Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: wcs. on November 06, 2009, 10:07:59 pm
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Ummm what does he live on in the meantime?
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Ummm what does he live on in the meantime?
Roast upon rungs & fried horse shoes! ;)
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That's 2 eggs a week, sorry, couldn't resist ::) So to get 2 custies a week over a year, what sort of houses in what sort of area does the guy need to canvass at 35 quid a shot?
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£35 house means nothing. It's the hourly rate that is everything. No point in having all high priced jobs if your hourly rate is crap due to the travelling time. You could make as much or more money from £8.00 houses in a day.
I have several £40+ jobs but they don't make me any more money by the end of the day 'cos they take longer to do than four compact £10 houses.
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On a window at that price ;D I know what you are trying to get across here, just a little optimistic. :D 4 new custies a week at a tenner is a very good result, or what would you say?
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Don’t think the real issue is work. The trick is to get ahead of the “rat race”. If you’re going to be pre-occupied with work all the time, you might forget why.
I think there’s plenty; you shouldn’t even have to worry about it for a day. If you can get 1 customer at £35 then you can get 100 customers at £35.
No rush, Give yourself a whole year to do it 8 new customers a month, by the end of the year you will probably have the 100.
So many people on here picking up a dozen new jobs a week, take it easy.
The guy is right, if you know where to look, have no inhibitions and have the gift of the gab......it definately can be done and done easily. Simple as.
The guy is right, if you know where to look, have no inhabitions
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£35 house means nothing. It's the hourly rate that is everything. No point in having all high priced jobs if your hourly rate is crap due to the travelling time. You could make as much or more money from £8.00 houses in a day.
I have several £40+ jobs but they don't make me any more money by the end of the day 'cos they take longer to do than four compact £10 houses.
you priced it wrong then ftp
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Ive just been printing flyers to distrabute next week i have done it before with the window cleaning but have had other work but, this time im going to deliver alot more.But the problem is before i delivered to 2 fairly big village estates and got 2 calls one didn't get back to me when i quoted and the other was a 1 off nightmare conservatory she even had the cheek to say when i was doing the job that no other window cleaner wanted the job in all i delivered about 200 leaflets there must be another w/c about there. But i delivered before that less than 40 and got 3 good jobs and i know theres a w/c around there, so it's just the luck of the draw i guess.
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Leaflets work, knocking is just more effective IMO.
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If I come upon houses in my neck of the woods that I can charge £35 for then I'll be sure to aproach them, but in the mean time I'll carry on canvesing the local housing estates and try and establish myself.
One day I may be in a position where I can drop a couple of my lower paying jobs to take on larger paying jobs, but just now I'll take small jobs, large jobs and any that fall inbetween.
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Go onto Google earth, type in South Lanarkshire and then see the millionaires rural landscape. Its true. Many a household here can be worked on for lots and lots of dosh.
It just takes bottle and a nice sign written van and Ewans heading post is not so far fetched.
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Yeah Ronnie, but Ewan is in the west midlands lol. I know what he is saying but, it's a little optimistic.
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Yeah Ronnie, but Ewan is in the west midlands lol. I know what he is saying but, it's a little optimistic.
no...your missing the point...it can be done,,, but it will take time..a long time! what ewan is saying is that is his long term goal! anduntill then he will do the lesser jobs
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Yeah. But no 2 a week.
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Some very good points there Ewan...also some absolutes that will not work for everyone....good to hear others views.
Cheers
Dave.
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If you think having a round of about 100 jobs averaging £35, servicing about 5-7 customers a day or 25 a week is possible, your half way there already. It’s just a matter of time ;) (that will differ slightly with different people)
If you think you it’s not possible or you can’t get your head around it, don’t waste your time trying, (until you can) ;D
There is absolutely no need for an independent window cleaner (sole trader) to have more than 200 customers on his books; it just means he’s got his pricing and how he operates his round wrong. (Fact so bother arguing) Because your to busy cleaning hundreds & hundreds of customers relentlessly. :'(
You have a choice, keep cleaning windows day in, day out etc (because you do love your customers) or do that and build “your ideal round” for you (your family, your future, your retirement, your home, and any other reasons) That’s where the real work needs to be done, not getting yet another (pointless) customer (yawn). That increases your work load, but does very little to the profit margin, absolutely the wrong reasons to even think about taking someone on. (You’re not even there yet as a sole trader) :o
IMO :D
I regard my round as fairly full with about 245 customers and some subbying on top. You're right though - I could tailor it more towards larger properties and reduce the customer numbers. As things stand, I would think 300 plus the subbying or maybe 340 - 350 without it would be very full.
