Justin, it’s win-win isn’t it? You make more and they pay less. The only downside is that you need more accounts. I know you’ve said 50% of your business is storefront, do you mind if I ask how many accounts you’ve got?
Renee, ouch now my back is all red…wait…did you say “pat”? I thought you said slap! Oh well, thanks anyway 
clinton, as of right now I’m averaging $20.83 per account.
I have a $20 minimum on storefront.
My average per service is ~$51.00. I don’t service much storefront.
Doug, I believe it’s a win win. I want to give the customer a monthly bill they won’t talk themselves out of. $50 a month for a little storefront if they’re paying $12 a week is going to be cut well before a $16 monthly bill. Although I’ve never believed in discounting price for more routine service. My base price starts at the twice a month or monthly. I have appx 350 storefronts (built from scratch) - averages out to appx $22 per account. The majority of the accounts I’ve lost went out of business. Oh yea, another interesting fact = I’ve lost more than I have 
I appologize for all the “Appx” - As you can probably figure out, I’m not very organized when it comes to a true count.
This thread and the fact I got another monthly account in an area off our beatin path (appx 15 minutes) encouraged me to market the area today. I kept exact numbers and they were the following:
3 1/2 hours of marketing
52 businesses
2 - $15 monthly accounts
2 - Strong possibily $12 / $14 - I Don’t count any of these which avoid setting myself up for disappointment. If I get one or two then it’s a bonus.
Passed out several cards but I don’t count any of these either.
I don’t do any accounts on the spot, because I feel it takes away from my marketing day. Besides there’s a certain day I need them on (3 weeks out).
I’ve posted in the past that my numbers are somewhere around 2 in 100 to 200. Those were just ballpark guesses. After today and counting - I doubt I could go in 200 businesses in one day, so I’m ammending my statement to 100.
2 out of 52 is a good day for me. I’ll take it every day 
Wow you must be moving at a good pace to hit 52 businesses in 3.5 hours! Congrats on your success today, I’m glad my thread gave you some inspiration. Hearing that you built a route of 350 accounts from scratch is inspiration to me as well.
Yeah I’ve learned pretty quick not to count the ones that seem like a strong possibility too. Same with handing out cards. I was handing out cards with bids at every store, but now I’m only giving them my card if they ask for it, or ask for a quote. I had one lady ask for a couple of cards for her and a co-worker because they want to get their houses done, so we’ll see if anything comes of that.
I can understand why you like to focus on marketing and not do the job at the time. I will probably end up doing that once I’m established. Either I’ll just market to a few stores as I go along on my route, or I’ll set aside a certain day. But for right now I like to get some cash in my pocket as I go, it helps with things like paying for lunch and gas
Doug, going out when you don’t feel like is the best time to go out! Look what happened, you go 2 accounts, if you had given in you would have never got them.
Woohoo, best day yet! Only made it to 12 businesses before landing one. $60, took an hour, and it hadn’t been cleaned in 6 years. They didn’t commit to a regular cleaning schedule but they did ask me to come and quote their house this afternoon, so that’s pretty cool 
combine your approach with this one
Which part, Sharen?
I started out by walking in with a quote but find I do better without it, besides quite often I can’t tell which windows belong to which store until I’m inside.
I get turned down for the free cleaning.
In a few months I will be looking for clients in the dead of winter
I will be checking back with potential clients, especially around accounts I already have.
Well today was an interesting experience. I’m not sure how many stores I went to, probably somewhere around 30. I only got 1 and it was for a thrilling $6! That’s right six whole dollars! 
I took it because this is a large extremely busy plaza that I’m trying to get my foot in. The entire strip is easily reachable windows with cover over the sidewalk, so any businesses I get here can be done rain or shine.
The ‘interesting’ part is that this place is a completely different market to what I’ve been pursuing the last few weeks. These businesses get a massive amount of foot traffic, get solicited constantly and many already have a WC. I assume THIS is the highly competitive cut-throat storefront market you guys all talk about. But every single person who said: “I have a window cleaner.” Refused to even look at a bid. That’s not cut-throat…that’s loyalty.
