Working the Numbers: Massive Action Results in Massive Results for Your Cleaning Business
(Pages 16-18 of the June 2012 eClean Magazine)
Download the pdf: Working the Numbers
by Steve Wright, www.TheCustomerFactor.com
Business, marketing, and sales is all about numbers, i.e., the number of prospects that you market your cleaning services to. See enough numbers and your business thrives. Don’t see enough numbers and your business suffers. Elementary stuff for sure, but now we’re going to apply it in the real world as it relates to your cleaning business.
Because I come from a window cleaning background, I am going to use window cleaning as my example, but the information provided can apply to all types of cleaning businesses.
First, let me emphasize that it takes a certain kind of person to pay for a professional to wash their windows so you have to see more “numbers” than, let’s say, a carpet cleaning business or maybe a landscaper would. In other words, not everyone is our prospect, so we need to see a lot of numbers/prospects.
And here’s how we do that…
Let’s use the marketing technique of flyers because it’s probably the lowest cost form of marketing available. If you put out 300 flyers a day, four days a week every week for four weeks, that is 4,800 flyers. Using the average of a one percent return, 48 people will contact you.
Out of those 48 people, let’s stay really, really, really conservative and say only turning into customers. That’s 19 jobs you just captured in 30 days!
Now I know there are people out there right now saying, “I can’t possibly do that. I work full-time” or “I just simply don’t have the time to do those kind of numbers.”
My answer to that is to have someone do it for you. It’ll be the best investment you will ever make. You invest $75 bucks a week to have three kids distribute flyers. Over a four week period, you will secure 19 jobs. Again remaining conservative, let’s use a low average per residential job of just $140 per house. That’s $2,660 for a $300 investment.
Um…not too bad, wouldn’t you say? That’s over an 800 percent return on your investment! Try and get that from the stock market.
And I’d like to stress once again that I’m remaining conservative. Frankly, if you can only turn 40 percent of your prospects into customers, then you’re doing something wrong. You should be able to convert at least 75 percent to 85 percent of your prospects to customers. And the $140 per house pricing is also low. In my area, the average job price was $200 to $250.
I’m also not even talking about the number of referrals you’re going to receive from the above 19 customers that you just acquired, PLUS the fact that you’ll be going back in six months to a year for a repeat performance (assuming that you follow up properly).
Excited yet?
If there’s no way that you can invest any money or spend four days a week distributing 300 flyers a day, then how about 200 flyers every day, three days a week, every week for four weeks? You’ll have 2,400 flyers turn into 24 interested people turning into 10 window washing jobs.
THEN take some money you have just made from these jobs and pay someone to assist in flyer distribution so you can boost your numbers. Just invest back into growing your business from the profits.
This works! How do I know? Because that’s exactly what I did.
When I was in the insurance industry and started working as a sale rep for AFLAC (yeah…I know. The AFLAC duck), I bought a mailing list of business names/addresses and must have visited every single business in my town in the first 30 days.
After awhile, the sales manager was asking me to make presentations to the sales force to explain why I was able so sell so much insurance. I think everyone in the audience expected some sort of magic bullet or some “secret.”
No…just a non-stop, whirlwind of activity the first 30 days. No magic bullets. Just massive action.
And once I started my window cleaning business, this whirlwind consisted of a combination of flyers as talked about above, and also mailing out postcards. A constant barrage of flyers and postcards the first 30 days created an incredible foundation for me to build my window cleaning business on.
I have no doubt that it will do the same for you!
Use whatever marketing method appeals to you (and what your finances dictate), but take strong action “early and often.”
I don’t care how you slice and dice it, but IF you work the numbers, the numbers WILL work for you…each and every single time.
But the numbers will not work in your favor if you see “few numbers.” For example, let’s say that you distribute 100 flyers one day every third week, that just won’t work. Not enough numbers. Not even close. Sure… it would work if you’re in the pizza business distributing pizza coupons, but we’re talking about the window washing business. You may luck into receiving a customer or two, but this “massive action” article isn’t about getting one or two customers.
So…are you working on your foundation?
Pick a date on the calendar and make that Day 1 of your massive action campaign. Work it hard for 30 days.
I can promise you that at the end of 30 days (assuming you religiously hit it hard for those 30 days), when the dust has settled and the smoke has cleared, you will be well on your way to a successful window washing business with more customers, more jobs, and more income.
As a side note, 30 days is my general rule of thumb because that has worked for me, but pick whatever time period works for you. You might be even more ambitious. Heck, just imagine what kind of window cleaning business you can create with a strong 60 or 90 days of non-stop, aggressive, push-push activity.
Steve Wright is the author of How to Start Your Own Residential Window Washing Business and the developer of The Customer Factor, which is a fully-automated contact management/follow-up software solution for service businesses. Please contact Mr. Wright at 256-546-2446 or at steve@thecustomerfactor.com for more information.
