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Casual Articles - Starting a Cleaning Business and Successfully Growing It
It doesn’t matter if you are starting a multi-million dollar corporation or a roadside lemonade stand, everyone can benefit from having a formal business plan. In fact, it should be the very first step in establishing any new business. Here are three reasons why –1) A Business Plan Contains Feasibility Research. The process of creating your business plan allows you to better understand the feasibility of your business idea. Unfortunately, not all new ventures are going to be successful because of outside factors, such as location, market trends, etc. By identifying this early on, you can save yourself a lot of precious time and money. Then, you can take what you have learned and formulate an alternative business proposal.2) Having a Business Plan will keep you Budget-focused. When you are first establishing your new business, it’s easy to become overzealous and, thus, accidentally overspend on things that you shouldn’t. By starting with a formal business plan, you equip yourself with the research needed to make intelligent purchasing decisions. For example, your plan’s “Marketing Strategy” will contain information about what advertising options will be the most effective and have the highest return-on
Be prepared for business with professional business forms and letters. You should have: a sales script memorized to perfection
Although technical skills are essential for IT consultants, there are many other things you need to know when running your own business. Here is a list of a few of the most important things you need to learn when running your own business.Learn How to Say "No"A lot of people may make crazy requests or waste your time as you begin your business. They may not have the money to pay or they may just be expecting too much. In order to stand your ground and run a successful business, you must learn to say "No."Learn About Banking and Merchant AccountsSetting up a business bank account should be one of your first steps. If you plan on reselling products, you'll need to set up a merchant account so that you can accept credit cards.Learn How to Manage Your FinancesYou need to make sure you get paid, get paid well, and get paid fast. You're going to need to figure out your expenses, know how to balance your checkbook, know about credit and collections and how that ties in to your whole billing and invoicing system.Learn How to Track Prospects and ClientsYou don't want to lose prospects or clients by failing to remember to make that important call. Use simple databases to track
Here is some professional advice that will help you start your own cleaning business with minimal investment and maximum return:
A professionally designed logo will help to brand your company in the public's mind. Your logo will be printed on business cards, door knockers, letterhead, car signs, etc., so carefully consider the image you want to present, and then choose artwork which will best reflect that image. Visit LogoYes.com to create your own logo for only $99.
Decide what you will charge for your services. Research the local market to determine what your competitors charge. You must remain within the local standards, and you can undercut your competition slightly; however, if you charge significantly less than the competition, you may end up with less money and more work than you care for. Your growth must be contained so that you can add employees as you need them without raising prices and thereby losing customers. Also, if you have more jobs than you can handle you may not be servicing the homes well, and this is certainly not good for business.
Advertise in the "services" section of the classified in your local newspapers. Keep it short, and ad your logo if you can afford to. Your ad might read “Quality housecleaning with integrity. Call ###-#### for a free estimate.”
Place an ad in the house cleaning section of your local yellow pages. Research all of your local phone books and notice which ads catch your eye. A good bet is a “knock-out” ad with at least 2 colors. A “knock-out” removes the yellow background and leaves a crisp, attention grabbing white field among all the yellow ads. For a lesser cost you may list your company in the yellow pages free listing column with a knock-out and color. Make this ad a minimum of four 4 lines, with color. In addition to the yellow pages books, consider pay-per-click advertising with YellowPages.com. This will assure that your business listing is shown before all of the alphabetized free listings.
If you have lots of time but little money, then hand delivering a marketing piece may be an option. Your choices are door hangers, brochures or postcards. We suggest that you use either brochures or postcards rather than door hangers because you can use them as handouts and also as mailing pieces. Why purchase boxes of door hangers which in two months you will not have time to deliver, if you are running the business correctly? You can develop your own brochure or postcard using Microsoft Publisher, or you can purchase a pre-designed template, and print the pieces in-house or have them printed at a local print shop or copy center.
