Post by Kevin on Apr 19, 2008 10:30:52 GMT -5
Why Most Cleaning Service Owners Fail
My 2 cents...
Why is it? Why do most of our fellow service owners fail within the first year? I hope you continue reading this article as I will give you some insight, and my honest opinion from monitoring other services over the last couple of years. It is not the first year most of the services fail. It is the first 40 DAYS!
When I started my service, seems like ages ago now. It has been close to 15 years. Things were completely different than they are now. There was probably only a handful of service owners actually advertising on the web. It took me a year of hard work to get my first web site, a one page website. The marketing technique which worked for me was going door to door. It was upfront asking for the opportunity to provide cleaning to whoever I met. This is still the strongest process of marketing your business and this is the #1 reason that most service owners fail.
Let me tell you the situations I encounter through me relations of roughly 50 new service owners a week. They are a disgruntle employee who worked for a janitorial service, think they are doing too much work for two little pay. (which in most cases they are)
They get the notion that the cleaning is the only part of the business and decide that i`ts easy to make money like the boss. So they file a DBA and get some business cards and start their business. One way or another they made a contact at some account that really likes them, and that account is going to hire them because they are the most important cleaner they ever had. Sometimes this happens, most of the time it does not. They are unaware of the contracts in place between that account, and their former boss. So from the start this cleaner, the new owner of the new company has no experience in marketing and without any account, or any hope of getting an account. So now the new company owner moves on to step 2.
I like to call step 2 - Blowing the rest of the money
My two thoughts are lazy and theft. This new cleaning service owner the former employee has no plan. The part of being lazy was no business plan, no marketing strategy, no research, no network in place before they started. Now the theft was the taking or trying to take the account they were cleaning prior. This new owner does not realize the work it has taken for the former boss to get such accounts, and in most cases does not understand how business relations work, so now they are either with an account, or without one. (which in most cases, they do not get the account they were trying to steal because they have no idea how the behind the scenes bidding process and contracts work). So here we go to blowing the rest of the money. Now were talking, about $1200 maybe less Placing newspaper ad`s, purchasing into all and every online advertising program, little local publications. I would say around $500 bucks worth. Leaving him or her with about $700 bucks left. Now this new service owner thinks there all set, they have some serious advertising going on. They just have to sit back and wait for the phone to ring. They use about another $500 bucks to go buy some cleaning equipment they think they will need once they start getting all these calls. Well you now the rest of the story at this point. They get a couple calls, not enough to make their lease payment for the apartment and have to get a full time job.
The first call is very exciting though, most cases they go and desperation bid the job and get it, then they figure out they did not make enough money doing the work. Some where in the process of this $1200 start-up they purchased a membership to an association with enough active members to ask questions and get answers from. They were to lazy to use it.
Please if your a new service owner or thinking about starting a new cleaning service. It is not as easy as most websites state this business is, it actually can be very difficult. Take some time and do research. Take some time and open an account here to get information that you will need.
Use this link to open your free account. usacleaning.proboards30.com/index.cgi?action=register
Please, Please, Please! ask questions, there is no such thing as a dumb question.