Free Web Sites Free Email Free e-Business
|
Free Web Sites Free Email Free e-Business
|
HOW TO START YOUR OWN SUCCESSFUL WINDOW WASHING SERVICEHere's a business that even the most skeptical will decide has a great potential for creating real wealth. In fact, there's so much in favor of the "little guy" starting this business that it's a real mystery why more people don't choose this one as the vehicle for their ultimate independence and financial security. If you plan your work carefully, a window washing service is an occupation that can bring you quick success. It's a service business that can be operated very profitably by one person--male or female. The basic knowledge needed for success is simple and easy to learn. Very little monetary investment is needed for equipment, usually less than $500. The need for tools is limited and there are minimal storage space requirements. You can operate out of your home for as long as you like. Yet, there's a real demand for this business everywhere. The success potential as a window washing service is as great in the smallest of towns as well as in the largest metropolitan area. Your risks will be minimal while your rewards can far surpass your wildest dreams. Generally, a one man operation in a city of 50,000 can expect to gross $5,000 or more per month after just ninety days in operation. Expenses for one-man operations grossing this amount should be less than $800 per month. Ideally, your plan should be to solicit new accounts, do the work yourself, and establish a regular customer route. Once you've established your service route and you're beginning to realize a good profit, hire part-time help to do the work while you solicit new accounts and establish more regular customers. Always be looking for opportunities to expand your customer base, while at the same time cutting your basic cost of operation. Concentrate on providing regular window washing services for all the one and two story office buildings and storefronts in your area. Start with those closest to your home and expand your efforts outward. Choose a busy thoroughfare leading into your city's downtown area--the one closest to your home--and begin calling on business owners and store managers all along this street. Usually, you won't have to do much more than introduce yourself, briefly explain your services, ask if they'd like immediate service (today), and leave your business card. On a once-a-week basis, you should have a strong enough base clientele after six weeks to keep one man busy six hours a day, five days a week. Until you become well-established, don't bother soliciting work on windows higher than the second story. However, it+ s best to call on every business, one after the other, as you make your way to the downtown area. Consider working through the businesses located in a large commercial business park. While most have only one or two large windows, they can be quickly cleaned in a matter of minutes. The cost will be low enough that the company can pay you out of petty cash, saving the hassle of having to have their accountant make out a check. In a large business park you can clean the windows of twenty to thirty customers in three hours. Charging ten dollars each, that's $200-$300 for just a few hours work. Not a bad start! As your business grows, call upon churches, private schools, businesses located on side streets off the main thoroughfares, and even homes if you'd like to try that market. Generally though, you'll find the residential market too time-consuming to make your efforts really profitable. Apartment houses and condominiums are quite a different story, particularly when you can land a number of customers in the same building or get a contract to clean the windows of all the clubhouse or activity room buildings in the entire complex. As mentioned earlier, you can headquarter in and operate from your home. Store your cleaning equipment and supplies in a corner of your garage. Your bookkeeping and other paperwork can be taken care of at your kitchen table with whatever office supplies you need easily stored in a closet or drawer. If you have a home computer, utilize an inexpensive or shareware spreadsheet program to keep your business accounts. This will help you greatly when it comes time to prepare your annual income tax return. Your most important advertising piece will be your business card. Have a supply of cards and an adequate supply of billing statements imprinted with your business name and address. Also have a supply of mailing and return reply envelopes printed. You could get away with rubber-stamping your business name and address on your statements and envelopes, but your business will grow faster and you'll save time by having professionally imprinted supplies from the beginning. There is no reason not to list your home address as your business address, but listing a post office box number will not harm your image. The most important aspect in becoming successful is personal contact. Someone from your company must regularly call upon your prospective customers. Talk with them. Listen to them. Get to know them. Find out who's currently doing their window, if there are any complaints, and how you can offer them a better deal. When you've actually investigated the service for which they're already contracted and you're certain you can offer a better price, put your ideas into a written proposal and deliver it to them. Don't be afraid to submit a proposal for a better deal, but remember when you do, your proposal should offer more than just a price break. Under-cutting a competitor's price usually means less profit for you. It may temporarily result in more work for your company, but you're in business to attain wealth not work yourself into an early grave. If your spouse is home during the day, he or she can answer the phone for you and set up appointments while you're out