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NCA 10 051609
Keeping Customers Who Only Want You
D: I’m all excited about jumping into our next topic. I’m hoping you are as well. If you would go ahead and press *6 now and that will get everyone muted out and we will go ahead and get started with the Never Clean Again University Keeping Customers Who Only Want You Workshop. We’re going to spend a couple of weeks on this because this is critical and it, really, at the root and at the core involves training; training your replacements and lining up adequate and suitable replacements for you so that you don’t lose every customer that you have. So keeping customers who only want you. I wrote down 7 steps to a win-win situation. So I’m going to do a little bit of an overview; alittle bit of a repeat of some things I’ve said, but I think they need to be repeated and then we’re going to get very technical. If at any point you want to jump in and ask me a question, let’s do that. You’ll have to hit *6 because if we don’t keep you muted out, there’s so much noise in the background from dogs and talking and telephones ringing that it becomes disruptive to the recording. And also before I forget, I don’t have the last transcript, it might be one or two transcripts, but I think it’s only one, uploaded to the site. I just ran out of time before I went out of town. I don’t think the transcript was ready, I’m not sure but anyway, it’s ready. I have it. It’s downloaded on my hard drive and as soon as this call is over with, I’ll be able to upload the transcripts to the website and you can go ahead and download that and print it. Hopefully you are hole punching these and putting them in a notebook called NCA and that notebook…I would encourage you to create some artwork or a word document that you can slip in the clear sleeve of the notebook that says I will never clean again and put that in the front of your notebook and leave that in a prominent place in the room that you work in or the office you work in so that you are always reminded that you are supposed to be getting myself out of the field. And if you are printing off the transcripts of every call, stick that in the notebook and, of course, at the end of the series you’ll have the CDs you can pop in and listen for review to remind you why you’re working so hard on your business.
So keeping your clients, keeping the customers who only want you; 7 steps to a win-win situation. First of all, I want to remind you that it’s ok to lose a customer. And I think this is very important for the independent cleaner who’s trying to transition to get out of the field to tell themselves, because I’ve been there. I know exactly how you feel when you clean a house, when you work for a customer; you really have become their employee. You are less of a business owner, even though you think you are, you have become their employee and Iknow how it feels to lose a job. I know how it feels to lose a customer. We take it personal and we feel like we’ve been fired. Andwhen you were the cleaner, you were fired. You did fail at some level, you failed to deliver. You failed to satisfy unless they just couldn’t afford the service; they got laid off or something. You know when we are cleaning the houses and we lose a client, it is a failure and it’s very painful and the perfectionistic nature that lured us into this business is the same nature that plunges us into despair whenwe lose a customer who is not satisfied with something, our price, our quality, our employees, whatever. It feels like a failure, it hurts, but when you make the change from being the cleaner to being the owner who is building the business, who is adding new accounts, not cleaning the accounts. When you make that change and youmake that transition, losing a customer is ok if it’s for the right reason and that’s one of the most important parts. It’s ok to lose a customer for the right reason. Because from here on out hopefully when you lose a customer, you are building your business and trying to take it to the next level and it has nothing to do with you personally not doing a good job. And of course you may lose some customers because your employees didn’t do a good job, but that’s part of it. That’s part of the equation. That’s part of the numbers, the attrition factor. And you’ll learn to accept those numbers as long as they’re within an acceptable range and they’re not costing you profits and quality of life.
Number 2: You need to lose clients in order to clean house in your company. You have to clean house and I don’t mean literally. I mean it is possible that you have some clients that you will have to clean out that are no longer a fit when this transition begins to really happenwhere you are no longer the cleaner. So it is ok to lose a client if it’s for the right reason. And the right reason is, of course, so that you can build your business. And so that certain clients are not limiting your capacity to grow. So that would be the right reason for losing a client. It is ok to lose a client for the right reasons and that reason would be for building your business. You’ll discover you have some of the wrong customers. You may discover you have all of the wrong customers but many of them can be converted to the right customer; can change, and I will help you with that process to make it smoother and easier and less painful for the customer to minimize the ones that will just go away.That’s, we do want to minimize that. But that is not the most important thing. The most important thing is to get you to the next level, help you get out of the field. It is not to hang on to the 10 or 15 or 20 customers that helped you get this thing started. That’s not the primary objective. It would be niceto hang on to them if we can get them to a profitable level and if they can follow your system. It would be nice. You don’t want to run people off unnecessarily.
