Tough canvassing

[Danfire]

Canvassed a road today where a previous crew of cleaners have dropped all of their customers....From what I can make out they were unbelievably cheap (big 5 bed detached places with conservatories for a tenner)....most people I spoke to said they never cleaned frames....spent my afternoon trying to convince folk that £30 is closer to the going rate....had a Greek looking woman tell me she would pay £15 for me to do glass and leave the frames....to my shame I agreed, think I will probably back out tell her I don't want to risk damaging my reputation.

 

[Alien Human]

Hats off to you for getting out there to drum up new business.......as challenging as it was. Keep going fella :thumbs:

 

[adamangler]

demoralizing when that happens, why i dont like canvassing.

 

[Ant]

A tenner! Lord above! No wonder you had a job convincing them! You did bloomin well getting them though :thumbsup:

Yeah watch out for them bubble n squeaks, always up to their tricks /emoticons/tongue.png

 

[boarcity]

everyone knows the recession has gone now so dont ever go in low now on pricing. iv noticed that a lot of windies quitted just as the recession ended which means theres loadsa work going begging

keep us posted on that Greek

 

[adamangler]

cant understand why anyone would quit. maybe sell up to do something else or go into another business but quit? dont think theres ever a need to quit you just have to try harder, if you devoted all your time to knocking and cleaning its almost impossible to fail.

not that i do lol, but if i had to i would, failure isnt an option for me put too much into it.

 

[Danfire]

I've got a theory...new, desperate cleaners go in way too low to quickly generate a full order book...once they've started they realise what's involved and instead of having that awkward conversation and telling existing customers they need to double or triple their prices they take on new work at a realistic rate and the original, underpriced stuff gets dropped.

 

[adamangler]

Tis true dan, if you need the work you need the work but it must be a pain to build a full round cheap then have to basically do it all again to get better prices.

 

[rugbywolf]

Canvassed a road today where a previous crew of cleaners have dropped all of their customers....From what I can make out they were unbelievably cheap (big 5 bed detached places with conservatories for a tenner)....most people I spoke to said they never cleaned frames....spent my afternoon trying to convince folk that £30 is closer to the going rate....had a Greek looking woman tell me she would pay £15 for me to do glass and leave the frames....to my shame I agreed, think I will probably back out tell her I don't want to risk damaging my reputation.

Are you trad or wfp? You don't have to clean the frames, it's only something that's come about in recent years. It would have been an 'Extra'. I remember when doing the sills was an 'extra'.

 

[Dave B]

In this climate i think you do need to do frames and sills everytime as you want to be better than any possible competition

Imo reputation is everything in this game

 

[rugbywolf]

In this climate i think you do need to do frames and sills everytime as you want to be better than any possible competitionImo reputation is everything in this game

Yes, that's fair enough daveyboy1, but most people are concerned about the cost of things, and £30 to £15 is a big difference.

 

[boarcity]

been my experience that few people will pay top dollar for long ,even if youre doing a top notch job . this year iv had a few top dollar jobs cancel with all manner of excuses but the truth is they couldnt afford the hit in the end. they search [and eventually find] a lower pricer windie somewhere

 

[Dave B]

It is a big difference but who would double the price just to wipe the frames over quickly..after the initial first clean it takes a couple of seconds more to wipe the frames with sill cloth and wipe sill after

They don't actually need scrubbing

 

[Dave B]

Wfp is even easier as you clean the frame with the glass..don't see where all this extra cost comes from

 

[Tuffers]

been my experience that few people will pay top dollar for long ,even if youre doing a top notch job . this year iv had a few top dollar jobs cancel with all manner of excuses but the truth is they couldnt afford the hit in the end. they search [and eventually find] a lower pricer windie somewhere

That's one thing to consider from custy's point of view. Do I pay high end price or low end price? After all most don't clean the internals, so wouldn't be able to tell if the windows had been cleaned or not. I think for some customers it becomes a chore having to fork out x amount a month. You gotta keep em sweet. Window cleaning rounds have an ever revolving door, that's for sure.

 

[boarcity]

it took me several yrs to learn that as long as you are constantly marketing your biz theres no need to worry cos new work is coming in all the time . in the early yrs of my biz i made the classic mistake, busted a gut each Spring on marketing but then backpeddled and did nowt later in the year

Marketing doesnt have to mean trudging the streets every day doorknockin [altho good to do it now n then] - marketing can be something as simple as making an effort to engage with passerby folk when out on the street working , or 5 minutes on twitter, or asking each and every customer have they any friends/relatives who may be intrested

by doing this you can confidently pitch your prices on the high side knowing that even if they dont bite theres more many other new enquiries coming thru , instead of pricing low out of desperation cos nobody has enquired in ages

 

[Danfire]

I do both trad and WFP...I don't canvass much but this was a call to a cul-de-sac that I don't clean at the moment...did the door knocking so I didn't have another road with just one house to clean, I have a few too many like that and I'm always meaning to canvass the others but never have the time...I think the frame cleaning discussion's been done to death already, I always do it and wipe over doors as well...all my canvassing is going to be tough going as I'm pushing the rates as high as I can, getting some shocked expressions but I'm guessing they never got their 800k houses working for minimum wage.

 

[peter rogers]

i would never do glass only **** that

 

[boarcity]

i would never do glass only **** that

the biggest firm in my area does glass only. frames are an extra,and a pricey one at that. iv always thought how wise this is, think how much arm effort is saved for starters .

i fell into the trap that a lot of newbies do,thought id include frames for free to get me a grateful round ,which i spose it did

i now make no mention of frames and sills included on my website,altho still doing them i dont want a customer bleating on my lads missed a sill if its being done gratis . you can only cow-tow so much,or you end up being bullied . i fight back now

only yesterday i had a neybour of a customer come over tellin me to tell my lads to remove their hoodies as "its threatening"

i replied theyre ordered to wear hat or hoodie at all time to avoid sunstroke. "grrr well,theres not much sun today, get them to remove them "

fookin busybody

" i heard that "

did you?, well F OOK OFF ! ok?

 

[Ant]

Trad Maintenance clean

Butter up window

Wipe around frame

Blade off glass

Wipe sill

Job done. Easy, with Little effort. Be a p1ss take to ask for more money cos I lightly wiped round the frame, as for the sill, well I've just bladed dirty water on to it so can't exactly say to custy, if you want me to wipe that dirty water off your sill, it'll cost ya!

 

[Ladder Lew]

In this climate i think you do need to do frames and sills everytime as you want to be better than any possible competitionImo reputation is everything in this game

lol its cringe worthy to think people expect others to pay more for cleaning the whole window. Thought we were window cleaners, not window glass cleaners, give them a set price for the window unless youre a WFP kinda guy /emoticons/tongue.png and can't do the plastics properly. Cringe again, I was out canvassing yesterday for the first time, although I was told there were two cleaners already in the area, neither of them did the sills or frames which were black. Still picked up 2 off one street and know the others will follow suit with my quality of work