Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: Ian101 on March 26, 2014, 06:37:15 pm
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Messer 1 ... £15 bimonthly ... cleaning away and out they come to pay me "I want you to come every 3 months from now on" ... sorry don't do 3 monthly Mrs Jones .... "whys that then" cos its not worth it to me ..... "but were trying to save money and cut costs" she went on to say ... sorry not worth my while ... "ok I will have to cancel you then" she says as they step into their new £40000 land rover discovery and drive away ............... yup could have offered it at a higher price but really cant be bothered with 4 cleans a year on any house under £90.
Messer 2 .... she cancelled me 9 months ago as she had sold house and was moving with a promise to call me with new address when she was in new place ... every time I drove past her house to clean others her car was still on drive .... phone message this morning "Hi ... this is Mrs Rightmove here Im moving tomorrow can you come and clean my windows today please before 3 this afternoon (time on message was 11.30 ish) ::)roll ::)roll ::)roll
Messer 3 .... working on an estate yesterday which is well sown up by me and a few other lads ,,, very tricky if not impossible to get new work on so quite surprised when a couple stop me and say can you give us a quote for 72 Letsbe Avenue .... they were on way out to work so said I would pop quote thru letter box ... large 4 / 5 bed house windows were FILTHY MINGING and not cleaned for about 2 years ... quoted £20 a month with £40 on first clean ... phone call that night yup fantastic when can you do them ... booked in for tomorrow .... text 10 mins ago "wife says your too expensive and unless I can drop price they will be forced to shop around ::)roll ::)roll ::)roll .... my reply was " thanks for the opportunity .. Ive been beaten on price a few times but never on quality or reliability ... best wishes Ian"
Some times glad when day is over .... thank fook theres plenty of decent customers out there
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you must have about 4 customers left ::)roll
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you must have about 4 customers left ::)roll
too many now im on my own .............. some price rises and culling I thinks
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More and more of our middle class customers are being pushed into the 40% tax bracket by Fiscal Drag. Osborne says it will make the middle classes work harder, and improved productivity will benefit the country.
He didn't mention that the hard pressed middle classes, already suffering from the withdrawl of child allowances and increasing living costs, will try to balance the family budget by cutting or reducing non essential costs.
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Ian
I like this reply - " thanks for the opportunity .. Ive been beaten on price a few times but never on quality or reliability ... best wishes Ian"
:)
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Great reply...
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Took the best wishes from Dazmond
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Quality reply Ian (pinching that to add to my list)
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On your own??
What happened to dan the man??
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Took the best wishes from Dazmond
Should have added 10 smileys too!! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Why you back on your own now Ian? Did the helper / canvasser not work out?
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In Every customer is a potential messer waiting to come out!
;D
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In Every customer is a potential messer waiting to come out!
;D
. +1.
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Ian
I like this reply - " thanks for the opportunity .. Ive been beaten on price a few times but never on quality or reliability ... best wishes Ian"
:)
+1
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Quality reply Ian (pinching that to add to my list)
X2 Stored and logged
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sounds like some of them were pro messers .
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On your own??
What happened to dan the man??
He left last week :(
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Took the best wishes from Dazmond
Should have added 10 smileys too!! ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Why you back on your own now Ian? Did the helper / canvasser not work out?
He left to go work for his dad who works for my mate who runs a 3 van operation ... in fairness he is earning more now than I could pay at this stage and with a young baby to pay for wasn't fair for me to stop him (not that I could of course)
Which now leaves me with a jam packed round for just me so the odd messer is water off a ducks back.
Question is do I still want to grow massive ?
Keep it as it is and have a chocca 1 man round with no real hassles ?
Go employ someone else with all the grief that brings with advertising, interviewing, training, more training, sacking them / them jacking in and starting all over again ?
questions questions questions
:)
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sounds like some of them were pro messers .
yup ... just unusual to get 3 in same day - normally 1 every 3 months thankfully
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post up about any new worker as its an intrestin side of ur biz . my latest has no front teeth
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post up about any new worker as its an intrestin side of ur biz . my latest has no front teeth
He must have really annoyed you.
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Question is do I still want to grow massive ?
Keep it as it is and have a chocca 1 man round with no real hassles ?
Go employ someone else with all the grief that brings with advertising, interviewing, training, more training, sacking them / them jacking in and starting all over again ?
questions questions questions
:)
If the answer to the question is that you do want to grow, then franchise.
