How To Start Your Own House And Apartment Cleaning Service

Houses and apartment cleaning services are gaining in popularity.These are business services that are growing in demand as aresult of more and more women seeking jobs outside the home.Their need to supplement the family income creates theopportunity for you to set up a lucrative business.
Ten years ago, businesses of this kind were serving onlyaffluent---homes of the wealthy people where women didn't want tobe bothered with the drudgery of household cleaning, and had themoney to pay someone to do it for them. But times have changed,and today the market includes many middle income families inevery residential area across the entire country. The potentialmarket among apartment dwellers is great also. All in all this isa business that has grown fast, and has as much real wealthbuilding potential as any we can think of.
This is a cleaning service generally associated with women;however, men are finding that they can organize, start, andoperate very profitable home and apartment cleaning businessesjust as well as women. It's an ideal business for any trulyambitious person wanting a business of his or her own, especiallyfor those who must begin with limited funds. Actually, you canstart this business right in your own neighborhood, using yourown equipment, and begin making a profit from the first day.
Many enterprising homemakers are already doing this kind of workon a small scale as an extra income producing endeavor. There's agrowing need for this service. Organizing your efforts in to abusiness producing $50,000 to $100,000 a year is quite possible,and you can get started for $100 or so, always using your profitsto expand and increase your business.
Absolutely no experience is required. Everyone knows how to dustthe furniture, vacuum the carpets, make the beds and carry outthe trash. But your must ask yourself if making a house clean andbright is important and uplifting work. If you look on it asdegrading or as drudgery don't involve yourself in this business.
Starting from scratch, you'll need a telephone and an appointmentbook. You also need an advertising flyer, such as the following:
HOME OR APARTMENT CLEANING We do the work---You relax and take it easy. You get the best job in town, at rates you can afford. Your satisfaction is always guaranteed! Call Sue: 123-4567---ABC Cleaning Services!
You can either type this notice out or write it in long hand witha pen. Either way, it's going to be your first advertisingendeavor, and bring in that first customer for you. It would be a good idea to visit your stationary store to pick upa pad of "fade out" graph paper, a couple of sets of transfers(rub-on) letters, a gluestick, and if they have one, a Klip Artbook.
Take these materials home and clear off your kitchen table. Takea sheet of graph paper, and temporarily tape the corners down onthe table. Then take a pencil and a ruler, and mark a rectanglefive inches wide and six inches long along the lines of the graphpaper. This will be the overall size of your flyer when it'sfinished.
Look for a Klip Art piece depicting a hurried housewife engrosseswith either cleaning tools or in the act of running the vacuumcleaner, or some other household chore. Cut this piece out, andwith your gluestick paste it in the upper left corner of yourrectangle. Then take your transfer letters and make the headline:HOME OR APARTMENT CLEANING. Next, type out the body of themessage on ordinary white typing paper. Be sure to use arelatively new ribbon, preferably a black carbon ribbon, andupper case letters. Cut this strip out, and paste it on the graphpaper, centered just below the headline. Then use some transferletters that are about twice as large as your typewriter type,and paste up the action part of the message: For DETAILS, CALLSUE:123-4567. Cut out a couple of border flourishes from yourKlip Art book, paste then under your action line, and you'reready to take it to the printer.
In essence, you have a professional advertising "billboard." Youcan check around in your area, especially with the advertisingclasses at your local colleges, but generally they'll do nobetter than you can do on your own using instructions we've justgiven you, and they'll charge you $50 to $100.
Once you have this advertising flyer completed, take it to anearby quick print shop and have about 200 copies printed. Youshould be able to get two copies on a standard 81/2x11 sheet, andrunning 100 sheets of paper through the press is going to costwell over $10. For just a few cents more, have the printer cutthem in half with the machine cutter, so you will have 200 copiesof your advertising flyer.
Now take these flyers, along with a box of thumbtacks, and putthem up on all free bulletin boards you can find--grocery stores,laundromats, beauty salons, office building lounges, cafeterias,post offices, and where ever else such announcements are allowed.
