Work drying up over winter?

[PJ Bullard]

@Cghwindowcleaning Its that old saying, not what you know but who you know. Im want to expand as rapidly as possible. I want to get into real high rise commercial contracts cos thats where the money is. I was speaking with a friend who runs a general cleaning company. He did well before getting into cleaning so had some money behind him. He brought a 5 grand ionics van system plus their longest poles (i think his longest is 67ft) and started advertsing on checkatrade. Now he cleans a fair few schools and offices and some of the prices he quotes are huge, but like he says, they pay. Thats where I want to be eventually.

I guess the best bet is to build up solid repuation first

 

[Mony]

This year we did a fair bit of advertising on our fb window washing page for the first time and mixed it with postcard advertising and I was amazed with the response.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[adamangler]

One thing ive never looked at is commercial, might be worth investigating. I did once send about 200 emails out to locals schools i had spent hours gathering. I only got 1 reply to say no, i reckon most hit a spam filter.

I would imagine canvassing and speaking to the right person to be the way to go with that.

 

[PJ Bullard]

Postcard advertising? Is that posting it through peoples mailboxes?

 

[adamangler]

@Cghwindowcleaning Its that old saying, not what you know but who you know. Im want to expand as rapidly as possible. I want to get into real high rise commercial contracts cos thats where the money is. I was speaking with a friend who runs a general cleaning company. He did well before getting into cleaning so had some money behind him. He brought a 5 grand ionics van system plus their longest poles (i think his longest is 67ft) and started advertsing on checkatrade. Now he cleans a fair few schools and offices and some of the prices he quotes are huge, but like he says, they pay. Thats where I want to be eventually.
I guess the best bet is to build up solid repuation first

Money breeds money, the hard part is getting that initial ball rolling and earning enough to be able to go to the next level.

I have plenty of plans for expansion and moving into more lucrative areas of businesss but will need capital.

 

[Cghwindowcleaning]

All business needs investment and money,you have to spend money to make money regardless of what you see and hear there is no easy route to having a sucsefull business ,good money vary rarely comes easy.

You also don't want to go out and spend money on a load of equipment for it to just sit there.

The big jobs can and should earn you more but can be hard to get most are in contract so dosn't matter what you offer they aren't and can't change.

you can send out thousands of emails and approach loads of companies but the person who picks up the email/post or answers the door normally isn't the decision maker so your efforts can be wasted.

There can also be greater risks with commercial you only have to lose a couple of big jobs for it to have a massive impact a mate of mine lost close to 2k a month when he lost a large contract he had.

 

[Mony]

This year we did a fair bit of advertising on our fb window washing page for the first time and mixed it with postcard advertising and I was amazed with the response.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Mony]

Postcard advertising? Is that posting it through peoples mailboxes?

We did Postcard advertising through a company named Postcard Mania out of FL. They designed, printed and mailed to whatever City we wanted. We generated some good customers through it and have used them several times usually in Spring and Fall.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[peter rogers]

Its picked up for me this week, had 4-5 calls for extras and 4 first cleans from last weeks FB assault. still no where near @StorminNorman level but the extra work this week will cancel out last weeks poor one,
Bumped into a leafletter the other day that does it for £25 per 1000 which i thought was quite good.

To be honest i just want to build a full round now and feck everything else off until im full, too much to remember, too much written on bits of paper, too much shite in my van and sick of driving all over the place. tommorrows schedule, 9am first clean, then drive 20 mins away to another area for 1 windo clean and a first clean at 11, then maybe do another clean on the way to 1pm car valet, then a gutter clean at 4pm. A full day of ******* about for less money than i could earn on the glass in 4-5 hours. its all work and all money but life will be so much easier if i just did windows,

its only took u bout 2 years mate but you have finally clicked on

 

[peter rogers]

Its picked up for me this week, had 4-5 calls for extras and 4 first cleans from last weeks FB assault. still no where near @StorminNorman level but the extra work this week will cancel out last weeks poor one,
Bumped into a leafletter the other day that does it for £25 per 1000 which i thought was quite good.

To be honest i just want to build a full round now and feck everything else off until im full, too much to remember, too much written on bits of paper, too much shite in my van and sick of driving all over the place. tommorrows schedule, 9am first clean, then drive 20 mins away to another area for 1 windo clean and a first clean at 11, then maybe do another clean on the way to 1pm car valet, then a gutter clean at 4pm. A full day of ******* about for less money than i could earn on the glass in 4-5 hours. its all work and all money but life will be so much easier if i just did windows,

its only took u bout 2 years mate but you have finally clicked on

 

[PJ Bullard]

@Cghwindowcleaning totally agree with you on the need to spend money to make money. The art of it is getting the balance right and only buying the equipment once you have enough demand for the services. Thats what Im working on now as Im still using a pure water trolley/pole system. Once I hit my customer target number, Im buying a van mounted system!!! But not until I hit that target which justifies the need for a van mounted system.

