What am I doing wrong?

[vin_uk]

I have just recently started a cleaning business back in april. I specialize in End of tenancy cleaning for landlords and householders, carpet cleaning, moving in / moving out cleaning, deep cleaning etc. I am now facing some major hurdles.

Firstly and I guess more importantly I cant seem to get any clients. I have printed pages and pages of letting agents (who are my main targets) from yell.com and gave them all a phonecall to offer my services to them. Most of them sound interested and ask for further info. So I post out a letter of introduction and my flyer, biz-card and a few sheets of a4 detailing what our services are, what they can expect from us and prices. Alternativley I send the same information attached inside an email. This is all followed up with a phonecall a week or so later.

I have listed my business on various websites, even designed my own site (Check it out). But the phone stays silent and my inbox is empity.

With what I have told you about can you see any flaws in my approach to marketing my business?

Thanks for reading.

Craig.

[fisicx]

Hi Craig,

How many other cleaning companies are in your local area? Do you offer anything different than they do? Do not expect them to choose you just because you are cheaper, I know quite a few businesses that have put their prices UP to get away from the cheap and cheerful crowd.

You seen to offer a wide range of services but this is not always a good thing. The letting agents I know use a cleaner for their flats. They are in and out in less than 2 hours! The decorating is carried out by the estate mangement team as is the ground maintenance. It's no doubt the same with house lets.

You say that despite all your promotion you haven't had a single lead. Have you changed your promotional material to see if different formats make a difference? Did you deliver the promotional material yourself or stick it in the post. If it was sent by post it would have ended up in the bin as the person opening the mail may not have been the person you spoke to or the person authorised to approve a new contract. It's the same with the email's, they would have all ended up in the trash.

So are you targetting the wrong clients?

Havre you tried working contacting the local builders to offer a post renovation spring clean? Spoken to the local university to offer to clean the student accomodation at the end og the semester? Contacted the local landlords with the same offer?

But I think that the main problem is you have spread yourself too thin, you are not a groundsman not a painter or decorator or a deep clean specialist - you are a bit of each, neither one thing not another. and that's the problem.

Suppose I did consider hiring you to work on my blocke of flats. How are you going to cut 2 acres of grass with your flymo or clean the windows 4 stories up with a ladder and bucket? And there are 44 stairs and 4 landings to clean - that's going to cost me £100 according to your website - for 1 stairwell!

More thoughts to ponder...

Graham

[Alternatives]

Hello,
I do not feel your doing anything wrong, as we have been doing quite a number of telephone surveys of late, the last till this month was done in 2006.
What we have found out is that trying to advertise anything on the net and getting a sale the odds has gone the net by 70% in 3 years. When we done our telephone call survey in 2006 we found that 1 in 7 homes were on the internet.
When we done the survey this month it was 1 house in 40 that were on the net.
The main reason given was 1-The Cost, 2 was people found the net had not given them what they wanted, and packed it up in favour of TV/Sky/etc. 3rd reason was they felt that they were spyed on too highly, and did'nt trust putting credit card numbers on line.
We ask in both surveys how many of them used Ebay, in 2006 it was 1 person in 6 who used or had used Ebay, this time not one still had an active Ebay account, most said that things did'nt seem to sell any longer on Ebay, but Ebay still charged them.
So anyone who has a a business if they feel that the Internet will make them get rich fast, well I think we all need to think again.
Bye
David Webb

[peterjhale]

Are you seriously suggesting that in 2006 1 in 7 homes had the internet and that fallen by 80% to 1 in 40

Doesn't that strike you as odd when online sales are increasing at some 30% per year ?

[peterjhale]

Back to the original question....

I would ditch that massive green image on the home page which has nothing to do with cleaning and maybe replace it with this page's image

http://www.dustbust.biz/services.html

Do you also do weekly house cleaning as it's not listed above.

You also need a decent headline on your homepage and a really good reason for people to contact you.

Why don't you list out your target customers for us to help you along....?

[peterjhale]

The above was for your website.

For your business...

- have you chased up the people you have sent letters of introduction to? What did they say ?

- you may need references so how about offering one free end of tenancing clean to each prospective letting agent to show how great you are ?

- don't reduce your prices at the moment - that is not the issue.

As you are new and no one knows if they can trust you and if you can do a good job you'll need to show them - so need references of some kind

Speak to your potential customers and work with them

[TWD-Tony]

The correct figure for Internet Access at home (according to the national statistics office) was 61% of all UK households had Internet Access at the end of 2007 (I use this stat on my flyers )

As for promoting your business... It's very very frustrating isn't it!

I did a leaflet / flyer drop a few weeks ago - targeting local businesses... Not one single response!

I realise it is quite a worrying time, especially when you are self employed - I know from 1st hand experience that when you first start out and you have little work, it is very depressing...

Things will change, you have to make them - I'm no life coach or anything but instead of phoning people and sending them stuff in the post, arrange a meeting with the boss and get some face to face dealing done

[vin_uk]

Peter. I have chased everyone up that i post and email to, their responses are usually always the same, that they are happy with their current cleaners and I will be put on file for future reference. I have also came across people that havent opened the email or have lost the stuff I have posted them. So the utcome of that is that I have to repost and email. Very frustrating.

The free end of tenancy clean seems a good idea, I think I will impliment that into my new flyers and while I have some editing to do on the website I shall add a page in there dedicated to promotions.

Tony. Going the direct route is another good idea I will try that out

[peterjhale]

I guess all you need is one agent to kick things off.

Just one clean to show them what you can do.

Once you have one clean you'll get others from them and then you may be referred and/ or you'll have a testimonial for others.

Don't give up. Visit the agents yourself and offer them that free clean.

Good luck and let us know how you get on.

[fisicx]

Do not add a page to the website dedicated to promotions.

Make the promotions your homepage. When someone lands on the site this is the forst thing they will see. Add a call to action to give ths visitor something to do: call 0123 45678 to claim you free spring clean.

The face to face is what I was trying to indicate in my original post. Flyers, letters and emails get ignored. Do you realize how much junk companies actually receive every day? And in many cases, the secretary opening the mail probably has instructions to bin everything soliciting for work.

Has your van got your phone number printed on the side?

I still believe that you need to concentratre on the cleaning and let the painting and decorating and garden maintenance rest until you have built up a bit of business.

However, I think the letting agencies will be a tough nut to crack. There are about 6 different letting agencies with properties on the estate where I live. The whole estate is managed by one company who employs cleaners, groundsmen, window cleaners, painters and decorators. You are trying to convince someone to cancel a contract with a comany who manages everything and employ someone with no track record (you).

But as Peter and Tony suggest, offer some freebies and arrange a face to face meeting with landlords, letting agencies, builders, accomodation services, social services, the burger van down the road. Anybody who needs something cleaning is a potential customer.