[blacksheep]

hi guys & girls, As you all know gave my notice in ,working  up untill dec .Starting to worry slightly, on what i have done. Wanted to jump streight into it after xmas.Iput my name in yell and sent out 50 letters to factorys in my area not a peep yet! bumped into a girl i used to work with for the company i used to work for ,she is still there,but getting worried the guy has lost more then half of his contracts and has girls covering 3-4 factorys. He only pays £4.85 cant get staff she said ,i am hoping its because of wages and not some else on the patch  ,theres quite a bit of competition around here i have found out ,my fault thought i look into it throughly.  not enough it seems, just looking for one small office job to cover me till i finish a bit afraid to advertise to much in case it goes the other way and cant handle it, i feel like a chick ready to break the shell, last night i was listening to the inland rev guy while looking at the floor thinking it needed stripping and  seeling was it a real wooden floor or karndean its karndean.then suddenaly thought do i know enough!! guys i think i have got COLD FEET BIG TIME.bit late for second thaughts

[*Chris Browne]

Hi Blacksheep
i was in the same position you are in now 18 months ago, it does get scary, i started one week before xmas! is that mad or what? on my first day on my big adventure my car broke down on my doorstep, i thought someone was trying to tell me something, 3 months later the first client i got went bump and we havnt been able to trace him since, then we had a cash flo problem, the money was there but it was not in my account (slow payers) it was touch and go wheather i could pay my staff of 8 but i did it somehow by robbing peter to pay paul. I have many stories like this and i think the vast majority on this forum will have experienced something close to the same, But ask them if its worth all the hassle and i'm sure that most if not all will say yes we love this business.

chrisl

[Ian Gourlay]

Blacksheep,

There are people more qualified to advise you than myself.

How good are you at Sales


I do not think 50 letters is going to get you very far.

CMS wrote an excellent piece on getting business.


It might be worth putting that into practice.

It appears you are concentrating on Contract Cleaning?

Perhaps you would find it more profitable to have a mixture of Domestic and Contract.

Good Luck in what ever you decide it not easy


Regards

Ian

[Jan K]

I wouldn't touch contract cleaning down here as there are so many competitors in that market. I have gone purely for domestic as it is an exceptionally untapped market. I do not have many competitors at all and some of them have even gone down the pan since I started a little over a year ago.

I spent 9 months researching, marketing, attending courses, putting together a business plan BEFORE I launched the business in its own right, but was working as a cleaner during that time!

I have taken the whole business venture very slowly and even tho I am not making any profit at the moment, I have broken even this year and managed to pay all the bills (and on time).

I swear by Yellow Pages/Yell.com for bringing in custom...........I do get referalls now, but mostly work comes from the 2 aforementioned sources!

As I have said all along, staff problems are my worst bugbear, turning away Clients is only done as a last resort or if they live too far out of the travel to work area for my Cleaners and I.

I already know my business could make a fortune for me, but without the staff......well!

Hang in there, Blacksheep, it will happen and as long as you have faith in yourself and your business, you will make it. Make sure you have done all your homework, and constnatly research and keep an eye on your competitors and how they are doing, and also your market....

Good luck and keep at it!!

Jan

[blacksheep]

thanks all,may be should not have put my thoughts down on this forum. when i get a bit twichy, i seem to come across as giving up i am not just a bit excited and nervous. cant back out now nor do i want to,but i think i should try and get 1or2 houses to clean to start me off,really did not fancy going down that road. purly because i have no experience in domestic, but how hard can it be! not the work i know it ard so dont all come back and have a dig.just dont know what entails in the diffrence between a spring clean v a basic domestic clean or one off clean,they got to be different, going to look through this forum see  what there is mybe put my bus card in local shop see what happens. I think its time for a kit kat moment :

[CMS]

CMS wrote an excellent piece on getting business.


For your benefit, I'll reprint it................





OK..........this is how I do it. Firstly, don't bother wasting your money advertising. In 24 years I have never won a contract through advertising. You MUST walk the streets and 'knock on doors' but I have a strict method of doing things.

