Monthly Archives: June 2009

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett & Michael Jackson died–CNN confirmed.

Twitter crashed.  Google News was unavailable for some for an hour.  The internet practically choked on the news of Michael Jackson, The King of Pop, dead after a cardiac arrest at his home.  Farrah Fawcett passed away on the same day.  Ed McMahon expired just two days prior.  While these iconic celebrities’ deaths are cause for great sadness, grief, loss and celebration of their lives and contributions,  there is an even bigger takeaway for all of us.

How have we lived…how well are we living ourselves right now?

At our current death rate in the United States (8.27 deaths/1000 population), yesterday on the same day we lost Farrah and Michael, another 8,154 other people died,  in the United States alone.  That’s 8,154 grandparents, great grandparents, moms and dads, brothers and sisters, children and grand children–each with an individual story and a network of family and friends that grieve their loss.

So while the news of Farrah Fawcett’s passing overshadows the loss of 83 year old Nina Pinsky in Paintsville, Kentucky, it all gets glossed over by the video of a Sheriff’s helicopter taking Michael Jackson’s body to the coroner’s office for an autopsy.  Yet this media coverage pales in comparison to the news stories running in the minds of every grieving loved one of any of the 8,156 people who died yesterday, and today, and tomorrow, and every day of the year.

So how am I living?

When my time is up, what will the “news coverage” say about me?  What will be my legacy?

I met Ed McMahon as one of my guests while I was working at the Grand Floridian Beach Resort at Walt Disney World.  I grew up with Farrah’s famous swimsuit poster in my room.  And my ITunes account has Dirty Diana on my favorites list still to this day.  I cherish each of these fine performers for their gifts and contributions to their craft and to the world.

Yet more than anything, I thank them all for the gift of invitation to reflect upon how I want to spend the rest of my life…how I want to make a difference in the world…how I want to remembered, when my day comes.

Low-Cost Marketing Strategies

A few power strategies for Low-Cost Marketing:

1. Instead of putting flyers on windshields of cars in parking lots, perhaps do the proven strategy (Jack George gets credit here) of putting a vinyl wrapped company car in the busy parking lot with business cards or flyers with a compelling offer in plastic holders attached to the back window of the car. Staples and OfficeMax sell the plastic card holders with suction cups. Be sure to answer your phone the day after, especially if its Saturday and Sunday or have MyPerceptionist answer your phone for you.

2. Babies R’ Us–one Saturday per month they have 6 foot tables available for local businesses to promote their services to their shoppers–huge opportunity to market to women from all different angles–grandmothers, new mothers, sisters of new moms, moms of all ages, people buying gifts for baby showers…hint hint, offer gift cards as a baby shower gift as part of your fish bowl give away drawing.

3. One of my most successful proven guerilla marketing techniques is to partner with your best/high quality, larger or largest dry cleaner in your immediate area. You can now offer to pay for the dry cleaner bags (and have your logo and compelling offer printed on the bags) and then give them to the dry cleaner to put on their customers’ clothes. Genius idea. If you can’t afford the printed bags, provide colored sheets of paper with two-sided promotions printed in black ink, and ask the dry cleaner to staple one to every bag of finished clothes. Offer to barter by cleaning the owner’s home for instance.

4. Walk the neighborhoods of your existing customers, (with testimonials in hand) and offer “immediate in-home estimates.” Make sure you have a great leave behind flyer or brochure, especially with a refrigerator magnet to leave with every homeowner, even if they say “No thank you.”

I could write for hours on this, but these are a few truly proven, massive return on investment, strategies to use.

Just think of it this way, “I have to raise $10,000 in new cash business in 48 hours or something terrible will happen to me (you fill in the blank)…what would you do to make it happen?”

Makes Glass Invisible!

www.freeinvisibleglass.com

www.freeinvisibleglass.com

Struggling to make glass clean and clear with not streaks.  Check out the free samples of this product to discover for yourself if Invisible Glass is the real thing!    www.freeinvisibleglass.com

Barter for Anything!

1. Make a list of what you need–vinyl wrap for your company vehicles, free marketing, coaching, equipment, supplies, training, web site services, accounting, equipment repair.

