This is always the slowest month for me. I am very motivated to grow and expand this year and the schedule was pretty slim pickens so I through out a hail Mary pass, an ad for 50% Off and it filled up the next two weeks!
I also have a Blue Marlon on the line! A lady called today and wants a bid for her bosses house of 13000 Sq ft!
I’m looking to stoke this thing over the next couple of weeks and turn it into a bonfire. I have some other marketing ideas to keep it growing. Looking to have a great year! I’m freakin motivated! Obviously 50% Off isn’t great but 50% of $4000.00 is better than 100% of $0.00. Some times you have to do what you have to do to get the ball rolling.
I have a lot of good ideas to implement this year and I am looking forward to executing them! No I don’t plan on working for 50%, I just need a jump start. I have accomplished a lot the last couple of years and I’m looking to flourish this year!
Not sure why I’m posting this lol but it just feels good to not take things lying down but to buckle down and see something good come out of it.
The longer I have been in business the more and more I see that execution is the key to success. How well do you execute?I think that makes the difference lore than any other factor.
We can sit around and think of a hundred ways to clean a window, 50 different ways to keep customers, 25 different ways to advertise but it all hinges on whether or jot we act and how aggressive we are to keep on throwing things at the board and not stopping until we are successful and reach our goals.
Just don’t forget to put on the invoice the full price on top and put 50% off FEB special . Or else you’ll be getting calls all year long asking for the same price .
I don’t know if I could do an offer like you’re doing (not ragging!) but there’s one job we quoted a couple of days ago that the lady seemed a bit iffy on price. It’s in a neighborhood we’d like to do more work in and I’m wondering if knocking off $20-25 would really kill me. It seems like a pretty easy job and work in February could lead to referrals throughout the year. It’s encouraging to see you’re having success and happy with your results. Maybe I’ll experiment just a bit with pricing for this month and see how that goes…
Though we killed it in January at our normal pricing. Then again, winter seems to have really skipped Florida this year. Anyway, good to see you’re booked this month!
You post it because, at least to me, I found your post motivating and encouraging. You’re not bucket bobbing it: you’re hustling for work and seeing the fruitage of it!
I wouldn’t normally give such an incentive but I felt with the marketing vehicle it had to have some punch to get a good response. I was saving it in my back pocket for just the right time. I waited til the last minute to decide to pull the trigger. I made calls to regular customers and those who hadn’t scheduled in a while with a 20% off and got some response but I would rather not sit by and let the next 2 weeks go by without jobs on the schedule. January is a big commercial month for me so it was good but February is always a killer for me. I’m going to start turning it into am opportunity month from now on! Big discounts in neighborhoods I want to target to get my foot in etc.
We always focus so much detail on what kind of squeegee we use and argue over soap. It’s time to nail down the sales and marketing. That’s a huge portion of our business. Many other businesses do large jobs and only have to come up with a handful of customers a year. We have to put anywhere from 1-10 jobs on the schedule 5-6 days a week in our industry depending on how big your company is. That’s a lot of customers to come up with. That makes sales and marketing a huge part of our game and we need to have some game in that department!
I don’t think it was our price she was iffy about…I think she doesn’t trust the windows will be clean if we don’t put vinegar in the water “Doesn’t dish soap leave streaks on the windows if you don’t add vinegar?”
Valid concern with why we spend so much time on squeegees, soap, etc. instead of sales and marketing. Been seeing this sentiment frequently this year @DaveYogi@cactus27@wcs and more. That topic probably deserves to be a stand alone post.
Maybe we put so much focus on those tool and technique items because they are subject to our direct control and because we get such immediate and discernible feedback whereas sales and marketing are fuzzier activities with less direct control and more difficult to measure effectiveness.
As long as youre making some margin its great,on the other hand if you have overhead with no income then break even is fine…so many businesses including ours went into a lowball model to gain market share during recession then raised prices as economy improved. …if clients dont accept and see value in your service next cleaning then move on to those who do. When we started in residential i used to offer free gutter clean with every window job,it worked like gangbusters then evolved into a profitable gutter division
Another thought: I am a push over and do not like unhappy clients. Too often we did work at “special” pricing but the following year they would get our letter/special and want a discount on a discount.
“Doesn’t dish soap leave streaks on the windows if you don’t add vinegar?”
