Wow – one week’s a long time…
BTW, much did you spend?
Perhaps having “high rise” in your name turns off those searching for residential service.
Do folks requiring high rise window cleaning generally search the Interweb for providers?
What’s your marketing plan?
Still paying $5K per month for liability as you stated earlier?
no, that insurance quote was a mistake.
Miami High Rise:
Please stop for a minute and try to survey your market conditions with some fresh eyes.
[B]Your market doesn’t care.
[/B]
[B]It’s time to choose a new market segment.[/B]
Forget about high-rise. I am in Toronto, Canada (bigger than Miami), and there are a ton of huge high-rise buildings here that look awful. For a few years I tried to break into the high-rise market (my website was tweaked to come up first for those search terms), but every time I submitted a quote, the building manager was shocked at how crazy high it was, because their current (low-quality) window cleaning contractor was doing it for peanuts.
Around here, a lot of high-rise companies employ sketchy workers, who are willing to be paid $12-$15/hr. They can put TEN GUYS on a building all day long, and it only costs them around $1500 maximum. How can you compete with nonsense like that?
Even if the head office added $800 to the bottom line, they could knock of a very large building for $2300. And they often settle for much smaller margins than that.
No thanks.
In most urban centers, the high-rise market is not worth the effort. 20 years ago you could make a killing on high-rise, but not anymore. You can make more money on the ground, doing low-rise commercial and residential.
It seems that you have an emotional attachment to high-rise window cleaning for some reason, but it’s going to kill your business. Let it go, and start selling your services to people that actually care.
Stop pursuing high-rise.
And remember that I have nothing to gain by telling you this. I’m only trying to help you.
Kevin
Hmmm. Yeah, I hear you.
I guess you will have to re-design your logo and get all new t-shirts too. That could be expensive.
Perhaps you could simply cover the high rise part and be Miami Window Cleaning…
+1 on that, Hi-rise prices around here are about half what they were 20 years ago, and in some cases lower than that
There is some money to be made by a small outfit doing mid-rise buildings that have a few discerning tenants that like to have a nice looking building, but the Hi-rise prices are too low to be worthwhile, plus you have some large cleaning companies who will do the windows for practically nothing in order to get/keep the more lucrative interior cleaning of floors, carpets, offices etc.
That two-three grand for a company to do an entire building is pretty sad, indeed. Was that a generalization or is there a specific building you were talking about? If so, how big/many windows/many descents is it?
For the same reason as people get their meds from a place that also sells jeans and lawnmowers, Its easier on them and they will sacrifice quality for “cheap and cheerful” as long as no one complains
It’s a walmart world
You are not showing up at all for “window cleaners Miami.”
The trick with Adwords is experimentation… I think that’s why they give you the $100 coupon.
I currently have 6 ads per ad group. They are set to rotate, so I can find out which are most effective. Then drop the low performers, and maybe replace them with even newer ones.
Also- click on “keywords” and then select “see search terms.” That will show you exactly what was searched, and the ad it was clicked on.
(sometimes these are different that what you want people to search for in an organic search.)
I spent $304 in May, and brought in $10,661 directly from Adwords. I only use it for my weakest keywords, so I know that would have been money I’d have missed otherwise.
I don’t necessarily think you need to change your name, just make sure people understand that you do BOTH. Back in the early 90’s (before youtube) we did a cable commercial that had action shots of us doing mid and hi-rise… and the copy was something along the lines of “if we can do this… just imagine what we can do for your home!”
Good luck! 
As for the “how did it happen?” I’m not sure.
20 years ago you could slather the scary dangerous angle pretty thick but nowadays anyone can get certified and trained in a hearbeat and safely cleaning big buildings is now easier than ever.
The mystery is dwindling, and so has the price tag unfortunately. That would be my guess.
As far as specifics, I bid 3 years ago on a 4 building complex. One 11-story, two 5 story’s, and a 4-story. A lot of glass on 3 of them and tons of tedious glass on one of them. I bid them at 11k for the package and they almost fell off their chair because they could all of them for far less than half of that with their current guy.
I bid 30 story buildings too, same issues.
No thanks. So I decided to let them keep the garbage high-rise.
I cut a deal to refer them all to a local competitor for a 10% finders fee but of course he never paid me a penny after a year of forwarding a whack of referrals. Oh well, who cares.
It’s a segment that carries bragging rights for window cleaning business owners but very poor profits and tight margins, as well as considerable risk.
Very similar to why so many window cleaners are willing to clean car dealerships for peanuts.
“I clean that amazing BMW dealership…”
What they don’t tell you is that they earn $25/hr cleaning it.
Again, garbage. Lots of it out there.
But I digress…
People take a much more pragmatic approach to things than they used to.
Uhhh…uhhhhh…am I stoned?
No, but the building manager would like you that way.
In most urban centers, the high-rise market is not worth the effort. 20 years ago you could make a killing on high-rise, but not anymore. You can make more money on the ground, doing low-rise commercial and residential.
And remember that I have nothing to gain by telling you this. I’m only trying to help you.
Kevin
You can still make it, the industry just needs to gain back some of the respect and lore it and other similar industries have lost big time.
Miami’s big, no one would disagree. I simply wanted to give my suggestions some helpful perspective.
He’s not looking for perspective or advice Kevin. He’s only looking for attention.
There is a reason why this thread has almost 2,500 views, and nearly 100 post.
He seems to post every week or so to keep the attention directed towards him.
Sad really. People have given him great advice-- the only thing he does with it–is ignore it.
Perhaps, Nate. You might be right.
Daniel: A few things stand-out to me on your website.
You bad-mouth you competitors. There are typos. It’s a bit wordy.
