“The clean took longer than I thought because the property was in a really bad state.”
What seemed like a straight forward 2 bed tenancy clean turned into a 10 hour nightmare.
With zero profit. Maybe even a loss.
Sound familiar?
Minimising these situations starts when the clean is booked.
Agenda
Asking the right questions
Pictures
Upselling
The booking
Payment
1. Asking the right questions
When you receive an enquiry for a tenancy (or a deep) clean, you need to ask the right questions.
Doing so helps you understand the size and state of the property to be cleaned. It also gives you an opportunity to upsell.
Here is a list of questions we used to ask as standard:
Type of property:
House
Flat/Apartment
Studio
How many:
Bedrooms
Bathrooms
Reception Rooms
Staircases
Small room/study
Does the property have:
Utility room(s)
Separate toilet
Conservatory
What type of carpet cleaning is required:
Vacuuming only
Full carpet clean
No carpets
If carpet cleaning is required, which areas are carpeted:
Bedrooms
Bathrooms
Reception Rooms
Staircases
Small room/study
Do you need:
Garage cleaning (sweeping only)
Balcony cleaning (sweeping only)
Patio cleaning (sweeping only)
Do you need upholstery cleaning:
Sofa(s)
Armchair(s)
Rug(s) [Small, Medium or Large]
Full length curtains
Half length curtains
Mattress(es)
Do you need the windows cleaned?
Internal (included)
External - How many windows?
Anything else we need to know?
What date is the clean required?
Morning or Afternoon?
What are the access arrangements?
Collect keys from agent
Client will provide access
If your website has online booking capabilities, include these questions as part of the quote request.
Fantastic Services have executed this online process very well - have a look here.
Make sure you check out interview with Fantastic’s CEO Rune Sovndahl for a deeper dive on using tech in your cleaning business.
2. Upselling
Did you spot the upsell opportunities?
Carpet cleaning
Garage/balcony/patio cleaning
Upholstery cleaning
You could add gardening, driveway cleaning and gutter cleaning to your questions. These are more relevant for deep cleans at an owners property rather than tenancy cleans.
Asking the right questions presents these opportunities and increases your average order value.
Approach the booking in the same way McDonalds take your order. Always ask: “Would you like fries with that?”
3. Pictures
Even if you ask all the right questions, you can’t get a gauge the state of the property without seeing it first.
It took us a while to introduce this step as part of the booking process. When we did, it was a game changer. Our teams knew what they were walking in to.
My recommendation is to always ask for pictures. Two pictures of each room to be cleaned (each from opposite corners of the room), will give you a good idea of the clean.
Ask clients to submit pictures during the online booking process or to send them via email or WhatsApp.
If they ask why, tell them that it helps to gauge how long the clean will take and how big a team you need to clean.
More importantly, it will help you price the clean.
If you take bookings online, you might want to consider a couple of options:
Allow the visitor reserve the date of the clean online. Then send an email with the final quote. This is a bit clunky but it works.
Allow the visitor to book the clean and include a disclaimer stating that there may be additional charges depending on the state of the property.
We didn’t have online booking capabilities when I had my cleaning business.
Everything was booked over phone or email so asking for pictures before confirming a quote was a simple step in the booking process.
4. The booking
Now that you have all the details of the clean, finalise the booking.
Find out whether the clean needs to be completed in the morning or afternoon.
We gave clients two booking windows:
9am to 1pm
2pm to 6pm
These windows enabled us to manage the workflow for our teams. Rather than having one clean in the middle of the day, we could book every team for at least two cleans.
We also found that more than 2 cleans a day affected the quality of each subsequent clean. These type of cleans are hard work.
Confirm access details as well. Do keys need to be collected or will the client be at the property to grant access?
After all the booking details have been verified, we did two things:
Send email confirmation with all the booking details, invoice for payment and a payment link; and
Send a calendar invite for the date and time of the clean, confirming all of the booking details.
5. Payment
This part of the booking process is crucial.
I’ve seen a many people on Twitter and Facebook get caught out with chasing payment after a clean has been completed.
We did this for years, and I hated chasing. It wasn’t until we bought a tenancy cleaning business where they took payment upfront that we changed our policy.
Such a simple change but crucial for cashflow, time management and minimising bad debt.
We asked for payment BEFORE carrying out the clean.
Clients could reserve the time and date but unless they paid for the clean beforehand, we wouldn’t turn up to clean.
Rarely did we have clients object to making payments upfront.
Our invoice and payment link were included in the email confirmation or clients could pay over the phone while they were booking (we used Paypal Now).
Payment had to be made at least 24 hours before the reserved date and time. Automated email reminders were sent in the days before the reserved date to remind clients to pay.
This might be a difficult step for you to take if you’re used to collecting payment after the clean. But it’s an important one.
If you take anything away from this post, let it be this change. It makes a massive difference to your cashflow.
Content to check out
This week’s episode of The Growth Lab podcast outlines 21 lessons every cleaning business owner needs to know about growing a cleaning business. Listen here.
Prefer watching over listening? Check out The Growth Lab podcast on YouTube.
Need More Help?
Email me with the growth strategy for your cleaning business. The more details you provide, the more personal I can make my response.
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Are you ready to reach more clients, win more contracts and build a massively profitable cleaning business? Start here.
Thanks for reading!
Matt @ The Growth Lab
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