Do what you've always done, get what you've always got!

[P4dstar]

11 months ago I became a full time window cleaner. At the time I had 45 customers. Here I am a year on and I have 275-280 customers (Too much effort to count them all nowadays) a few guys on here have told me how amazing this achievement was etc but in all honesty I missed the targets I set myself.

I plodded through the winter. I decided to focus my efforts on organising my round and getting things in order through the winter so come March I could concentrate on growing the customers etc. I have set myself some pretty tough targets, wanting to get 210 net customers by the start of winter, This would take me to 450 total customers. I had a good look how I plan to do this, searched loads of options up from canvassing to Lead generation and a few obscure ideas too. Then I got to thinking, i'm looking for something new and I don't need to. Last year was good, I built a lot from nothing. If it wasn't for the lack of organisation I could have pushed on and hit all my targets.

This same week a year ago I was out delivering leaflets with a friend. We did it with the yellow pages so they paid us to do that and we just dropped a leaflet on the top of each one. A fair amount of customers came from that and I followed up with canvassing streets where I got work from the leaflet drop. I advertised on Facebook and got some good results from that.

This years plan....

• Leaflets - I've no time to deliver them myself anymore, certainly not in the scale I did last year. I've got a young chap to deliver leaflets for me, this week he delivered 2250 which has customers trickling in nicely. I reckon last year we delivered 4k leaflets in total so i'm already half way there in a week.
  
• Canvassing - I'm going to knock doors where the work is already or where it comes in as and when i'm working there. I have found canvassing blindly gives nothing but messers, canvassing where I worked last year wasn't too bad.
  
• Facebook - I've stopped throwing my name into the hat on FB posts. Customers seem to do it for me but I feel when I do it I seem desperate. I've started advertising again on the local for sale and discussion groups etc.
  

This is all things I did last year, tweaked a little and I get a lot more regular walk ups so i'm set up to win I think.

What I will say is this is area dependent. There is a distinct lack of reliable windies in the area. Leafleting round here gives me 1-2% return, just 3 miles down the road the return is 0.5-1%. The canvassing seems to be the same no matter where you go if done to the neighbours of where you already work. I no longer consider myself a noob, still pretty new to the industry but I hope the above is of some use to the completely new guys. I thought it would be good to do a ''one year on'' type post but I plan to be so busy this coming month I won't have time to so ''11 months on'' it is haha.

Lastly, thanks for reading the long story by the way, thank you to everyone who has given me support and help along the way. I won't tag people because i'll forget someone but the regulars on this forum are the absolute salt of the earth, I wouldn't be where I am without your help. I owe so many beers out it would probably bankrupt me!

 

[Part Timer]

That must be your longest post without a rant ?.

Well done on your growth, very few new business's hit their first year targets, the fact you got anywhere near yours is credit to your hard work. 

 

[P4dstar]

That must be your longest post without a rant ?.

Well done on your growth, very few new business's hit their first year targets, the fact you got anywhere near yours is credit to your hard work. 

Thanks mate. You were right up the top of the list of people I wanted to thank. I do love a good rant though haha

 

[Part Timer]

Thanks mate. You were right up the top of the list of people I wanted to thank. I do love a good rant though haha

Buying me beer will bankrupt you  :beerchug:  

 

[P4dstar]

Buying me beer will bankrupt you  :beerchug:  

Buying you and Garwood a beer would bankrupt my entire family haha.

 

[steve garwood]

You’ve done good mate, well done ?.

You do exaggerate about the beer, not had a drink now for 9 hours 

 

[Part Timer]

You’ve done good mate, well done ?.

You do exaggerate about the beer, not had a drink now for 9 hours 

Bet it won't be another 9 hours before you do though 

 

[steve garwood]

Bet it won't be another 9 hours before you do though 

1pm. Love Sunday lunchtimes with roast spuds etc ?

 

[Chris34]

11 months ago I became a full time window cleaner. At the time I had 45 customers. Here I am a year on and I have 275-280 customers...

Well done, that's really inspiring.  

I started in January/February but I've not been able to get going properly yet, primarily due to lack of funds.  I didn't attempt to get any new customers during the week or so of bad weather and then the following week I had a £550 mot bill.  

I have posted about 350 business cards but I only ordered 500.  Out of that I got 1 job through a call, 1 canvassed, 1 no thanks via text quote and 1 phone enquiry on Friday which I'm waiting to hear back.  Currently got 5 maybe 6 customers through these and friends and family.