Number 3: Remember obligation, it’s not personal anymore. When you were the cleaner it was personal and you almost became people’s personal assistant. You’re their right hand man…their right hand woman. You can be friendly but you’ll have to stop becoming and being friends with your customers. And that does happen with independent cleaners. It’s natural. They just love you to pieces because you make their life better and so that natural bond occurs and you become friends instead of friendly. Eventually that will go away because you do not obligation in the relationship. You are not obligated to keep cleaning cheap. You are not obligated to be the one there cleaning once you take your business to the next level and you handle it correctly and professionally. They have a right to expect you not to just switch things on them, but at the point when you do, then they have the right to choose whether to stay with you or to move on to another independent cleaner. But obligation cannot be a part of that equation. You’re not obligated to do anything or to stay. You want to make sure that obligation factor isn’t there because it will completely minimize your ability to expand as long as you’re feeling obligated to these customers.
Number 4: One way to keep those customers is raise their rates now. If you know they are grossly underpaying, they are definitely not paying what the market would bear, what they would pay, now is the time to raise their rate, not when you’ve transitioned. If you’re still cleaning their house, they’re still happy. They still have you. They still think you’re the best thing that ever happened. This is the time while they’re at the peak of their satisfaction to raise their rate, not when you’ve given them anew employee and this new employee isn’t as good as you and now you realize gosh I’m not making any money off of this account because when I pay my new employee and my payroll taxes, there is no money left over. Well that’s the wrong time to raise their rate because that’s almost a given you’re going to lose them. So if they’re satisfied and if you’re the cleaner, now’s the time to raise their rate and now’s the best time to make it a substantial rate increase. If they are ridiculously underpaying and you do the math and you realize wow if I were paying an employee to clean this house, there would be no profit left over. Or the profit would be so small it is not worth the effort. Then go ahead and create a substantial rate increase and don’t blame it on we’re expanding, we’re about to have more expenses because a rate increase with that reason behind it says, we’re not necessarily worth it, we just have needs. Well, that’s the wrong message. If you’re going to send a rate increase and especially if it’s substantial, I say substantial, it could be 20-25% increase. You might be raising their price from $75 to $100 or from $75 to $90. That’s a pretty good increase. So if you’re going todo that, you’re letter needs to send a message that says we’re amazing. We’re at the top of our game. We are the best company in town. We are insured and bonded not like those others. We do bring professionally trained staff if you’re doing that already. We do thorough background checks. We are expanding. Our customers are referring us all over town. See the message you need to send them is, you know, the times, the economy, the expenses are going up but we are the best service in town, and we are below our competition, if you do shop the competition and you know your rates are not as high as the franchises, then you can brag about being, we’re still reasonable but we do have expenses. But we have these assurances that we offer. And these assurances are professionally trained, we supply all the products, we are a non-toxic, safe, green cleaning company, whatever it is that you offer that you can excel at, make sure you mention it in your rate increase letter. And it cannot all be about we have needs, we have expenses, payroll’s gone up, taxes are gone up, yah, yah, yah. You don’t want that. So right now is the time for a rate increase. You need to make sure you do the math on some of these customers if you plan to transition. If you do the math, if you have a $100 house that’s taking you personally 6 ½ hours to clean, do the math. What are you charging in that house? That comes to $15.83 an hour. How will you pay anemployee to clean that house? Are you going to pay somebody $12 an hour or $12 an hour equivalent but on commission? And then there’s $3.80 an hour left over for payroll taxes and overhead. You won’t even make a profit. You’ll go in the hole on that job. So,you’ve got to do the math. If you do the math before you make the transition, those customers are zero profit for you and some of them will actually cause you to go in the red on their house. So make sure you do the math, identify the customers that are grossly undercharged and get their rates up while you’re still cleaning. That’s the best chance of you getting their rates up without you canceling. I mean you’re going to give them plenty of other reasons later on to cancel your service. Might as well right now be over-priced.
