8 Skill Sets You Must Have to Grow a Successful House Cleaning Business
You might think that starting a house cleaning services is as easy as tossing a bunch of cleaning supplies into the trunk of
your car and finding a few clients probably people you know from whom you can
build a base of clients through referrals. When the business gets too big for
you to handle alone, you can hire help and transition into more of a business
management role.
Branding and marketing. The branding part includes creative
design - a brand color palette, logo, well-chosen fonts, an understanding of
basic design principles, design software and the know-how to use it, web site
design and hosting, and an ability to define a brand message and style of
speaking/writing that defines your business. On the marketing side, you’ll need
to create collateral such as flyers, direct mailers, ads, and so forth. You’ll
also need to know about different ways to get your message out, how to measure
performance of various marketing channels, and to evaluate return on marketing
investments.
Customer service. Speaking of Yelp and other small business online
review sites, a common theme in negative reviews is poor treatment of people
who first attempt to interact with a business and either provide feedback or
have their complaints heard. Do an outstanding job here and the need for online
reputation management diminishes greatly.
Tele-sales. While it’s true that customer referrals form a big part of the new
client acquisition process, a dedicated tele-sales effort — one that is fed a
consistent supply of leads from marketing — is the only way anyone ever gets
rich in the house cleaning business.
Recruiting and human resource management. The people you send out to clean
customers’ homes form the lifeblood and will make or break your business. There
is a particular set of personality traits that makes a person perfect for home cleaning services. You need to know what those traits are, how to spot them in
interviews, and how to win over and retain those people once your customers
start becoming attached. You also need to know how to handle disciplining and
firing nonperforming employees without exposing yourself to lawsuits.
Risk management. This includes data and physical security, PCI
compliance, as well as liability protection for yourself. People will be
allowing your employees into their homes, sometimes when they’re not there.
They’ll be giving you credit card and other personal data. You need to know
best practices for keeping keys, homes, and personal data secure. You also need
to know how to protect your business from liability via employee criminal
background checks, bonding, insurance, and policies to address things like
damage and breakage that occurs on cleaning jobs.
Accounting and finance. If you don’t know a thing or two about
managing and optimizing business cash flow, financing, calculating net present
value of investments, and so forth, you might find it very difficult and
stressful to hire people and to make all the right moves at the right times to
expand your house cleaning business into something that delivers more than just
a basic standard of living.
Cleaning operations know-how. Do you know how long it should take
for one person to effectively clean a four-bedroom, two-story house with two
pets? Do you know how to guard against cross-contamination of rooms in
customers’ homes? What cleaning solutions and tools work best at lowest costs?
If you expect to turn a profit in your business, this is all information you’ll
need to have in order to price jobs and to train and equip your employees
correctly.
Technology. Don’t expect to be able to accomplish any of the above without a
better-than-average understanding of how to use a big variety of contemporary
desktop and mobile technology.
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