The last time I mentioned that house to you Roger you said you had not done it for months and months, you even said something along the lines of it being a pain even though it was a big account.
The woman came to me while I was in the driveway of the other account, why the hell would I call on a building site>? Which is what it is at the moment.
I don't tout for any work, don't need to, picking up 2 or 3 accounts every week.
If she is still your customer then fine, I'm not bothered in the least, in fact when she does ring me and ask for a quote (which she will) I will point her in your direction.
But you also have to ask yourself what was she doing coming up to me in the first place?
I know full well you would always have done a good job, and whatever you were charging her would have been relatively cheap too.
One thing you can never, ever accuse me of is taking work off you, the only one I do that too is Simon.
Niether would I ever diss your work or method either.
Bare in mind a tiny little shop you did for a couple of cleans that Simon now does.
When she told you that she wasn't happy with my system, what did you do?
you took the account, I'll bet you even told her how (in your opinion) it leaves spots, its no good, etc etc.
Rather than telling her (as I would have done were it you cleaning the windows) that Ian never does a poor job, and the method used is first rate.
I would then have contacted you and told you of the complaint (as I've done on several occasions when your customers have rang me to ask where you are)
In fact if one of Simon's customers talk to me, I never diss him or his work either, though I'll take work off him at the drop of a hat given the chance.
I have a work ethic/moral that I stick to rigidly.
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However; back to the topic!
Commercial isn't the be all and end all, Macleod is very wrong on his opinion of domestic work.
I've been going 23 years, so I can be classed as an old timer, but my current domestic round has been built up over the last 2 and a half years, it is this work that is paying for my van, or at least the work I picked up over the first 9 months after going WFP.
Since then, the new work picked up swells my bank balance and has allowed me to hit turnover targets I'd never have dreamed possible before.
Some commercial work is fantastic, medium sized offices and so on...first rate.
If you have the nerve to put in the right price you can get incredibly good money.
I'm talking about what on the surface looks like a really large job, one that done trad would take you 5 hours or more.
Priced trad you'd probably put in a price of perhaps a £100 - £150 and consider it good money.
You'll be shattered of course as it will probably be a 3 storey office.
Providing you have WFP, this same job will get banged out in an hour and a half, and if you are charging at the same rate as before (one that is competitive with a trad firm) then you will be raking it in
But make hay while the sun shines, these jobs will disappear as more and more go over to WFP.
That market will get more and more competitive.
The bigger commercial stuff is much more tightly priced as it is, if a job is going to take several days for a single man to do then the job can run into several hundred quid, or even a few thousand on really big stuff.
You ain't gonna make £50 or £60 an hour on those jobs!
But you can and always will be able to on well priced domestics.
I have a lot of accounts between £20 and £40 that all pay very well indeed, and these and others like them aren't likely to change any time soon.
Roy Harding does mostly Domestic, and he does absolutely fantastic, not many will equal Roy on here, he has really got it sussed.
Ian