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Getting Your First Cleaning Business Leads

 

When you first start your cleaning business, you’ve got new crisp business cards, ads that you personally developed, cleaning supplies ready to go and eagerness to start cleaning. However, the success of your cleaning business, home cleaning or commercial boils down to one thing: you need leads.  Without your first cleaning business leads you might as well shut down shop, because let’s face it, business leads equal sales and sales pay yourself. Leads are what successful sales people convert to customers and grow long lasting relationships. If you can successfully convert your cleaning business leads, you are off to the races as they say.

Sounds simple right?

Actually it is pretty simple. Converting your cleaning business leads into customer is essentially your bread and butter of how successful you’ll become with your cleaning business or any other business for that matter.  The place many people get off track is at the beginning, as they don’t even know where to start.

Certainly we can mutually agree on one thing: there are many ways to get cleaning leads. But which ones are most effective? Which require a minimum investment of your time and money? These are some of things you need to think about. Hopefully in today’s post I’ll be able to make the picture clearer en route to gaining some of your first cleaning business leads.

Hand Out Flyers

This is probably the most simplest, least time consuming and least expensive way to gain your first cleaning business leads. When I first started out, this was my bread and butter. It worked well for me because I could create my own flyers and more importantly distribute the developed flyers myself. Here’s how to effectively hand out flyers in hopes of gaining your first cleaning business leads.

  • Develop your own at home flyer
  • Include a few words on why anyone would want to do business with you
  • Don’t forget to include your phone number and any other contact info
  • Hand out your homemade flyers to friends, family members, neighbours etc.
  • For those of you in commercial cleaning, visit small businesses in your neighbourhood during and after work hours.
  • Always carry business cards, and be ready to hand out at any interaction along the way.

FREE Advertising

A website, even a simple design, will place your business name on the Internet, but that doesn’t guarantee that your website will rank high or even display in search results of Internet users looking for the products or services that your business offers. Let’s hope that you either have a website or that you’re in the process of creating one. Having a website is one of the simplest ways to establish online presence. Here’s where you can advertise your new cleaning business online for FREE.

Yahoo Local – One free business listing where you can include your web address, phone number, physical address and add your business up to five different categories.

Google Places – Very similar to Yahoo’s Local where you can add your web address, phone numbers etc..

Merchant Circle – Similar to Google Places and Yahoo Local. It offers the same free basic online listing, but it also allows you to add a picture.

Yelp Canada- Enter you business name, address, phone, email, website URL, up to three categories, and hours.

Kijiji – On Kijiji you can list your print ad for free and up to four pictures. You can customize the ad any way you like. Here’s a sample cleaning services ad on Kijiji.

Craigslist – Very similar to Kijiji in the sense of you listing your own cleanings services under the category services offered. List your website, phone number, address and up to four pictures.

Cold Calling

Cold calling is one of the hardest things to perform successfully.It’s s sore topic for most as most entrepreneurs dislike cold call. Let’s face it, who likes getting doors slammed in their faces. I certainly don’t. It’s demoralizing, exhausting and very counter productive. However, I learned cold calling can be effective by simply doing the following:

  • Plan before you call
  • Seek out a personal connection
  • What can you do for the client attitude?
  • Careful note taking

Direct Mailers

This is a real simple process.However, I’ve never done much direct mailing. This isn’t because I don’t believe that the process is effective, in fact direct mailers are very effective. Friends in the cleaning industry have been very successful with direct mailers. Anyways, I won’t get into details as to why I haven’t done much direct mailers, but instead wanted to share with you on how you can use direct mailers to gain your first cleaning business leads.

So, by now you may be wondering where you’re going to get addresses for your direct mailer? Well there are several ways you can get cleaning leads (addresses) to mail to.

  1. City Directory – Mainly for residential homes.
  2. Online Search - Mainly for commercial establishments.

You can make good use of your local city directory by heading  to the nearest library where it’s kept and making use of it regularly. In case you didn’t know, this book not only contains all the names and addresses of anyone living in your town, but other information about them as well such as household income (in generic ranges only). All you need to do is ask the librarian for the City Directory. The librarian will then probably ask for your ID which they may hold this until you finish with the book.

Pay attention to high-end neighborhoods in your area, then copy the pages with all the names and addresses. Then head home and take the info from the copies and start writing envelopes. After that you just stuff the envelopes with your marketing and place them in the mail. You can include a sales letter with a flyer plus a business card inside. This is a real simple process that works provided you have quality marketing material. Quality will depend on your interpretation of quality, so take your time developing your flyer.