2. Identify Potential Barter Partners.  Start with partners located within your market whose company is a comparable size to your own.  Research the prospective partner companies online or by asking around about the company.

3. Design your “Ask” by thinking through what both sides need and get from the Barter.  Be clear and honest about it for both sides.  Use language such as “win-win partnership” or “partnership that genuinely benefits both of us.”  Offer, “and you may have other benefits I haven’t thought of.”

4. Ask the Barter Partner.  Start by asking only one company in each service area at a time–don’t ask three accountants for instance, approach one and then wait for the resolution of this potential partnership before approaching another accountant.  Have your calculations done in advance, your service for my company is a $1500 value and therefore I would happy to provide monthly house cleaning of your home for 12 months, a $1560 value.

5. Be specific about the exact steps involved for both parties.  Be sure to identify steps involved, frequencies, support required, resources involved, expected results and remedy or resolution suggested in the event the partnership does not work out for one or both parties.

Don’t forget that you also have gift cards to use, as well as vouchers for free cleanings in addition to the service of house cleaning.

Some great resources online:

www.barterplanet.com

www.bizxchange.com

www.craigslist.org

www.u-exchange.com

Your Dream Client

Your “Dream Client”

Identifying your “Dream Client” is critically important.  The process of defining your Dream Client pushes you to become far more clear and specific about the nature of your business and your marketing focus.  The creation of your Dream Client allows you to identify exactly the client with whom you want to work the most.   This simple yet powerful concept will empower you to make better decisions for your business as well.
Highest Profit, Most Enjoyable, Best Client Relationship, Least Problems, Most Referrals

For instance, knowing that X is your Dream Client, helps you stay focused upon their issues, needs and likes/dislikes.

You can make better decisions about where to spend your marketing dollars and your efforts.

Who do you want as your Client?

What are your most profitable services?

What frequency is most profitable?

What is the “3-D Picture” of your Dream Client?

  • Home Value $XXX,XXX.00
  • Bedrooms/Bathrooms/Square Footage
  • Age of Home
  • Services Provided—Cleaning with Carpets, Windows & ?
  • Household Income
  • Dual Income or Single Income Couple
  • Children
  • Pets
  • How many cars
  • Professions or Careers of Homeowners
  • Own Additional Homes
  • Travel Volume per month
  • Pay by Credit Card; Pay for service in advance–# of months
  • Phone Estimate or In-Home Home Health Audit
  • How many Affiliate Services Used in One Year

Here are some examples of actual Dream Clients

Actual Dream Client (middle-income buyer)

$195,000 Home

2BR/2Bath

1780 sq. ft.

Weekly Service is $105 (averaged)

5 year old home

Weekly Cleaning with Windows 2X/yr., Carpets 1X/yr.

$78,000 Annual Income

Dual Income-Both Full-time

2 Children under 10—daycare or school full-time

1 dog

2 cars

Teachers, Engineers, Computers, Office, Paralegals

No additional home

Travel less than 2 weeks per year

Pay by Credit Card (pays two weeks in advance)

Phone Estimate

Uses 3.5 Affiliate Services per Year—painter, landscaping, lawn service, pest control, carpets are the most commonly used

Refers 3 or less new Clients per year

Residential Cleaning Service Owner loves this and only hopes to improve this Dream Client by:

  1. Increasing Carpets to 2X/yr.
  2. Pay by Credit Card with one month in advance
  3. Uses 5 Affiliate Services
  4. Refers 5 or less new Clients per year

So now the Owner has a focus upon which to work in terms of what they are targeting as their best Clients, along with “stretch goals” upon which to focus with their existing Dream Clients in order to maximize annual revenues from these current Dream Clients.

Actual Dream Client (Affluent Buyer)

$550,000 Home

5BR/3.5Bath

3450 sq. ft.

Weekly Service is $265 (averaged)

10 year old home

Weekly Cleaning with Carpets & Windows 2X/yr., Pest Control monthly, Outdoor Pressure Washing 2X/yr., Two cars washed/detailed 12X/yr.

