First swing at expanding residential markets

Being mainly a commercial cleaner who only cleans residential through referrals, I am a novice at attracting new residential customers through advertising.  For commercial contracts, I just bang on the door and sell them on how I can benefit their business, but I didn't really see banging on doors as a good idea for residential.  I don't want to be so invasive and pushy.

What I ended up doing was posting door hangers with an attached magnetic business card instead.  I hit all the neighboring towns to try and get my name out there realizing that their is very little competition in the smaller towns...most don't have any.  Even with maybe only 5,000 citizens, not having competition makes that a solid bet that I will get a good ROI.

So far, it has kept me very busy.  It has only been out there for a few days, but I have been very busy since.  Today, I had 3 houses in a very wealthy rural area to clean.  It was a challenging day going from 8 am this morning to finishing up around 8 pm tonight due to a fair amount of travel and longer set-ups caused by poor access points.

At least when I finished the last job, the customer invited me out to the new salt-water pool to have a drink before loading everything back into the van.  Let me tell you, that doesn't happen on commercial jobs...I might be able to get used to this  

Congratz Rob, you're going to enjoy residential work   

Well done milspec6 !!!!!! Residential market=money right away. Very necessary for us as O/O business. Good luck with your marketing.

Res., I think is the way to go....

Get paid good and quickly, Daily!!   

nice! why do people have salt water pools? I faintly remember going to a community pool when I was prob about 10yrs old and it was salt water

residential is where its at for sure in seattle, commercial is so competitive I think some cleaners pay the restaurant to clean it for them... lol -.08c/sq ft beat that!

ACpower1 wrote:nice!    why do people have salt water pools?   I faintly remember going to a community pool when I was prob about 10yrs old and it was salt water

residential is where its at for sure in seattle,    commercial is so competitive I think some cleaners pay the restaurant to clean it for them...   lol   -.08c/sq ft    beat that!

Unless they do a DAILY maintenance plan, I would pass on that in a heart beat, my biggest commercial account is a property management company that manages 40 building around LA and I charge $ 0.15 / sq ft every 3 months minimum 7 buildings, most 3 stories high, I don't think I can touch restaurants less than $ 0.20 / sq ft even if they do it once every 3 months.
Commercial is a PITA especially in the summer, I just got done with 9 buildings last week, the last one is 5 stories high, the work sucks big time, had to pull all 300 ft of hoses, the best thing on that particular building is when I send the invoice, almost $ 1000 for hallways only and stairs   

Good luck with the residential marketing Rob. You can do it. Now you'll have dogs nipping at your hells. Customers following you around and "helping" you with the hoses etc.

Commercial can be a real pita, but I think that it is easier to get follow-up business than residential. When you clean a house, they might refer you to neighbors and friends, but on commercial, you have the referrals coming from every employee and their family / friends.

The numbers are in your favor with commercial.

Salt water is easier maintenance.

That's cool Rob.

I heard it was better on the skin too