Fish made another run at my commercial customers today - a shopping center I do monthly. I was told by my customers that I missed them by 30 minutes. They went through with their pamphlets and aggressive pitches and quotes nearly twice as high as mine (they must have forgotten that they’d started trying to undercut me last year at this time) but this time they tried a new trick - at least to me, that I thought was hilarious. Two guys get out of the truck. One guy goes in and pitches but the other one stays outside and starts cleaning a window without even getting the OK and while the guy inside pitches he points out that the business is ‘already getting one window cleaned for free’. All my customers gladly sent them on their way.
Yikes. Isn’t that what the inner cities guys do at stoplights?
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Never thought of that. It is kind of.
Are we only supposed to solicite jobs no company is cleaning?
Part of a business is acquiring new customers, another part is keeping them. Dont we all try to do both.
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I don’t see anything unethical or underhanded about that approach. Clever (and efficient) sales tactic, that obviously won’t work at every store, but will likely have a higher success rate at businesses who are less then thrilled with their current cleaners.
Fish must tell their franchisees to focus on soaking up commercial storefront work? They recently opened up shop here and there is plenty of that work to go around. I saw their two technicians (maybe one is the owner) cleaning some windows as I was stopped at an intersection. It was not only embarrassing how they were cleaning windows but the tools the were using looked like something they picked up at the hardware store. I don’t now how they can advertise “professionally trained,” when you are getting two monkeys sent out with some swiffer mops and a squeegee. I wish them luck, but the amateurs with no formal training have never stuck around here.
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My view point when others solicite a current customer I have is simple.
If they take over the account by one of two methods, either one I am fine with.
Lowball, means customer didnt respect what I offered, not my customer base anyway.
Customer left me for lack of service, I deserve to loose account.
@gmo, feel proud your customer finds value in your service and dont get all bent because another business dare work in the same area. It’s what every business deals with.
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I noticed that they started up in casper saw their website and laughed at pictures, not proffessional at all. 
Not bent and I do respect every window-cleaner’s right to solicit new business but I just thought the walking up and cleaning a window while the other guy pitched was a little cheesy and so did my customers. Sorry, but you gotta have a sense of humor when a giant like Fish moves in.
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Yes, you’re right. I just think their tactics are funny sometimes.
Not unethical or underhanded but also not efficient, at least not in the area I live in. People here don’t go for the hard sale. I just thought it was funny.
I have worked for a northern cali company that charges $18 for inside/out, screens,tracks, and sills. Per window. Nuts, right? And I have worked for fish. Fish is horrible. I started work there and had to train a few people that thought they were going to train me. I had 5 years exp, all three employees had less than a year. What i came to find out was that the only training they had was from watching “fish training videos” and doing bids. None of the guys even wanted to do bids and they were so amatuer at cleaning glass that when we did a resid. project i would do half the house while the 3 others did the other half. Not only that but they charged virtually nothing for a pane of glass, so all of the bids they do are extremely low ball. The basis of their company is to get jobs and do them extremely quickly by just slapping water on the window, squeegee it and then walking away. They had all this high-tech equipment like water fed poles and thousands upon thousands of dollars of equipment and no one ever used any of it. So basically the basis of their businesses is to drive around all day,hop out of the fish van, do a job extremely quickly and then leave, so you end up having to do about 20 to 30 jobs a day while charging about $20 for each of them. Horrible business plan. It’s why so many people that buy their franchises end up going out of business. I’ve seen them try much more funny / scandalous shit than that.
Do tell.
At least they were in there quoting high prices. That’s good for your knowledge as you hustle to grow your business.
Is there a chance Fish had rates nearly twice as high as you because they have more expenses like insurance?
After they found your price was so much lower they may have found that to be funny.
It isnt common for companies to be that far off on prices unless one is a bucket bob.
They also are leasing a small little storefront office space. I thought that is highly unusual as why would a start up window cleaning business need or spend money on more overhead. Maybe that is a FISH thing?
Yes, they are required to have an office. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a storefront space in a strip mall but they aren’t allowed to work from home.
Canvassing is everyone’s right as long as there isn’t a no soliciting sign. The cleaning a window without asking tactic is a little gauche in my book. Why not ask first? Of course, the current window cleaner would have to be really bad for there to be a real impact.
There are much better ways to land a new account that already is another’s account than cleaning a window for free to demonstrate. It pretty much means nothing if you ask me.