I've been taking my time because I am trying to walk before I run with it.  I am busy in the background trying to work stupid things out, like how to use these bloody smartphones (seriously, they are the most annoying phones to use, might get rid of it and get a dumb phone), setting up and using gocardless, working out a pricing strategy that is consistent, setting up files so I can monitor my progress etc

Basically I've been setting it up so that once I feel 'ready' I can just sell sell sell and not have to worry about the organisational aspect of it as that will already have been done, might need a few tweeks but the system is good enough to work with now.

I know that when you're working inside a business then it's hard to see the wood from the trees, everything is a blur, so my theory is to set everything up while I'm not in that situation and then it's a case of just getting my head down, grafting hard and following the plan.

Anyway my plan is to deliver 100 business cards per day with the target of getting 1 customer per 100, so 5 per week.  I will carry out 1 first clean per day followed by my regular jobs, then I will drop the cards off from about 15:00.  This will mean that 500 per week are dropped off.  My target is 25 new customers per month.  If I find that I'm not getting that then I will either tweek the design or drop more cards off each day.  

I put a post up on a buy sell group and got zero response.  I did turn off commenting though so I might try it again but allow commenting.  The reason for turning off the commenting was that I didn't want anybody coming on and trolling the advert.  I've seen it happen to other window cleaners and mud sticks and all that.

My financial situation is extremely fragile but it's nothing new, the majority of my life I've gone without things including food.  The problem is that the lack of money will most likely hold me back.  Today I am getting a list of things to sell to hopefully generate cash which I can then use to help smooth over the lack of money problem.  I've worked out that I need £500 per month to make ends meet (I earn around £800 office cleaning in the evenings).  Anything above £1,300 is surplus to what I need.  I've currently got about £100 of wfp work so £400 short.  Once I'm over the line then I can relax a bit but at the moment I struggle to relax and feel very anxious, this doesn't help when it comes to trying to act confident and professional when quoting.

So that's where I'm at, hoping to emulate what you have achieved in 11 months p4dstar.

And just as I finish, Bob Marley has come on the radio..  ..don't worry, about a thing, because every little thing is gonna be alright  : )     

 

[Hyzer373]

Well done mate, this is inspiring to a newbie, I’d be very happy to get anywhere near that amount of customers in my first year.

 

[P4dstar]

Well done, that's really inspiring.  

I started in January/February but I've not been able to get going properly yet, primarily due to lack of funds.  I didn't attempt to get any new customers during the week or so of bad weather and then the following week I had a £550 mot bill.  

I have posted about 350 business cards but I only ordered 500.  Out of that I got 1 job through a call, 1 canvassed, 1 no thanks via text quote and 1 phone enquiry on Friday which I'm waiting to hear back.  Currently got 5 maybe 6 customers through these and friends and family.

I've been taking my time because I am trying to walk before I run with it.  I am busy in the background trying to work stupid things out, like how to use these bloody smartphones (seriously, they are the most annoying phones to use, might get rid of it and get a dumb phone), setting up and using gocardless, working out a pricing strategy that is consistent, setting up files so I can monitor my progress etc

Basically I've been setting it up so that once I feel 'ready' I can just sell sell sell and not have to worry about the organisational aspect of it as that will already have been done, might need a few tweeks but the system is good enough to work with now.

I know that when you're working inside a business then it's hard to see the wood from the trees, everything is a blur, so my theory is to set everything up while I'm not in that situation and then it's a case of just getting my head down, grafting hard and following the plan.

Anyway my plan is to deliver 100 business cards per day with the target of getting 1 customer per 100, so 5 per week.  I will carry out 1 first clean per day followed by my regular jobs, then I will drop the cards off from about 15:00.  This will mean that 500 per week are dropped off.  My target is 25 new customers per month.  If I find that I'm not getting that then I will either tweek the design or drop more cards off each day.  

I put a post up on a buy sell group and got zero response.  I did turn off commenting though so I might try it again but allow commenting.  The reason for turning off the commenting was that I didn't want anybody coming on and trolling the advert.  I've seen it happen to other window cleaners and mud sticks and all that.

