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Still struggling to get customers

I just take my time and chat away to my customers and do a great job. Every month new customers come to me or tell my customer to do there's. Pressuring oneself for new customers only leads to frustration and accidents. Not worth the hassle, the windows will always be there!

 
I always found its never one thing that gets you customers keep at it get into march things will move more also put tourself on google business listings its free make sure to put pictures on there comes up when people search locally


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Flyers are good but more long term rarely get immediate response but people keep them for months and do ring so keep knocking them out!


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This week will be my first week with the van signed. I will let you know if it makes a difference and my website is up and running. I'm taking it easy at mo because next month it will take off with everyone wanting spring cleaning!

 
Are your prices set right? Are you using Facebook and social media to their full potential? Are you on any local selling pages?


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Patience.. Its my advice! And when you get a certain amount of work , the work comes automatically ,just because youre visible and people start to talk about your service.

 
It can be rather frustrating when you don't seem to get anywhere fast.

A few of us in our area have found leaflets don't bring in much response, but then another cleaner swears by them. The motor trade in general has stopped posting out flyers as country wide they have a too little response rate these days. Some seem to do well with Facebook but as I'm not on Facebook I don't know.

We have found that the most effective for us is door knocking and also networking. I can remember knocking for hours and getting absolutely nothing. Then one evening in summer son and myself went out and canvassed a new residential area and got about 50% of the houses. But if you don't canvass you wouldn't hit the jackpot - a cleaner who has stopped cleaning and left his customers high and dry.

Don't forget to use your existing customers as referrals. After you can done a good job and the customer is happy, ask them if any of the friends and family living close by would like your services as well.

One of our customers got us at least 30 new customers and that lead to further referrals from them. In fact most of our customer base is from referrals. Another lady asked us to clean her mother's flat in our town as the window cleaning pair hadn't been seen for 8 months after they had a partnership split. (We called them Little and Large. Little went up the ladder whilst Large couldn't due to his size so did the bottoms. Little felt he was doing most of the hard graft and only taking 50% of the earnings.) We ended up with 13 houses on that street within half an hour of arriving.

And of course, you can offer your small customer base add on services such as fascia & soffit cleans, gutter clearing and cleaning, conservatory roof cleaning and also add on garage door cleaning. We also offered internal window cleaning but tend to not offer that nowadays.

Don't be afraid to stop the van if you see someone trying to clean their own windows. We did this on several ocassions and got a customer from one of the stops who was with us for about 7 years until circumstances changed.

As @David Ksays, its all about being patient and not portraying desperation when canvassing. It takes time for a rolling snowball to pick up snow.

You have got to be obsessed with window cleaning from now on. Forget your favourite football team and you haven't time to go out with your mates to the pub unless its on a special ocassion.

When you go out canvassing try to look presentable. When someone answers the door, "sorry to disturb you, but I clean windows in the local area and would like to offer you my window cleaning services. Would you like me to give you a free quote whilst I'm here?"  "No thank you, we already have a window cleaner." "Well thank you for your time and sorry to have disturbed you." Then pull a Columbo on the crowd. As you turn to leave then say, "Oh sorry, do you mind me asking what your window cleaners name is?" If its John, then thank them and walk away. When you get outside write that address down with John's name on it. Keep a record of every house you canvass. One day if John stops cleaning, you have a list of his old customers you can canvass. If they answer they do it themselves, then fine, just say if you need someone in the future here's my number. (We have a customer now who used to do his own until he had a heart attack. We did his neighbours each side and often chatted over the fence. We were his first choice when he needed his windows to be cleaned.) 

Don't ask questions that can take you into a dead end cul de sac such as "do you have a window cleaner?" "If they answer yes then you shot yourself in the foot.

 
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You have got to be obsessed with window cleaning from now on. Forget your favourite football team and you haven't time to go out with your mates to the pub unless its on a special ocassion.
I can vouch for that, when you start it has to take over your life until your established, otherwise you end up not having enough work and give up.

 
Generally the longer you stick around the more you’ll pick up. Some people wont hire somebody until they know they’ve been in it a year or two, simply because of reliability worries. Also, a lot of people like to see you’ve got a good rep before hiring you. How long can you drag it out is the question. We were on the brink of going bust after 5 months thinking we’d never get anywhere, our first van died at the same time and we were seriously contemplating packing it in. But then just at that moment the phone started ringing non stop, had a good think, managed to secure finances for a new van, & luckily enough, here we are 4 years down the line still going.


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Desperation is a bloody good motivator.  There is no blueprint, just a jumbled bag of ideas, often they seem not to work. When you are desperate you make them work.

 
We have got most of out customers of Facebook posting our page on the local buy sell swap sites we delivered about 2000 flyers and maybe got 5 customers. We have been set up a year this month and got about 120 customers like I said mostly from Facebook and word of mouth


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Canvassing is the way to get customers!

Only if......your well presented, people judge you by the way you look!

Only if......you speak confidently about your services and yourself!

Only if.....you have good body language and appropriate eye contact!

Only if...they like you!

 
The only consistent method of getting work is to canvas, canvas and CANVAS. Make sure you systematically cover each road too and not waste your time. If a house looks like it has mint clean windows (frames are a great indicator), don't bother knocking just wasting time and will get frustrated. Knock only on dirty looking houses, if they are out drop a leaflet in and take a note of the house number in a pad. Then return at a peak time like after 5pm or on a weekend to all the dirty houses you noted down that were out. It's just about putting the hours on the pavement.

 
leaflet drops etc are fine but you need to talk to customer and let them see you are professional ie dont turn up in tracksuit and hoodie.Nice jacket and trousers tell them what you do. See what they are being charged and if its too cheap move on or just say if you ever want to change let me know.I always bring a sample of pure water and ask them for a sample of their water do a tds test in front of them and let them see the results.Many people dont know what pure water is.

 
leaflet drops etc are fine but you need to talk to customer and let them see you are professional ie dont turn up in tracksuit and hoodie.Nice jacket and trousers tell them what you do. See what they are being charged and if its too cheap move on or just say if you ever want to change let me know.I always bring a sample of pure water and ask them for a sample of their water do a tds test in front of them and let them see the results.Many people dont know what pure water is.


Showing them a TDS test is a good idea.

 
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