Cold Calling Success With Your Cleaning Business

Cold calling is one of the hardest things to perform successfully. Knocking on 50 doors a day, and only getting two or three promising leads would lead even the most confident person to give up. That’s the downside of sales is any industry, whether you’re selling yourself, your service or a product it can become demoralizing pretty quickly. When I first started out with my cleaning business, cold calling was relatively foreign to myself. I had the marketing background, but selling was certainly not my cup of tea. It took me months to land even a solid two or three leads, but eventually I started to turn the corner and the leads became customers.

After growing frustrated, I turned to some reading and a friend who’s been in sales for as long time in hopes of revamping my strategy. I cut my number of calls down, but spent more time researching and weeding out prospects before picking up the phone.  Here’s what I learned and how I became friends with cold calling again.

Plan Before You Call

One thing I failed at miserably was planning ahead before I made the cold calls. I used to think that by dropping in with a business card would be enough and the business would start to pour in. Boy was I wrong! I realized through a lot of trial and error that it’s not about the quantity, but rather about the quality of the cold calls. Who will you be calling? When will you be placing your calls? These are questions you should answer the day before you make the calls. Since there are many businesses, target a certain section of the city or certain types of businesses. This will help you stay organized and delay your travel time. Since I was employed full-time, most of my in person cold calling took place in the evenings or weekends. The upside to this was that it gave me an opportunity every evening to sit down, block out sometime and organize myself ahead of next day’s cold calling.

Research  Before You Call

This point could very easily tie in with planning before you call, but I wanted to separate it to simplify the process. Researching ahead of your cold call seems pretty tedious, but the success of your call totally depends on how well you arm yourself before the call. The more you know, the better you’ll be off when you walk through the doors. Simply stop do a Google search on the company ahead or even look up the prospect on LinkedIn before you make the call. Even if you’re not going to use the information, you will come across more confident and more powerful when you have information on the other person and their company.

Seek Out a Personal Connection

Whether through online research or during the phone call itself, you should try to find a personal connection with your prospects. Your research might reveal that you share the same view on a mater or have a past connection with the same company. During the call, you also might discover a common interest. Let’s say that your kids and your prospect’s kids play hockey, this would be a great way to break the ice and ease the pressure on both sides. More importantly, it will give you insight about the prospect on a deeper level.

What Can You Do For Your Client?

Never forget this: People don’t care about you, they care what you can do for them. Ask a lot of questions during the call, rather than talking about yourself. Show your prospect that you care and are there to help, rather than just do another pitch like all the other predecessors. Learn about your prospect’s business needs first, so you can more effectively tailor your pitch.

Careful Note Taking

Since you’re likely a start up or relatively new in the cleaning industry – you likely don’t have a proper professional note system on your computer. However, that shouldn’t stop you from taking careful notes after your cold calling session. What works well for me is my notebook. It’s a simple 250 page notebook that I write down all my thoughts, ideas, sales visits, and other notes pertaining to the business. It’s easy to follow, as all my notes are dated and more importantly it’s all within one place. Often this notebook doesn’t leave my house, but anytime I leave the cold call session I ensure to take a business card with me. Generally I make a couple of quick small notes on the back of the card, which I later revisit and transfer into my notebook.

Final Thoughts

Sales calling is never an easy process, but not following any of the above suggestions makes cold calling that much more difficult. Rather than only going up against a potential prospect, now you’re fighting against yourself due to lack of proper research, preparation and planning. Get into a routine of doing the above steps, and soon enough this will become second nature, but more importantly your cold calling success will become greater and eventually the sales will start to flow in over time.

Readers, could you suggest any other tips for cold calling?

READER QUESTION: I’m New and Want to Start a Cleaning Business

This week’s reader question:

Hi Eddie!
How are you? It was inspiring to read your story. I moved to the States from England recently – I reside in Massachussetts and am looking to start up a cleaning company.
Although I have no professional cleaning experience, I have always been a clean freak and enjoy it! And my cleaning is impeccable and I have also been told so on many occasions.
I feel I have the drive and determination to take it up professionally, though I have never had a business.
Just wondering what advice and help you could give to a newcomer who’s just starting out and wants to start a cleaning business.
Any advice would be most greatly appreciated!
Thank you for your time.
Kind Regards.
Reader

This Week’s Answer:

The fact that you enjoy cleaning and are a cleaning freak is an important step towards becoming successful in the cleaning industry, because let’s face it – 95% of people don’t enjoy cleaning and only do it because they have to. The rest of us or the 5% enjoy cleaning because we’re passionate about it, slightly nuts and total clean freaks. That’s why there’s such a demand for cleaning businesses – residential or commercial. Now that I’ve been in the cleaning business for over three years, everything has become second nature to me. Certain tasks that were once a chore, have now become easy and straight forward.