When your business starts growing and hand delivery is no longer an option, then direct mail postcards are the most economical and effective advertising tool. You’ll need to purchase a mailing list unless you plan to create your own. We have found that DirectoryStore.com has the best prices on Hill Donnelly directories, the most up-to-date and accurate lists available. You can use labels or merge the postcards with your mailing list and have them copied at a local office store or printer with a high speed/high quality copier. Insist on seeing a sample from the copier before you have the job completed. You MUST deliver high quality postcards in order to make the best impression on your prospects. Flimsy paper with lopsided print, ink rubbing off and jagged edges is not the professional image that will make your prospects eager to call.
Be prepared for business with professional business forms and letters. You should have: a sales script memorized to perfection w
When John applied for a job at Oakland Company, his resume looked fabulous, showing tremendous talent and advancement. His qualifications were beyond question and he built immediate rapport with everyone in the interview process. Every one of his references checked out. Six months later, you were wondering why you hired this clown.Today’s hiring professionals seem to prefer recruiting candidates from the ranks of the employed. It is a logical approach assuming others have recognized their talent and retained them while untalented people were sent to the unemployment line by their frustrated past employer.The reality being overlooked in this scenario is that most employers fail to deal effectively with underperformers. The secret in effective recruiting today is to understand the twelve mistakes commonly made by hiring professionals and recruitment teams. This article will look at those twelve mistakes and offer ways for hiring professionals to avoid making the same errors. The payoff of avoiding these errors is the ability to shift the time currently spent on recruiting toward other aspects of running the business or developing other facets of human resources.Mistake #12 – Failure to understand w
Decide what you will charge for your services. Research the local market to determine what your competitors charge. You must remain within the local standards, and you can undercut your competition slightly; however, if you charge significantly less than the competition, you may end up with less money and more work than you care for. Your growth must be contained so that you can add employees as you need them without raising prices and thereby losing customers. Also, if you have more jobs than you can handle you may not be servicing the homes well, and this is certainly not good for business.
Advertise in the "services" section of the classified in your local newspapers. Keep it short, and ad your logo if you can afford to. Your ad might read “Quality housecleaning with integrity. Call ###-#### for a free estimate.”
Place an ad in the house cleaning section of your local yellow pages. Research all of your local phone books and notice which ads catch your eye. A good bet is a “knock-out” ad with at least 2 colors. A “knock-out” removes the yellow background and leaves a crisp, attention grabbing white field among all the yellow ads. For a lesser cost you may list your company in the yellow pages free listing column with a knock-out and color. Make this ad a minimum of four 4 lines, with color. In addition to the yellow pages books, consider pay-per-click advertising with YellowPages.com. This will assure that your business listing is shown before all of the alphabetized free listings.
If you have lots of time but little money, then hand delivering a marketing piece may be an option. Your choices are door hangers, brochures or postcards. We suggest that you use either brochures or postcards rather than door hangers because you can use them as handouts and also as mailing pieces. Why purchase boxes of door hangers which in two months you will not have time to deliver, if you are running the business correctly? You can develop your own brochure or postcard using Microsoft Publisher, or you can purchase a pre-designed template, and print the pieces in-house or have them printed at a local print shop or copy center.
When your business starts growing and hand delivery is no longer an option, then direct mail postcards are the most economical and effective advertising tool. You’ll need to purchase a mailing list unless you plan to create your own. We have found that DirectoryStore.com has the best prices on Hill Donnelly directories, the most up-to-date and accurate lists available. You can use labels or merge the postcards with your mailing list and have them copied at a local office store or printer with a high speed/high quality copier. Insist on seeing a sample from the copier before you have the job completed. You MUST deliver high quality postcards in order to make the best impression on your prospects. Flimsy paper with lopsided print, ink rubbing off and jagged edges is not the professional image that will make your prospects eager to call.
