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Volume 8
September 2008
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| Greetings!
Fall is upon us and with the back-to-school season comes a bump in new clients for many housecleaning businesses. This September, the Clean Team Pro Newsletter is exploring ways to make the most out of this fruitful season.
Our feature article, Six Ways to Grow Your Housecleaning Biz, describes strategies for expanding your business and increasing your revenue. If you are still in the start-up phases (where penny pinching is your top priority), then you may want to file away these suggestions for next year. But once you have a reliable income stream and a steady pattern of growth (you will get there, if you have not already!), then the time has come to consider expanding your business.
I'm also excited to share with you some great reader feedback on last month's feature article about how to motivate your employees. I would love to hear from you, too! Share your thoughts on this month's feature article. Tell me what business expansion models have worked for your company. Let me know what topics you would like to see covered in upcoming newsletters. I look forward to hearing from you at jeff@thecleanteam.com.
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 6 Ways to Grow Your Housecleaning Biz
As a small business owner, you are constantly looking for ways to expand your business. After all, the road to success is paved with innovation and growth. If you survived the stressful start-up period and secured your company's reputation, the time has come to concentrate on maximizing your company's earning potential. But how do you that?
Here are 6 suggestions for growing your business and increasing your revenue -- while still maintaining the quality and reliability your reputation is built upon.
#1 Add New Teams
After the headache and turmoil of starting your business with just one team, you may find yourself thinking: "No way do I want to go through that again! I have a good thing going, so I will just keep it small." While your wariness is understandable, it is also misplaced.
Rest assured: Your first team is the hardest. With your first team, you had to spend a lot of time and invest a lot of money to create a system for recruiting and training new employees. Now that you have a system that works, though, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. Simply use what worked the first time to find your new cleaners -- and turn them into an efficient cleaning team.
You can double (or triple) the size of your cleaning force -- and your earning power -- for a mere fraction of the cost and time it took you to get your first team up and running. And by the time you are ready to grow from nine to ten teams, you will hardly feel the investment. You will, however, see a dramatic bump in your bottom line.
#2 Open a New Location
Once you have multiple teams in place and have satisfactorily covered your current location, the time may be right to think about expanding westward (north, south or east would be fine, too!) While there is a degree of risk involved in opening a second location, you can minimize that risk by considering the following:
· Do you fully understand the economic viability of your new location?
· Have you researched your competition?
· Have your profits grown in a steady and predictable pattern over the last three to five years?
· Do you have the capital necessary to invest in your new location without comprising the livelihood of your original hub?
· Do you have tried-and-true team leaders, who can help you train and supervise new employees in your new location?
If your answer to these five questions is Yes!, then the time may be right to open another location for your business.
#3 Hire Support Staff
When you first start out, you pinch every penny you can find. You process the payroll; you answer the phones; you order the new supplies; and you wash the dirty cleaning cloths. But as your business grows, you may find that penny pinching is actually costing you money. If that is the case for your business, then the time may have come for specialization of your labor force.
As owner of a housecleaning business, your most important tasks are servicing your clients' needs and supervising your staff. And you can't be effective at either of these tasks if you are buried in payroll stubs. Hiring an administrative assistant can significantly lighten your load.
If you are not certain whether you can handle the financial commitment of a full-time employee, consider starting with a part-time assistant. You will likely find that he or she saves you far more than her salary costs.
#4 Expand Your Niche
Just because your company excels at house cleaning doesn't mean you cannot also conquer related fields such as office cleaning, window washing or carpet cleaning. By diversifying, you expand your revenue stream and open up opportunities for cross-promotion. Like opening a new location (see #2), expanding your niche may involve a certain degree of risk. A new sub-business will require additional capital and personnel investment. You can minimize this risk by doing your homework:
· Will your location support your new venture?
· Will you have competition? And if so, is there room enough for the both of you?
· How can you leverage your current client base to market your new services?
If you can answer yes to each of these questions, the time may be right to diversify your business model by expanding your niche.
#5 Form Partnerships
Let's say you think you want to expand your niche or open a new location, but you are not quite sure you can handle the additional costs. You might want to consider forming partnerships with other businesses.
Perhaps, for example, there is a struggling housecleaning business two towns over. By matching up your successful business model with their knowledge of the local market you might be able to see significantly faster revenue growth with markedly reduced risk.
Likewise, a local window washing operation might make a perfect partner for your housecleaning business. You could offer your current clients a valuable added service without having to invest capital and personnel. At the same time, your new window-washing partner will be able to open up new markets for your business.
#6 License Your Product or Service
Do you have a unique product? Perhaps an environmentally-friendly cleaner or a super-functional cleaning bucket or tray? If so, licensing may be an effective expansion technique for your business. Licensing costs relatively little and can open up outstanding passive revenue streams. For example, you can receive income from individuals and other housecleaning businesses paying you to use your products; you can also receive royalties from continued sales. Unlike opening a new location or developing a new niche, licensing your products or ideas is an expansion option that can net impressive rewards.
Conclusion
Whether you just hung out your housecleaning shingle or you have spent years establishing yourself as a market leader, you know that your company's success depends on your ability to expand your business model.
The six suggestions above are proven strategies for growing your business and increasing your revenue stream. Why not try put one (or more) of them on your agenda for this year? By 2009, your company may be bigger and more profitable than you ever imagined!
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Letters From Our Readers
Last month, the Clean Team Pro Newsletter talked about ways to keep your employees motivated. Our feature article touched on the difference between positive and negative feedback, coming down strongly in favor of positive motivational strategies. Here's what one of our readers thought about this issue:
Great newsletter! It's a really
interesting topic. Thought I'd add one comment about the need for positive
feedback. Sometimes our perception of events can be misleading. If I recall correctly, the
founders of behavioral finance, Kahneman and Tversky discovered this while
studying the techniques used for training Israeli fighter pilots.
Israeli trainers traditional method was to rely principally on
negative reinforcement rather than positive. The reason being, the trainers
found that after an exceptionally good flight, praise was given, but
performance declined. Whereas after a poor flight, negative criticism was
given, and performance improved.
Of course what was really happening
was that performance was regressing towards the mean. But nevertheless, it's
interesting to note that in many sectors, negative reinforcement is still the
primary means of feedback, probably for the same reasons - performance
generally regresses towards the mean. If I recall correctly, Kahneman and Tversky disproved the
efficacy of the technique.
-- Jesse Smith, Owner, Tay River Builders, Princeton
NJ
Share your thoughts with me at jeff@thecleanteam.com.
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Thanks for reading us this month! Come visit us on the web at www.thecleanteampro.com.
Sincerely,
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Jeff Campbell
The Clean Team Catalog |
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