Hi
Ive just started out and wondering if any tips out thier for organzing a round, as you dont want to be driving around here thier and everywhere wasting fuel, I have canvassed certain area's and booked them all in so im in the same area, which is working so far.,
whats a simple way of building up from stratch? do you do one area, then the following day do another area within the same 2 miles radious, then as you expand do outside areas.
How did you do it when you started off? did you canvass every day and the ones you got do the following week.
cheers
It probably is easier to organise at first anyway due to the gaps.
Until about three years ago (I've been going 20 years), I would do all the work in one area then do all the work in the following area. Each area can take one day to a few days. I work it so that the next area I will be working in isn't far from the current area. This means that if I finish in an area half way through a day, I don't usually have to travel too many miles to start in the next one. However, in recent years I've had to alter things a bit. I've been getting larger (by my standards) commercial jobs where the cleaning intervals may be different to my domestic round. Therefore I've had to do more mileage to service this. Also, I have a couple of areas where the domestics are done quite rigidly on a 6 weekly rota - even if it means breaking off elsewhere. I don't normally supply this sort of service so I make sure that it's worth it for me.
However, if you are mostly domestic, for now try to make sure that all the work is on the same frequency interval. Failing that, ensure that the less frequent customers will be visited every second time in the area - so that you don't need to visit an area again just for a couple of houses halfway between your normal visits. You may want to charge a lot more for less frequent customers in order to discourage the practice.
I think it's important to acknowledge that you can't always give a customer what they want AND run a business in the most economical manner. Something usually has to give. It may mean that as you need the work, you may be prepared to be pulled out of the sequence that you would prefer (for now anyway). It may mean losing a customer as you can't viably supply what they want. Or it may mean that a customer needs to settle for a service that isn't totally what they like but they'll take it anyway.
It's more important to get this about right these days due to the soaring costs of running a vehicle.