$310,000 Annual Income

Single Income

2 Children—16 or older

2 dogs

4 cars

Business Owners, Lawyers, Doctors, Executives, Old Wealth

2 Additional Homes

Travel 8 weeks per year

Pay by Credit Card (pays 6 months in advance)

52% are Gold Plan Service Clients (Silver, Gold, Platinum)

24% are Platinum Plan Service Clients

Phone Estimate

Uses 6.5 Affiliate Services per Year—painter, landscaping, lawn service, pest control, carpets, party servers/bartenders/valet parkers, and home theater or computer tech support services most commonly used

Refers 3 or less new Clients per year

Provides team members $500 Holiday Cash Bonuses annually

Residential Cleaning Service Owner loves this and only hopes to improve this Dream Client by:

  1. Pay by Credit Card (pays 9 months in advance)
  2. 35% are Platinum Plan Service Clients
  3. 60% are Gold Plan Service Clients
  4. Use 8 Affiliate Services per Year

Door Hangers

What are your opinions on Door Hangers as a tool for building a client base?  Door Hangers can be a valuable tool, but you may as well be throwing away your money if you do not have a good coupon or a good advertisement on the Door Hanger.

Redefine Your Brand

Redefine Your Brand

Over the next year I want you to seriously consider the first word of this chapter title redefine.  Think about it, did you know, there are residential cleaning companies that focus purely on cleaning churches.  There are cleaning companies that do nothing but cleaning funeral homes out.  About the company, whose tagline is “serving the downtown eight lead.”  How about positioning yourself as home health experts would keep your home clean, sanitized and healthy.  Did you know that there is an SI seek his to describe businesses that refer to themselves as a state cleaning.  We don’t clean homes, we only clean estates.  Now coming from the five-star hotel background myself about this one.  Graceful, elegant, charming company providing turndown service and a minute he services for the affluent homeowner.  In other words, what are your brand, who are you who you trying to serve and wire you in business.

We’ll deal with Nick is in your unique selling proposition in the next chapter.  So for now, I want to focus on the bigger issue of the branding of your company.

Redefining your brand encompasses many factors.  First, wire you in this business?  There are almost as many answers to this question as there are registered owners of residential cleaning companies in America.(24, 164, at last count(.

I love cleaning!  I am in this business to build a great company.  I am in this business to build a great company and by other companies or to start other divisions or other companies.  I am in this business to build it and sell it.  I am in the business to build it and pass it on to my children.  I want to build it and start a franchise.  I want to build my business, and then license the systems I’ve created or create a consulting firm.

Earlier I mentioned briefly, the idea of commodity.  Commodity thinking again has a powerful place here when you think about branding your company.  The commodity minded owner will tend to have the following beliefs:

1.  Timebase labor and pricing.  Exchanging time for money.

2.  Using coupons for nominal amounts such as $10 off the first visit.

3.  Price consciousness versus value orientation.

4.  Doing the work yourself.  Struggling to get out of the employee mentality.

5.  Technician focused, that is, managing the minutia or the details of the day-to-day grad.

6.  Today focused.  Lacking the proactive skill of envisioning this week, next week, next month.

7.  Working harder, not smarter.

The more entrepreneurial, owner will have the following beliefs:

1.  Value based upon results of services, not just time served for my.

2.  Values attraction marketing for pre-qualifying potential new customers.

3.  Services and multiple offers focused.

4.  Values development of passive revenue for the company.

5.  Focused on growing the business.

6.  Tomorrow focused, being proactive rather than reactive.

It is an example of the value minded business owner in residential cleaning.

The value oriented business owner asks they are prospective customers.  The following questions:

if we were able to give you back six hours per week, what would that mean to you?

If your child’s toys for sanitized every week, will that do for you?

When we win your trust over time and you believe are cleaning crew, what would that mean to you?

What are your top three reasons for contracting a cleaning service today?

Revisit your business plan, as it relates to your brand.

Is my goal for being in business still clear?

Am I laser focused on how to make money?

Am I crystal-clear on my target customers?

Am I maximizing profit potential from every customer based upon my brand?

Am I leveraging every current customer for referrals for new business?

Am I exhausted, risking burnout, working harder rather than smarter?