Which way is most useful for cash flow, business or residential windows?
Business window cleaning. Especially if you live in an area with harsh winters. That way you can work all year
Sent from my iPhone using Window Cleaning Resource
I think you need to make the distinction as to what “business” means: storefront or commercial.
IMO, storefront is only profitable if you have a really good route which may take years to develop. Since the retail business has been hit so hard by both the recession and the trend towards online shopping, I believe it would be a mistake to start window cleaning in the “storefront sector.” If you already have a good route, great… but I wouldn’t advise someone new to go into storefront window cleaning.
Commercial is a good moneymaker if you have a waterfed pole and want to do midrise. I don’t think it is very profitable going after chains like Walgreens who only want to shell out $15 per store.
Residential is where it’s at for the new window cleaner who wants to start making money in the first couple of years. You have to have good customer skills, though. You gotta make people smile and be especially detail oriented. If you can make people smile & laugh and also deliver high quality in an efficient manner, you will always be able to make money. Even in the great depression of the 1930’s, there were still rich people who wanted their windows cleaned and were willing to shell out $$ for it.
You said it that’s how I run my business its going very well just doing a great job and trying to please every customer but that’s impossible!
Sent from my iPhone using Window Cleaning Resource
[SIZE=6]Both![/SIZE]
Commercial is often thought of as bringing in more money on a regular basis but you can do the same with Residential if you set them up an a quarterly service agreement. A house that goes every quarter for $200.00-400.00 ads up quick. On top of that you get way more referrals from residential which ads to the revue generated from that side of the business. On top of that Residential can be easier to penetrate and generate some quick sales. Going out hanging door hangers, mailers, door knocking etc. can generate quick leads which can be also generate referrals.
10 new customers signed up on a quarterly service agreement brings in $1000.00 revenue per month! 30 new customers is $3000.00 per month revenue which is $36000.00 per year! how easy is it to reach 30 new customers? Lets say you make a goal to get 2 new customers a week and get them to sign up on a regular quarterly service agreement. That’s 8 customers the first month. Now lets say out of those 8 customers you get 3 referrals and sign 2 up on a service agreement. That’s now 10 customers on a quarterly agreement and $1000.00 per month of reoccurring revenue.
The key to Residential is taking great care of the customer and have a great follow up procedure in place so you turn the initial sale into regular reoccurring revenue. Make the goal of your residential sales process to generate new regular customers committed to a service agreement, not to get one time jobs. This changes the whole process from the target market down to the cleaning process. It narrows down your efforts to focus on building reoccurring revenue from residential the fasted way possible.
When we examine both commercial and residential from how easy it is to generate initial interest in our service, to getting a regular commitment, it is easy to see that Residential has the same potential for generating regular reoccurring revenue as commercial. I would even argue that it has more potential because of it’s ease of access to get potential customers attention and gain interest in your services. Not to mention it’s potential for generating referrals which is also reoccurring revenue, just not guaranteed (unless you count the average likelihood of getting referrals from customers).
Residential is the often overlooked golden mine and hidden gem of reoccurring revenue. Shhhh! Just don’t tell anyone 
Good post…the only thing I disagree with is in bold…That is in a perfect world scenario. Some areas such as the area i live in, the weather does not allow for quarterly cleaning. So you have to adjust for things like this.
But don’t worry I won’t tell anyone about the secret path to the gold mine…LOL
Steve you bring up a good point. I am curious what type of weather is preventing you from quarterly cleaning?
From Oct to April.We deal with extreme cold and snow and wind. Im willing to work in it as I do route and commercial work during this time. But I have yet to have one customer willing to have residential WCing work done. So in the case of my market that limits most residential work to 2x a year tops. Maybe in larger metro areas with the same conditions you may be able to generate interest because of sheer number of people, but here with a local population of less then 25k its not.
Hope that info helped with your question…“what type of weather is preventing you from quarterly cleaning?”
