Ok I'm fed up of analogies:
Window cleaning is exactly the same as all businesses.
When you first start out you take on everything that pays pound notes because you have no yard-stick other than what you used to get in your last job or your wretched dole money.
And Mrs Smith could dick you around with her under-priced job by saying "not today" and Mr Jones never pays you or Miss Adams says "can we leave it until Spring?"...and because you have limited customers you have no choice but to say "yes".
But as your round grows and more customers come aboard (and you've learned to price right) you
come around to thinking "Hey! I've actually got a product that people want to buy."
And in the fullness of time you come to the realization that the dead wood customers actually hold you back and you're better rid of them. For a short while it may leave a few voids in your working diary but it will allow you to give a great service to the good customers and room to allow other properly-priced-good-customers onto your books. The dead wood will be serviced by the newcomers...thus preserving the circle of life.
To sum up: Dump the rubbish asap...do you really need Mrs Smith's £60 a year that badly? Methinks not!
Excellent advice Simon, I turned work away in order to stay loyal to old customers, these same customers that dumped me for an undercutting trad guy.
I am taking 5 weeks to get round, if I dumped a weeks work consisting of my underpriced customers,I would actually be better off.
I held back when the recession loomed, but as I emerge unaffected the cull has started.
Being a softy has cost me dearly over the years, it just doesen't pay.
A well run window cleaning business needs to be continually evolving, from the day you start till the day you retire. taking in better priced work and dumping the dross.
Just like a fat worm, chomp and dump.
you mentioned they dumped you when a guy came around and undercut you
and then you mention a cull
loyalty needs to be both sided imho