My financial situation is extremely fragile but it's nothing new, the majority of my life I've gone without things including food.  The problem is that the lack of money will most likely hold me back.  Today I am getting a list of things to sell to hopefully generate cash which I can then use to help smooth over the lack of money problem.  I've worked out that I need £500 per month to make ends meet (I earn around £800 office cleaning in the evenings).  Anything above £1,300 is surplus to what I need.  I've currently got about £100 of wfp work so £400 short.  Once I'm over the line then I can relax a bit but at the moment I struggle to relax and feel very anxious, this doesn't help when it comes to trying to act confident and professional when quoting.

So that's where I'm at, hoping to emulate what you have achieved in 11 months p4dstar.

And just as I finish, Bob Marley has come on the radio..  ..don't worry, about a thing, because every little thing is gonna be alright  : )     

Thats how I worked mate. Know what you need and re-invest anything else in the business. New equipment etc etc. When you have a good solid set of equipment then put some away. I think that when people fail it's often because they take every penny from a business. Don't spend too much time working at a steady pace if you wanna get somewhere, too easy to get comfortable. I am so busy with quotes etc that my head is literally spinning, some of these new customers will stick, some won't and i'll have to go again but I know I will get somewhere at the end of it.

 

[RWCleaning]

Respect @P4dstar glad to here you’ve given your all. I wasn’t hardcore enough in the first two years, was still living at home so never had to push myself, wish I did now. I could be looking for a employee now possibly if so. 

Funny enough I’ve just enquired of how much a print & delivery for approx 5/6,000 homes will be from a local company. I’ve never really recorded a % of a leaflet success before. But I’ve never done a drop of this potential size.

 

[P4dstar]

Respect @P4dstar glad to here you’ve given your all. I wasn’t hardcore enough in the first two years, was still living at home so never had to push myself, wish I did now. I could be looking for a employee now possibly if so. 

Funny enough I’ve just enquired of how much a print & delivery for approx 5/6,000 homes will be from a local company. I’ve never really recorded a % of a leaflet success before. But I’ve never done a drop of this potential size.

If its any help at all my leaflets are less than £50 for 5000. There are local companies that will deliver them for £40 per 1000 which I looked at originally. I didn't use them because - They deliver your leaflets with numerous other companies, all have minimum delivery values, every single one I found had someone claiming they didn't deliver them and you have no real way of checking outside of asking existing customers.

I found a lad who is willing to deliver them for the same price. He will deliver them alone although if he decided to contact the local chinese takeaway and deliver them together I wouldn't really be bothered (Told him this)

If all goes to plan the target will be reached by the end of June. It's gonna be a tough couple of months to get there but it's doable. From there I would be in a position to recruit and carry on from there!

 

[RWCleaning]

If its any help at all my leaflets are less than £50 for 5000. There are local companies that will deliver them for £40 per 1000 which I looked at originally. I didn't use them because - They deliver your leaflets with numerous other companies, all have minimum delivery values, every single one I found had someone claiming they didn't deliver them and you have no real way of checking outside of asking existing customers.

I found a lad who is willing to deliver them for the same price. He will deliver them alone although if he decided to contact the local chinese takeaway and deliver them together I wouldn't really be bothered (Told him this)

If all goes to plan the target will be reached by the end of June. It's gonna be a tough couple of months to get there but it's doable. From there I would be in a position to recruit and carry on from there!

Yeh decided to got with it, 6,000 leaflets printed & delivered £380. I’m quite happy with thar. In the area theyre getting delivered I have 48 customers, so the next time they’re due I’m going to explain what I’m doing and would they mind just keeping a eye out for my leaflet and mind dropping me a text when they get it?

I wont ask all of them to do that, just the ones I get on well with & I see next time. That way I can have peace of mind that the leaflets are actually getting posted. Worked out £42 a thousand. Going out end of April/early May. 

 

[P4dstar]

Yeh decided to got with it, 6,000 leaflets printed & delivered £380. I’m quite happy with thar. In the area theyre getting delivered I have 48 customers, so the next time they’re due I’m going to explain what I’m doing and would they mind just keeping a eye out for my leaflet and mind dropping me a text when they get it?

I wont ask all of them to do that, just the ones I get on well with & I see next time. That way I can have peace of mind that the leaflets are actually getting posted. Worked out £42 a thousand. Going out end of April/early May. 

You didn't pay attention in maths... It's £63 per 1k leaflets ?. Still thats cheap man, like real cheap. Royal Mail will charge you 6p per leaflet just to deliver. Most leaflet companies are between 4-5p just to deliver do 6.3p per leaflet is cracking as long as they're delivered.