Vin
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Question is do I still want to grow massive ?
Keep it as it is and have a chocca 1 man round with no real hassles ?
Go employ someone else with all the grief that brings with advertising, interviewing, training, more training, sacking them / them jacking in and starting all over again ?
questions questions questions
:)
If the answer to the question is that you do want to grow, then franchise.
Vin
and there is always franchise ..... good point Vince :)
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post up about any new worker as its an intrestin side of ur biz . my latest has no front teeth
Thats what you get for advertising on GUMtree..
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Question is do I still want to grow massive ?
Keep it as it is and have a chocca 1 man round with no real hassles ?
Go employ someone else with all the grief that brings with advertising, interviewing, training, more training, sacking them / them jacking in and starting all over again ?
questions questions questions
:)
If the answer to the question is that you do want to grow, then franchise.
Vin
and there is always franchise ..... good point Vince :)
"Vince"?
Vin
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Question is do I still want to grow massive ?
Keep it as it is and have a chocca 1 man round with no real hassles ?
Go employ someone else with all the grief that brings with advertising, interviewing, training, more training, sacking them / them jacking in and starting all over again ?
questions questions questions
:)
If the answer to the question is that you do want to grow, then franchise.
Vin
and there is always franchise ..... good point Vince :)
"Vince"?
Vin
Ooooops sorry
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Vin are you under 5ft 7 in height??
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post up about any new worker as its an intrestin side of ur biz . my latest has no front teeth
Does Tosh work for you?
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Anyway Back to Subject....
Messer 1 ... £15 bimonthly ... cleaning away and out they come to pay me "I want you to come every 3 months from now on" ... sorry don't do 3 monthly Mrs Jones .... "whys that then" cos its not worth it to me
I had that attidude 4 years ago, but you have to move with the times and adjust to your market. My quarterly cleans are amongst the highest profit jobs i have ever worked. If i could id have 4 times the customers i have now; all on quarterly cleans.
Look im not wanting to blow my own trumpet here; I did 14 houses yesterday netted me just under £600 for the day. which is an averge price of £42 per clean. Now these wont be cleaned until June, however i do have three other quartely rounds set into the bi-monthlys and it does help boost your income considerabley. I have about 60 customers now on quarterly.
So you can make it work if you want it to. You just have to indetify a gap in the market, and if you dont fill it someone else will. Just look at go cardless, how they have filled a major gap in the market with small business needing DD facilities but wouldnt otherwise have the capital to set one up.
You can be a window cleaner, or a businessman who runs a window cleaning service. I prefer the latter.
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Anyway Back to Subject....
Messer 1 ... £15 bimonthly ... cleaning away and out they come to pay me "I want you to come every 3 months from now on" ... sorry don't do 3 monthly Mrs Jones .... "whys that then" cos its not worth it to me
I had that attidude 4 years ago, but you have to move with the times and adjust to your market. My quarterly cleans are amongst the highest profit jobs i have ever worked. If i could id have 4 times the customers i have now; all on quarterly cleans.
Look im not wanting to blow my own trumpet here; I did 14 houses yesterday netted me just under £600 for the day. which is an averge price of £42 per clean. Now these wont be cleaned until June, however i do have three other quartely rounds set into the bi-monthlys and it does help boost your income considerabley. I have about 60 customers now on quarterly.
So you can make it work if you want it to. You just have to indetify a gap in the market, and if you dont fill it someone else will. Just look at go cardless, how they have filled a major gap in the market with small business needing DD facilities but wouldnt otherwise have the capital to set one up.
You can be a window cleaner, or a businessman who runs a window cleaning service. I prefer the latter.
agree with what you say and do have tri monthly customers but these start at £90 ... this lady due to what she said was looking to pay £15 every 3 months so save herself money so didn't bother to go down route of offering it at say £25 or £20 ... maybe pre judged but took snap decision of I didnt want to keep job on as its a house all on its own and a PIA job pot plants etc :)
Yes I can see more people in the bigger houses wanting trimonthly and next website rejig will aim for some of these.
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100% You got the ticket then! 8)
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Anyway Back to Subject....
Messer 1 ... £15 bimonthly ... cleaning away and out they come to pay me "I want you to come every 3 months from now on" ... sorry don't do 3 monthly Mrs Jones .... "whys that then" cos its not worth it to me
I had that attidude 4 years ago, but you have to move with the times and adjust to your market. My quarterly cleans are amongst the highest profit jobs i have ever worked. If i could id have 4 times the customers i have now; all on quarterly cleans.
