Client surveys are underrated.
They’re definitely under utilised by cleaning businesses.
When was the last time you surveyed your clients?
Not asking for a review or a testimonial.
Questions that enable them to provide feedback about your service and why they chose to work with you.
Harsh as it may sound, my guess is that none of the readers of this newsletter have surveyed their clients.
(If you have, let me know in the comments and accept my apologies!)
We didn’t survey our clients when I ran my cleaning businesses.
Big mistake.
Survey’s provide a treasure trove of information.
If acted on it will improve your business and increase lifetime value.
Clients have a habit of sticking around when you take onboard what they have to say.
In today’s email:
Arranging a survey
Questions to ask
Key Takeaways
👇🏾 Listen: Need to find reliable cleaning staff for your business?
THE BIG IDEA
Arranging a survey
We recently helped a commercial cleaning business find more contract opportunities in the professional services space (lawyers, accountants, engineers, surveyors etc).
As part of our onboarding process, I asked about client feedback. The owner confessed that in 20 years of running the business, he’d never asked clients for feedback.
No news is good news right?
Perhaps.
Better news is understanding why clients work with you and how else you can help them.
More Value = Happier Client (and more revenue).
I asked the owner to introduce me to his Top 20.
He identified the top 10 clients to send the survey to.
Here’s the email he sent out:
And here’s my follow up email sending the survey:
Simple.
Questions to ask
The survey had two sections and asked 14 questions.
The first section asked for details about the company.
The answers provided useful information including:
Size of the company
Cleaning budget
Decision making process for vendors
Most important vendor qualities
Challenges with previous vendors
The second section asked for feedback on the cleaning business.
Here we found out:
How they found the business
Any obstacles to choosing the business as the preferred vendor
The businesses best qualities
Why they decided to work with the business; and
Why they’ve stuck around for so long
Useful information for building your ideal client profile, developing your value proposition and understanding how similar clients engage cleaning businesses.
You can use this information to tailor your marketing and sales scripts.
You can make changes to your cleaning service, bidding process and customer experience.
The beauty is that you get all this information in less than 30 minutes work.
I sent the survey to 10 clients and 5 responded.
A 50% success rate is very good.
The information you get as a result is priceless.
Here’s a link to the survey: https://forms.gle/SvzyahqrbGNdW5TFA
Key Takeaways
“What did you learn that I can use in my cleaning business?” I hear you ask.
If you’re based in the UK and you’re looking to target SME professional service businesses, here are some key insights:
Soft service budgets (cleaning, waste + grounds maintenance) range between £5,000 and £50,000/year
There’s one decision maker - General Manager, Practice Manager or Office Manager
The most important qualities are reliability and cleaning standards.
The biggest challenges with other cleaning vendors are unreliability and cleaning standards.
The reputation of your business is a big factor in the decision making process.
Consistency is the single biggest factor that impacts how long a business engages your services.
It’s all well and good collecting this information.
The real value lies in using it to improve and grow your cleaning business.
Now imagine collecting this sort of information 3 or 4 times a year.
What sort of impact will that have on your business?
Content to check out
This week’s episode of The Growth Lab podcast is an extract from webinar James and I hosted to launch The Cleaning + Property Maintenance Support Group. Louse Trehearn from the DCBN provides some useful tips for streamlining the recruitment process for your cleaning business. Listen here.
Prefer watching over listening? Check out The Growth Lab podcast on YouTube.
Need More Help?
Want to 3x revenue growth for your cleaning business in the next 12 months? Book a call.
Email me with the growth strategy for your cleaning business. The more details you provide, the more personal I can make my response.
Join The Cleaning + Property Maintenance Community and gain access to support, accountability and networking opportunities to grow your business: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1279455169412140/?ref=share
Thanks for reading!
Matt @ The Growth Lab
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