What’s up fellas—little about me, I’m a full time firefighter that started window cleaning just this year as a side hustle and I’ve gained some good residential customers and a couple storefronts—my fit is just better with residential customers that get blown off or receive poor quality from larger companies (the main companies in town seem to have shifted focus to power washing and have gone down in window cleaning quality).
A local business man has taken an interest in me because we share values and he respects the grind—he’s offered to get me in with his commercial property managers and I couldn’t be more excited and also terrified because I’m getting into a different game.
All this to ask, how long do you give these kind of businesses—upscale salons, restaurants, wedding venues, boutiques, etc.—to pay you? I’ve had all but one storefront customer, who mailed me a check, pay when the service is finished like I ask for in the formal estimate. Tips? Thanks guys.
When does the upscale salon or restaurant require their customers to pay? No need to give them an interest free loan of your services. Get paid and move on.
Giving someone “terms” requires more of your time and attention to follow up and should be worth it, if you decide to do that.
I did what was understood in advance to be a “one time cleaning” for a lawyer, at the end he was like “ok bye bye, just snailmail my secretary an invoice and we’ll mail you a check at some point…”
I told that joker, “I’ll wait right here for payment today, you’re here, I’m here, the check book is here.”
Welcome to the window world and thanks for serving the community as a firefighter. Like the others said, try to get paid day of. Give customer’s all options they can have to pay you (credit card, check, cash, venmo, PayPal, zelle or any others I forgot).
If you decide to do bigger commercial jobs be prepared for waiting 30 days. Yes a pain to wait but the payouts are $1,000 and higher.
