November 22, 2005
ISSN 1556-7648

Trash Talk: Tip of the Week

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Tip of the Week: 10 Tips for Gaining Customers for Your Cleaning Business

Prepare yourself before meeting with your potential customer. Know your product or service inside and out, learn as much as you can about your potential customer's business, and know your competition. The more you know, the more confident you'll be when talking with the potential customer. Use what works. What is working for you now? What has worked in the past? Learn from your successes and failures. Talk to other cleaning companies to see what works for them to see if you might gain some insight into new ways to market your business. Target niche customers. Call on customers in your niche market. If you want to clean office buildings, then focus on this market rather than trying to learn a dozen other markets like restaurants, schools, or medical facilities. Once you've mastered your niche, then think about expanding into other niche markets. Create a brand for yourself. Become known as an expert in your market area. Be the person your customers go to for advice on any cleaning issue. Before you know it, you'll gain a reputation as an expert problem solver. Sell more services to existing customers. It's much easier to sell to existing customers than it is to find new customers. Offer additional services like window washing, carpet spotting or floor care services for additional profitable sales. Ask for referrals. Tell your customers and everyone you know, who your ideal customer is and that you welcome referrals. Ask them to keep you in mind when they're talking with that ideal customer. Improve your sales skills. Don't rely on your knowledge of your product or service to make the sale. While this is very important (see #1), you also need to know how to close the sale and you can only accomplish this by improving your sales skills. Some of the things to work on are: learning how to connect with the decision-maker, learning how to read people and their actions, learning how to ask probing questions and learning how to ask for the sale. Tend to your own back yard. There is more business in your own back yard than you might realize. Ask friends, existing customers, neighbors, and anyone you meet at networking functions about opportunities in your area. Project a positive attitude. The way customers perceive you can determine how much resistance you will encounter when talking with them. Always project a friendly, courteous attitude. Also avoid using "sales" tactics. Instead, become their partner in solving problems. Build relationships. People buy from people they like, so when networking, think of other attendees as "friends you haven't met yet". And keep in mind that on average, most of us have over 200 people in our network, so your possibilities will expand the more people you spend time building relationships with. Copyright (c) The Janitorial Store (TM)