1. I go to a reception and say this (word for word) "I work for a cleaning company and we'd like to do your daily cleaning. Is there anybody I can write to initially about this?"

Now then, let's look at what has happened here. Firstly, the receptionist would have been on her guard because she has to act as a 'goalkeeper' and keep the reps away from the decision maker. Then as soon as you say you want to write she starts to relax and you don't have to say any more than you have already said (don't spoil it by trying). I would stake my life on it that within thirty seconds she is offering you a compliment slip with the decision makers name on it. Put it in your pocket and move on. Total time less than a minute.

2. At the end of a day walking the streets you should have in excess of 100 compliment slips, in fact you can get that in 3 hours. Send an introductory letter to the decision maker on each compliment slip (a good mail merge/database manager like Act! can do this). You must keep it brief; just a short introduction, say why you are writing (that you would welcome the opportunity to quote) and, most importantly, that you will call him in a couple of days to make arrangements to visit. And make sure that you do.

From 100 compliment slips you should get the opportunity to quote for 10% of them. I can convert half of these into contracts but I've been doing it a lot of years. If you work on a conversion rate of 10% of your quotes you should get 1 new contract a week (100 compliment slips = 10 quotes = 1 contract).

You must keep collecting the compliment slips, maybe 200 a week then you will have a constant 'pipeline' of intro letters/quotes/new starts. But remember, as soon as you stop collecting compliment slips the pipeline will dry up!

Also, make sure you maintain your database properly. As has been said before, keep a record of 'renewal dates' etc.

Now I'm going to tell you about something that I do that I bet no-one else on here does.

I presume that like me you will keep your quotes on disk somewhere.

REQUOTE EVERY THREE MONTHS! - automatically whether they have asked for it or not. You can knock up a short covering letter to say that you are requoting incase the clients circumstances have changed.

You MUST maintain your collection of 100 compliment slips a week which will give you 10 quotes a week. After three months you will be sending out 10 new quotes a week PLUS 10 requotes that you did three months ago. After six months you will be sending out 10 new quotes a week, 10 three month old quotes a week and 10 six month old quotes a week.

The Conversion rate is less on requotes but it does happen. Your original quote may have been declined BUT three months later it could land on a guys desk when he's had a really crap day with his cleaners.

I used to convert 50% of new quotes and 10% of requotes.

BUT KEEP THAT PIPELINE OF COMPLIMENT SLIPS GOING - IT'S A NUMBERS GAME. IF YOU DON'T GET THE QUOTES IN YOU WILL NEVER GET THE BUSINESS IN.



Good luck.

[DP]

Hi CMS

Your post on this subject is great, I saved it from the last time and have kept it ever since. That is with the exception of the first paragraph, sorry and all that but although you may have never won a contract from advertising in 24 years, there are plenty of people who have, me included.

Although your way is a great way (and with respect) its not the only way and when you don’t have a big brand name and lots of support, advertising can act as a crutch to the small company bringing both substance to the business and confidence to the customer.

The only problem is when you get it wrong, there is nothing that will empty a bank account faster and the key is finding the balance.

Nevertheless this is an excellent post and I’m sure that anyone who tries it will see the benefit.

[blacksheep]

thank you cms for going out of your way to rewright this peice, i have took your advice on board from the last time you wrote this and printed it off! i will put this to the test after the week end and let you know what happened and will leave a couple of chocs as a calling card regards blacksheep, and thanks to all who replyed

[CMS]

DP...............How can advertising bring confidence to the customer? I would really appreciate your views on this one. Most of my Clients would rather I spent money on cleaning their building not on expensive advertising.

Blacksheep...................thanks for your comments. Forget the chocs!! Cheap gimmicks don't sell cleaning!