making sales calls. Your partner can also type out your monthly statements, see that they're mailed on time, and handle your bookkeeping. It may not be feasible for all of your incoming calls to be answered at all times. Use a telephone answering machine to answer with your message informing the caller that they have reached Bill Smith at Bright Window Cleaners. Unfortunately, you are occupied at the moment and cannot take their call. If the caller will please leave his name and number you will contact him shortly. The caller will assume that you are on another line and that he has reached your voice mail box. He will leave a short message. You should get back to him as quickly as possible. Most answering devices can be activated by remote from another touch-tone phone. If you are not going to return to the house soon, call your home number every hour to check for messages. Quickly get in touch with the caller and arrange for a personal appointment. Don't let prospective customers wait too long or they will find another service that will respond more quickly. As the size of your company increases and you hire a crew to handle work assignments, you will ultimately need to hire a secretary to handle your calls and to make job assignments or act as a dispatcher. Even with a secretary, you can still operate your business out of your home for as long as you choose. Regardless of how large your work force becomes, it+ s always best if you supply the window washing equipment and supplies. Employees should be allowed to take the equipment home with them and required to use their own vehicle for transportation to each job site. By all means, spend the extra money to supply your workers with uniforms. Matching shirts and trousers with a big patch on the back of the shirts listing your company name and phone number is not only impressive in projecting a professional image, it's also one of your cheapest and best advertising methods. Once you've hired people to do the actual window washing, get a couple of magnetic signs showing your company name and telephone number. Be sure to "wear" these signs on your car as you make your sales calls and spot check on the progress of your work crews. As soon as possible, get similar signs for your crew chiefs. If you should opt for company-owned vehicles, be sure to have your company name, phone number, and logo painted on each side of these vehicles, and allow your crew chiefs to drive them home at night. All of this will provide you with a great deal of inexpensive advertising. The equipment you need to professionally wash windows is relatively simple: a twelve or eighteen inch window brush; an aluminum telescopic brush handle; six, ten, and eighteen inch squeegees with replacement rubber blades; a couple of plastic or galvanized water pails (two gallon and five gallon capacities); an eight foot step ladder; and, a 16 foot extension ladder. Your start-up supplies should also include five gallons of liquid soap, a good supply of clean rags, towels, and several chamois, and sharp razor blade scrapers. This entire list of equipment and supplies should total no more than $500. You'll need to add to your equipment only as your business grows and you are forced to hire more personnel. Some professional window washers are promoting an alternative method to clean with besides using window brushes and squeegees. They advocate the use of "strip washers." These are 3/4 inch pieces of aluminum pipe covered with a nylon sleeve fitting over the pipe. They are similar in appearance to the handy do-it-yourself paint rollers, and are used in much the same manner. Strip washers reportedly work very well on all but the dirtiest of windows. Another alternative is an extension pole and brush device. Water is pumped through the handle and out the brush in a rinse-wash-rinse cycle. Most professionals claim this device is ideal for second story windows. Brush devices also require a hose and water source backed up by sufficient pressure to drive the device properly. In many locales, this will not be available. Thus, for the best results most workers still prefer the basic brush and squeegee. A third alternative is a hose and water-fed brush that uses deionized water where ladders aren't feasible. Deionized water has had all minerals and foreign elements removed. Using this water assures the window washer of an easier and faster job with no worries about streaking or water drops. However, the washer must carry his own supply on board his truck in a large enough quantity to assure completion of the entire job. Your prices should range between $20 and $25 per hour. Pay for hired help should begin at $5 per hour. Checking the prices charged by several other companies in your area will give you a basis for establishing your fee. You want to earn a sufficient profit to make your business worthwhile, yet in the beginning you want to provide customers a low enough price to make your service attractive. If you hire outside help, you will also need to check on how to begin paying the employers portion of the FICA taxes and how to withhold and pay income taxes for your employees. A little time investigating proper procedures can save you substantially on down the road. It's important that you do some homework on exactly how to clean the various types of windows and window coatings you will run across. Many of these coatings or coverings require special treatment such as the use of soft towels instead of brushes that might scratch the surface of the window coating. The professional technique for washing windows cleanly and in the least amount of time is as follows: Add a few drops of cleaning solution in your bucket of water, remembering that too many soap suds are detrimental to quality work. Wet your brush from the bucket and then scrub the window. Take your squeegee and make one wiping pass across the top of the window, being