Switching to all commercial work

I spent my Sunday cleaning a rare residential about 40 minutes away. A nice couple with an adorable girl in Kindergarten that kept asking if I would stay and play with her....shy thing needs some friends. I almost wish I could have stayed for a little bit, but that isn't my role.

They were thrilled that I was able to get out all the stains, even a ground in block of red silly putty (dang thing was like cement, but I won anyway) which netted me a nice tip. It was a successful afternoon, but on the drive home I really had to think things over a bit.

Despite all my efforts, I was never able to garner much residential work this year. I think my best month was 7 houses. Granted, they were large McMansions in the rural areas that netted a sizable ticket, but that is hardly being in business. The only thing that kept me alive was the commercial (which was also unusually slow this year over 4 of the 7 months).

I think I have been wasting my time running around trying to get residential work, the market just doesn't seem to be there like I expected. Instead, I am going to just go all commercial and try really hard to get my foot in the door when that new College opens up in 2018.

Still don't know what went wrong with my plans this year, but it is time to move on to a different business plan while there is still a business left. I do have a couple of confirmed homes to clean the end of the month, but I don't expect much more for this season.

Sometimes.your location dictates where your business is going to go. But maybe reaidential.takes a little more time.to get the ball rolling

Have you tried giving your residential customers incentives for referring you to their neighbors and friends ? I used to do this, they can do either 4 cleanings or 1 cleaning and 3 referrals and they will get 1 free cleaning ( the 5th ), the free cleaning has to be the average of all 4 cleanings, that being said, your customer has to be able to get a copy of their referrals' invoices, that way, you can average them out and get those copies and shred them out, that used to work really well for me, I quit doing that 2 years ago but I'm thinking about restarting it again, it's like giving them 25% discount each cleaning which is big but the result will be bigger because you expanded your customers base.

The only residential jobs I have been getting are either repeat customers or referrals. There hasn't been a single cold call all year. Heck it is my customers that keep placing me on the local social media boards, posting commercials for me on Facebook, etc., but it just isn't working.

Maybe it just takes more time? I don't know if that is it or not, but there is certainly a flaw somewhere. I wasn't looking for a lot of residential, just need it to cover what my commercial doesn't which is about 30%. With the exception of 2 months, that has not been happening.

Commercial seems to be what you do the most of, the bulk of your income. It seems to me, you have a good talent selling to those types of accounts.

The only problem I see, is that you need dependable labor. A lot of the jobs you are doing are quite large. So I see a good reason why you want to keep pushing commercial, I just think personally, you need to get some help if you are going to keep getting these large accounts.

That is a very valid point about labor and commercial. There is no money in small commercial, only the large and that takes either lots of time or lots of people....sometimes both.

I guess that is why the franchise companies service most of those jobs, but seems to be the only fruit hanging from the money tree around here.

I suspect that I will be looking for a day job come November and back to cleaning on a part time basis for some extra cash. Not what I want to do at all, but such is life.

Good decisions. It will be a good start for 2018. Best of luck.

You are right commercial cleaning will be the best choice and you get offers more often than relying on only residential.

I truly think comm is your ticket!
But let's look at your marketing for residential.
What efforts did you do? Door to door, online(Facebook, web site...), Mailings,.
Referral sources like carpet stores, plumbers....
A little reflection and our input maybe We can help you down the road.and help us think of something we have let slide.
By the way: I've come to a realization that a Facebook page could be beneficial than a web page. People will interacte more! And they will come back more often than a website.
2¢

Well, for residential, this is what I tried:

= Facebook ads
= Paid a listing service to update every free site with my info.
= Joined Yelp and a few other similar sites
= Got listed on all the neighborhood chat boards
= Distributed thousands of door hangers and magnet Biz Cards
= Supplied the local real estate agents with my cards
= Paid for the website with video
= Struck a deal with another cleaner for referrals on jobs he didn't want to accept due to distance.

It isn't much apparently, but I was only looking for about 20 jobs per month. Most months that didn't happen....actually, only one month did this year.

I thought it was just a dead market, but I had a call from someone the other day saying that they found it difficult to find me on the internet so there are other issues in play. I still seem to be MIA when people are searching for a carpet cleaner.

Rob I just googled "carpet cleaning Blair NE". You don't show up on maps, or on the first three pages.

You need to get your SEO straightened out. That is likely the reason people are not calling for resi. I thought that company that did your site and video was supposed to juice your SEO too?

So you now have 2,  5-star reviews on Google

This is the ongoing issue Matt and I don't know what is happening. I have been as high as 4 on the first page and always shown on the maps and then it disappears until I find out that "someone" has messed with my data (service area especially).

Each time that it happens, I get a flood of calls from the "SEO salesmans" asking for money to boost my exposure. I believe that they are absolutely related and I am fed up with it.

This is also why I am switching to all commercial so that these vampires can go after other victims for awhile as I am tired of addressing this problem.

Rob,  if you want to get your SEO and website straightened out.   Contact Tiffany at Ezee design marketing and print.  

I can vouch for her 100%,  she is awsome.    I pay her 200$ a month and the website is flooding with service requests.       She got all our ducks in line and did some really nice website work.       Idk if you want to do $200 a month but I believe she can do less for less money.      

www.hydracleanNW.com   is our new site,   we are finally getting solid work from just our website and not just paid sites or word of mouth

her cost for us is less than 1 small job per month

Thanks for the referral AC and welcome back.

AC, more info for Tiffany. I googled ezee design marketing and print. To many links.
What town or #

Nice website AC, I don’t need SEO but sure could use a website upgrade.
Bob, call me if you have access to your google local listing, I can guide you to some tips on being on the 1st page.
Reviews also help a lot, especially if your competitor has a few more than you, you should ask your family member and friends to give you positive reviews.
The reviews need to mention some importantly keywords like “carpet cleaning” “best” “upholstery cleaning” “sofa cleaning” etc.
Once you figured your SEO out, you don’t need to make monthly payments for SEO, just need to watch your listing once a week or even once a month.
AC, can you put Tiffany’s phone # here ? I definitely need a web design service.

AC, just wanna remind you, we still need Tiffany’s #, thanks.

Just thinking;
Website vs. Facebook.?
Kinda feel that doing the Facebook thing, heavy, could perform better.

Matt; My carpet cleaner wrote:Just thinking;
Website vs. Facebook.?
Kinda feel that doing the Facebook thing, heavy, could perform better.

I said the same thing awhile ago and I think it is the case in many markets. I recommended my guitar instructor yesterday and the person immediately looked for his Facebook page, not his website. I have been seeing that a lot this summer. The difference between the two is that they will not find your FB page without someone recommending you first.

Website for people that do general searches for a cleaner
Facebook for people who get referred to you by others

I like the referral route far more than I do the general public searches, as they already had someone they trust convincing them to give you a try. I have been ramping up my FB page for that reason.

For me personally, none of those 2, I would go on Yelp first, not because of that’s the main source of my business, but because I know I can trust those reviews, of course not all of them, you have to kinda weed the stupid ones out, but as we all know, that’s not that difficult to do, Yelp saves me time in choosing who I want to hire, sometimes it can be a little difficult when the ratings are almost equal, in that case, whomever can get the job done the earliest usually win my business, I’m sure that’s what most customers want, especially in metropolitan areas, that’s why I almost always reserve a spot or two empty in my schedule for those people.