Experienced door knocker looking to make it in window cleaning! All advice is welcome

[Doorknocker]

Good evening from rainy South Wales, I’m door knocker. As my name suggest I’m very experienced in door to door sales here in the UK and abroad. I’ve been in the home improvements business since I left school back in 06 and I’m potentially looking to try something new. I feel blessed to have found this forum as window cleaning is something that I feel my skill set could generate a lot of income in a short space of time.

I guess I’m looking for some friendly advice as-well as maybe exchanging hints and tips with other members on business management and I could help you with generating new sales. Any questions please fire away

I would be looking to hire a cleaner so I can concentrate on sales alone.

Budget wise, I would be looking to go high end without getting silly, I would like my whole business to look the part.

If you guys were starting up and you had the following budgets. How would you spend it?

£1000
£5000
£10000
£15000

I look forward to your replies

DK

 

[Part Timer]

Firstly being a business owner I think that you should know all aspects of your business, including the manual side. It will be very hard trying to price up a big house, or large residential block of flats if you have no concept of time involved in doing it. By all means once established then get others in to do the manual side, but even then I still think going out from time to time is important.
Before answering your questions we need to know your tap TDS and what transport you currently have. £15k won't get you high end of anything if you don't currently have a decent van and a high TDS

 

[ched999uk]

One thing that is a little different when door knocking for window cleaning is that you are hoping the customer is a long term one not just a one off. So while you were selling a one off, presumable, high value home improvement you are now 'selling' a regular service!
As @Part Timer said, knowing the business from top to bottom is a very good idea. Without doing the job how are you going to employ someone to do the job if you can only select candidates that have experience in WFP? You need to be able to teach a new employee how you want the job done and to what standard you want the work done to!
I've only been going 16 months and I'm only now gaining speed! I have a basic formula for pricing but unless you have experience you don't know the little things that slow a job down and cost you time.
In all seriousness I would say start out by buying basic kit (decent stuff, not budget - i.e. gardiners poles and brushes) , if you have a spotless water near then get some barrels and give it a go on your own windows - it will probably cost you less than £500 to give it a try.

By the sound of it you are thinking of canvassing full time and then employing people to do the work. How long do you think you can canvass before you max out an employee? Then you need another employee to enable you to keep canvasing. If you have never run your own business and just worked for others then it's a big change as everything is down to you - logos, accounts, equipment purchase, marketing, managing time, the list is endless.

Hope that gives you things to think about?

 

[JohnDoeWindows]

I don't think you can generate enough work to pay yourself a decent wage and a full time 'cleaner' if you don't plan on working on the tools with a few customers yourself from time to time.

Let's say your employee had 500 customers which he did over 25 customers a day, 5 days a week which is some going - would you make enough to pay yourself a decent wage as well as him and your business overheads? I don't think so but I could be wrong

 

[Nosey]

Ridiculous

 

[Iron Giant]

Budget is nothing if you don't have a clue how to clean a window as standards are everything and unless you know what is expected and how to clean and maintain to a high standard then no matter how much money you spend the business will fail, you can't just build a customer base then stick some spotty faced young un out and pay them minimum wage and expect him to flog his eyeballs out every day

A firm working in my area dad was a long-termer his standards were okay his son got into the business under his dads company name with his own van and his standards were lower than his dads then the son set 2 lads on and let them go out on their own after a few weeks his two lads were worse he soon lost work, I haven't seen them for quite a while now.

 

[spruce]

Good evening from rainy South Wales, I’m door knocker. As my name suggest I’m very experienced in door to door sales here in the UK and abroad. I’ve been in the home improvements business since I left school back in 06 and I’m potentially looking to try something new. I feel blessed to have found this forum as window cleaning is something that I feel my skill set could generate a lot of income in a short space of time.

I guess I’m looking for some friendly advice as-well as maybe exchanging hints and tips with other members on business management and I could help you with generating new sales. Any questions please fire away

I would be looking to hire a cleaner so I can concentrate on sales alone.

Budget wise, I would be looking to go high end without getting silly, I would like my whole business to look the part.

If you guys were starting up and you had the following budgets. How would you spend it?

£1000
£5000
£10000
£15000

I look forward to your replies

DK

He didn't stay long.