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Selling your window cleaning business or a round

Bruce Beck

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8
When it comes to buying and selling a window cleaning business,or a window cleaning round, there are a lot of permutations that may have an impact on the value of the business or round.

Important questions to consider;

The obvious question is what is the monthly value of the business?

This question may appear to be the most important one but is it really?

In my opinion NO!!!

one must consider;

How long has the round been opp-orating for?

If the work has been canvassed as apposed to a round that has been established for many years (some may have been opp-orating for over 20 years) the value must come into question.

E.g. A round that has been canvassed may have an large initial turnover but up to 50% of customers could fall by the wayside after a while.

E.g. A round that has been established for many years, the window cleaner would have built up a valuable rapport, not only, with the customers but, within the community.(example; the customers will be loyal and shun new window cleaners that try to encroach on your round)

These factors can have gross importance and impact on the business.

How compact is the work?

This too has great importance on the value of the round.

to state the obvious, If the work is spread out:

There will most probably be a lot of other window cleaners in the area (other problems and issues can arise because of this. example; your competitor could undercut you or be a megalomaniac and do everything in his being to try and take your customers out of spite).

Your earnings, per hour, will be less as travelling from house to house will be time consuming.

Worse still if you have a team of 3 and over on some jobs you will only be covering the wage bill.

Anyhow any thoughts on this fellas and in your opinion what would you consider a fair price for your business? Also is there a mutual price now that most window cleaners adhere to I.e. 10 times the value?

 
Whatever you can get for it.

I would start mine at 10x and depending how desperate I was for a sale would determine how little I sold it for.

From a buyers point if view its totally different you determine value by what you are wanting for me it would be how long you've had it, has to be wfp,has to be mostly online e payments , doesn't necasarily have to be compact but has to be priced according to according to how compact it is or how much it van turn over per day

 
Back in my day haha, 3x was the norm! I shudder at 10x now, would spend a year essentially working for free, it will make good business sense in some scenarios, but I'd prefer to canvass!

The thing not taken into account is that, that round is never worked 100% month in month out. I reckon 10% roughly is missed due to (work on the house, forgotten locked gates, lost a customer, bad weather etc etc). So really, a £1000 round, in reality may be generating £900 a month. So should be priced accordingly.

Also I think smaller rounds can't go for as much as big rounds. I.e. There's no way I'm paying £1,000 for a £100 round. Yet it's more understandable to pay 100k for a £10,000 round!

Rambling.

 
Profit is one of the main factors you can have a round that turns over 10k a month but if after paying for staff,van,equipment etc your left with only a grand profit then that's not as good as say a round of the same value which takes half the time and cost to service and makes 5k profit.

So many different factors determine the valua and what you can get for work.

 
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