Unfortunately, being anxious will just get you nowhere. Yes you might have experienced failure this year, but with that in mind, wouldn’t it be much better if you start to think ahead for the coming year? Or, if you think 2011 is your year, wouldn’t it be nicer if you make 2012 your year, too?

So, it’s about time that you create a New Year’s Resolution which will serve as your guide in achieving your goals for the following year. This is to help you avoid the mistakes you’ve made from the past, and get on a better way in the future.

The following are some important items that you might want to consider for your New Year’s resolutions list. These items are not that hard to do, but it’s important that you pay attention to see the results.

Maintaining Positive Attitude

As a cleaning business owner, one of your goals is to make sure that your clients are satisfied and happy with the job you and your crew made. So, how would you reach this goal? By simply working a little bit harder on maintaining a positive attitude, making your clients happy will be an easy task for you. This is because when you have a positive disposition in life, it will show in your face and it will reflect on whatever you do. So, if you (as well as your crew) are happy with what you’re doing, you’ll only be providing the most excellent work. And this makes your clients satisfied and happy, too.

Keeping In Touch With Current Clients

Just because you already won the cleaning contract from a certain client doesn’t mean your client-vendor relationship should just stop there. Calling your clients to remind them of some future services they may have expressed interest in does not mean that you’re bothering them especially if they specifically asked you to keep them informed. You’re only showing them that you give importance to what they tell you, and that you know exactly what they need. This way, you’re portraying an image that your company is not just after the money, but can also be a partner to your clients’ success.

Keeping In Touch With Prospective Clients

Make it a point that you sometimes get in touch with your potential clients again. These people are those who have previously inquired about your services, and/or those who you would like to offer your services with. Send them an email, or probably cold call them to ask if they might be interested in your service. This is to remind them of your company in case they would need a cleaning service.

Being Grateful With What You Have

Not all cleaning companies are the same. Some cleaning companies use high end cleaning equipments, or are probably using three trucks as their vehicles, some don’t. Some may have much, some may have much more, but there are also some who may have worse. You can’t expect your business to own three trucks right away, as well as you can’t expect to have the same bad fate as that of the other. What you can just do is to be grateful with everything you have so you’ll learn to give importance to everything around you.

Appreciating Employees

Aside from appreciating the things you have, learn to appreciate the people around you as well. These people are your employees, or should we say your team – your partners. Appreciate all the effort and hard work these people are doing to make your business grow because without them, your company might not have been where it is now.

Taking Advantage of the Technology

It’s true that you can just cold call a potential or current client. However, this can take a lot of time. So, to save some of those times, you might want to consider using new media channels. Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, or LinkedIn can be very useful to bring your message out there. These sites has large numbers of users, so giving in some time everyday in maintaining these sites can be very helpful for your business growth.

Whenever the year’s about to end, we tend to list down all the things we wanted to do the next year or the things we wanted to change. This leads us to creating our New Year’s resolutions. It’s like making a blueprint of our goals, and our plans, and our hopes. So take a break, create one, and then take your cleaning business to the next level.

Though it sounds a lot easy, cold calling a prospective client is sometimes a little frustrating. Because there are clients who show no interest, or simply just ignore the call, this technique has become a bit of a challenge for some cleaning business owners. Fortunately, there are some ways that you can do to have a bigger chance of getting your prospect’s attention (and possibly get their “yeses” for a new contract later on).

But before you can effectively do the process of cold calling, here are some of the most important things that you must consider to get the right approach:

Timing is Everything, you never want to make the right Call at the Wrong Time!

Research

In order for you to get an advantage of scheduling a meeting, you must first understand and know the details about your prospect. That means you’re not going to use the same approach for each and every call you make. You need to do some research about a certain prospect’s company to be able to talk to them about their business as well as their needs once you call them.

Proper Timing

For most people, early in the morning is the time when they’re still willing to entertain calls as this is the time when they’re most energized. If it’s possible, you can try and make a call during these times. But, you can still try to call anytime during business hours, but make sure that you know what’s the most convenient for your prospect.