When a prospective customer calls, have your appointment book andpencil handy. Be friendly and enthusiastic. Explain what youdo--everything from changing the beds to vacuuming, dusting andpolishing the furniture and cleaning the bathroom to dishes andthe laundry. Or, everything except the dishes andlaundry--whatever you have decided on as your policy. When theyask how much you charge, simply tell them six to ten dollars anhour, but for a firm cost quote, you'll need to see the home andmake a detailed estimate for them. Then without much of a pause,ask if 4:30 this afternoon would be convenient for them, or if5:30 would be better. You must pointedly ask if you can come tomake your cost proposal at a certain time, ot the decision may beput off, and you may come up with a "no sale."
Just as soon as you have an agreement on the time to make yourcost proposal and marked it in your appointment book, ask forname, address, telephone number.
Jot this information down on a 3x5 card, along with the date andthe notation: Prospective Customer. Then you file this card in apermanent card file. Save these cards, because there areliterally hundreds of ways to turn this prospect file into realcash, once you've accumulated a sizeable number of names,addresses and phone numbers.
When you go to see your prospect in person, always be on time. Acouple of minutes won't hurt you, but a few minutes late willdefinitely be detrimental to your closing the sale. always bewell groomed. Dress as a successful business owner. Be confidentand sure of yourself; be knowledgeable about what you can do aswell as understanding of the prospect's needs and wants. Do notsmoke, even if invited by the prospect, and never accept adrink--even coffee--until after you have signed contract in yourbriefcase.
Actually, once you've made the sale, the best thing is to shakehands with your new customer, thank him, and leave. A littlesmall talk after the sale is appropriate, but becoming friendlyis not. You create an impression, and preserve it, by maintaininga business-like relationship.*
When you go to make your cost estimate, take along a ruled tabletsuch as those used by elementary school students, carbon paper, acalculator and your appointment book. Some people find it easierto work with a clipboard and ordinary blank paper with carbon.Later on, you may want to have general checklists printed up foreach room in the house, with blank lines and spaces for specialinstructions.
Whatever you use, it's important to appear methodical, thoroughand professional, while leading the prospect through thespecifics he or she wants you to take care of: "Now, you want thecarpet vacuumed and all the furniture dusted and those two endtables, the coffee table and piano polished as well, I assume?"
Simply identify the specific room at the top of the sheet ofpaper, the lead your prospect through the cleaning steps of eachroom, covering everything in it. Your implications of puttingeverything in "ready for company" shape will cause the customerto forget about the cost, and hire you to do a complete job.Always have a carbon under each piece of paper you're writing on,and always look around each room one more time before leaving it;then ask the prospect if he or she can think of any specialinstructions you should note for that room.
Finally, when you've gone through each room in the house with theprospect, come back to the kitchen and sit down at the table.Take out your calculator and add up the time you estimate eachjob in each room will take to complete. Total the time for eachroom. Be liberal, thinking that if you can do the carpet job in15 minutes, it will usually take the ordinary person 30 minutes.Convert the total minutes for each room into hours and tenths ofa hours per room. Add the totals for each room to arrive at yourtotal hours to clean the entire house.
Talk with the customer briefly, wondering how she can ever findthe time to get everything done at home, especially when holdingdown a fulltime job. A little bit of small talk, a quick mentalevaluation of the customer's ability to pay, plus your knowledgethat you can get everything done in four hours, instead of six itwould take most people, and you summarize by saying:
"Well, Mrs. Johnson, you've certainly got enough routine cleaningwork to keep you busy all day and every day of the week! Icertainly don't know how you do it, but anyway, we'll take thiswhole problem off your shoulders, save you time, and actuallygive you time to relax. We can do it on a regular basis, everyother week for $120 per month or the one single time for $75.
"I can imagine how tired you are when you get home form work. Ifyou're at all like me, there are times when, faced with all thishousework, you want to run away someplace and hide. Now, we'lltake care of everything for you--keep the house spic and span,ready for company, allow you to forget about housecleaningchores, and for a lot less than it's costing you now in time,work, and worry. And we guarantee that our work will more thansatisfy you. So, would you like to try our cleaning service onetime for $75 or do you want to save $15 a call and let us takeover these chores for you on a regular basis?"
Here you begin finding a place in your appointment book, and tellher: "Actually I have an opening at 8:30 on Tuesday morning. Wecould come in every other Tuesday at 8:30, clean the whole houseand have it done before you get home from work."
