This Is Bobby. I M Doing It but Not on That Spreadsheet

1

NCA 06 04-12-09

Welcome again to NeverCleanAgainUniversity. Go ahead and press *6, well you don’t have to press *6 yet. I’m sorry. If anybody wants to comment on the homework, first of all, I’d like to know if anyone is able to say that you have been filling out either the spreadsheet or something like the spreadsheet to document your leads, your incoming prospective clients. Anybody have any comments? Are you doing that? Are you following the spreadsheet?

This is Bobby. I’m doing it but not on that spreadsheet.

Are you doing it any differently or are have you added this feature to your business since the NCA?

I wasn’t doing it before NCA but I’m writing down on a sheet of my own the incoming calls and what there…

Ok, great. So you have a sheet on your desk, even if it’s just one sheet and you’re adding names every time the phone rings, right?

Right.

Or even if you don’t get their name, you’re adding something and then are you asking every single one of them how they heard about you?

Yes, I am.

Great. Now as that list grows then let’s say over a month’s time you have 10 or 15 or 20 names on that list of people who have called. Have you done anything on that list itself to make it eye popping as too who booked a yes. For instance, do you put a big giant check mark on their name and that’s a yes or do you put a yes by their name or anything like that? So that is you just glance at the list you can go wow look at all those people who went ahead a booked a cleaning or booked an estimate.

Well you mean did it actually turn into a job?

Yes.

Yes, I have a yes in the last column so that I know what converted, yeah.

Ok, so how many calls have you gotten in a month? Since you’ve been tracking that if you’d been tracking it for a whole month, how many calls have you gotten-inbound calls.

Seven.

Ok and out of 7 phone calls how many converted to a cleaning?

Three.

Ok, so 3 out of 7. Great. Has anybody else begun to track that when you haven’t been tracking it before?

Yes, I did.

Great and what are you seeing? How many calls have come in in the time you’ve started tracking them and what’s the conversion rate?

Well, I tried to go back a month. I don’t remember all the calls that came in but I probably got a half dozen calls now. I did get a lot of one time cleanings and we’re not in a position at this point to do those so I basically turned those away. But out of the ones that came in I pretty much got all of them. Not right away as far as converting to repeats. They called back a few weeks later after shopping around and have said yes. So actually we have 2 new jobs to do this week. Great so out of 12 phone calls how many did you turn away because they wanted a one time cleaning?

Probably about 6.

Ok, so the other 6…they were looking for repeat service.

I think it was more like 4 other calls. I didn’t get 12 calls I don’t think…probably more like 8-10 and out of the 4 I think 3 converted.

Got it. Now the key here is you want to be as exact as possible. So you should be using that spreadsheet or that list on your desk or whatever so at a glance you know for sure wow we got 10 calls and out of those 10 calls 4 of them became repeat clients. You want to be exact and not guess because there’s such a big difference in a 4 out of 8 versus a 4 out of 6. For your conversion rate you want to be as exact as you can. Has anyone beefed up your marketing since our last 2 marketing calls and have increased whatever you were doing? Have you increased it?

I have.

I have.

Oh good and what are you doing?

I put in a newspaper ad and then I also have a Valpak ad running. Unfortunately the Valpak ad is not going to run until the end of this month. April 22nd is actually when it runs so I’m hoping it will increase a lot more. But I have gotten some calls from my newspaper ad. A lot of them have been one time cleans.

Sure, so you’ve put some Valpak in place, but you haven’t gotten the results yet because it hasn’t run.

Exactly

And have you put anything in place yet that has been actually been running?

The newspaper ads. It is running, but it is a very small newspaper.

How effective has it been? How many calls would you say you’ve gotten directly from the newspaper ad?

I think only 3 and I landed all 3 jobs.

Got it. So you got 3 out of 3 from the newspaper. Was that in more like a service directory area where people who are looking for a house cleaner would specifically go look or was it a random display ad that’s just placed somewhere in the paper and just people reading the paper found it.

I think it is just a random…it is not in a service section.

So it’s like a display ad somewhere.

It’s like a display ad somewhere and it is a small newspaper but it does go out to 10000 homes and the target area that I really want to be in.

Excellent. Excellent. What did you pay for that ad?

$113

Ok, what does that tell you? That’s pretty good. You just got 3 clients that I am assuming are repeat is that correct?