Be Positive

Having a positive attitude is important in this process. Yes, your prospect maybe not able to see your face, but he can hear your voice. If you have a positive mind, you’re happy. And when you’re happy, it’ll reflect in your voice which draws interest and attention.

Now that you know how you can get the right approach, you’ll be ready to make series of calls. The following are some cold calling tips that are quite simple, yet very effective:

Since you're not physically with your Client, the best you Could do is Sell your Service through your Call!

Opening

During cold calling, you must not forget the famous line “first impressions last”. Right from the start, the person you’re calling to can actually recognize if you’re worth their time. So, there are two things that you must do:

1. Speak clearly. By simply not making the person feel that he has to decipher every statement you make, you are not lowering his level of interest. This way gives you a greater chance of getting his attention to listen to what you’re trying to tell him.
2. Create a warm, distinctive tone of voice. A picture of you as well as your character begins to take its shape in the imagination of the person you’re speaking to by simply listening to your voice. Warm voice usually draws attention; however, not all people are born with it. So, try to practice speaking with a warm tone to get used to it.

Introduction

When you’re cold calling, you’re also trying to project a professional image. So, it would be better to state your name after the opening instead of wait for the person on the other line to ask who you are.

Purpose of the Call

This is the part where the person will determine whether he should listen to you or just hang up. So explain the purpose of your call in a way that still grabs the person’s interest. Give your prospect enough reason to keep on listening by explaining to them the benefits your company can give rather than selling your services. Remember, your focus here is to set an appointment and not to make a sale.

Asking for an Appointment

Now, how you ask the person on the other line is the most important. Since you already have the person’s interest, make him agree for an appointment by asking for a specific time. Asking your prospect to meet with you “next week” will just invite a NO answer, while asking him to meet with you on a specific day and time like “Thursday at 10 am” for example is way much better.

Cold calling prospective clients is one of most essential part of your cleaning business. It may not be easy (and a little disheartening when you’re being rejected) at first, but you can always get better at it. You just need to keep on practicing the process and learn from each call to be more effective at it.

Though this business may require a lot of hard work and determination, setting up won’t take long and it doesn’t require you to attend some seminars or take some classes before you begin. You can already earn good amount of money and have a steady work within just weeks. Here’s how:

Step 1: Gather all necessary supplies

Start Cleaning Business - Window Cleaning Tools

Before you get started, make sure that you have all the necessary supplies ready. It doesn’t have to be the latest equipments just yet. It just has to be the most essential supplies and materials such as the following:

• Soap or cleaning solution
• Squeegees
• Glass scrapers
• Scrubbers
• Bucket
• Ladders (for taller windows)

The above supplies cost a few hundred dollars only. But considering the amount of money that you can make from cleaning windows, you can absolutely earn the said costs after just a few jobs.

 Step 2: Learn how it’s done

It doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll need to attend to seminars, trainings, or workshops; you just have to gain knowledge on how it’s properly done. Because you’re possibly not an expert in this field yet, it would be a great help if you do some research first before you begin to operate. There are a lot of resources that you can use to know how it’s done like searching online for some free window cleaning guides or ebooks, or by watching the step by step process of cleaning in youtube. You might also want to practice what you’ve learned by cleaning your own window or maybe a friend’s window to see if you’ll be ready to begin.

 Step 3: Determine the charges

This is usually the hardest part in cleaning industry – deciding what to charge. Of course you don’t want to charge your clients with a very high rate, but you certainly don’t want to undervalue your services as well. So, when figuring out your rates, it’s best that you check with some businesses same as yours in your area on the amount (going rates) they usually charge to ensure that you’re not charging too high or too low, whether hourly or per window.

 Step 4: Search for potential clients

To start earning, you need to promote your business and search for customers. You can do this by giving away some flyers or business cards, or by placing ads to some free classifieds such as Craiglist, or perhaps by cold calling prospective clients, and telling to everyone you know that you’re running the said business. You might also want to consider offering discounts to somehow attract more customers.