The customer agrees that 8:30 Tuesdays will be fine. Then you askher if she prefers to be billed with the completion of each housecleaning session or on a regular monthly basis. Point out to herthat by engaging you on a monthly basis, she picks up a freehouse cleaning every three months.
Now that you have your first customer, you want to fill every dayof the week, each week of every month with regular jobs. Once youhave one week of each month filled with regular jobs, it will betime for you to expand.
Expansion means growth, involving people working for you, morejobs to sell, and greater profits. Don't let it frighten you, foryou have gained experience by starting gradually. After all--youraim in starting a business of your own was to make money, wasn'tit? And expanding means more helpers so you don't have to workyourself to death!
You can operate this business quite successfully from the comfortof your home, permanently, if you choose to. All you'll need is atelephone, a desk, and a file cabinet.
So, just as soon as you possibly can, recruit and hire otherpeople to do the work for you. The first people you hire shouldbe people to handle the cleaning work. The best plan is to hirepeople to work in teams of two or three--two for jobs notincluding dishwashing and laundry--three for those that do.
You can start these people at minimum wage or a bit above, andtrain them to complete every job assignment in two hours or less.Just as soon as you've hired and trained a couple of people as acleaning team, you should outfit them in a kind of uniform withyour company name on the back of their blouses or shirts. A goodidea also would be to have magnetic signs made for your companyand services. Place these signs on the sides of the cars yourpeople use for transportation to each job, and later on, thesides of your company van or pick-up trucks.
Each team should have an appointed leader responsible for thequality and overall completeness of each job assigned to thatteam. The team might operate thus; One person cleans thebathroom, makes beds and carries out the laundry, while the otherperson dusts and polishes the furniture and does the vacuuming.On jobs where they do the laundry and the dishes, the thirdperson can pick up the laundry and get that started, and then dothe dishes and clean the kitchen. By operating in this manner,your work will be more efficient and the complete job will take alot less time. However, it is important that each person you hireunderstand that the success of the business depends on the "crew'doing as many complete jobs as they can handle each day--- not onhow much they get paid per hourly working for you.
Your team leaders will check with you each afternoon for the nextday's work assignments and gather the team together, completewith cleaning supplies and material, on the next day. Your teamleader should be supplied with a stack of "hand-out" advertisingflyers to pass around the neighborhood or within the apartmentbuilding before leaving each job site. A good supply of businesscards wouldn't be a bad idea for them either, in order toadvertise your services to others they come in contact with. Theonly other form of advertising you should go with would be adisplay ad in the yellow pages of your telephone directory.
Design on paper a system of clean-up operation that you cangenerally be applied to any situation, then drill your teams onspeeding up their activities to make the system work even better.Just as fireman practice and practice, you should drill yourpeople as a team in their cleaning activities.
Probably the biggest time-waster in this business will be intravel from job to job. For this reason, it's important to spreadadvertising circulars to the neighboring homes when you're doinga job, or to the apartments on the same floor when you're in anapartment building. As the organizer and person assigning teamsto jobs, it will behoove you to locate, line up, and assign jobsclose together as possible. Keep up your efforts to cut time ittakes for your crews to travel from one job to the next. Work atlining up jobs all in one block, or in one apartment building.
Your equipment needs will be minimal: Cleaning and polishingrags, mops, a couple of plastic buckets, and furniture polishes.Most people will have the necessary cleaning materials, includingvacuum cleaner, soaps and cleaners. But it wouldn't hurt to havethese items available just in case you get a job in a home or anapartment without these tools. As your business grows, you'll beable to purchase all your needs at huge discounts, and these arethe sources of supply to cultivate as you grow.
One of the most important aspects of this business is asking for,and allowing your customers to refer other prospects to you. Allthis happens, of course, as a result of your giving fast,dependable service. You might even set up a promotional notice onthe back of your business card (to be left as each job iscompleted) offering five dollars off their next cleaning billwhen they refer you to a new prospect.
This is definitely a high profit business, requiring only aninvestment of time and organization on your part to get started.With a low investment, little or no overhead requirement, and noexperience needed, this is an ideal business opportunity with agrown curve that accelerates at an unprecedented rate. Think ofit. If it appeals to you, set up your own plan of operations andgo for it! The profit potential for an owner of this type ofbusiness is outstanding!