They’re not. That’s the problem with that is they were all just first time cleans. Somebody needed a good spring time cleaning.

Ok. Ok. So they were one time cleans but they definitely pose the possibility of being repeat cleans especially if you work those leads. People who have been willing to give up money once are willing to give it up again if they were happy which they probably were. So ok none of them converted to repeat. Not great but not horrible. But they all bought a first time clean and if you work those leads you will get one of them, I guarantee it, for a repeat. So if it’s monthly send them a letter that says hey I know I gave you a quote for a bi-weekly, but have you thought about monthly. we can help you keep up with all that hard stuff and that first time cleaning will never result again. That first time fee that I charged you of $250 that will never happen again as long as we’re keeping it up for you on a monthly basis and it’s only this…If you market to them you’ll get one of them.

Ok

But what that tells me is you need to keep doing that because that’s an excellent return and I would guess that if you had gotten 6 calls you would have gotten 1 or 2 repeat clients out of them. So you’re half way there. Keep doing that ad and maybe even make it a little larger. Drive them to your website…go to my website, fill out this form for an online quote and be entered into a drawing for a free cleaning so you want to draw them to your website and capture their email address. So that’s good. Anybody else beef up your marketing so far since these last 2 calls?

Well I have been. I’ve been doing tons and tons and tons of flyers and I’m using the dirt code bleach sheet (?) so I know exactly what my numbers are and what I’ve converted. I had 7 inquiries in February and 3 converted to repeat, 12 in March and 8 converted, and only 3 so far in April despite the fact we’re blitzing like crazy.

Isn’t that crazy? So you got 7 calls from your flyers in March?

In February

Oh and 12 in March.

And only 3 so far in April.

And of the 12 how many converted?

8

And of the seven it was 3?

Yes

Ok. Now what did it cost you? Do you know what it cost you to put out flyers in February and March?

I’m totally losing track on keeping track of that because it’s all labor.

Ok so the printing itself is cheap, correct?

I don’t think so… no.

Oh so it’s not been too cheap?

I’m printing it at home.

Ooh yeah that’s expensive.

Well I got quotes and they want $1600 and they won’t barter with me and I’ve gone 4 places.

Ah. Shame on them.

I’d rather spend $80 here than…

Yeah.

Whenever I have $80 I print out 500 and when they’re gone they’re gone.

So when you dropped in February and in March do you know about how many you did print and sent out? In February we did I think 11000, but they were on car parking lots because we were desperate and it was too cold and that didn’t do very well at all.

That was February?

Yes.

Well you said you got 12 calls in March and 8 jobs off of it.

March. In March I did so maybe that’s where it came from.

Ok so it was February that you got 7 calls and 3 jobs.

Yes.

Ok.

And now just in the last 2 weeks we’ve done about 7000 and I’m going back to my neighborhood again and I’m actually starting to get calls like you said I would. So I’m doing what you said.

Very good. So the repetition will improve your results.

Yeah, I’m thinking it will.

Yeah, they want to see you again and again and you’re less of a stranger every time hey see it. It’s like oh yeah they’re still around instead of a fly by night on their door and they never see you again. So I definitely would encourage you repetition is important. I think your conversion rate is really pretty good. I mean if you did 11000 flyers in those 2 months…is that what we’re guessing?

Yes

Ok if you did…and you got 11 customers off of it so that’s, if they became repeat clients, that’s really not bad.

And some of those 12 I got in March just cancelled the quote because of the recession. My husband won’t let me, so I didn’t even get a chance to quote it but I did get their email address.

There you go and because they called you, they’re interested and hopefully they will. When things improve for them they will be coming back. So anyway the whole point of this discussion and exercise is if you’re not able to answer these questions, you have absolutely no basis to make marketing decisions. So I’m done grilling everybody so you can go ahead and press *6 right now and mute yourself out.

