Following up for return jobs

What is your follow up system like? I am wanting to ramp mine up this year. In the past I have mostly just called customers. Lately I find many who like to use text or email more but a phone call allows for a sales opportunity that an email or text doesn’t as well. What is your experience and do you for see making changes?

In person has always worked best for me. You gotta be able to break the ice and conversate from my experience.

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Not sure what you mean by in person? You mean you go by their house 6 months later?

I have never followed up. Is it to see if they liked the work just performed and justing to try to sell more work?

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For example of I clean a residential job I would follow up in six months to schedule at least the outside again. Some customers will call me before I call them but some will not call as they may not think about it or they may not have the budget etc. It adds jobs to the schedule that would not be there if I didn’t follow up.

You can then look at the sales you get from call backs and estimate the amount of work you will get in the future off of your follow up system.

We’ve done plenty over the years.

Currently doing a mix of things.
-Scheduled blast emails
-4x6 reminder card of last appt.
-Have a job close by for crew and need to fill the day, call with direct offer.

We track how each client prefers to communicate and if we have their preference we lean that way.

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Never mind I’m mainly commercial, that’s what I was referring to

Ok. I was just confused by the response. Do you do route work or mostly non point of sale Commercial?

I do anything and everything commercial, route work, low rise, high rise,

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Agreed, I do it all. I email them weeks prior to when I think they should get them done and call days prior. If I know we’ve already done texting, I’ll also send a text. Every customer is different, I try to remember all of mine. Save them in cell phone with a tag next to their name
-text
-call
-email
After my list gets larger I know things will need to change. I’ll transition to that this or next year.

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I keep it simple.

When I do the job the first time, I sell them on repeated cleans. They tell me how many times a year they want, and what they want done. So, many of mine do before Mem. day, before the 4th of July, and again in Aug-Oct.

All I have to do is contact them 30 days before and set the appointment. Pretty simple.

I don’t work Sundays, so that’s my day every week to get the books done and set up what I need to get done that week.

Dry erase board Man, dry erase boards. Pretty simple way to mark down what needs done, so you don’t forget. If you have the wall space like I do, melamine boards are a LOT cheaper than dry erase boards.

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We do something similar to this, commercial gets their dates stated as week of, just so we have some flexibility. A week prior will notify them which day will be there.

Residential will get actual dates.

This is all set up in February a good 90% of my schedule is set February using service agreements.

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When I use to do residential we use to send out a letter mid March and follow up with a phone call starting April.

Now I see my clients 4x,2x or once a month so no need to follow up for scheduling.

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Maybe it has to do with the difference in winter’s? Here winter’s aren’t bad so window cleaning is year round. I don’t know. People’s mindset here tends to be more laid back about scheduling (speaking of residential). Sort of like I’ll schedule when I think about it. I’ve had customers on contracts before with residential and it goes good for a while and then they tend to get flakey on me. For that reason I dropped residential contracts.

I’m considering a new approach that puts the incentive on the customer to schedule regularly and for them to follow up with me. I will still follow up with them but more along the lines of a systematic approach and then forget about them if they don’t respond.

I have lots of customers who schedule a few times a year but allot also who tend to not respond regularly and then when they have an event they call. I can’t stand that. Yah I’ll take it but I want a customer base that wants regular service not a midnight booty call. I’ve got a family to feed.

@Garry lives in the warm climate too. He has his clients on a schedule similar to mine.

You don’t have to require a service agreement if you don’t want to, but as others have said, it creates exclusiveness and locks in a spot for them.

I put all of my clients that want return service on a schedule THEY choose. If they don’t keep it, I don’t have a spot for them. I don’t need to deal with flakes and fakes. I understand when things happen and they have to break an appointment or they are having work done on the property. But if someone is being cheap, I don’t need them as a client. I just don’t have the time to mess with people like that. I’m busy, and I’m sure you are too. Wasting my time is wasting my most limited commodity.

You just have to decide what kind of clients you want to deal with. They can be replaced with better, if you want that.

A service agreement for those that are flakes, might take the problem out of the equation. Even if it’s just for flakey people.

Been thinking about those who do something like this.

Simply awesome.

I have never done contracts. I have a fair amount of repeat customers and several who have been quarterly for years, then a handful that I only hear from yearly or every other year. Fine with me, as long it is ME they are calling for their window cleaning needs. :wink:
I still get my fair share of one offs and that is just how it goes. People move, or go with someone cheaper, or life changes happen (health, job loss, spouse dies, whatever). All in all I work each week of the year to fill my schedule. If that were perfect I would be a millionaire by now without even trying. I rather enjoy starting each week with nothing and looking back at the end of the month and saying - “Hell yea! That’s how it’s done!”

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I am not sure if this has been mentioned. I put my residential clients on a schedule where I come out a minimum of twice a year. It doesn’t have to be in/out every time. This has helped me tremendously with keeping my schedule full. Everyone knows what schedule they are on. I call the month before to schedule. Does anyone else do this?

Hope this helps someone.

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My customers are all logged on my Google calendar so around March I’ll look back to the previous year to see what jobs I did and then start scheduling my regulars. March and April are the months I’ll fit in new customers and then May-July it is pretty much regulars only. I have very few customers who don’t text this day in age, so that works best.

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Always get the customer email… That is why we do 99% of our official quotes through email. It’s 2018, people are busy…nobody wants their window cleaner calling them. 1 week after the job I send a blanket email asking them how our service was and if there were any areas they had concerns about… Then if their reply is, You guys were awesome! I then send them a hyperlink to our google my business page and politely ask them to leave a review. If they had concerns then we address them.