Look im not wanting to blow my own trumpet here; I did 14 houses yesterday netted me just under £600 for the day. which is an averge price of £42 per clean. Now these wont be cleaned until June, however i do have three other quartely rounds set into the bi-monthlys and it does help boost your income considerabley. I have about 60 customers now on quarterly.
So you can make it work if you want it to. You just have to indetify a gap in the market, and if you dont fill it someone else will. Just look at go cardless, how they have filled a major gap in the market with small business needing DD facilities but wouldnt otherwise have the capital to set one up.
You can be a window cleaner, or a businessman who runs a window cleaning service. I prefer the latter.
out of interest how do you get your 3 monthly customers ?
is it on your website / leaflets
do you offer when you quote a job ?
if a house was for example £20 monthly what would you offer trimonthly ?
hope you don't mind me asking :)
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yeah basicly i offer three 'options' on my quote slips, i fill out three prices and they choose what one they want.
Monthly, Bi-Monthly & Quarterly.
Funny enough Bi monthly is by far the most popular choice people go for, Monthly is a handful these days, and im actually trying to discourage monthly cleans now. Quartely just became popular as people started to ask to reduce their cleans back in 2008, epecally since the credit crunch.
Word just got around, and i had quite a few people actively call me up to specifily go on a quartely round as no one else is interested in doing it. So i have gained alot in the long run, its taken a long time though and for a while i was wondering if it was worth it.
If they dont go for it then thats fine, 90% of the time though they always choose a bi-monthly clean anyway. but the quertely isnt one to be sniffed at. and its going to become alot more popular in the next few years.
It is important though to ramp up the price from a monthly price to make it worthwhile.
So if you had a £20 monthly clean thats £240 per year
On Bi-Monthly £32 Thats £192 Per year saving them £48 per year
On quarterly £45 Thats £180 Per year saving an additional £12 per year over the bi-montly option.
So in eccesnce you dont loose out, and the customer sees a deal, everyone likes a deal dont they? But you baseline still never goes below £180 per customer for a year clean no matter what frquency.
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yeah basicly i offer three 'options' on my quote slips, i fill out three prices and they choose what one they want.
Monthly, Bi-Monthly & Quarterly.
Funny enough Bi monthly is by far the most popular choice people go for, Monthly is a handful these days, and im actually trying to discourage monthly cleans now. Quartely just became popular as people started to ask to reduce their cleans back in 2008, epecally since the credit crunch.
Word just got around, and i had quite a few people actively call me up to specifily go on a quartely round as no one else is interested in doing it. So i have gained alot in the long run, its taken a long time though and for a while i was wondering if it was worth it.
If they dont go for it then thats fine, 90% of the time though they always choose a bi-monthly clean anyway. but the quertely isnt one to be sniffed at. and its going to become alot more popular in the next few years.
It is important though to ramp up the price from a monthly price to make it worthwhile.
So if you had a £20 monthly clean thats £240 per year
On Bi-Monthly £32 Thats £192 Per year saving them £48 per year
On quarterly £45 Thats £180 Per year saving an additional £12 per year over the bi-montly option.
So in eccesnce you dont loose out, and the customer sees a deal, everyone likes a deal dont they? But you baseline still never goes below £180 per customer for a year clean no matter what frquency.
top answer Marc :)
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I don't ramp it up that much for less frequent cleans but I do ensure it's worth my while.
I found there used to be a lot of messers (i.e. same day cancellations) on monthly. So, as I was struggling to keep up, I went to 6 weekly. This reduced the messers who I later got rid of anyway. Initially I only did a 12 weekly service for larger jobs - £80+. As the economy started to squeeze a few years ago, more and more people wanted 12 weekly. So I reviewed things and decided that I would give 12 weekly to anyone but I made sure I got 30-40% extra per clean. I did go for 50% at first but that pushed a little too hard and I was losing jobs that I wanted to keep. So 6 weekly at, say £20 becomes 12 weekly at £26 - £28. I lose the odd one over it but that seems to pitch it where most people will go for it if they want to reduce frequency.
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Other than very large jobs I refuse 12 weeklies. I think if I started accepting them my mindset would be to default to that. That is what happened with 8 weekly.
