[Tosh]

   Ewan, where in the country will these leaflets be delivered?

[ronnie paton]

dazmond i know many like you who charge4-6 quid the told me from the start the same has you, guess what nearly five years on im still making ends meet!!!

I have one area in a local area i harge around a £10 the other 2 cleaners on the estate charge rom 4-6 quid gues who has more of the estate and has done for over 4 years and guess which one keep door knocking with out much joy!!!!!......................

[dazmond]

ok!fair play to u ronnie!im upping my prices every year in april.most of my round is very compact and i am pricing higher for new work.im not doing too badly.onward and upward!

best wishes

dazmond

[mileslake]

Disregarding up north , which Dazmond says is a £6 per house job ( unbelievable). I can see a potential in this. Mainly as an add on instead of con roofs on  a Friday.

[darragh windows]

cant be bothered reading through all the posts on this one so i dont know if this has already been said or not , i think its a good idea till you have a fully build round of regular customers but after that forget about it how do you suppose to get round a large number of one offs say the week before christmas when they all will want done and still manage to please your regulars

[james44]

Jamie do what i do and pass on the work to another window cleaner someone you know will do a good job there happy for the work you get a % for giving them the work

There are window cleaners who don`t have a full round and are greatful for the extra work

[gary mallett]

agree

[darragh windows]

Jamie do what i do and pass on the work to another window cleaner someone you know will do a good job there happy for the work you get a % for giving them the work

There are window cleaners who don`t have a full round and are greatful for the extra work

good point seems a good idea then

[james44]

well just to let everyone know me and my mate have been out today again and what a worth while day it has been think i found a way in how to use the dia-a-clean method
i am not going to do a write up just now as it`s a bit late will do one in the morning

[daniel worgan]

Will keep watching then....

[james44]

Hi peeps an update on my weekend out to get more work, and to test if the dial-a-clean can work, well turned out to be a very useful weekend
.
Well as I said on an earlier post my mate went out canvassing and did £90 of work  nothing special there, but it is how we have started to canvass that is different to our normal canvassing,
Though about the window cleaners who walk about with there ladders to gain work so decided to use this approach to canvass ourselves, what a difference that turned out to be,

 We found customers were more likely to have you clean there windows when turning up with ladders than knocking on doors canvassing with leaflets,decided to turn this into a survey as well as a canvassing exercise,
Why was this! reasons given were customers don`t like answering the door in the evening after a hard day at work customers find this annoying so less chance of them to uptake your offer for window cleaning where as in a Saturday morning/ lunch time they are fresh and a bit more relaxed so more chance of there custom.
Same we found about leaflet dropping they get chucked in the bin for 2 reasons they either have a cleaner or they think you will be no better than the other cleaners that they have used,

Example we had on Saturday walking past a house where the lady was washing her own windows I replied you should get a window cleaner to do that for you, aye right she said it`s because they don`t do them right that I am doing them myself,. I said that not all window cleaners are the same they are a few good ones out there running successful busineses so I said let me do a couple of windows for you to show her we are not all the same, did a few windows she was happy and said to me as you have done them few you may as well do the rest so I did she was happy with the clean and asked much do I normally charge for her size of house £8 I said the windows din`t look to bad  I said as it is a first clean it would be £12  I said so she went indoors came back out and gave me the £12 and asked how often I come round  well signed her up for every  4 weeks

So could this explain why we only get a small return on leaflet drops, customers think you`r just another crap cleaner posting leaflets, well some seem to think that, that was the general feedback we got on Saturday

So it looks like you have more chance to sign up customers canvassing with ladders than you do door knocking with leaflets because the feedback we had that customers are less likely to say yes at the door because they have had so many cleaners saying they will do this and that and don`t or they just don`t come back so taking you ladders with you at least you can show what you can do so have a better chance to sign them up
Anyway have taken on a lot more customers offering the dial-a-clean where we have told them that we would be offering 4/8/12 weekly cleans and that we would leaflet drop 2/3days before we would be in there area so as they can ring us a to have there clean booked in to our round

Now we found that there was quite a lot of customers who did not have there windows cleaned on a regular basis there were several reasons for this, so these customers we have told them we would drop a leaflet on a monthly basis to remind them of our services and that they can call when they need us the reason we decided to do this was they can be clean 1 week and the weather can turn and they can be filthy the next so they now know we are only a phone call away and they don`t have to wait for the ladder man to turn up
My mate has decided to help me out on this and I will be taking on my nephew when he leaves school in the summer,

Well we signed up over £400 of new work this includes guttering and facias not a lot but we spent more time getting feedback which was our intended goal makes me wonder how much we could have got had we pushed a lot harder than we did

So for a newbie starting out or someone wanting to add extra customers next time you go canvassing take your ladders!