Step 5: Stay organized

Window Cleaning

Once you’ve gained clients, it’s important that you’ll stay organized. Make sure that you have a planner that has all the list of your schedule for the day, a file that has all the information of each of your clients with their contact information, the dates of service, payments, and all the other important data that can help you manage your clients list. This way, it’ll be easier for you to keep track of everything while at the same time you won’t be late to any appointments, thus helps you project a professional image.

Though you may consider window cleaning business as one of those tedious jobs out there, still, it can be a great source of income. And the best thing about this business is that it’s not too complicated as everything’s pretty much easy to start. Even with a small amount of money, for as long as you have the patience and determination, everything falls into place and you’ll sure make a profit out of it.

With lots of hard work, patience, and determination, window cleaning business can be a great source of income.

At first, you will get all excited and eager to start your operation. You’ve got a lot of energy until one time, you noticed that you’ve been waiting for months now, and yet your business is still struggling. Since starting this type of business is fairly inexpensive, it’s pretty much easier to decide to just stop. And that’s exactly the reason why there are a lot who fails.

Giving Up Too Soon

Yes, you may already have done your part of searching for clients, cold calling them, sending them emails, etc. But you still see yourself complaining of not being able to find more clients. Are those marketing strategies you do still not enough? Is it high time to just stop the operation and just move on to another type of business?

No. Giving up too soon without really putting a little bit more extra effort to gain customers is very unreasonable. The problem with most people who failed in this industry is they gave up so easily. What they didn’t realize is that they must have been very close to gaining customers, that there must have been a chance if they have decided to wait even just a little bit longer.

Reconnecting with your Clients allows you to build an even better Rapport for you and your Business' reputation..

Reconnect

Now, what you can do is to try to reconnect to your prospects. You don’t have to sound like you’re always selling. You’ll just have to remind them that your business exists. By occasionally sending your prospects some newsletters, informing them what’s new in your company, or possibly suggesting or answering to their blogs (if there’s any), you’ll somehow reconnect with them without making them feel they’re being marketed to.

You must not forget that you’ve got yourself into a very competitive industry that moment that you decided to start your own cleaning business. Competition is around you; left and right, front and back. That’s why you must be really determined to “compete” to be able to reach your dream of becoming successful in this line of work. The words “give up” shouldn’t be on the list of your vocabulary anymore, it’s just a sign of weakness. In this industry, you have to be tough to stay competitive and keep on track. And, you just have to be the type who puts up a fight and never gives up.

So for those who are considering giving up, think of a much better way instead. You’ve already made some effort to market your business so why stop now? You don’t stop on first, second, third, or even fourth attempt of offering your service; continue trying until you get results.

In reality, you can expect people to get frustrated once in a while. It’s a common emotional response to some factors that are beyond our control. However, there are some individuals who continually get frustrated. Now why is that? Because these people might have failed to do what they should be doing: that’s keeping themselves on the right track.

With a lot of fellow business owners around them, with so many sets of different ideas, and with so many tasks they think they needed to learn, they somehow lose track of their goals. Now, if you feel like you’re getting out of track and seems that you’re running your cleaning business without a clear mission, the tips below should help you get right back on track again:

Money Saved is considered Money Earned, so you Better Cut Back on Your Expenses!

Avoid Purchasing a Lot of Things You Wouldn’t Need Yet

Most successful business owners became successful because they knew the “secret” when they were just starting out: that is not buying what they want; it’s buying what they need. In cleaning business, where you’ll start with limited resources only, it’ll be better if you know how you will wisely spend your capital. Invest on most dependable cleaning equipments that you can use for years, and not on portable ones that could only last for months. Remember your main focus here is to earn, and not to incur debt just because you can’t resist on buying things you don’t actually need.

Think Before You Do What Someone Else Has Told You to Do

Since cleaning business is a large industry, there will always be some “unsolicited” advices from anyone out there. These people might tell you to do this, or that for a quicker success, or to buy this, or buy that for more efficient work. Though you may find some of these advices useful, it’s not always that you have to do what everyone else is telling you. Consider those that will make sense and those that might have something to do with your goals, but remain focused on the most important things that you should do; avoid wasting a lot of time doing every thing those “mentors” have told you.