The commercial side looks proper lucrative. I imagine there are companies that travel from city to city doing commercial jobs, staying away, absailing and the like - thats where I want to be at in a few years time

 

[Dave B]

The only commercial work i am really bothered about is the softwash/pressure washing side of things

There are enough windies doing commercial so i am doing something different

Within another year i can see windows being the thing my employees do not what i do

Some of the simple jobs i have done lately using chems for roofs etc have been very lucrative

£100+ for a conny roof in under an hour and fascias etc done in quick time

Makes me better money than windows

 

[StorminNorman]

All business needs investment and money,you have to spend money to make money regardless of what you see and hear there is no easy route to having a sucsefull business ,good money vary rarely comes easy.You also don't want to go out and spend money on a load of equipment for it to just sit there.

The big jobs can and should earn you more but can be hard to get most are in contract so dosn't matter what you offer they aren't and can't change.

you can send out thousands of emails and approach loads of companies but the person who picks up the email/post or answers the door normally isn't the decision maker so your efforts can be wasted.

There can also be greater risks with commercial you only have to lose a couple of big jobs for it to have a massive impact a mate of mine lost close to 2k a month when he lost a large contract he had.

I do agree to this one.

Tomorrow morning I am getting up at 6am and travelling 2h one way to get a much longer pole so I can do a job in an extremely posh area to a guy who owns another 10 houses in that estate.

Got a call today from him and have no other options to get the job done. Not charging him a fortune, just 150 quid for gfs and windows on a 5 bed detached, but I know that my investment and time will bring me back every single penny I will spend to get his house done. He runs the estates FB page and is very well regarded in our town. There are more than 200 houses there and no window cleaner ever called since it was built a year ago.

 

[Dave B]

I got in with the woman who runs a local estate community fb page

Did her 2 tennants houses too

Now i have customers in every single road on that estate and am on there at least 3 days a week every week

Fb can really pay off

 

[Dave B]

The good thing is somebody will post on one of the local groups"anyone know of a decent reliable window cleaner " and 8 people will suddenly all post my link

Unfortunately @Adams0211 also has a facebook presence in the same area but out of all the 20+ windies i know in the area we are the only 2 in competition in the whole town and contrary to what people might think we actually chat most days while out and about and will help each othet out on big/ awkward jobs

 

[Adams0211]

The good thing is somebody will post on one of the local groups"anyone know of a decent reliable window cleaner " and 8 people will suddenly all post my linkUnfortunately @Adams0211 also has a facebook presence in the same area but out of all the 20+ windies i know in the area we are the only 2 in competition in the whole town and contrary to what people might think we actually chat most days while out and about and will help each othet out on big/ awkward jobs

I think the key thing with our area is that's it's a smallish, fairly compact but reasonably highly densely populated town.

There's also lots of different facebook groups such as several local business groups, lots of selling groups and different community groups.

I don't know how it compares to other areas but there also seems to be a hell of a lot of people who spend a lot of time on facebook. The woman @daveyboy mentioned above, for example, is always on there and always recommends him. I have customers who are the same. For some reason there seems to be a lot of women with a lot of time on their hands on facebook which is handy for us.

If we lived in a larger town or city I don't think facebook would work so well. We'd have more potential customers but I think we'd have fewer localised groups to advertise on. That's fine if you're happy to be travelling all across the city but I can't imagine many people would want to do that.

I think it's funny that these people see me and @daveyboy regularly recommended on facebook and must think we're bitter rivals. In reality we help each other out, pass each other work and meet up for a chat periodically.

 

[PJ Bullard]

I'd like to see @daveyboy and @Adams0211 have a winding cleaning duel on the main street in stevenage. I can picture it now, squeegees for swords and wound up scrim as a whipping device. I'd pay good money to watch

 

[Adams0211]

I'd like to see @daveyboy and @Adams0211 have a winding cleaning duel on the main street in stevenage. I can picture it now, squeegees for swords and wound up scrim as a whipping device. I'd pay good money to watch

What's a squeegee? /emoticons/smile.png)

 

[PJ Bullard]

I cant spell to save my life...lol

Only kidding. Its good that the two of you are good mates. I chat to all windys I see aswell and am friendly with quiet a few around my way

 

[Adams0211]

I'd like to see @daveyboy and @Adams0211 have a winding cleaning duel on the main street in stevenage. I can picture it now, squeegees for swords and wound up scrim as a whipping device. I'd pay good money to watch

What's a squeegee? /emoticons/smile.png)

I cant spell to save my life...lol
Only kidding. Its good that the two of you are good mates. I chat to all windys I see aswell and am friendly with quiet a few around my way

Don't worry, I wasn't taking the **** out of your spelling. I hate tradding and go out of my way to not use a squeegee.

 

[sam86ni]

Its picked up for me this week, had 4-5 calls for extras and 4 first cleans from last weeks FB assault. still no where near @StorminNorman level but the extra work this week will cancel out last weeks poor one,
Bumped into a leafletter the other day that does it for £25 per 1000 which i thought was quite good.

To be honest i just want to build a full round now and feck everything else off until im full, too much to remember, too much written on bits of paper, too much shite in my van and sick of driving all over the place. tommorrows schedule, 9am first clean, then drive 20 mins away to another area for 1 windo clean and a first clean at 11, then maybe do another clean on the way to 1pm car valet, then a gutter clean at 4pm. A full day of ******* about for less money than i could earn on the glass in 4-5 hours. its all work and all money but life will be so much easier if i just did windows,

You do car valets as an add on? That is interesting.