Be prepared for business with professional business forms and letters. You should have: a sales script memorized to perfection
Firstly you must be wondering who I am and how my advise can be credible, Well lets say I've been there got the T shirt and some and that my credentials are Seller SJACOBS3 View my about me page and the link will take you back to my website j-lou.com I was a power seller from 2001-2007 and was featured for ebay in the daily Mirror to help ebay with its U.K promotion & Represented them for promotion of businesses using ebay as a selling tool.So you want to be a successful Ebay Business.I always called it the 3 p's "Product-Presentation-Price" get this part right and you are on your way, but it doesn't stop there this is the first step, You product needs to have a wide appeal ie: computer equiptment, Fashion, car parts, shoes, jewelery etc. With ebay you can see demand and prices through other sellers in the field that you may have knowledge in. You can see how these sellers are getting on view their feedback and record their sales record, obviously to get a good share of the marketplace you need to better others either on price-product-presentation or service but ebayers tend to ignore this last factor.This unfortunately is the first flaw with running a business Just on Ebay because the more you
Place an ad in the house cleaning section of your local yellow pages. Research all of your local phone books and notice which ads catch your eye. A good bet is a “knock-out” ad with at least 2 colors. A “knock-out” removes the yellow background and leaves a crisp, attention grabbing white field among all the yellow ads. For a lesser cost you may list your company in the yellow pages free listing column with a knock-out and color. Make this ad a minimum of four 4 lines, with color. In addition to the yellow pages books, consider pay-per-click advertising with YellowPages.com. This will assure that your business listing is shown before all of the alphabetized free listings.
If you have lots of time but little money, then hand delivering a marketing piece may be an option. Your choices are door hangers, brochures or postcards. We suggest that you use either brochures or postcards rather than door hangers because you can use them as handouts and also as mailing pieces. Why purchase boxes of door hangers which in two months you will not have time to deliver, if you are running the business correctly? You can develop your own brochure or postcard using Microsoft Publisher, or you can purchase a pre-designed template, and print the pieces in-house or have them printed at a local print shop or copy center.
When your business starts growing and hand delivery is no longer an option, then direct mail postcards are the most economical and effective advertising tool. You’ll need to purchase a mailing list unless you plan to create your own. We have found that DirectoryStore.com has the best prices on Hill Donnelly directories, the most up-to-date and accurate lists available. You can use labels or merge the postcards with your mailing list and have them copied at a local office store or printer with a high speed/high quality copier. Insist on seeing a sample from the copier before you have the job completed. You MUST deliver high quality postcards in order to make the best impression on your prospects. Flimsy paper with lopsided print, ink rubbing off and jagged edges is not the professional image that will make your prospects eager to call.
Be prepared for business with professional business forms and letters. You should have: a sales script memorized to perfection
Too often a business assumes that IP based solutions are the best choice to satisfy their communication requirements. Particulalrly with convergence issues. But....don't get caught making a hasty decision. There are viable options...and factors to consider before making a final choice.One of the problems with convergence is protocol, starting with IP.While we tend to think in terms of Internet and IP, there are alternatives. Dedicated circuits come to mind, followed by frame relay. One option that hasn't gotten much exposure but may offer some real advantages is gigabit Ethernet via fiber optics. The fiber overcomes the distance limitations associated with Ethernet. Ethernet allows for layer 2 switching versus IP based routing. From a private network perspective, this may be an ideal way of lowering overheads and improving latency and jitter issues.The same applies to other transports such as a private radio network. The IP headers are only one solution to source and destination, and are necessary only when joining the public Internet where IPv4 is the required protocol by agreement (not technical requirement). In 1985, the choice of protocol was still being debated, and Ethernet and Token Ring were st
If you have lots of time but little money, then hand delivering a marketing piece may be an option. Your choices are door hangers, brochures or postcards. We suggest that you use either brochures or postcards rather than door hangers because you can use them as handouts and also as mailing pieces. Why purchase boxes of door hangers which in two months you will not have time to deliver, if you are running the business correctly? You can develop your own brochure or postcard using Microsoft Publisher, or you can purchase a pre-designed template, and print the pieces in-house or have them printed at a local print shop or copy center.