Apply Set of New Skills Right Away

Time is valuable for all of us; it only means one thing – income. And in cleaning business, wasting time is definitely a no-no especially when you’re just starting out. If you’re already reading an article on “how to drive more traffic to a site” even before having your own website, you will just be wasting your time. This is because you might have already forgot all the information you’ve read by the time that you have your own site. Chances are you will need to read the whole article all over again. So, it would be wiser if you put all the information or all the skills you learned to work as soon as possible. And, if you’re interested in driving more traffic to your site, then don’t waste your time and make a move to have your own website right away.

Having a Plan and Sticking to it allows you To Keep your Head in the Game!

Stick to Your Plans

When you’re just starting out your own business, it’s really easy to get disrupted because of some things that are happening around you. But, does it have to completely sidetrack your plans? No. Things do happen to us, and the only difference between each and one of us is our ways of figuring out on how we can keep on moving. So, if you’ll easily get sidetracked, then you won’t get any progress in achieving all your goals. Remember, the most important factor to surviving is having a plan and the discipline to stick to it.

These are just some of the few things that you can do to keep back or stay on track in running or starting your cleaning business. You really can’t avoid frustrations but you can at least lessen it by focusing and knowing all your goals.

In order to succeed in this competitive industry, it’s important to let the people know that you have a high standard cleaning company. How? By planning ahead on how you could keep an extreme level of professionalism, your cleaning business will have a greater chance of getting ahead. The following are the levels of cleaning business professionalism to help you project a high quality cleaning company:

Choosing a Cleaning Niche

The first level of cleaning business professionalism would be choosing the niche you would want to concentrate on. What’s great about this industry is that you have different choices of the type of niche you can start. You may choose from any of the following niches:

• Office Cleaning
• House Cleaning
• Gutter Cleaning
• Window Cleaning
• Carpet Cleaning
• Etc.

Any type of field would be a great choice as all of these niches are profitable. However, when you’re just starting out, it would be better to choose one and become an expert to ensure that you’ll be providing a service that’s beyond just par. This way, you’ll be more successful in achieving all your other goals. It’s easier to add some extra service when you’ve already established a good reputation anyway, so it’s more practical to try to be the best in your chosen field first.

Building Experience

You’ve decided to start a cleaning business to make a living, and of course to be successful, right? So, in as early as the planning stage, you must have already included in your plan that you will be “hands on” to your business and will not just “play” as the manager only. This is the second level of professionalism: being hands on to everything to gain experience. In order for you to determine which would be the best cleaning process, you must personally experience it first. A true professional knows how to handle any other tasks he or she might encounter. If you know only one aspect of running your company (for example searching for clients only but don’t know the basics of cleaning), you cannot confidently show your staff how they should be doing their jobs. Remember, if you haven’t gained enough experience and your staff falls short of your expectations, then there’s no one else to blame but you.

Commitment to Improve

Being professional is being able to commit to continuous improvement of your business. In cleaning industry, if you don’t know how to handle those times when the business is slow, and if you easily get discouraged, you’ll be going through a rough road ahead. So, instead of giving up just because there’s a lot more established cleaning companies out there, think of a much better way to improve your company and stand out. Remember, as soon as you decided to embark on starting your own cleaning business, you’ve already committed to give a lot of effort to make it grow.

Professionalism is something important for your cleaning business. The more professional you are, the more you project a high quality service providing cleaning company. And the more you project such image, the greater the number of clients you’ll gain and you’ll keep.

To better make the right decision, you must first know and understand the difference between subcontractors and employees as well as being aware of some other things that you need to consider when you decide. The following are useful information to help you determine which one would be the best choice for your cleaning company:

Employees

Hiring Employees is a Long-Term Investment for your Cleaning Business

Employees are the people who will work under you. You have full control over the things that has to be done. And since you’re the one who trained these people, you can also expect them to do the job the way you like it to be done.

Also, your employees are the people you can trust and can always rely on. Work flow is going to run smoothly as it’s easier to just assign employees to work from project to project rather than always trying to search for subcontractors to do a certain project.