 

[Iron Giant]

11 months ago I became a full time window cleaner. At the time I had 45 customers. Here I am a year on and I have 275-280 customers (Too much effort to count them all nowadays) a few guys on here have told me how amazing this achievement was etc but in all honesty I missed the targets I set myself.

I plodded through the winter. I decided to focus my efforts on organising my round and getting things in order through the winter so come March I could concentrate on growing the customers etc. I have set myself some pretty tough targets, wanting to get 210 net customers by the start of winter, This would take me to 450 total customers. I had a good look how I plan to do this, searched loads of options up from canvassing to Lead generation and a few obscure ideas too. Then I got to thinking, i'm looking for something new and I don't need to. Last year was good, I built a lot from nothing. If it wasn't for the lack of organisation I could have pushed on and hit all my targets.

This same week a year ago I was out delivering leaflets with a friend. We did it with the yellow pages so they paid us to do that and we just dropped a leaflet on the top of each one. A fair amount of customers came from that and I followed up with canvassing streets where I got work from the leaflet drop. I advertised on Facebook and got some good results from that.

This years plan....

• Leaflets - I've no time to deliver them myself anymore, certainly not in the scale I did last year. I've got a young chap to deliver leaflets for me, this week he delivered 2250 which has customers trickling in nicely. I reckon last year we delivered 4k leaflets in total so i'm already half way there in a week.
  
• Canvassing - I'm going to knock doors where the work is already or where it comes in as and when i'm working there. I have found canvassing blindly gives nothing but messers, canvassing where I worked last year wasn't too bad.
  
• Facebook - I've stopped throwing my name into the hat on FB posts. Customers seem to do it for me but I feel when I do it I seem desperate. I've started advertising again on the local for sale and discussion groups etc.
  

This is all things I did last year, tweaked a little and I get a lot more regular walk ups so i'm set up to win I think.

What I will say is this is area dependent. There is a distinct lack of reliable windies in the area. Leafleting round here gives me 1-2% return, just 3 miles down the road the return is 0.5-1%. The canvassing seems to be the same no matter where you go if done to the neighbours of where you already work. I no longer consider myself a noob, still pretty new to the industry but I hope the above is of some use to the completely new guys. I thought it would be good to do a ''one year on'' type post but I plan to be so busy this coming month I won't have time to so ''11 months on'' it is haha.

Lastly, thanks for reading the long story by the way, thank you to everyone who has given me support and help along the way. I won't tag people because i'll forget someone but the regulars on this forum are the absolute salt of the earth, I wouldn't be where I am without your help. I owe so many beers out it would probably bankrupt me!





15

Should be with CP it tells you how many jobs you have ?, Very well done mate.  

 

[RWCleaning]

You didn't pay attention in maths... It's £63 per 1k leaflets ?. Still thats cheap man, like real cheap. Royal Mail will charge you 6p per leaflet just to deliver. Most leaflet companies are between 4-5p just to deliver do 6.3p per leaflet is cracking as long as they're delivered.

It’s £42 per thousand, plus the cost of printing. 

 

[P4dstar]

It’s £42 per thousand, plus the cost of printing. 

Well that makes more sense haha. Still cheap that mate. I'd be interested to see your results, are they a national company or just local?

 

[RWCleaning]

Well that makes more sense haha. Still cheap that mate. I'd be interested to see your results, are they a national company or just local?

They cover all BH postcodes (Bournemouth) SO (Southampton) & DT (Dorchester) but seem very reputable. I went down there on Monday to meet the guy in person. I guess he can only trust his delivery people as much as I can trust him. We’ll see.

The area I’m doing is maybe a majority retirement area, a little over 6,000 homes, but at a guess I’d say a good 70% are either detached bungalows or detached houses, then a bit of new build closes with semi’s, then a very small percentage of terraces & houses divided into two flats etc.

We’ll see. I’d be happy with a 0.5 definite job return. I guess the problem is some keep your leaflet for 18 months before call don’t they sometimes?

 

[P4dstar]

We’ll see. I’d be happy with a 0.5 definite job return. I guess the problem is some keep your leaflet for 18 months before call don’t they sometimes?

The longest i've seen is 7 months. The bulk will call on the day or over the next 24 hours. A few might trickle in after that but it's a really quick process on the whole. I'm on about 0.5% return so far but have a few quotes to do. On the whole i've always found leaflet customers take time to think it over and tend to be a bit more committed than most.