Are You Passionate About Cleaning?

Without passion you can’t succeed, whether you’re planning to start a cleaning business or any other business for that matter. Passion is what drives you, and on those really tough days it’s what makes you understand why you’re in the business in the first place. Far too many people start businesses without being passionate about the subject they’re starting the business within. They focus way too much on the green stuff (money), without much thought on why they’re about to get into the industry. Don’t become one of those people. Be honest with yourself, and asses your reason for wanting to get into the cleaning industry.

Cleaning Industry Has An Easy Entry Barrier

Gaining entry into the cleaning industry is relatively inexpensive and pretty easy. All it takes is your dedication, some home made flyers, cleaning materials and voila – you’re a small cleaning business. That’s why I’ve recommended to many people over time, that starting a cleaning business is a no brain-er. However, at the same time, it’s more about passion than the dollars. I started my cleaning business for under $200, and haven’t looked back since.

Research Before You Commit

I really think it’s important to do you research ahead of time before you commit to anything – especially starting a business. Read as much as possible, take notes, and ask a lot of questions. I’d also highly advise you to get together with an accountant, and see what your options are for taxes within your state or province. Maybe you’d like to incorporate your cleaning business and separate the personal and business taxes at the end of the year or maybe your accountant will recommend you stay small due to projected income you foresee earning.

Here’s a list of articles I’d recommend you read, as they’ll offer you some great insight:

The main reason people fail at starting a cleaning business

Different types of cleaning businesses

6 start-up tips for new entrepreneurs

How to start a cleaning service

How to get cleaning business leads

Marketing Material

You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars on Marketing and promotional items in order to become successful. However, you will need to maintain a sense of professionalism in order for potential clients to take you more seriously. Start off with a logo and business cards. The reason why I emphasize on having a logo designed – your logo will brand your business. It automatically distinguishes you from the rest. Ask friends if they know of any graphic designers and see if you can negotiate a rate to have a custom logo designed for your new business.

The next step I recommend is to create business cards. Again, something that’s important to any business, especially when you pitch your service to potential clients, you can leave a business card with all your contact information. Two websites that create amazing business cards are MOO BUSINESS CARDS and JUKE BOX. For the slightly more budget conscious business cards, check out VISTA PRINT.

Finally, with your logo and business cards in hand, you’re ready to create flyers. For years now I’ve been creating my own flyer’s through Microsoft Word. I insert my logo on top of every flyer, and ensure that there’s a phone number where I could be easily reached.

Sales and Promotion

When I first started, I really didn’t know where to start promoting my business or my services. I think it took me almost three months to land my first client, but with a lot of dedication and perseverance I manged to land my first client. Please give yourself enough time as this is certainly not an overnight process. Be ready and open to talk to anyone and everyone about your business. Here’s what I’d recommend when you first start out:

  • Have business cards ready to hand out at all times
  • Let your friends, family members and acquaintances know that you have a business
  • Send an email out to all your contacts introducing your business
  • Develop a simple promotional flyer, and visit your local grocery stores and libraries to hang them in their FREE ad bulletin board
  • Use websites such as KIJIJI and CRAIGSLIST to advertise your cleaning services
  • Carry business cards with you at all times – in your purse, car and jackets
  • Talk openly about your business – holding back doesn’t get you anywhere and nobody will ever find out about your services
  • If you’re doing residential house cleaning, take a walk within your local neighbourhood and drop off flyer’s door-to-door
  • If you’ve decided to get into commercial office cleaning, visit small businesses with your flyer and don’t forget to drop off a business card

Final Thoughts

Any beginning is difficult. Whether you’re starting a new relationship, job or business – there are certain challenges that you’ll need to overcome. Probably the biggest challenge any new business will face is drumming up new clientele. That being said, keep in mind that it’s all a time process. Establishing your business in the market and gaining sales takes time. Gaining new clientele certainly isn’t an overnight process. It’s very easy to get discouraged and give up,  but if you give yourself enough time, stay determined and keep pushing forward, the results will be unbelievable and your income potential unlimited.

Good Luck!!

Eddie