The only thing about hiring employees is that you’re obliged to provide them their employee benefits such as sick and vacation leaves, health benefits, and some other allowances. But, this is not a downside though. If you’ll just be a good employer and be willing to provide them what they’re entitled to have, you can be sure that your employees will also be willing to do their part for your company. It will be easier for them to provide quality service to your clients and make them happy. In this case, both you and your employees will benefit from it.

Subcontractors

Subcontractors are per-contract Basis only, hence unlike Employees, are Short-Term

Hiring subcontractors means you’d only be hiring them to do a specific project. You simply pay what their fees are and that’s just basically it. They’re not under your employment; their only focus is to do that certain job you hired them to do. You might not need to tell them what needs to be done (they’re trained and usually knows what to do), and you might not need to watch over them until they finish their tasks. However, even though you only contact a specific company to do a specific job, it’s not always that they’ll be sending the same people. That means it can be a little hard to build trust among you and your clients if they always see different faces to clean their homes or offices all the time.

But, hiring subcontractors can still be a great idea to do all the extra services your company offers. They can do the carpet cleaning or probably pool cleaning. Any other things that can help you accommodate all your cleaning jobs. In addition to that, your subcontractors may also be helpful in marketing your company as they can always refer you to their other clients as well.

Before you decide on which would be the best worker for your cleaning business, you might as well take into consideration some of the few points stated above. Take your time and do some research to help you analyze which is better. Remember, the more you learn everything about the two, the easier for you to judge and make the right decision. In short, employees will be working for you on a long-term basis, and not just per project.

As the business owner, you know that you and/or your crew will be working in your clients’ homes or offices. And the said clients will not always going to be there to watch and supervise your team while you do the tasks. That could leave you and/or your staff vulnerable to different complaints of lost or damage (lawsuit); additionally, falls and slips on wet floors are most likely to happen as well. These are the reasons why insurance would play an important role for your cleaning business.

Many cleaning business operators seem to overlook the significance of insurance. Probably because it’s a little expensive to have one, or they just prefer to have a cheaper insurance. Whatever the reason is, some of these operators’ decision to not get or to go for cheap insurance for their businesses could possibly just bring more problems in the future.

Why carry insurance?

Even if Insurance can be a Heavy Load at first, you and your Business will benefit in the long run!

Though it’s not always that something will go wrong while you’re running your cleaning business, it’s still not safe to say that there will never be a problem. What if one time one of your staff just fell out of the ladder while he cleans the gutter? Or, one of your staff accidentally did something that caused your client/s to be rushed to the hospital. You can’t really tell, right?

That’s why insurance would be beneficial for your cleaning business. Besides having “peace of mind” that the insurance company will pay the costs if for instance something just went wrong, you’ll also have an edge over your competitor that doesn’t have it.

What to consider before getting insurance?

In order to prevent some future problems, you need to be sure that you’re getting the “best” insurance policy for your cleaning business. There are many large insurance companies that can provide general liability insurance package that includes the following:

• Premise liability – helps protect your clients from having to pay medical bills if they’re injured or harmed within your business premises.

• Products liability – pays for the injuries or damages caused by a wrongful use of cleaning solutions.

• Completed operations – helps you pay for litigation expenses, and would pay for injuries, damages, and all related settlements.

To make sure that you have the right insurance to cover potential lawsuits, don’t just rely on one insurance agent’s advice. Compare rates so you can determine which one can give you the most coverage at the lowest fee. And, you might also want to speak to some companies to get advice about your general insurance needs to get the perfect policy for your cleaning business.

Owning a cleaning business is a great way to earn income. However, you must not forget that owning such business could mean having a great responsibility as well. While it may seem like an addition to your business’ expenses to get insurance, or probably a hassle to get one, it will still be worth your time and money if you know that there’s something that will protect you and your business.

Yes, your cleaning company’s maybe at its peak right now; no signs of threat of a possible financial devastation whatsoever. But, that doesn’t guarantee you that you’ll remain on top especially in this competitive market. This is exactly the reason why income diversity is very important.

