So far I haven’t thought of much to contribute to this thread, but an estimate we did today has got me thinking. Last night an acquaintance called because she is going to be cleaning a house that needs the exterior windows cleaned. She sent me the number of the interior designer who is passing bids on to the owner. We met with her today and submitted a bid. We were surprised to see two other acquaintances who are working together on the same property doing a renovation of the yard. When the designer arrived, they told her they know us, and she can trust that we are responsible. She told me she’s not getting any other window cleaning bids because we’ve been so highly recommended. The recommendations are from people who don’t necessarily know our work, but know us and trust that we do good work. In this particular case, being involved in the Brazilian community and speaking Portuguese may be a help since the owner is moving from Brazil, but it has made me think of other contacts to seek out. I think house cleaners, interior designers, landscape designers and others who already work for and are trusted by wealthy homeowners could help us window cleaners get into our target neighborhoods.
This is great thread and my first ever post!
What about a high end gym? In my area we have a Lifetime Athletic Club which is a super high end national chain. I just looked thru their national media kit and the demographics are perfect in regard to income levels and home ownership precentages. I am going to contact them and see what kind of options they may have for local only advertsing. Also, maybe Curves gym for women as I find most of my customers to be female.
Also, I had a solicitation recently from a company that was putting together the advertising for golf score cards for one of the nicer golf courses in my area. I didn’t give him the opportunity to sell me beacuse I’ve had such poor results with print advertsing in the past but looking back I think that may have been a mistake… anyone that has 5+ hours to play golf can afford our services and isn’t going to be doing the window cleaning themselves.
Welcome to the forum.
My cousin is a part-time window cleaner and he manages to hook these whales just doing storefront work in their areas.
Just be seen!
These three words should be tattooed on the back of every window cleaners hand.
“So you never have an excuse”
You are probably on the right line of thinking in this thread.
Charitable acts go a long way. Wealthy are donating to causes or events they enjoy. Symphonies,performing arts, golf outings, medical events. Some things we do are include a gift card to every player as a tee prize to charity golf outings. And donate a free exterior cleaning as a raffle or auction prize. One a month two guys called every customer asking for a donation for the local food bank. We matched every dollar in donation in window cleaning dollars.
We get good traction from the community newsletters, and or the community preferred vendors list.
You could contact some luxury car salesmen, and ask what they do to attracted buyers, and pick their brains on what characteristics they find in the buyers. Most of the wealthy drive nice cars.
Most the wealthy around here are involved with some level of town politics, and go to town meetings, or community meetings. Maybe have some presence there.
Most of my clients play cards, brigde, canasta, or poker. And services providers do come up at these games. Maybe just having a passing knowledge of the games could help.
They go to a local places for happy hour. And may stay later of the band is good.
One main action points is the consistency and regularity of the service. They express they want more regular service. We set it up. We tell them when we are coming and what we are going to do. They never have to think about it again.
I bet you already have a few of your customers in mind when thinking about this. You could just ask your top 5-10 customers, how to get in touch with their friends.
“Mrs. Whitcomb may I ask you a favor? How might I get in touch with other great clients like you?”
Most people especially wealthy people like to help others. It makes them feel good.
In my area, most wealthy neighborhoods have an active HOA. Those same neighborhoods are generally built on private roads and have strict “no-solicitation” policies, which the HOA enforces diligently. The HOA wields power, so the best course is to buddy up to the board members.
Contact the president and take him/her to lunch. Ask to attend the next board meeting. Introduce yourself to the group. Offer your services (perhaps even at a discount for early adopters) and explain a little bit about yourself and your company. Once you get a handful of people to hire you, reputation spreads like wildfire within the community and you’ll have to work less and less on marketing.
So a quick update to what has been working for us regarding this topic… So one of the things we did this year is send out our uniforms techs out after work or days where there wasnt a lot of work on the schedule to the high end neighborhoods to hand brochures on doors. We encouraged our guys in a non salesman way to interact with customer when they had the opportunity as well. We have seen the biggest return out of this than anything else we tried. Not only did it put work on the schedule but it got the guys hours during a slow time. In our first years we use to pass out flyers and brochures but got away from that when we started EDDM years ago… I may have to mix this back into our marketing plan
How are you working this into your crews work schedule? Are you only doing this during the slow days or are you making it an ongoing task? Oh yeah one more question 
how are they payed for there canvassing time?
We are just doing it during slow times or offering it to crew members for extra hours on their days off. We may incorporate it into our marketing for 2017 since we have such great success with it the past 2 months.
We paid them their regular hourly rate. In my first 5 years i use to hang flyers all the time so i know how long it should take each area. We would print off each subdivision and highlight the streets using google maps and send them with a box of flyers.
Thanks for the reply Kyle!
