Gavin,
The best way I've found to drum up work is by building a database of potential customers that you can send out letters to, I have done this for tennis court owners, I have around 500 owners on mine, I send out letters (via mail merge) to all approx every 3 months, so far it has kept me averaging about £650 per week (two to three days) since Feb when I started this business, not enough yet but hopefully with other forms of advertising and additional services I can build up from this, building a database took me most of two months research and typing.
I will be adding gutter vac in Sept and I,m also in negotiations with a national tennis court builder to clean there customers courts in the South West.
It makes sense to set yourself targets (business plan) my target for next year is four days per week averaging £250 per day 40 weeks per year, 40k pa gross, not to ambitious I hope, I would be happy with 20k plus for wages as I'm knocking on 59 with no mortgage.
Regards
Cliff