When your business starts growing and hand delivery is no longer an option, then direct mail postcards are the most economical and effective advertising tool. You’ll need to purchase a mailing list unless you plan to create your own. We have found that DirectoryStore.com has the best prices on Hill Donnelly directories, the most up-to-date and accurate lists available. You can use labels or merge the postcards with your mailing list and have them copied at a local office store or printer with a high speed/high quality copier. Insist on seeing a sample from the copier before you have the job completed. You MUST deliver high quality postcards in order to make the best impression on your prospects. Flimsy paper with lopsided print, ink rubbing off and jagged edges is not the professional image that will make your prospects eager to call.
Be prepared for business with professional business forms and letters. You should have: a sales script memorized to perfection
If you haven't already seen the latest beverages on your local store shelves, you've been missing out on a profitable opportunity. Once limited to health food stores and fitness supplement retailers, energy drinks are becoming the latest way to quickly and easily make a profit as an Energy Drink Brand, distributor or wholesaler.The industry has grown 700% in the last 5 years and still growing at up to 72% every single year.The energy drink industry is booming because of the current attention to new brands, non-coffee drinkers, health and fitness and the help of Red Bull, Monster Energy Drink and Rock star Energy Drink. As people have become more interested in making their bodies feel healthier, more aware and happier, the beverage industry has looked for a way to bottle these intentions and create a portable way for people to be more energetic and profits have been bigger than ever.It used to be that energy drinks were limited to those with caffeine – coffee, tea, and caffeinated carbonated beverages. However, this was a limited scope to the beverage industry and often created sagging profits for retailers. People just wanted more choices to their beverages and were becoming bored with what they alrea
Be prepared for business with professional business forms and letters. You should have: a sales script memorized to perfection whether you do in-home estimates or estimates by phone; cleaning fee estimate calculator; fee estimate letters; follow-up letters for quotes not booked; new customer letters stating hourly fees for cleaning services and payment policies; a customer database and accounting system; information sheets listing vital details for each customer; cleaning service checklist form to leave with customers after each service; and customer survey forms for every new customer to complete and return.
Magnetic car signs are a great advertising tool which can be made by a local sign maker for $25 to $50 a set, plus an initial set-up fee. Be certain that your signs fit on both compact and full size cars, and that you use no more than three colors. When designing your signs keep in mind that bold lettering and brief wording works best. Remember to include your logo for name branding.
Purchase cleaning supplies at your local discount center, grocery and dollar stores. Either store or brand name household cleaning products will work, however, compare percentage of the active cleaning ingredients. Consider paying a few cents more for the better brand in order to lessen time spent scrubbing. Avoid products containing bleach as it can cause damage to carpets and counters.
Commercial grade vacuums will last much longer than home quality. We have found that Royal brand commercial vacuums, crafted with die-cast aluminum, are the lightest and longest lasting available anywhere, and they out clean the competition. Available in several models, Royal Commercial Vacuums come with a lifetime warranty on the motor housing, fan casing and nozzle. Visit VacLand.com for the best prices, reputable salespeople and 2 - 5 day nationwide shipping.
Your own website is a luxury that is worth the expense when you can afford it. Be certain to add your website address to all business documents, and to all of your advertising. The website should have an online estimate form and customer testimonials.
When you’re ready to hire employees be certain you have your employment application, employee policies handbook, cleaning procedures manual, warning certificates and all of the appropriate human resources paperwork. With strict policies and procedures to follow, your employees will know that they are working for a professionally run company, and therefore will be less likely to take advantage of you. Also, you will need to keep employee files containing tax paperwork and employment history including a record of verbal and written warnings. To obtain the appropriate tax documents for employees contact your accountant or local state employment office.
Before You Start a House Cleaning Business:
Obtain your federal tax ID; local & state business licenses; bonding insurance, and liability insurance. When you hire employees you will also need worker's compensation insurance. The Small Business Administration is a great source of information for start-up paperwork, business plan templates and links to other informative websites. http://sba.gov/starting_business/startup/guide.html
The Internal Revenue Service has a website which offers a wealth of information for small businesses. You'll find start-up guides, information on tax credits and business deductions, advice on record keeping and choosing an accounting method, employee t
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