Out of the initial one off cleans 9 have called back to have them done on a more regular basis.

Can dial-a-clean work we think it can! With a little bit of tinkering here and there we are determined to make it work

We believe flexible working is the way forward!

[dazmond]

fair play to u james for giving it a go.nothing ventured,nothing gained but when i started i bought a small round and canvassed at weekends and picked up quite a few then word of mouth etc and so on.im happy with 320 domestics and 5 small commercial jobs.i dont go looking for work as my work keeps me busy most of the time!i do push the conny roofs/fascias/gutters in spring/summer when i have more time to fit them in!and obviously i take on more work if its at the right price.most of my work is evry 4-5 weeks,the odd 6 weekly/8 weekly.i find most custys want monthly.if they dont want them cleaned that often they will accept 2 monthly for a slightly higher price.working saturdays are good as ive picked up quite a few as im working.i find this business is very simple to run and ive built up trust and a good reputation.i also monopolise certain areas on my round.they are very compact and other window cleaners dont get much of a look in as its not worth it for them to clean 1 house in the middle of 80 of my custys! ;)i have an arrangement with another windy and he passes work onto me if its down a road i clean in and vice/versa.it helps keep our rounds compact.works well for us.

regards

dazmond

[dazmond]

where its gonna be a pain for you james is when youve got plenty of regular work and you get behind because of weather and 2 custys phone u up in an area ur not working that week etc.youll end up running all over the place for very little reward. :.after a while these custys will become more of a liability and u will end up dumping them for the regular work!

what ur doing is nothing new but the old tried and tested way of having regular custys that dont dictate to you that u have on ur books at an agreed frequency is better!

your enthusiasm will wain for this type of work once ur books are bursting at the seams!

[james44]

yep agree dazmond was talking to a local cleaner last night who i worked for when i first started window cleaning and are going to pass work his way as i know he will do a good job,as i say it will need a bit of tinkering here and there but looks promising

[daniel worgan]

So mate...you walk round with ladders??
What would be your business strategy if you were wfp??

[chopsie]

So mate...you walk round with ladders??
What would be your business strategy if you were wfp??

I would guess....go with a full tank of water and clean them there and then,Just like he is doing with his ladders  :

[daniel worgan]

So mate...you walk round with ladders??
What would be your business strategy if you were wfp??

I would guess....go with a full tank of water and clean them there and then,Just like he is doing with his ladders  :

Yes of c ourse...why didn't i think of that.... :
So you walk round the streets with a ladder,but you got to get in the van and move it every house so they can see your van and equipement...i dont think so...you will be out forever before you get a days work.
I think there is a business to be made out of this but certainly not in this way,all this will achieve is to make people look at you as if they feel sorry for you,no way to run a business imo...

[wezzy32]

im out canvassing 2morow only got 40 quid off work todo then im nocking on doors and im going to try the 1 off clean for those how um and r at the door and also offer a regular service.

[chopsie]

So mate...you walk round with ladders??
What would be your business strategy if you were wfp??

I would guess....go with a full tank of water and clean them there and then,Just like he is doing with his ladders  :

Yes of c ourse...why didn't i think of that.... :
So you walk round the streets with a ladder,but you got to get in the van and move it every house so they can see your van and equipement...i dont think so...you will be out forever before you get a days work.
I think there is a business to be made out of this but certainly not in this way,all this will achieve is to make people look at you as if they feel sorry for you,no way to run a business imo...

You do not have to move van all the time,people do not need to see it or ladders,the point is you offer to do clean there and then,every time you get a clean move van to that vacinity,or door knock 5 or 6 either side of road then move on,

[james44]

Daniel around here wfp has a bad name so many cleaners thought it would be easy just to throw a pole about they just gave wfp a bad start as if it was not hard enough to convert customers,

i myself went back trad and took lots of work from these cleaners i now wfp tops and trad bottoms,

so thats why i take ladders and not wfp  if customers saw me standing there with a wfp they would most likely shut the door, strange tho that we wfp the tops and trad the bottoms they did not seem to mine as long as they were done right!