How to professionally drop store front clients

I’m saying they don’t even have a business page on fb, a free platform for others to find you? I could see them not having a website since they cost money…but anyone serious about starting a business you’d think they would at least take advantage of free platforms

I know many large window cleaning company s that do not have a fb business page.

They do commercial and route work.

I understand its a free platform and it can generate work for residential window cleaning company’s.

But its far from necessary.

I really dislike the term bucket bob…

PS… a good website makes you money not cost you money.

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I consider it, along with other similar marketing tools, back end marketing to a well established business routine.

What about Bucket Bill? Jk

Okay. This could go in so many ways…

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Yes. Yes it could

Since the recession ended ive had no problems raising prices on everything from storefronts to skyscrapers without regret. We are seasonal with a limited labor pool so some years you cant get to all the work. You,dont need an,mba to know that you keep the profitable jobs and drop the breakeven or low margins. That,said the,stores you resent during busy,season may,be the,ones keeping your overhead paid during the off months.

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Squeegee Steve?

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Well, thank you to everyone who has taken me somewhat seriously :blush: I’ll work on finding a way to make the route work

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“underbid” and “worth your time” are pretty subjective terms.

If you have no work when slow season rolls around again, almost anything will be “worth your time”.

It also seems to me that unless you are booked solid every day of the week all year, then whether a job is “underbid” or not is mostly determined by ego. Yeah it’s nice to be grossing $70-100+ pmh, and that’s a reasonable goal for anyone getting into this business. But $40-50 pmh is still decent money compared to what you would earn working for someone else, and can be had EASILY with a solid route of low-priced, $1 per pane type storefront work.

All the other advice in this thread is top notch.

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Well put Samuel!

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He’s not too shabby…

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Yeah I told one client I needed to raise price to $35 rather than $30. And I’m there at least an hour every time :sweat_smile: And she told me that’s fine but she’s switching to monthly instead of bi weekly. Worked out for me cause I don’t want to worry about it but it left a bad taste in my mouth. I know she wasn’t happy even tho she said it’s fine. I don’t want to have a tense relationship with my customers. I think I’ll just take this one on the chin and deal with it. I’ll just have to find a way to do these windows extremely fast. I find myself being extremely thurough

It’s not just related to windows…in my experience with a mother, two sisters, a daughter, an ex-wife, and a girlfriend, when a woman says it’s “fine”, she means “awwww, hell no, it’s not fine”.

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Haha great point :joy: I’ve been thinking I’m going to make it right and go do her windows for $25 in a couple weeks and tell her I didn’t feel right leaving on that note. Idk.

An hours worth of work for $35? You’re gonna drop it to $25? Maybe I’m just a dick… but does the grocery store give you $10 off your shopping because you were a little mad about the cost of their groceries? I don’t think working for an hour then charging $25 or $30 or $35 is worth it.

Best advice I can give you, correct the prices early on so you don’t have to continuously raise their prices. When I give storefront pricing i offer “locked in prices for 2 years” as a way to appeal to them and sweeten the sales pitch. It’s helped me close more often, I’ve also stopped offering once a week cleanings. I only sell every 4 weeks and every 2 weeks now, the 2x/month and 1x/month cost extra cleanings and it was a lot easier to factor into my scheduling even during peak residential times. Saving one day a week for route work, one day a week for estimates/flyers/call backs, and 3 days of residential window cleaning (4 days if I don’t schedule route work that week) is more than enough time to make good money seasonally as well as year round with steady storefronts.

Mondays: call backs/follow ups, flyers/marketing, onsite estimates

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday: residential WC, PW, GC work

Friday: route work, cause who doesn’t like the option to have an early Friday?

Saturday: leave open for any cancellations that had to be rescheduled for whatever reasons, or if a customer can only get their windows done on Saturdays then I’ll sometimes book someone in for a Saturday.

Long winded post, my bad, but I’ve found having a dedicated day for tasks has helped me become more productive overall I feel. Hopefully you can use something from what has helped me out to grow your business.

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I’d keep em just for contrast. That day or two of the month when your out there doing them you’ll appreciate the “good” work that much more. Try and get residential from them. I have two vacuum cleaner stores I do for free. One is 6 and one is 8 panes plus doors. My “price” is flyers on the counter. Seems vacuum cleaner repair customers see the value in clean homes. Think I’ve scored at least three decent $200 houses each now.

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No I was saying since I changed her $35 this last time, in two weeks charge her $25 so it evens out to being $30 for each time. She wants them cleaned every 2 weeks but she doesn’t want to pay over $30 each time so she reduced things to monthly. In my head it made sense since I “over charged her” $5, I’d give her $5 off in two weeks and apologize and just explain maybe I’m new in business and I’m trying to make things work but I don’t want her to feel she’s getting ripped off or something Idk I could just tell she was upset.

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[quote=“Wallywindow, post:38, topic:42571, full:true”]

Some of the best advice I’ve received thanks

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Gotcha, ok that makes more sense now to me