[sonya]

Hi Blacksheep and the rest of you guys,
Its Sonya here. I was so nervous when I first joined this forum you guys will remember "No turning Back" I just found it so hard to get my head around the transition, going it alone was frightening but after reading CMS & Timbobs posts, I said to myself look woman get your b...side out there and let your presents be known so I did. I wasn't going to target domestic clients at first but decided that I could use my past experiences to bring in regular work. I posted my first 600 letters in my towns more affluent areas and on the commercial side walked the streets like a trooper. Every estate agent, office block, building site and more! And again as CMS has said once you get your leads chase them up, offer them free quotes I have done so many quotes now that my confidence has rocketed. I have 4 estate agents on the books 2 of them are giving me regular work one job is a builders clean on 3 flats that they are selling on behalf of their client. I have some more work from property developers too and a long term office cleaning contract. I'm not going to go on but You can do it black sheep,  they do say it's good to get cold feet and feel alittle nervous in a weird sort of way it adds to the excitment of self employment.
'Go get um' GRRRRRRRR.........!!!!

Sonyaxx
P.S going to hit the road again tomorrow let you know how I get on.

[blacksheep]

hi sonya,did you have another person cleaning with you or were you on your own

[CMS]

Well done Sonya. There really isn't any substitute for knocking on doors you know.

And the other advantage of this is that you get to quote/clean only the buildings that you want.

In the early days it really used to p**s me off to make an appointment over the phone and to get there to find it's not worth having -very small, miles from anywhere etc.

Identify the work you want, nice carpeted offices, access by keys, 5 days a week.....................then go in and tell them that you want to do their cleaning. It really is as easy as that.

[sonya]

Hi Blacksheep,
I am working with my sister at the mo. I have an Appointment with the job centre to recruit 4 new staff to be put together in 2 teams. My problem is I seem to have more contracts to fufill than my budget allows, and I have just landed 2 new contracts last week just by hitting the streets I am under pressure and might have to team up with another company to fufill a large builders clean. I don't want to say no completly to this contract as I could really do with the reference, but we'll see.
Go get um BlackSheep........
Sonyaxx

P.S Thanks CMS I'm having a great time on the streets and clients are also refering me so making my job easier. Cheers Mate heres an online pint

[blacksheep]

I get this BIG smile on my chops when i see another person taking off well done im going to start shifting my arse soon, well as soon as i save up for my ins cover but tomarrow is my day off so i am going to give cms advice a go and hit the streets just hope its not ping it down

[sonya]

Blacksheep, Hi its Sonya how much is your insurance cover? Might be able to get your costs down! every little helps and all that...

[CMS]

Take a look here......................

http://www.insuredrisks.co.uk/index.do

[blacksheep]

i looked on there its about £500 thats with contract works i am assuming that means if a client leaves me high and dry with staff to pay also i was covering if i need to hire a scrubber/dryer. i also not sure about getting ins before i get a job, which means i would be paying for ins with no income, and if a quote is accapted the client will want to see ins cert, and i really dont want to let them know there my first job and could they wait till it comes through

[dustdees]

Blacksheep,

I had a trade start date.

I thought start trading 1st July 2005, get your quotes in, and make sure you know what you are covered for,get your jobs booked in advance to begin with. THEN, phone up your chosen insurance company to begin the policy the day you have your fisrt clean.

You job start 1st OCT 7AM then phone ins company 31Sept to commmence policy at 12am 1st Oct!!  Worked for me.

[blacksheep]

hi ya how you feeling to day

[DP]

 CMS (sorry just got back to this one)

DP...............How can advertising bring confidence to the customer? I would really appreciate your views on this one. Most of my Clients would rather I spent money on cleaning their building not on expensive advertising.

Money on cleaning buildings instead of advertising! That’s like saying "I’m not buying any wheels for the car, I’m gonna spend it all on petrol instead". 

Do you really think that customers buy their products or services without any confidence at all. Unless you are saying that the millions of people who respond every day to some form of advertising or another - don’t exist  - what makes them do it? I don’t think even you CMS can be everywhere otherwise I must have got my customers by default, lucky me you were busy that day.

From deciding the size of company to their location/products/service/substance/accreditations/payment terms etc etc, of which every aspect gives them the confidence to make the call feeling they are contacting the right people for the job.

From the humble business card to the million dollar TV campaign, be it Branding or Marketing all are designed (either in part or full) to inspire the confidence to buy.

Where have you been for last 20 years CMS, don’t tell me collecting compliment slips I bet.