[Shane sharples]

Nice websites! At the minute I'm paying £80 a month for a full page in the local business magazine, which is getting me work slow and steady , £30 a year for a local business website and just payed £114 for a year as a vip listing under yell.com and got a Facebook page, I think iv got everything but my own website, 1st year in business so I'm paying loads in advertising trying to get noticed locally

[Ian101]

Nice websites! At the minute I'm paying £80 a month for a full page in the local business magazine, which is getting me work slow and steady , £30 a year for a local business website and just payed £114 for a year as a vip listing under yell.com and got a Facebook page, I think iv got everything but my own website, 1st year in business so I'm paying loads in advertising trying to get noticed locally

just my opinion but you need a website ... done all mine myself thru one and one @ £15 a month and about 80 man hours over last 2 years to get it just how I like it ... do my own seo and tends to bring work in 

[Smudger]

No, he's based in Cambridgeshire - we just done a deal that he will canvass 2 evenings a week 3 weeks out of four for the next six months

Darran

[tlwcs]

If you're an established window cleaner with a good base of customers I think it's a good idea to charge double for a first clean and this will weed out some of the potential problem customers. If you're just starting out for the first time however it's a bit different since you're just trying to fill your day and getting used to the job, learning as you go along etc... Yes, you will get some drop outs but this is still a minority. 

I'm still at the stage where I'm building up my round and if I charged double for first cleans I think it would be detrimental to my business. I just have to accept the risk that I may get a few extra drop outs & just move on ...

I'm not sure about this, to me it doesn't matter if your a new starter or not. I think people expect to pay more for a first clean, especially if they're bad. Two things, people buy people. If they like you, they will pay the price. (Within reason) Secondly it's confidence. If you value your service, so will the custard.
Tony

[Walter Mitty]

10% sounds OK to me; I'm assuming that this refers to those who have fourcleans or less.
My dropout rate for new customers is a bit higher than that these days.  However, I charge a higher price than I used to and also, I take a lot less hassle than I once did.  I'm not prepared to hang on to customers who mess me about just for the sake of turnover.  Such turnover is fools' gold because a higher level of micromanagement is needed to get it.

[Smurf]

If you're an established window cleaner with a good base of customers I think it's a good idea to charge double for a first clean and this will weed out some of the potential problem customers. If you're just starting out for the first time however it's a bit different since you're just trying to fill your day and getting used to the job, learning as you go along etc... Yes, you will get some drop outs but this is still a minority. 

I'm still at the stage where I'm building up my round and if I charged double for first cleans I think it would be detrimental to my business. I just have to accept the risk that I may get a few extra drop outs & just move on ...

I'm not sure about this, to me it doesn't matter if your a new starter or not. I think people expect to pay more for a first clean, especially if they're bad. Two things, people buy people. If they like you, they will pay the price. (Within reason) Secondly it's confidence. If you value your service, so will the custard.
Tony

+ 1

Never be afraid to ask for what the job is really worth to you as after all your goal should be to work less for more reward.

[Smudger]

Walter - dropout would be entirely those customers who cancel the service, those you drop would be classed differently.

There are two distinct areas of drop out, the largest proportion would be in the first 3 cleans,  where for whatever reason a customer took on the service and then dropped it, ( this is to be expected ) then the established customer drop out, IMO it should be very low, because the customer has proved they want service, the only loses now come from, financial changes, house moves, death or personal circumstances. All of these are unavoidable and openly communicated by the customer ( except death!! ) if your getting regular dropouts of customers you've had for more than 3 cleans then ask yourself some questions, is my clean as good as it could be? - am I providing a timely service ? - are my customer service skills acceptable ?

Darran

[SeanK]

There are just people out there that want clean windows but don't want to pay for clean windows, some will take you
on thinking I can handle paying for this and after handing the cash out a few times find they cant.
Others will try to pull the wool over your eyes by pretending to want a regular service but all the really want is a once a year
clean done as cheaply as possible.
But luckily for us most just want their windows cleaned to a half decent standard by somebody they can trust around their
property, once they have this window cleaning rarely comes into their minds.
The problem with building a new round is that a lot of the customer types you need will have already been taken and a higher
percentage of the customer type you don't want will still be out there, the more saturated with shiners  the area becomes then the worse this gets.
It can still be done but it just makes it a bit harder, that's why its pointless asking questions like this on here because as with
everything in this game it will all depend on what's already happening in your area.

[Stoots]

mines about 20% but that includes me dropping them because they wont pay online. cant be doing with collecting

[Walter Mitty]

Walter - dropout would be entirely those customers who cancel the service, those you drop would be classed differently.

There are two distinct areas of drop out, the largest proportion would be in the first 3 cleans,  where for whatever reason a customer took on the service and then dropped it, ( this is to be expected ) then the established customer drop out, IMO it should be very low, because the customer has proved they want service, the only loses now come from, financial changes, house moves, death or personal circumstances. All of these are unavoidable and openly communicated by the customer ( except death!! ) if your getting regular dropouts of customers you've had for more than 3 cleans then ask yourself some questions, is my clean as good as it could be? - am I providing a timely service ? - are my customer service skills acceptable ?

Darran

OK, I'm with you now.
Excluding the ones that I choose to drop then.
Early drop out rate (within 4 cleans) is very low.  It does happen of course.  I normally retain customers for the longer term but maybe 5% stop within 4 cleans.  There are spikes to this.  When the economy was struggling around 2008 - 2011 a lot of people lost their jobs/had pay cuts/overtime and bonuses cut - so it did increase for a while.
Losing a long term customer is pretty unusual.  OK, so people move or die.  I've also lost them when retiring, as it means a hefty income reduction for many - or they now have time to do the cleaning themselves.
Like everyone else though (I imagine), I do get a very occasional mystery cancellation from a long term customer.
Overall, I'm happy with my retention rate.

EDIT:  I did get a spike in drop outs when switching to WFP in 2005.  Although I primed the customers, I wasn't aware of any other residential window cleaners in the area using WFP.  This made it appear that I was a bit of a maverick because few customers had seen it.
I prepared the ground for the switch but it was still too big a leap for some of them.
Unlike some window cleaners, I wasn't prepared to mess about blading off de-ionised water from the ground floor windows etc.  I had to be firm for the longer term viability of my business, so I was prepared to take short term hits to achieve this.

[8weekly]

Well I find it's a continuous turnover. People moving is the biggest one, but I get cancellations saying they are going to do them themselves or a family member will do them. Also, my work is two monthly so 4 cleans is 8 months in.  I have never analysed the figures but I would estimate no less than 10% don't last a year and no more than 20%. There will be ones that turn out to be one offs (or two offs), but I think that some just don't think that their windows are dirty enough after two months when they were minging to start.

The other factor is that since taking someone on I wanted more work quickly. I probably lowered the bar in terms of my "interview" with them to qualify out the messers.

Anyway, I don't think 10% is high at all.