[chris turner]

I always thought buying a round would be the easiest growth method, well it is, but damn is it hard work!
Slowly working my way through the 145 customers I bought off another windie, last time they were all cleaned was October/November last year. Every house is so dirty so I'm almost doing 10,11 first cleans a day on top of my other work. It's a killer.
Added to that all the extra planning, adding all the new customers 1 by 1 to cleaner planner, all the phone calls, letter writing, new customers wanting to chat and making sure I keep my old customers up to date..... It's exhausting on my own.
I don't know the town that well that I bought the round in either so I'm having to route plan everything the night before.
For those of you who bought rounds in the past, how long did it take you to settle things down into a nice routine?

[Spruce]

I always thought buying a round would be the easiest growth method, well it is, but damn is it hard work!
Slowly working my way through the 145 customers I bought off another windie, last time they were all cleaned was October/November last year. Every house is so dirty so I'm almost doing 10,11 first cleans a day on top of my other work. It's a killer.
Added to that all the extra planning, adding all the new customers 1 by 1 to cleaner planner, all the phone calls, letter writing, new customers wanting to chat and making sure I keep my old customers up to date..... It's exhausting on my own.
I don't know the town that well that I bought the round in either so I'm having to route plan everything the night before.
For those of you who bought rounds in the past, how long did it take you to settle things down into a nice routine?

About 3 cleans before they started to trust us. We got addresses and prices only, so had to get names and telephone numbers as well.

I was easier for me as I only had about 10 days work a month when we bought this, so I was able to spend time doing it well and learning at the same time.

Their previous cleaners hadn't cleaned the frames for years and did it traditionally. The round was mainly dorma houses and they just used to walk over the roof tiles. We were converting to wfp so it was a new round, filthy and we were wfp inexperienced. Massive learning curve as wfp wasn't that accepted 9 years ago either and in some instances we told them that they could pay us when they were happy with the standard of clean. We had to explain the system at virtually ever house.

9 years ago we also had crap equipment - whippy Unger Aluminum poles with heavy Vikan brushes, 2 Hozelock hose reels linked together with 1/2" garden hose and no electronic controllers - pumps running at full pelt with 3mm brush jets.

One of our cusomers noted that we spent so much time doing first cleans that we wouldn't last long. She didn't last long and we are still working the street and still cleaning her mother in law across the road from her. We still have most of our old customers although some have died. We also got a lot of new business with those first cleans.

Much easier nowdays TBH.

[chris turner]

That's what I was thinking, about 3 cleans before I have the work up to my standard, customers trust and hopefully know the area better so I don't have to sat nav every house!
The guy I bought the round off poled the tops and trad the bottoms, it really shows, justs masses of dirt coming from the bottom frames and from the sills.
Obviously I need to make a good first impression so I'm trying to get the windows as clean as they can possibly be, it's just such a slow process, a little bit demoralising if I'm honest.

Must of been really hard for you spruce having to go through what I'm going through but with far inferior equipment.
I only had a 15 min break all day today, started at 8am finished at 5pm, I'd have to go visit a chiropractor if I was using an aluminium pole for that many hours.

Just have to graft away and get through the next few months and hopefully start reaping the rewards.

[Stoots]

About 3 cleans before they get easier to clean, speak to everyone, get into a routine with those u have to text for gates, know ur way around, get comfy, confident and faster

[Tom-01]

I always thought buying a round would be the easiest growth method, well it is, but damn is it hard work!
Slowly working my way through the 145 customers I bought off another windie, last time they were all cleaned was October/November last year. Every house is so dirty so I'm almost doing 10,11 first cleans a day on top of my other work. It's a killer.
Added to that all the extra planning, adding all the new customers 1 by 1 to cleaner planner, all the phone calls, letter writing, new customers wanting to chat and making sure I keep my old customers up to date..... It's exhausting on my own.
I don't know the town that well that I bought the round in either so I'm having to route plan everything the night before.
For those of you who bought rounds in the past, how long did it take you to settle things down into a nice routine?

The work I bought had been cleaned to a very high standard for 5 years regularly, that was the main reason I bought it. All very compact, well priced work. Its a gamble definitely but hopefully one worth taking. I went out with him and cleaned the work before the handover. Took a few hours to add to my system but other than that relatively straight forward and all the work is on my doorstep.

The work you bought Chris whats it worth per year?

Tom

[Spruce]

I think I did 4 to 6 cleans a day. They were minging. The first clean was frames and windows. I left them to completely dry whilst I went onto the next house and then the next. I then came back with the intention of doing windows only, but many had to be redone and the third clean left the windows spotless in most instances.

