New housing Estates

[Splitpin93]

You may all hate me for restarting an old thread, sorry if this is inconvenient.

Do this guide still exist or have you given up on providing this? ?

Take Care Guys

 

[spruce]

We have had a few new estates go up over the years within a 10 mile radius of us.

This is just my opinion.

We found that every cleaner sees a new housing estate as virgin territory, especially newbie cleaners who are desperate to grow their round. We canvassed a new build estate in the early days and just struck it perfectly right; (customer's comment. He said that they had had lots of cleaner's door knocking but it was too early.) The council had just finished laying tarmac and people saw that as the end of the build and they could now expect their clean windows to stay cleaner longer. We probably got 50% of the estate. But over the next year we lost most of them due to them over extending themselves financially and being unable to afford our clean.  But we did retain a nucleus of good customers we still clean today.

So by all means canvass but do expect a higher than normal drop out rate. Also expect a lot more competition. Established window cleaners see new build estate as a way of getting new compact work with the background of dumping some of their old work.

Pricing is another factor. Newbies also tend to either quote too low or too high due to inexperience. Or you get the cleaner who promises to undercut every quote because he sees it as a good means of getting lots of business. We've had that as well.

We've had a new estate go up next to the estate we live on. The builders are a well known national housing company who have a number of house builds on the go atm in our region. Their show house windows were all cleaned by a national cleaning company for all their estates. The estate build is now finished and we no longer see this window cleaning company around here. But they still clean the show house windows on another house build estate.

We have 2 cleans on this new estate, both were customer requests. I didn't canvass the area. We have had a couple of walk ups even although there a cleaners working the estate I have never seen before. I have a full schedule so I didn't take anyone else on.

 

[Iron Giant]

Just get out and canvass that's the way forward, I have picked up 100's of custys over the years on new builds and some have been with me over 9 years I have only had a few messers over the years and just last week I had one that has been on my rounds over 2 years wanting to skip till spring and she mentioned there is other cleaners cheaper than me nut that's just how it is I told her, 

A lad I know has gained 100's of houses and in the last 3 years and has gone from working on his own to needing to have another lad with him, he knocks every single house as soon as they move in. nowadays building work gets dragged out over years and the final layer of tarmac on one estate I do still isn't done as the estate is still growing over 9 years later, 

The difference between me and him is I am happy working on my own and don't want every house I let custys come to me through recommendations and I want them all on direct debit. He wants as many houses as he can get and is a workaholic also he still does a massive amount if cash collection and they clash the work out and no doubt do over 60 houses a day as he works from first thing till after 5pm cleaning. I also know he is a bit cheaper than me and doesn't charge double for first cleans, people will jump ship over £1