However, larger properties can have their own drawbacks - mainly concerning access. I try to not get too involved in work that must be pre-arranged. I have eased off on that a bit in more recent times but having to pre-arrange work means taking an educated guess at how much work will be carried out in a day. If I overestimate it means letting someone down. If I underestimate I haven't used the day to its full potential. Therefore, I feel that the best way around this (for me) is to either do very little work like this OR to underestimate and to have some smaller filler jobs (no pre-arranging required) that can be tacked onto the end of a day.
So far, I have chosen to have very few jobs that need pre-arranging.
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£35 house means nothing. It's the hourly rate that is everything. No point in having all high priced jobs if your hourly rate is crap due to the travelling time. You could make as much or more money from £8.00 houses in a day.
I have several £40+ jobs but they don't make me any more money by the end of the day 'cos they take longer to do than four compact £10 houses.
you priced it wrong then ftp
Quite possibly I have but it still works out at around £30 an hour. I seem to remember you saying that you priced every job the same once. Even pouring scorn on those who added a rich tax on a large job. Have you changed your tune now are you stinging the wealthy?
So, unless you overprice the larger jobs you will still be cleaning the same number of windows per day as your more run of the mill work.
Have to say, I love cleaning the bigger properties out in the sticks purely for the scenery etc. - makes a very nice day. However, my most profitable work is a large block of flats that earns me the same in two hours as many earn in a day.
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Round here there are loads of £35+ houses but I learned a long time ago that I prefer doing the lower priced houses.
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If we work on the princaple of we want to earn £xxper hour should it matter the value of the indavidule property ?
What if you lose one of your £35 houses, surely there harder to replace than a 2 bedroom terrace as there are fewer of the big propertys to target. I would have thought a good mix of propertys would be the trick.
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I agree with Murdie and Vince. Also,the safety aspect of this sort of round is spreading your custy base out. If I lose a 10 quid custy, it's easy to replace. A large 35er isn't on every corner. Also, that's one of the reasons I don't do big commercial jobs. Lose 1 of those, let's say one worth 1000 quid or more, you would have a big hole to fill in your monthly biz.
Personaly, I prefer lots of small/average custies and that's how I have built my biz.Some guys want to build a huge biz and some want a comfortable regular income that covers their needs.
We aren't all the same.
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I worked out the average price of properties I clean a couple or so months back, posted a thread on here about it.
The average price was a fraction over £20.
I think you'd have to do remarkably well to have a round full of properties at nearly twice that, particularly running at a 4 weekly frequency. Im in my 13th year of trading and have over the last few years really aimed for the higher priced properties; I think it is possible to do achieve what Ewan is talking about but it would take years of focusing yourself, applying yourself, motivation and effort; Im ALWAYS on the lookout! In the mean time you'd have to settle for lower priced properties.
Saying that I doubt it would be achievable for everyone, I doubt every shiner in any given area could achieve it (there is a limit on pukker properties) and I also doubt custards willingness to have a fairly priced £35 property cleaned at a 4 weekly interval.
Isnt Roy Harding the bloke to ask?
Matt
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Replacing a £35 job is no harder than replacing a £10 job? If that's the case, is most of your work on 35 quid custies? If not, why not?
If it were that easy to get 35ers, why hasn't everyone got at least 90% of their round at 35 quid and obove?
It's all great on paper, but all this has nothing to do with reality.If, as you say, it's just as easy to replace a 35er as a 10er, then all WC's need to do is go out and canvass every custy and have a 35 minimum charge. Job done. Don't think so.
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For gods sake Ewan, I'm not having a go at you. Calm down, just read what I posted and answer the point, that's all I wanted. It's pretty easy to see what I'm asking.
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I don't have a minimum price, I don't restrict my business that way. I do try & get the maximum value possible, within reason to make it a stable account, for every job. I may do a £35 job & they have a neighbour, little cottage with 5 windows all at ground level. 5 minute job, an easy £5. So, for 5 minutes extra work the £35 has become £40. Simples.
Ewan has some very good & true points. It all depends on personal circumstances & business stage though in reality. If you've just started up & need to put bread on the table then it will be very hard to risk being too greedy & losing what could have been a normal account for an ideal one.
At my personal stage I can afford the luxury of being picky & quote what I want & not what I have to to get the job. I still want the job if I quote obviousley but at my price. ;)
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I'm not asking you to change my mind Ewan. I thought you had changed your attitude lately and I could have a normal post to clarify a point or two, nothing more. I know you can answer my points, I just wonder sometimes why you don't. Don't know if you noticed, but I haven't had a pop at you at all.