I had one downstairs UPVC lounge window that the cleaning water just turned milky. After the third go I bladed the glass off and dried the frames to ensure the clean ended up OK. I dreaded the next clean but it was perfect, no milky runs either. To this day I never worked that out. (It is a south facing window).

I focused on cleaning that estate and left the other work to become a little overdue. We had that work but this new stuff wasn't a given so it needed tying up as quickly as possible. There were other cleaners that got wind that the round was being done by new cleaners using a system that was very distrusted.

There was only one other wfp user in the area and he was slowly converting his customers to wfp. He was still doing mostly trad work. All in all that took about a month of solid graft to get on top of that new round. But once the first clean was done, I just sailed through it next time. Then the complaints started because I left the windows wet, so I started the whole pure water explanation again.


I love it nowdays as we don't need to bother to explain wfp at all. If they don't like the way we do it, then tough, find someone else.

[Spruce]

I always thought buying a round would be the easiest growth method, well it is, but damn is it hard work!
Slowly working my way through the 145 customers I bought off another windie, last time they were all cleaned was October/November last year. Every house is so dirty so I'm almost doing 10,11 first cleans a day on top of my other work. It's a killer.
Added to that all the extra planning, adding all the new customers 1 by 1 to cleaner planner, all the phone calls, letter writing, new customers wanting to chat and making sure I keep my old customers up to date..... It's exhausting on my own.
I don't know the town that well that I bought the round in either so I'm having to route plan everything the night before.
For those of you who bought rounds in the past, how long did it take you to settle things down into a nice routine?

The work I bought had been cleaned to a very high standard for 5 years regularly, that was the main reason I bought it. All very compact, well priced work. Its a gamble definitely but hopefully one worth taking. I went out with him and cleaned the work before the handover. Took a few hours to add to my system but other than that relatively straight forward and all the work is on my doorstep.

The work you bought Chris whats it worth per year?

Tom

Our area has a number of well established window cleaners, so the reason for buying this round was to also get compact work. It wasn't well priced but was quick to get through once I got going. The stuff I was getting and still get to this day are recommendations and are a little all over the place.

We canvassed another estate next to this one and picked up lots of work that was going begging due to another cleaner packing it in. We did that as a knee jerk reaction to the financial crisis in 2008. I worried that if I lost a third of my work due to the downturn then I was going to be in trouble.

It later turned out that we (my son joined in 2008) lost very little and actually gained more than we lost. We have too much work at the moment.

[chris turner]

I always thought buying a round would be the easiest growth method, well it is, but damn is it hard work!
Slowly working my way through the 145 customers I bought off another windie, last time they were all cleaned was October/November last year. Every house is so dirty so I'm almost doing 10,11 first cleans a day on top of my other work. It's a killer.
Added to that all the extra planning, adding all the new customers 1 by 1 to cleaner planner, all the phone calls, letter writing, new customers wanting to chat and making sure I keep my old customers up to date..... It's exhausting on my own.
I don't know the town that well that I bought the round in either so I'm having to route plan everything the night before.
For those of you who bought rounds in the past, how long did it take you to settle things down into a nice routine?

The work I bought had been cleaned to a very high standard for 5 years regularly, that was the main reason I bought it. All very compact, well priced work. Its a gamble definitely but hopefully one worth taking. I went out with him and cleaned the work before the handover. Took a few hours to add to my system but other than that relatively straight forward and all the work is on my doorstep.

The work you bought Chris whats it worth per year?

Tom

Hi Tom. It's around £17000 worth yearly. Most of it is fairly compact although about 1/3 of it is a bit more scattered.
It's all in Woking so about half hour from me.
Iv only just started using cleaner planner so was in the process of adding my customers before buying this round. 280 customers details to manually input and schedule.
Also alot of the custies on this round are 'call night befores' which I'm trying to convert them to txt, pain in the *** having to make loads of calls every evening, especially to new customers who have lots of questions.

[Spruce]

Even if you charge extra for the first clean, which I felt I couldn't do at the time, I always view the first clean as a loss or break even in the best case.

I don't believe in telling the customer that it will take 3 cleans before its right. I would rather do the 3 cleans first (if it need them) so they are easy next time. But that's me. I clean to my standard, which over the years, seems to be higher than most of my customer standards.

[chris turner]

Even if you charge extra for the first clean, which I felt I couldn't do at the time, I always view the first clean as a loss or break even in the best case.

I don't believe in telling the customer that it will take 3 cleans before its right. I would rather do the 3 cleans first (if it need them) so they are easy next time. But that's me. I clean to my standard, which over the years, seems to be higher than most of my customer standards.