Number 5: Start weaning those customers off of you now, gradually, if you’re still in the field. If you’re not in the field, then obviously you’re just trying to keep from bouncing back and forth. But if you’re still in the field, now’s the time to wean them off gradually so you don’t have to just chop them off at the kneesand say, I won’t be back but my staff will. Call me if there’s a complaint. Wean them off gradually. You can ease your new staff into these jobs as you’re hiring and you’re giving more and more responsibilities of the house to the person that you hired and trained. New customers, however, need to be trained completely different than the set of customers you have now that you’re going to have to retrain. Keep this in mind. I don’t care if you are still cleaning houses. Your new customers need to only be familiar with the way you plan to do business, instead of the way you’re doing business now. So make sure you’re telling all your new customers, I won’t necessarily be the one cleaning. I may come the first few times and hopefully that won’t be 25 times. Hopefully that will only be 1 or 2. I may come the first 2 times and help out my staff and check out their work, or whatever. But try to make sure that the new customers are already familiar with the way you do business, that you have someone cleaning, that you will do house checks and you will do follow up calls to ensure quality andall those things you’re going to do other than you personally cleaning it and you personally making sure the job is done right. That doesn’t help you get out of the field and there’s no reason. New customers don’t care. They just want to know what to expect. The only reason why your existing customers care is because it’s because it’s never been done that way. So once they’re used to it and they’re still getting a quality cleaning, most of them will be fine and will make the transition with you. So you do need tostart weaning off your customers now. One way to do that is to gradually stop cleaning the majority of the house. As you’re hiring and letting others do the work. You can go there, get them started, once you know you have trusted staff, leave, go do an estimate, come back; wrap things up. That’s one way to gradually ease yourself out of the field. Another way, of course, is this person has worked with you for weeks, the customer is very comfortable with her and you make sure that she is doing everything in that house that was important and that you would have done. Eventually she goes, she cleans, you leave, you come back, you check the work, then she goes and cleans and you weren’t there at all. You can ease these people into the homes that you’re cleaning right now that you know are spoiled. The customers thatare at work and never see your face, not an issue at all and you can transition them as soon as you’re ready. The customers that are there watching, communicating, relating with you on a personal level, you’ll have to ease them a little bit more gradually. And you can tell them; have that conversation with them. Say, we’re growing, we’re expanding, we’re hiring, we are doing fantastic. And it can’t be I’m just getting too old to do this. It has to be we are doing fantastic, we’re growing, we’re getting referrals out the wazoo. I am finding terrific employees, people that love to clean. You got to be positive, instead of I’m trying to expand. You know, I’m getting too old to do this because then it’s not their benefit, and it creates insecurity in them as to what to expect. But if you’re excited and proud of what’s happening and extremely upbeat about your own progress, it creates a sense of excitement in others. Maybe not all of them, but in others. Wow, I’m glad to hear that. What good news. Ok, great instead of, oh, it won’t be you soon. So you have to create that environment and you can do this gradually and less abruptly if you have the time, if you’re not out of the field yet.
Number 6: Have a system of marketing in place and I know we’ve already talked about marketing. We’ll talk alittle bit more about marketing before the conclusion but you have got to begin to put a system of marketing in place. The reason why that’simportant and why it‘s on the list today is because you will lose some customers. And there’s really nothing more scary than to lose a customer when you have none lined up and your phone isn’t ringing and there are no prospects because you need the money. But what is so exciting is when you’re able to take the risk of losing that customer whom you’ve had for 5 years or 10 years and you’re able to take that risk with the rate increase or bringing in a new staff member that you’ve trained into their home. There’s nothing more exciting than to be able to take that risk because you have other prospects lined up because those prospects are finding you and calling you and you’re doing estimates and phone quotes and so forth. So if you don’t put some marketing in place and get it systemized, in other words, it can’t just be flash in the pan marketing. Oh I ought to try this because I need customers and then it goes away and then you’re after the next thing and after the next thing. It has to be systemized. Itcould be that Valpak is working for you in the past, has worked for you in the past so you’re going to get them set up. Now you’re going to do a Valpak e3very month or every other month, however they set it up. If Valpak has never done well for you then find something else. I’ll tell you one thing, that in the early days in my business when I was transitioning from a trunk slammer to a business owner, I discovered that the newspaper offered an advertisement that was very unique. I didn’t even know about it before the rep from the paper called me and what they do is they would come out and take a picture of me while I had my clipboard, I’m doing an estimate at a door. They would take a professional picture and put it in the newspaper and write a story around me and my business. And it was quite large. It was about half a page in the newspaper. It drew so much attention. Little teeny, teeny, teeny print at the top of the story it would say advertorial. It was basically paid advertisement but it was written to look like a story, an article written in the newspaper. I cannot believe in those early days of my business how that one medium built my business. Everytime I hired because I was a solo cleaning company7 from the beginning, so every time I hired I knew exactly how many customers I needed in order to fill my newest hire up in order to get her as quickly as I could to full-time so she wouldn’t quit. These people will quit if they can’t make enough money. And so I would run those advertorials, those stories every time I would hire and I would end up within a few weeks enough customers to fill up my one new hire. And then I could slack off a little bit and then I would do it again and do it again and that one particular medium built my business in the early days. So you will find some things in your area that just works well. And of course there’s all kinds of things that work well all the time that you should have in place all the time; that doesn’t stop…internet marketing, pay per click advertising and yellow page advertising, networking at chamber of commerce meetings. All of those things should be ongoing and then some other paid marketing that you get a system going that you can keep in place; that you don’t have to start over from scratch and create ads. You can pick up the phone and call your rep ok I need to run that for 3 months, I need to run that for 6 months. So get that systemized and you will have enough customers calling you to replace the ones that won’[t make the transition.