sure to keep the end of the squeegee pressed firmly against the molding or top sill of the window frame. Wipe the squeegee and then do the same thing down each side of the window. From this point on, it's just a matter of wiping the window clean with one continuous stroke. You do this by arching and looping your wiping strokes across the window pane, back and forth, never stopping or lifting the squeegee blade from the glass. With this method, you can wipe even the largest window clean in just a matter of seconds. Practice at home on your own windows and those of your neighbors. You'll quickly develop a knack for this method and wonder why you never discovered it before. When you've finished with the squeegee, take a chamois and carefully "blot-wipe" any excess water that may not have been picked up along the sides and bottom of the window frame. That's basically all there is to it. You'll find the spring and summer months to be your busiest. However, because of the increasing popularity of painting holiday scenes and special sale announcements on business windows, be alert for year 'round opportunities as well. Keep plugging away and offering your services to businesses throughout your area, particularly along those busy thoroughfares where moving traffic contributes to the build-up of dirt and grime on windows. When you're ready to hire helpers to do the work for you, a simple ad in your local newspaper's Help Wanted column should bring you more applicants than you'll ever need. After you've hired those you want, keep a record of the ones you liked but didn't hire, and check with them when you want to add onto your crew of workers again. Bulletin Board notices will also bring in a surprising number of applicants. Another good idea is to spread the word among local firemen, policemen, and teachers that you're looking for part-time help. Depending on your area's pay scales, you can also do pretty well by contacting the temporary help services in your area. About the only regular advertising you'll need to do is a medium to large display ad in the yellow pages. This is a must. Once you're established you'll find at least 40% of your business will come as a result of your customer having seen your ad in the yellow pages. Here's an "insider's" trick to advertising in the yellow pages. Try to name your business with the very first letter of your business name beginning with the letters A, B, C, X, Y, or Z. Statistics and surveys show that when people look for a service in the yellow pages, they invariably pick from either the top or the bottom of the alphabet. Aside from the yellow pages, your next best advertising will be "reminders" such as note pads, special calendars or holders, date or appointment books, and sports caps with your company name and emblem on them. However, as this kind of advertising is quite expensive, it's good to keep it in mind, but best to hold off on it until you can well afford the cost. Radio, television, newspaper, and direct mail advertising efforts will cost you much more than any business you receive from them, so don't consider it to a great extent. However, any free publicity coverage you can generate will surely be well worthwhile. Telephone soliciting for business works very well, but you should have your list of businesses and their telephone numbers plotted out according to new routes you're trying to build. Time spent travelling between jobs will cost you money, just as time spent looking up telephone numbers along a certain planned route will seemingly take forever. If you do decide to solicit new business by phone, you'll have much greater success if you can offer some sort of promotional gimmick to get them to try your service the first time. If you have a client whose business is located in a locale in front of which a lot of other business people pass, try offering your service to him for free in exchange for a little advertising. Offer to do the windows for free once a month if he'd let you put a sign in the window--something like, "These windows cleaned by Bright Window Cleaning Service, 123-4567." Consider doing the windows of new clients for half price as an introductory offer. Also, join with another service business on a joint promotion--weekly window cleaning and office janitorial service for one low cost. The ideas, gimmicks, and promotions you can use are limited only by your imagination. One window cleaning service hired some attractive college students on a commission basis to call on businesses along the new routes they were trying to develop. The students simply introduced themselves as representatives of the firm, explained the available services, and offered a half price introductory package. They ended up selling better than sixty of the businesses upon which they called. During the summer, one enterprising company even tried using a crew of young co-eds as window washers. They weren't the best workers, but their enthusiasm, looks, and good nature proved a bigger asset than their skills. Dressed in snappy red and white short coveralls, they drew quite a crowd on each job. It was good advertising for the company which also received free newspaper and television coverage, plus an untold number of new business leads. However, the uniqueness of the idea eventually wore off. It did prove to be a gimmick that brought in new business, caused a lot of people to recognize that the company was in the window cleaning business, and made the salesman's job much easier. A window cleaning service is an easy business to start, even if you've had little
experience running your own operation. With a small amount of imagination and a
combination of persistence and quality workmanship, you can easily become as financially
secure as you desire. All it takes to start is the decision by you to begin. Reach for
your dream, and may you always enjoy the fruits of unbounded success! |