So I’ve got a bit of an experiment going now. I’m going to see if over time I can accumulate a large number of these lower priced accounts in this plaza. If I can, and they’re weekly, I’ll be able to bang them out and still make a decent buck. But the exposure will be absolutely HUGE. Meanwhile I’ll also be pursuing the more out-of-the-way places where I’ve been getting much higher prices. In a few months we’ll see which market is more lucrative.
I thought I’d share this with you guys so that you can look around in your area to see if there’s maybe two sides to the market like what I’ve found.
Best day yet! Again I started out not wanting to go looking for work, and the morning was rough with rejection after rejection. But I ended up landing 3 new accounts out of about 30-40.
I seem to be running into more of the territory that’s locked up by other companies at (what I consider to be) ridiculously low prices so at the moment I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to get enough work at the $2-$3/pane I’ve been charging. We’ll see.
Any updates? This has been a very helpful thread. I’m getting ready to go out and get some more route work for the winter as well. So far I have almost a full day of route work every 2 weeks and would like to get another full day for the alternating weeks. We do mostly residential work but I am seeing the benefit of having at least some consistent route work.
Are most of these stores you guys are going for mom and pop shops and franchises? Or are you going for big chain stores also?
It seems like you are over complicating things. Never offer a free service unless you are getting something more than another cheap account out of it, save the free window for your $300 residential service.
I have 2 closing ratio’s 1 is overall stores visited (works out to about 1/10, the other is stores where I got to talk to the decision maker 1/5 (or 6) without asking them for repeat business I am offered it 1/3 by the owner.
There are 5 things I do;
I never assume anything about the customer, I hit EVERY business even if I think there is a “Snowballs chance…”
I come in wearing my BOAB, Squeegees, etc. carrying my pole and bucket so that they think "okay this is a window washer and he is ready to do the job [I]Right Now[/I].
I come in with a price in my head usually higher than I think the job should be and say in 1 sentence before they get a chance to say anything “Hi, would you like your windows washed, I’ll do the outside for $x”. If they say yes, I start work right then, if they say anything besides yes I just say thank you for your time and leave.
When I am done I make sure that they actually inspect my work before I take their money. If I quoted the job right and liked doing the windows and wanted to do them on a regular basis, as I was giving them the receipt for the cash I would use the assumptive close and say “when would you like me to come back, same price”. If they ask my to come back on their own and I wanted the job and I underbid the first wash I would say " I can come back on a regular basis if you want, but I just gave you the introductory rate, the normal rate will be $x" and let them negotiate from there.
Every time I am in the area if they are not my customer I “forget” I have ever been in that shop and repeat this whole process over, sometime it might take 20 visits before they trust you enough to give you the work.
I was wondering Nomad, I notice you travel around doing windows in different areas. How do you keep track of who you have done when you may not be back to that shop for a long time? Just curious. Do you ever go into a place you did a year ago and forget that you’ve been there before?
All I have for records is my receipt books which get filed after we prepare our taxes. Other than that I don’t care if I have been there before, it has no bearing on my business model except that they usually remember me and are very happy to see me again, ask about my travels, etc. In Step 5 I was talking about way back when (20ish years ago) that I was building a business on a more traditional model.
Right now my business is all about having the freedom to go wherever I want to and still support my family while I’m doing it, it is a lot more work than anyone except those in their first few weeks of Window washing has to do, but for until I feel differently about life, it is worth it to me. No commitments, no real bills and I only work until I’ve made $100 that day, which I might add, for the first time in a decade or two is mostly mine to spend as I see fit.
Michael Kelly
well I just started my window cleaning and pretty scared bout going out there I live in downtown chicago and there’s alot of store fronts in my area. I haven’t even came up with a name yet! but I’m thinking about going for the first tome free approach so likes a good idea thanks.
well I just started my window cleaning and pretty scared bout going out there I live in downtown chicago and there’s alot of store fronts in my area. I haven’t even came up with a name yet! but I’m thinking about going for the first tome free approach so likes a good idea thanks.
