’s like a part time job. For commercial companies they are constantly managing all the different ways people get paid.
Today Mike interviews Mike Coy from True Merchant Advantage and goes over merchant processing for cleaning companies.
Mike and Mike agree that you have to have an agreement for payment right off the bat with your customers.
Are you one of those companies that individually negotiate payment dates? Listen in to why that is a HUGE mistake and how you can fix it and your cleaning business cash flow problems in 45 days or less.
BONUS TIP: When you sign a contract, if it’s before the 15th get a cc and charge them for the rest of the month. If it’s after the 15th charge them for what’s left in this month and the next month.
Learn the secret to solving your cash flow problems forever.
Every other major vendor charges the same time every month, (mortgage, health insurance car ins etc) Why aren’t you?
This helps with bad debt and non payments. Anyone that isn’t approved, they don’t get their cleaning that month - call them right away and give them the opportunity to pay you for 2-3 days and if they don’t, you don’t service that account.
Listen to what Mike and Mike say is the best way to stop chasing your customers for payment.
Are you eager to solve your cashflow problems but have anxiety about customer reaction and contracts? No problem, Mike and Mike cover how to set it up right with your client with easy contracts.
They cover the 2 Major things that freak people out when they think of integrating merchant processing to their billing:
It’s important that you understand how the money goes from your customer’s card to your account.
Best of all you can do one time payments and recurring payments.
BONUS TIP: You no longer need a swiping machine or modem, you can use something that attaches to your iphone or key it in online on the portal.
What about credit being a factor in getting a merchant account? Are you concerned you have to have perfect credit and a vatican blessing to get approved for a merchant account?
Don’t worry, It’s like getting a loan, as long as your credit is above 600 and you haven’t had previous merchant accounts shut down you should be able to get an account.
What about contracts??
Never fear, Mike Coy to the rescue, they have forms that their clients have to use with the basic info to cover you as a business to charge your customers.
BONUS TIP: Keep the contracts super simple
Getting a true signature helps against customers lying about what they agree to and reducing your chargeback occurrences.
You can modify your contract to include billing and charging your customers .
You might be surprised to hear how quickly you can get your money once the payment has been processed, listen in to get the inside scoop.
Ever accidentally bill someone? No problem, undoing the charge is easy as a button click. Listen to the show to get the full details.
Mike’s recommendation is at the min set up an automatic billing for your customers. It’s a convenience to them as well as you!
Want to know how do you transition all old customers into this new system? Mike Coy gives a detailed step by step story of how he switched his own company from sporadic billing to one monthly billing in less than 45 days.
Mike Coy recommends the 4 hour work week - Timothy Ferriss for some mind blowing shifts in mentality over your company.
BONUS TIP: You have to cut service to clients who don’t pay
WHen you continue to service customers who are in default, you end up throwing good money after bad because you are constantly chasing the guy that owes you 1500 and he knows you want the money but won’t stop service.
Learn how to nip that in the bud with merchant processing.
Finally Mike and Mike confront the the fear of all your clients freaking out. Hear what they have to say about the shift from paper to automatic billing.
Mike Coy has set up a very special page just for owners of cleaning companies to get more information about what it would look like to get a merchant account set up for your company. www.growmycleaningcompany.com/cashflow takes about 20 minutes and cost nothing!
So stop wasting time by reading! Go there now!
Check out the last episode- http://www.growmycleaningcompany.com/how-to-make-cleaning-cool/
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How to Make Cleaning Cool
In today’s episode Mike interview’s Joshua Lammers from Above All Window and Cleaning Services on how to make cleaning cool.
Mike starts off with the foundation of any company, culture.
Anyone that has ever worked with Mike knows his core values; Have fun, make money, be real, help out. In fact if you asked anyone that has worked with him over the last 10 years he can almost guarantee that they will be able to recite them.
BONUS TIP: Be clear about what your core values are. If they are having fun then that needs to be throughout everything in your company from owners to management to employees.
Excited but don’t know where to start? Start internally.
Make sure your culture is clear to your employees. Mike shares some of his best tricks to getting culture deeply embedded into their psyche.
It’s important that you have to act fun if you are fun. It’s an all or none commitment.
Mike shares the hidden benefits to living your core values outloud.
BONUS TIP: The goal isn’t to make everyone love you, but the people you really want to work with that will get and appreciate your unique vibe will be hard pressed to leave.
Don’t try to be everything to everybody and be true to who you are.
Mike talks technical with some of the best ways to show your core values to the world.
Learn how to use video and your culture and core values to polarize your audience.
The cool part is you get to be who you are
Hear Mike’s sad story of how he transitioned from super professional to real and fun and how it transformed his business.
Finally Joshua gives back with his genius in the Lightning Round
Check out our last episode http://www.growmycleaningcompany.com/how-to-keep-clea…-employees-happy/
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Website- www.GrowMyCleaningCompany.com
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How to Keep Employees Happy
In today’s episode Mike chats with Alex Sherman from Eco Friendly Maid Service about how to keep employees happy.