The main point I wanted to know is, are most of your custies 35 quid and above, that's all.
Anyway, it's all a good reason NOT to do my paperwork that's been sitting on the desk waiting to be typed into the bloody system. Back later :(
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is most of your work on 35 quid custies? If not, why not? –
No, some are exactly £35 more are over £35 and others less than £35.
So will you be getting rid of everything under 35?
If it were that easy to get 35ers, why hasn't everyone got at least 90% of their round at 35 quid and obove? –
Good question keep this train of thought up and you will be able to answer these question yourself.
Doesn't the ability to get custies with such size houses depend on how far they are from you and how compact they would have to be?
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You know I work my biz in Germany and all my Brit custies are in estates. Compact is a row of 6 or 8 houses of which I would have between 3 or 5 of each row. Now that's pretty compact. The average price is 15 euros. To drop these and just do my other (German) custies would be a bit stupid. My average German custy is about one to one and a half hours work, average price for these type of jobs isabout 80 euroes.
If I dumped all my Brit custies in favour of the bigger German custies, I would be cutting my own throat for no better reason than to have the same money but less custies. Why would I do that? The main reason for being mostly domestic based is the security. If I lose 1 or 2, so what? If I lose 1 or 2 bigger custies it makes a bigger hole to fill.
Just because a custy is bigger than another, doesn't make my biz better. That's my point.
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It doesn't really matter what price your jobs are as long as your hourly rate (including driving around) is as high as you want it. In fact I work on a monthly target of turnover.
If you are getting say £30 per hour turnover all day long then it doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out that a disciplined and motivated sole trader who works in showers and drizzle could earn over £1000 per week in turnover from 33/34 hours of work.
Now, to achieve that £30 per hour including driving you can have all manner of properties - so let's say you have a 4 bed detached that pays £10 for 30 minutes work then you should work toward pricing it at £11 for 25 minutes and work towards £12.50 and doing it in 20 minutes.
So as long as your day is paying you an average of £30 per hour over 8 hours then in 4 days you will be touching on a very good weekly turnover. The extra day will allow you to have holidays and sickness.
My round ranges from (with a handful of exceptions at the lower end) £7 to £30 on domestic with the vast majority at £10 - £20 and (again with exceptions at the lower end) £20 to £140 on commercial.
If you want to earn top dollar as a sole trader then:-
1. Raise your hourly rate (including travelling) by pricing higher, compacting work and working faster - but do not compromise quality too much or you will be more susceptible to undercutting and competition.
2. Drive less
3. Work in more inclement conditions than you do at present
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Why did'nt I put it that way? ::) Sounds better than the drivel I just posted. ??? ;D
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So we are in agreement then that size doesn't matter, as long as we can achieve the desired hourly rate. In fact probably better having a good mix as to minimize any lost customer. ;D
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So we are in agreement then that size doesn't matter, as long as we can achieve the desired hourly rate. In fact probably better having a good mix as to minimize any lost customer. ;D
Yes; but Ewan's ideas of pruning and sifting to always improve your round is a very valid point.
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So we are in agreement then that size doesn't matter, as long as we can achieve the desired hourly rate. In fact probably better having a good mix as to minimize any lost customer. ;D
Yes; but Ewan's ideas of pruning and sifting to always improve your round is a very valid point.
Of course you should always look to improve your business. It doesn't matter what industrie you are in, sole trader or employer. You should always want to improve income and customer base. But I would feel it is to risky putting all your eggs into only a handfull of baskets(so to speak) ;)
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He's at it again, he he he, ;D a sole trader is not a solo trader.Sole traders can employ and be quite a large firm, just as some ltd companys are very small.That aside your figures are rubbish, yes you can run a biz on 120 custies, but why would you want to?
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What are we realy talking about here chaps its all down to the market we opperate in and we all cannot work in the same market.Its margin or volume. Margin: less work and bigger profits. or More volume ,more custies per hour, higher turnover less profit per customer. Its should be the same if our hourly rate is the same and that = what we think we are worth.
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For me it's about profit & being reasonably happy at work. I don't strive to appear big & employ etc. I still invest in my business with good poles & equipment.
I prefere larger jobs, These are what I will go out of my way for these days. Smaller jobs I'll take on if they suit me & accept my price. I'd rather do 4 houses in a day for the same profit as 20.
Less hassle, good profit, better work. I'm pretty much full to the limit at the mo' but I'll still take the plush jobs & refine when nesessary. ;)