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Im 4 and 8 on everything apart from my new round im building now which is all 3 and 6 weekly which im finding most want 6 but a lot still want 3 making it quicker to build than a 4 and 8 weekly round. I wouldnt entertain 12 weekly unless £50 plus jobs otherwise its not overly worth doing.
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Anyway Back to Subject....
Messer 1 ... £15 bimonthly ... cleaning away and out they come to pay me "I want you to come every 3 months from now on" ... sorry don't do 3 monthly Mrs Jones .... "whys that then" cos its not worth it to me
I had that attidude 4 years ago, but you have to move with the times and adjust to your market. My quarterly cleans are amongst the highest profit jobs i have ever worked. If i could id have 4 times the customers i have now; all on quarterly cleans.
Look im not wanting to blow my own trumpet here; I did 14 houses yesterday netted me just under £600 for the day. which is an averge price of £42 per clean. Now these wont be cleaned until June, however i do have three other quartely rounds set into the bi-monthlys and it does help boost your income considerabley. I have about 60 customers now on quarterly.
So you can make it work if you want it to. You just have to indetify a gap in the market, and if you dont fill it someone else will. Just look at go cardless, how they have filled a major gap in the market with small business needing DD facilities but wouldnt otherwise have the capital to set one up.
You can be a window cleaner, or a businessman who runs a window cleaning service. I prefer the latter.
The problem for existing customers wanting to move to 3 monthly is they want it cleaned for the same price as the monthly.
I can see it working from the outset for new customers
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Quality reply Ian (pinching that to add to my list)
Me too! Great reply :)
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Anyway Back to Subject....
Messer 1 ... £15 bimonthly ... cleaning away and out they come to pay me "I want you to come every 3 months from now on" ... sorry don't do 3 monthly Mrs Jones .... "whys that then" cos its not worth it to me
I had that attidude 4 years ago, but you have to move with the times and adjust to your market. My quarterly cleans are amongst the highest profit jobs i have ever worked. If i could id have 4 times the customers i have now; all on quarterly cleans.
Look im not wanting to blow my own trumpet here; I did 14 houses yesterday netted me just under £600 for the day. which is an averge price of £42 per clean. Now these wont be cleaned until June, however i do have three other quartely rounds set into the bi-monthlys and it does help boost your income considerabley. I have about 60 customers now on quarterly.
So you can make it work if you want it to. You just have to indetify a gap in the market, and if you dont fill it someone else will. Just look at go cardless, how they have filled a major gap in the market with small business needing DD facilities but wouldnt otherwise have the capital to set one up.
You can be a window cleaner, or a businessman who runs a window cleaning service. I prefer the latter.
The problem for existing customers wanting to move to 3 monthly is they want it cleaned for the same price as the monthly.
I can see it working from the outset for new customers
Yeah I see what you are saying there, but I haven't had this issue. Ones that have said can we go to quarterly cleans please, I say of course you can, the price needs to be adjusted, and will cost more on a per-clean basis but it will still save you money in the long run.
If they say no, then so what. their off the list. at least you tried to accommodate them. which is what I always try to do.
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yeah basicly i offer three 'options' on my quote slips, i fill out three prices and they choose what one they want.
Monthly, Bi-Monthly & Quarterly.
Funny enough Bi monthly is by far the most popular choice people go for, Monthly is a handful these days, and im actually trying to discourage monthly cleans now. Quartely just became popular as people started to ask to reduce their cleans back in 2008, epecally since the credit crunch.
Word just got around, and i had quite a few people actively call me up to specifily go on a quartely round as no one else is interested in doing it. So i have gained alot in the long run, its taken a long time though and for a while i was wondering if it was worth it.
If they dont go for it then thats fine, 90% of the time though they always choose a bi-monthly clean anyway. but the quertely isnt one to be sniffed at. and its going to become alot more popular in the next few years.
It is important though to ramp up the price from a monthly price to make it worthwhile.
So if you had a £20 monthly clean thats £240 per year
On Bi-Monthly £32 Thats £192 Per year saving them £48 per year
On quarterly £45 Thats £180 Per year saving an additional £12 per year over the bi-montly option.
So in eccesnce you dont loose out, and the customer sees a deal, everyone likes a deal dont they? But you baseline still never goes below £180 per customer for a year clean no matter what frquency.
top answer Marc :)
ahh thanks Ian, and thanks for engaging me so well, its nice to have meaningful discusions on here.
all the best.