Losing a particular source

In cleaning business, depending on just one source of income could lead you to future financial problems if, for some reason, you lose that particular source. Yes, you probably have an emergency fund, but that fund could have been “bigger” and could have gone further if you just aimed of having different sources of income for your cleaning business. Besides, if you know that you have other sources to fall back on, together with a considerable amount of emergency fund, you’re secured that your business will remain stable and you can still have financial peace of mind if ever you lose your primary source of income.

While most clients pay on time, there are some who don’t

Your other source of income doesn’t have to be the same or equal to your primary source of income. You just need to try to find some “part-time” or one time cleaning jobs while keeping your “full-time” or regular cleaning jobs. These part-time jobs can be a great help in smoothing out any uneven stretches you may encounter if in case some of your regular clients made a late payment. Remember, not all big accounts will pay you on time so you could pay all the bills; it can actually be the smaller ones that you can rely on sometimes.

Think of it as “a bonus”

If on the other hand your regular clients are never late in paying you, your income from these one time jobs can just be a bonus. Payments from your big accounts can be used to pay all the bills while you can keep and save all the money from those one time deals to build a much larger emergency fund.

Starting a cleaning business is not a hard thing to do. What’s hard is how you can keep your company busy to stay on track. However, if you’ll just work a little bit harder to develop other source of income in addition to your regular accounts, you’re not just making your company profitable; you’re also making it strong.

Setting prices for your cleaning services seem rather difficult than starting it. Because you wanted to stay competitive, it’s important that you have to be precise right from the very beginning to accurately hit a reasonable price. Ideally, you’ll go to the house or the business establishment to evaluate the job before you could quote a price. However, the question is: will it going to be charge by the hour or by the square foot?

The following are some tips to help you determine how much you should charge for a particular cleaning job:

Pricing by the Hour is for Small Scale Cleaning Services

By the Hour

Pricing by the hour is usually being used in house cleaning service. Because not all houses are big, especially if you’ll just clean a particular part of the house (bedroom, living room, etc), charging by the foot won’t give you a profit. But you have to remember that no two houses are the same. So you may need to go to that particular home to see the tasks you needed to do. By then, you should be able to determine the total amount of time an average worker will need to complete it. Then multiply this by the hourly rate of your staff to get the total cost of labor then add on the total amount of other expenses. Depending on your area and the types of services you offer, your hourly rates could possibly start from $15 per hour.

It’s also a great idea to determine the basic charges or the going rates in your area. This way, you’ll have a rough estimate on how much fee would be acceptable or whether you can have the same pricing structure.

By the Square Foot

Pricing by the square foot is most common in commercial cleaning service. But don’t forget that rates may change depending on the location. To get an estimate on how much to charge, you need to go to the business establishment and check the following:

• Total square feet
• Floor surface type (vinyl flooring, carpet, or ceramic tile)
• Entire area (types of rooms, number of toilets, restrooms, office, etc)
• Specific service required (dusting, mopping or vacuuming, cleaning restrooms, etc)

For Commercial Cleaning Service or Large-Scale Cleaning Businesses, Pricing by the Square Foot is your best Bet.

In medical facilities, it’s understandable to bid a little higher per square foot compared to regular office buildings as these medical facilities may need more specialized cleaning service. Same goes with restaurants or warehouses as these business establishments may require more effort and more time to clean.

You may also need to adjust your price rate per square foot as the building size increases. Meaning, you need to decrease your usual rate per square foot if you’ll have to provide service to a building with 13000 total square feet than you would to a building with 4000 square feet.

In setting prices for your cleaning business, you shouldn’t forget that you put up a business to earn a profit and make a living. It is not wise to set your prices too low just to attract clients as you will not just be making enough profit. So this won’t give you an assurance that you will be in the business for so long. Besides, you’ll just be hurting the whole cleaning industry and you’ll just have a hard time to raise your rates in the future.

While on the other hand, setting your prices too high will only result to losing contracts to your competitions. High price rates will just give you few contracts as it’s too easy for potential clients to look for other cleaning service.

One of the most important things that you have to learn in cleaning business is how to price your services. This is to let the customers know that you’re providing a professional and excellent service at reasonable price while at the same time, you’re making a profit. Estimating a price is a skill that can improve overtime; you just need to focus on getting it right.