MIke starts off with tackling the fallacy that if you pay your employees more you will get a better employee.
BONUS TIP: Moving from 10-12 dollars won’t get you a better standard of employee.
Hear why Mike hates Health Insurance and what you can do to make your employees happy and healthy.
We all know with health insurance you end up hemorrhaging cash and they hate you for it because it’s always worse than they would get by themselves.
If you don’t spend money on health insurance you can put money time and effort into better ways to keep them happy
Another great idea are Books - Give them a Kindle after 60 days for free and say you will pay for any book they buy.
These ideas make your 10/hr commodity job into an irreplaceable job.
Mike then goes into Referral programs to get more of your best employees.
BONUS TIP: Your best employees hang out with your other best employees!
Definitely don’t be afraid to screen and segregate who your best employees are - find out where they hang out and advertise there for more employees.
Links
Check out the last episode http://www.growmycleaningcompany.com/competing-with-lowball-bidders/
YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChxfA97D5XdOD4WWwHYrM
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Competing with Lowball Bidders
We have all been there, trying to provide a good service at fair prices with a little bit left over to put food on the table only to be frustrated with competitors offering to “clean” for a fraction of the price.
Today’s guest Joe Scrozati of Dust Busters NJ asks Mike how he can sweep these people under the rug.
But in a world of instant gratification and walmart cheap prices, how do you compete with the lowball bidders?
First things first you have to ask yourself is it just you or are you customers angry about the service they get with the lowballers as you are?
BONUS TIP: The opportunity lies in the quality of service you can give.
The short answer to this problem is EDUCATION.
You need to educate your customers and perspectives on the benefits to THEM
If you have customers that you have good experiences with coming in after lowball bidders use them as case studies.
It’s worth it to hire a videographer to film it. Mike breaks down the step by step process to getting excellent testimonials and sound bites to use in your marketing arsenal against the lowball bidders out there.
BONUS TIP: Get your client’s pain from before using your services. Ask how it affected their lives. Ask how their lives/business/employees are better since switching to you
It’s also very likely that you have customers and prospects that just don’t care. If you do have customers that don’t care and are just trying to get the cheapest service, don’t bother wasting your time, get different clients.
BONUS TIP: Use a lead magnet.
Mike harps on the lead magnet often, but only because it works! Listen in on how to do it right.
Finally you must know your Unique Selling Proposition. If you don’t know what that is, you better listen up.
Here are some of the guidelines for your USP:
It has to be unique
Not cheap or green or anything generic
Not money back guarantee
Very specific audience meeting a very specific need
Ask your customers what they want for ideas
To tie it all up in a nice pretty bow Joe shares his smarts in the Lightning Round
Don’t stop selling
Do what you say you are going to do
Get somebody to help you with the paperwork
Check out the last episode http://www.growmycleaningcompany.com/bidding-on-cleaning-jobs/
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Bidding on Cleaning Jobs
Choosing the Right Cleaning Employees
Hiring the right staff for your cleaning company is a big challenge in the industry. After your first 10 or so hires you know generally who your star employees are and who you would die happy never seeing again.
But you can’t say “ I only want to work with a specific race, age or gender” in your hiring ads...Well, you could, but I’m sure there’s some kind of government entity that would frown upon that.
Today Mike coaches Michael Frenda on how to zero in on choosing the right cleaning employees that work with your whole team cohesively and make your life easier.
BONUS TIP: Find out where you ideal employees hang out, what they’re interested in, what they read and listen to and put your ads there!
Next up is Culture and Core values. This is a topic that Mike hits on all the time but it’s crucial to making your cleaning company run smoothly on all levels.
Listen in on how to weave your core values throughout your cleaning company and hiring process.
If you are very clear on your core values you ads should be dripping with your core values.
If your core value is honesty or integrity then make that abundantly clear in your hiring ad.
“Would you rather cut off your left arm than tell a lie? then this is the company for you
You”
Learn how you can use the copy in your ads not only to attract the employees you want but repel the ones you don’t.
Prospective employees should know exactly who they are dealing with from the words you use. This can also be translated to your sales copy but that’s another podcast for another day.
The right employees will be attracted to your core values and culture will feel like they’re home when they are working for you.
Mike shares wisdom on how to transform your hiring process into an indoctrination to attract the best cleaning employees and keep them.
It’s not about the money.
A lot of employers make the mistake of thinking if they pay more than the others they will get a better caliber of employee. Learn why that fallacy can be costing you more than $1/hr per employees.
Obviously you have to pay min wage by law and it’s not going to be 18/hr but typically it’s a 1-3$hr swing.
Hear how you can combat the hourly rate battle and weed out all those problem employees before they even step foot in your office.
Mike recommends reading Topgrading - Bradford D. Smart Ph.D. These concepts can really supercharge your hiring process.
BONUS TIP: Don’t accept people with large employment gaps.
Don’t just accept long periods of time of no work. Dig into why didn't they work. What they might be hiding could save you time and money.