We’ll jump right into the discussion about employee hiring and finding and hiring the right people. But just something to keep in mind; these numbers that are being shared with the group today…you couldn’t possibly be accurate if you’re always just off the top of your head. If you are always thinking well I think I got about 25 calls this month and I think probably about half of them came through. You want to speak from a basis of fact. So when you’re making marketing decisions you’ll be able to look back and say wow that newspaper ad was really productive, but my goodness, Valpak sure didn’t produce much. You start tracking what it costs you to put out flyers and you might decide for 11 clients it costs too much. You might decide you thought it was expensive but for 11 clients it’s actually a bargain. Make sure you’re tracking every single phone call that comes through to your cell phone or to your office phone. Find out where they heard about you and then track whether or not they booked a cleaning or not. I track all cleanings including one times. Obviously the most important number we’re tracking is the repeats. But I still want to know out of 30 phone calls how many people said yes to service and actually gave us some money? Then of that number and let’s say it’s 15, of that number, how many of those 15 that had a one time cleaning, how many of those ended up converting to a repeat schedule. Hopefully out of that 15 it’s 9 or 10. Track everything. It’s absolutely critical because once you are tracking and you see trends and patterns, then you know how to spend your marketing dollars when you hire someone. For instance, if she knows that one ad in the paper, a one week ad, is going to net her 3 clients, and she’s done some hiring and she needs about 15, then at least she knows where she’s at. She knows that sticking an ad in the paper and waiting for my phone to ring is not going to be enough to fill up this new employee. But if you don’t know that then you don’t even know where to begin when you hire someone. So then she can look at that and go well I’m going to do the ad in the paper…there’s $113 and I’m going to do this Valpak because last time I did Valpak I got 6 clients off of it so there’s probably a chance at 9 clients. I think I better go do some door hangers and flyers. You have numbers to work from instead of guess work and it makes all the difference in the world because when you hire and you have a great job candidate…the worse thing is when you lose them because you have a lack of work, not because you lost them because they were lazy and you had to let them go. So you don’t want that to happen and you don’t want to be shooting in the dark. So make sure you are tracking every number and you will use that for building your labor force and knowing how much money you have to spend to fill up the schedule of a new employee. So it all works together. It’s a domino effect going on here. Every single thing impacts something else in your business, so if one thing is off then the other thing will be off and then another thing will be off.

So we’ve done some marketing and you’re jazzing up your whole emphasis and now it’s time to really start looking for your replacement and finding the right kind of people. If you’re like most people in the past you haven’t had the best of luck with employee hiring. In fact, it’s usually the number one factor that keeps business owners from succeeding is not being able to find quality, competent staff. Then when you do, they go away. They last 3 months. They last 6 months. One of the things that I learned several years ago in my business was anything that you see chronically repeating itself in your business is a system failure. I truly believe that. Most of us see things in such an isolated way that we actually blame what’s going on, on the individual incident that’s occurring. For instance, I have now control over it. I mean she quit. Her car broke down. She doesn’t have a car anymore. What could I do? There’s nothing I could have done to avoid that. Or, this person quit because her aunt got cancer and she has to move back to help take care of her aunt because there’s no caregiver. We feel like because all these isolated incidences keep coming up and causing us to not have the good employee that we really cherished, or the bad employee we were happy to see anyway leave. We keep thinking those are all isolated incidences and therefore we really don’t have any control over it.

My belief is when you see in a big picture, a chronic problem of turnover of people who never last a year, or 99% of your staff does not last a year or 2 years. If you see a picture that creates a pattern that is duplicated over and over and over again in your company, that is a system issue and that is good news because you can control that and you can change that. If is truly is all these external factors that are creating turnover then you never have control over it and you’re always at the mercy of what’s going on in other people’s lives and I don’t agree that that’s necessary or that’s the case. Yes, there will be a little of that but if you look at your company and you’ve never had a single employee last 2 years then you’ve got something going on internally that can be changed and improved that will also improve that number. I’m a firm believer because I’ve been there and I’ve done that. I went through a period of time in my business where turnover was so excessive and outrageous that we were delivering terrible service…well I’m not going to say terrible service. We were delivering bad service and terrible service to any customer that was unlucky enough to get a new employee because they were just turning over and over and over. The few clients that I had that were quite lucky that had one of my seasoned employees that last, they had a relatively good experience with my company. But what I realized because the turnover was keeping me from being able to grow. I could not get to the next level as many of you have felt. I couldn’t get to the next level and the number one reason had nothing to do with not enough customers. It was not enough workers, workers that didn’t stay and I kept thinking it was a result of people found another job. How could I compete with a job that’s going to pay them 40K a year? How do I compete with somebody who says I want to go back to college? I thought all these things were out of my control and there’s nothing I could do about them.