[paul@ctcs]

Up to now CTCS have avoided domestic cleaning, Today we met with the owner of a local domestic cleaning company who has decided to sell her business.
 She currently has jobs totaling 70 hours a week, she pays her 2 members of staff £5.50ph and charges her clients only £7 to £8ph, she says on average the profit per hour is about £1.50 per cleaner, to me this sounds like a waste of time!!
 If CTCS is to take on this work we would aim to ensure the highest standards with uniformed, police checked staff and a discounted carpet cleaning service (1/3 off).
 My question Is If we decide to take on the jobs how much should we expect to charge per hour without scaring off the existing customers???

Many thanks In advance

Paul
 

[martin19842]

hi paul,

hows life, done much more build cleaning.??

question where is the business??  cambridge??

theis is a conversation that i have had with many different people on here. Peterborough is being charged about £12.00 per hour.  so i would be looking in the £11- £14.00 an hour.  but youve probably got VAT as well on top of that.

the argument is, do you buy an established client base, then whack up the price and frighten the business away, or do you create your own client base in an are that you want.

i agree with you that the chargeing levels at the present time are awaste of time.

regards

martin

[Tim Downer]

Hi Paul
I am not in the Domestic cleaning at the moment, although if the opportunity arose, I would probably consider it very much.

However, if I was offered the same opportunity as yourself, I would be thinking of weighing out the cost of buying the business from this person, against putting the price up to around the £10 - £14 or whatever you decide, and loosing some of the custom!! Will it be worth spending the original purchase price??

However, with the diversity of services you have to offer each client as per your web site, ( carpet cleaning etc ) plus the whole package of police checked and uniformed staff, you will be able to package the whole deal as a very professional company and be able to charge accordingly.

As regards putting up the price an scaring off the customers, if you were to offer all of them a 1/3 discount on their carpet cleaning etc, maybe as an introductory price for staying with you, or clean their windows inside and out for free on the first day only of their home cleaning, it would probably be to their advantage to stay with you for the extra % your are charging.

Only you will be able to decide if it is worth taking at the price offered, and hope that if you do, it goes really well for you.

Regards

Tim

[Jan K]

I am currently in the same position as you Paul, only with a slight difference. I run my own dom cleaning business but am still in my infancy. I am only charging my customers (of which there are 17) £7.50 per hour and paying my cleaners £5.50 per hour. The problem I have been having is getting cleaners!! Anyway the long and short of it is this......I have been seriously undervaluing myself....and am now in a position where I have to raise my prices to £9.00 per hour to justify my existence...in other words make a profit!! Apart from my own Clients who have been with me since before I started the business, I shall be increasing my prices, but I need to give them a reason for doing so. Currently we use all their cleaning products, so I shall let them know that I shall be providing all cleaning products.  I am giving all my customers the option of leaving at the beginning of April, which is when I am introducing the increase, and I am sure I will lose some, but between now and then I should get more customers. Any that leave will be hard pushed to find a similar quality clean for less than a tenner an hour down here.

What I am trying to say is, increase your prices but give your customers something more, or improve your service to them.....most of your Client base will be so used to having their homes cleaned and not having to do it themselves that they probably would be quite happy to pay a reasonable increase in prices. I don't see you have much to lose as you already are in control of an established cleaning company.

Me on the other hand, that's a different matter....I could find myself losing all my customers and then I would be right up the creek. I have devised my letter to my customers and it is sitting patiently waiting for me to have the nerve to send it.....scary but necessary!!

[a55essor]

Hi all

I've just took a job on for a development company cleaned one of he's properties
 it wasn't a builders clean but a domestic, that's what he said, because it had carpets basic furniture in it for the new owners. I charged him £15 per Hr, I've
signed up for more work. by the way he got me through my free ad with yell.com, and this is just 2days into the ad.


kev

ps windows charged extra

[Clean 'n' Tidy]

Hi,

i agree with everyone above. To make any profit out of domestic cleaning you will need to look at charging between £10 - £14. I currently charge £10 but am looking at increasing my prices at the end of march.

Jan,
I did what you are in the process of doing. /i started out as a one man band just doing cleaning for extra cash. I found that that I was geting so busy that I needed to employ start. My starting price was £7 per hour 18 months ago. I have gradually increased that to £10. In the process I have lost some clients but it is one of them things. I still have a couple of clients that are a low arate due to the fact that I do the cleaning for them and alos they have been with me since I started.

Hope this helps guys.

rgds
Kim

[Malcal]

Hi Jan K
If your clients don't know each other then theres no need to put all the prices up by the same amount at the same time (i.e. why do I pay £10 when **** next door pays £7.50 ). So you can put them up one at a time, so no sudden loss of income. In a previous job we put up the price of the lowest hourly rate job each time we got a new client so the turnover and profit increased at the same time.
Regards Mal

[Ian Gourlay]

Paul,

If I read your post correctly you are thinking of buying a customer base that will give you hazzle for £90 a week.

If I was you I would do a few more plugs Or clean an extra carpet.


Personally I would not pay a lot for business but would try to construct a deal which was performance related.

Ie in relation  to the number of customers you can retain charging £10 to £12.