As much as I would love to charge extra for the first cleans I just think it would be a sure fire way of loosing alot of customers. I want to protect my investment and retain as many, if not all of the new customers.
I'm expecting one or two dropouts, some people don't like change or would rather choose there own window cleaner. That's there choice but I don't want to loose any through any bad choices I make.
My daily takings are suffering slightly whilst I get the work up to a standard I'm happy with but that's a hit I'm willing to take for a couple of months.
Today I worked my butt off for only 2/3 s of what I normally do but had lots of very good comments from the new customer,  so was worth it.

Even picked up a new one, by accident...
I mistyped a house number on cleaner planner, started cleaning it today. Done a couple of windows then old dear pops her head out of an upstairs window and says ' I think you've got the wrong house love!'
So I went an checked and she was correct, I was meant to be doing 131 not 113 lol
So I went back and apologised,  she said 'oh that's fine, how much do you charge?'.... £** I would charge for this I replied.
She then says ' that's a bit more then my current window cleaner but he's useless, plus your much better looking!' 'jobs yours if you want it'.
I was pretty stunned lol, first time iv picked up a job for my charmingly good looks

[Tom-01]

Even if you charge extra for the first clean, which I felt I couldn't do at the time, I always view the first clean as a loss or break even in the best case.

I don't believe in telling the customer that it will take 3 cleans before its right. I would rather do the 3 cleans first (if it need them) so they are easy next time. But that's me. I clean to my standard, which over the years, seems to be higher than most of my customer standards.

As much as I would love to charge extra for the first cleans I just think it would be a sure fire way of loosing alot of customers. I want to protect my investment and retain as many, if not all of the new customers.
I'm expecting one or two dropouts, some people don't like change or would rather choose there own window cleaner. That's there choice but I don't want to loose any through any bad choices I make.
My daily takings are suffering slightly whilst I get the work up to a standard I'm happy with but that's a hit I'm willing to take for a couple of months.
Today I worked my butt off for only 2/3 s of what I normally do but had lots of very good comments from the new customer,  so was worth it.

Even picked up a new one, by accident...
I mistyped a house number on cleaner planner, started cleaning it today. Done a couple of windows then old dear pops her head out of an upstairs window and says ' I think you've got the wrong house love!'
So I went an checked and she was correct, I was meant to be doing 131 not 113 lol
So I went back and apologised,  she said 'oh that's fine, how much do you charge?'.... £** I would charge for this I replied.
She then says ' that's a bit more then my current window cleaner but he's useless, plus your much better looking!' 'jobs yours if you want it'.
I was pretty stunned lol, first time iv picked up a job for my charmingly good looks

The sun was quite low today maybe she couldn't see properly...

[FRESHER]

What due diligence do you you do when buying a round?

[Walter Mitty]

My only experience of buying work was not good.  A couple of them bumped me for the money.  Also, although this may sound like a good thing, the previous guy looked after them too well.  He had spoilt them and they expected the same from me.  They seemed quite hurt when I wouldn't make individual "appointments" with them centring around when they were at home.  In the end, after cancellations by them or me, loads of messing around etc., I only ended up with four of the original twenty three customers I bought.  It's more work than it sounds as there were some pretty big jobs among them.  Finding my way around was an issue at first but that is soon learned.
A hard lesson was learned there.  Also, a couple of the "customers" were only "ad hoc" rather than the bimonthly recorded on the paperwork.  I might do ad hoc for a very large job at a premium price but I certainly wouldn't have paid money for such a job.
Now I get my own new work and ensure that it slots into my business as seamlessly as possible.

[Jonny 87]

Even if you charge extra for the first clean, which I felt I couldn't do at the time, I always view the first clean as a loss or break even in the best case.

I don't believe in telling the customer that it will take 3 cleans before its right. I would rather do the 3 cleans first (if it need them) so they are easy next time. But that's me. I clean to my standard, which over the years, seems to be higher than most of my customer standards.

That's exactly my thoughts too.

I've never charged more for a first clean, but I do clean the house about three times, by the time you do all frames, ledges, glass, then going back just doing the glass.

But I never say "it will take three cleans to get them right". I think to myself I wouldn't want to pay for a service if it was pretty poor the first time, and it doesn't bode well for the future.

I did a first clean yesterday, and I could see a few of the neighbours (in the reflection of windows ) watching me as I worked with my back to them. The whole estate has trad cleaners who do an ok job, but they walk on roof tiles and don't do the frames as thoroughly.

I even cleaned this customers garage door for them as a "sweetner".

In my experience it has only worked against me once or twice, where the customer drops you after a few cleans. Generally it leads to more work in the area and very happy customers.