You might be surprised at what you’re telling your new hires when you don’t dig deeper into their employment history.
Finally Mike breaks down a few key concepts when it comes to hiring.
Don’t let your fear of not hiring someone you need to hire a bad employee.
Learn what he means when he says 3 different places, 3 different people and how it can refine your selection process without any extra work.
Finally, when it comes to choosing the right cleaning employees keep in mind, once you do hire them you can easily turn a good employee to a bad one without ongoing support, community and daily examples
Michael then brings the heat in the Lightning Round
“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better” -Jim Rohn
Make sure you put enough effort into marketing and sales
Make the decision that you are going to work ON the business more than IN the business
More great stuff on the last episode http://www.growmycleaningcompany.com/where-to-adverti…cleaning-company/
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Are you bombarded with advertisers trying to get you to spend your hard earned advertising dollars?
Listen to todays podcast with Jose Guerra on where to advertise your cleaning company.
Learn how to maximize your website with John Ayers owner and founder of Local Slice.
Bidding for Janitorial Services
Today’s podcast is gonna blow your mind as Mike shares his genius ideas about the things you should do when bidding for your cleaning business.
Lamar Saunders asks Mike about following up and closing a bid, but instead Mike coaches Lamar about the important things to do before placing a bid for clients that might be unworthy of his precious time.
TEASER: Mike gets excited about finally sharing his thoughts about the stuffs he usually gives to private clients.. Got curious? Want to know about it? Go on and listen to Mike’s podcast episode for today!
BONUS TIP: Mike is very specific about Setting Your Ground Rules
Never go out on an appointment unless agreed upon. Get a straight commitment, demand for a specific length of uninterrupted time for the whole meeting/appointment. It should be fixed with the ground rules to avoid you getting your time wasted.
BONUS LOVIN: Do not sell yourself too much.
Customers can’t stand having too much information about you that they don’t actually need. It annoys them, and an annoyed customer means zero profit. Instead Mike suggests to change that into asking questions and then you follow up, in that way you can get good informations that favors your interests.
BONUS QUOTE: If there’s no ‘pain’, there’s no sale ever!
What Mike means by PAIN is, the NEED of the customers. All you have to do is ask them instead of feeding them with info’s which are practically useless to them. They don’t care about you, they care about what can you do for them.
BONUS MANIA: Mike sums up the 3 things you need to know before placing a bid. Here’s a brief break down for it:
Make sure you listen close and listen carefully to what mike has to say about these three things because it is crucial and Mike want’s all of you to know.
And then lastly, Mike advised Lamar to raise his prices. Lamar complains about customers often give him bad credit or stereotyping him and claims that Lamar lacks some experience because his rate is too low, might as well his services aren’t good either.
Before they end this episode, Mike invites Lamar to the lightning round as he lights some of his bright ideas to answer Mike’s questions:
Links
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Our Facebook Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/growmycleaningcompany/ could light up your gloomy cleaning world by joining to our discussions together with other cleaning company owners. Share us your thoughts, ask questions, and learn!
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Mike opens today’s conversation with the WORST time to try and keep a customer and some red flags to look out for that can mean something bad is coming. One of the things you will discover is how to take a proactive approach to keeping customers for the long term instead of trying to salvage a problem last minute.
Too many times we get busy and don’t listen when our customers are telling us there is a problem- even worse, we tend to blame the customer for being “too picky” instead of figuring out how we can use their feedback to step up our game!!
Sure we cover the tried and true- it takes six times the time money and effort to replace a customer than to keep one, but listen in and figure out HOW to make that number work in YOUR business.
You will also discover how to set your customer up with “pain of disconnect” so they are more inclined to stay with you, give you more chances and forgive you when you make a mistake!
When we do lose customers, rookies feel like that is the end of the story- veteran owners of cleaning companies know that there is a treasure trove of valuable information to be mined from customers on their way out- Mike explains how to get that information and make it profitable for your cleaning company.
KEY POINT: Your BEST prospects are your PAST CUSTOMERS!!
So few owners spend time and money on previous customers and lost bids that never were customers- but those people are so much cheaper and easier to convert into customers than total strangers.
When you lose a client, that is THE best time to start marketing to them!!
Just when you think you have had all the customer retention fun you can handle, Mike invites Joshua into the Lightening Round and he treats Cleaning Nation to some wise words…
Resource Alert: Once you know how to retain your customers, you are going to want to retain your employees- discover how HERE. For ALL the good stuff, subscribe to our YouTube channel by clicking HERE and iTunes HERE. What’s that you say? You are a Stitcher fan? We got you covered- check us out on Stitcher right HERE (we just started on Stitcher, so make sure you leave us a nice review while you are there…
For all of you that want to really dive in and ENGAGE, join our Facebook Group for owners of cleaning companies- you can talk about retaining customers, getting new customers, employee drama, and all sorts of cool stuff- request to join HERE
Last but not least, you can get your Grow My Cleaning Company fix on Twitter HERE- follow us and give us a shout out!!