However I think your money would be better spent on building your own client base and also offering this service as part of Your Free Home Audit when surveying for Carpet Cleaning

However I can see temptation of taking over exsisting team and customer base and using this as a means of expansion and charging higher prices to new clients. Using £90 profit as prmo seed money. When you have aquired say 100 new clients start putting up prices to old clients.

But it depends on how good cleaning team is and how long they have been cleaning for current customer base.

[paul@ctcs]

Hi Guys,

Thank you all for your helpfull advice I'm going to ask the lady selling her business If she would be happy to deliver a letter to her customers explaining how CTCS are considering purchasing there current cleaners business , how there service would be improved and what else it would include. The letter would also mention the proposed increase in price, depending on reaction I will hope to make a decision.

Another question would be, would It be normal practise to ask clients to sign a minimum term contract? This would obviously make the business more viable.

Martin19842,
Hello Mate The business is in Newmarket so not far from Cambridge. We have done a few more builders cleans, still only for the one builder but they have some fairly large projects in the pipeline, so this side of business should pick up soon.

Ian,
Plugs


Many Thanks

Paul

[martin19842]

hi there,

Paul

newmarket, and she is charging £8.00 an hour, the amount of money in that place as a whole, really sounds underpriced to me.

cambridge is on around £12-£14 an hour newmarket must be in the ball park

regards

martin

[paul@ctcs]

Hi Martin,

If I could get that amount of money It would be very profitable, But I'm not sure if I would get much joy so I'm thiking £10 ish may be a compromise that may work?
Any idea on obtaining contracts with domestic customers? Or is it the norm to offer a service which can be terminated at any time?

Paul

[paul@ctcs]

This Is what Im up against regarding cost http://www.agmcleaning.co.uk/cleaning_services.htm  This company is in Cambridge!!
I have been sneaky and have called a few local cleaning companies and they all quote under a tenner.
I'm now thinking Its a waste of time!!

Paul

[julieg]

Hello guys,

I've have had very helpful feeback from you guys in the past and as I have just gone through an almost identical process, I feel I should contribute...

* At the end of a hectic first year I had 26 Domestic cleaning clients in Surrey.

* It became clear that we were not charging enough (£10 p hr, we supply all equipment and supplies, insurance and pay staff quite well) and not actually making a half decent profit.

* We considered raising the price for new customers only, but took the view that each slot that remained at the old rate meant we couldn't take on new clients at the new rate !

* So like you, we drafted our letter, but was able to mention providing supplies and registering for VAT as some reasons for price increase.

* we sent letter and waited to see the impact, 2 weeks later we have lost half our customer base.

* We had many calls from clients saying how sad they were to lose our excellent service and how pleased they had been but can not afford the new rates. (which at least shows we were providing a good service)

* One thing I would definately recommend is actually following up all letters with a phone call - and give them the opportunity to adjust the frequency or duration of their cleans to fit within their budget. Also gives you the chance (if they are leaving) to make it clear you would love to have them back if they change their mind.

* Some customers have the odd idea that our cleaners are on minimum wage and we don't have any other costs !!! - so be prepared with answers to these questions when you call.

* Even though you may lose a proportion of customers, it is worth examining the actual impact on revenue, remember you have existing and new clients coming on at the new rates...

* We are currently in marketing mode as you might expect, but instead of taking on any business, we now are working harder to get the RIGHT customers on board - we are confident we can fill our schedules with custmers looking to pay the extra for a reliable, high quality service.

* Watch this space  !!! - we'll tell you how it goes...

Please drop a PM if we can help further...

P.S if your potential purchase of this Domestic cleaning company falls through, and she stops operating or is no longer providing an decent service , a good targeted door drop in the area might soon pick up her unhappy/ex clients ?

Regards,

Julie and Daniel G
   

[Jan K]

Hi Julie!

Well done you 2 for having the guts to do what you know you have to do! I suppose it is almost like starting again. I have decided that I am going to introduce the price increase to my new and exisiting business customers, but keep the original price for my own personal customers! My own personal customers are the ones I forsee losing if I increase across the board.

Hi again Paul!

Don't be put off by that website link.....they are charging £7.00 to £9.00 per hour, but also they are charging between £20 and £50 Agency fees per month!! If you charge £10.00 per hour you will still be value for money........many people are put off by fees (at least down here they are). If you quote a simple hourly rate your customers are going to know exactly what they are paying and exactly what they are getting right from the outset!!

We must all be gluttons for punishment lol!!

[Ian Gourlay]

Paul

I think there is a Merry Maids operating in Cambridge they must be getting higher prices.

If AM are backed by The Princes Trust they are still in Start Up Mode and might not laslt as they need to find lots of clients to Gross 1000k a week

[Derek_Walker]

Hi all

I think you would definately need to be charging anything between £10 to £15 per hour to make any sort of profit. If you are employing staff you will have sick pay, holidays, wear & tear on equipment, running of vehicles, uniforms, insurance, advertising etc. Dont forget that you are supplying a service to clients that are either too busy or just have the money and want someone else to do it.
Cleaning is like any trade, the right clients will expect to pay a reasonable price for the service.
If you charge a low rate you may as well go and work for someone else and not have the hassle.