Watching New Trends In 2009

Happy New Year to all my friends in the housecleaning industry! I hope you had a blessed Christmas and I pray you'll have a prosperous New Year!

Trends to Watch in 2009
Be sure and keep your eye on the top trends this year. Everywhere you turn you’ll be hearing about one of these topics:

The Economy
Green Cleaning & Pink Giving
Health Issues
Baby Boomers

GREEN is the color of responsible living and pink is the color of benevolence. Anything pink and anything green in your business will resonate deeply with consumers. So much so, they’ll switch services to do business with you because consumers like “socially responsible” companies!

The ECONOMY - What goes up must come down. Consumers are no longer trading up when making their purchase decisions, but rather trading down. Believe it or not, your service can accommodate in ways your competition will never think of! Try offering discounts for pre paying each month, and even bigger discounts for paying up front for a year! We’ve done this recently with a letter to our clients called “Everybody’s raising prices, so we’re LOWERING ours!” where we offered a discount to clients who pay up front for the year! Several took us up on it.

HEALTH - Thanks to the web and aging boomers, we know more than ever about our health, and consumers are very concerned about a healthy home and healthy living. Instead of marketing your “green cleaning” for the earth's sake, market your “green company” for healthy living—"safe for pets and babies"! Health sells better than environmentally friendly when it comes to maid service.

BOOMERS Represent the biggest transition in history as these individualists are preparing for retirement, downsizing their homes and simplifying life in general. Keep your creative cap on and think of more services you can offer to the aging boomers. Don’t miss out on this huge population opportunity that has traditionally used maid services during their busy careers. You just have to think of new ways to solve their housekeeping problems.

Let 2009 be the best year ever for pricing jobs, winning sales, and keeping clients. Don't let the economy get you down, watch the trends and market to the needs of consumers and you'll have plenty of customers in 2009!

Debbie Sardone

http://www.themaidcoach.com/

Growing Your Maid Service In A Down Economy

Even as we're in the midst of our "busy season" and people are scrambling to get their houses cleaned before Christmas, everyone is thinking about the economy and how it will affect their business once the "rush" is over and January arrives. Well I came across an article today that really inspired me and I thought it would be good to share some principles I gleaned from it, as it applies to the maid busienss.

Small Is Good
First of all, I am truly grateful, more than ever to be called a "small business". right now, small business are more likely to have a "good month" the the larger corporations that are struggling. All we have to do is take on a few new customers and we can have a good month!

Focus on Profits
A recession is a good time to focus on net profitability. Trim expenses (except marketing!), reevaluate your marketing and only use what's worked best for you. Scrutinize every new purchase to be sure it's necessary before buying. Manage the minutes if you pay by the hour, and consolidate routes to reduce wasted drive time.

Sell Painkillers
When money is tight, people only buy when they are in pain. If you aren't solving problems and reducing people's pain you will have a tough time keeping up in a tight economy. Know one calls when they have a clean house just to "keep it up". People call when they have a problem so you must have the solution. Position your marketing to go after those who are "in pain" (company's coming, arguments over cleaning chores, time pressures).

Challange Your Assumptions
I had to learn this the hard way. Businesses change at least every five years in pretty dramatic ways. If you're still doing things the way you always have you could be in for a surprise during a tough economy. This is the time to think of ways your business can be done in a more efficient way and adapt. Years ago we would never clean a house without seeing it first. That's just the way we did business. After the recession in 2001 we disovered we had to adapt to a new climate where many people were just "one-time" cleans or only used us two or three times a year. Bidding over the phone became a must to minimize cost since so many did not convert to repeat service.

Maximize Your Current Clients
If you haven't added carpet cleaning, window washing, natural stone care (granite clean and care services), laundry services, etc. you are missing opportunites to generate revenue without marketing to new clients. Pick a couple of services you'd like to add and form some affiliate relationships with other hungry vendors.

Think Out Of The Box
Maid services are notorious for staying the same, year afer year. Get creative, think of ways to help save your customers time and money--and sell that! We've implemented several "pre-payment" programs that have ben very profitable and beneficial to our customers. Who said customers won't pay for a year of maid service up front? You have not because you ask not!

Get An A+ In Customer Service
Now is the time to foucs on quality and consistency. People are on edge and more easily frustrated and breakage, showing up late, and sloppy work will get you fired quicker than ever before. Set up more random house checks, inspect first time cleans, make plenty of follow up calls. Let your customers know you love and appreciate them! Turn Off The News
Too much media doom and gloom will have an effect on your morale and attitude which will spill over onto your staff. Catch just enough of the news to keep from being ignorant, but spend more time than ever reading marketing and business strategy books and save the doom and gloom media diet for your competition!
Remember your resiliency. Economic cycles come and go. We've have been here before and survived. Don't throw in the towel growing now can give you the competitive edge!

If you'd like my audio CD "Growing Strong In A Weak Economy" please visit:

http://themaidcoach.com/products.htm

Cleaning Business Holiday Party

In these tough economic times, everyone is looking to cut expenses any way they can. Hosting an employee Christmas party can get expensive if you aren’t careful. Several years ago, a colleague of mine in the residential cleaning business confided about how frustrated she was with her employee Christmas parties. She would spend several thousand dollars each year securing a lovely banquet hall with a full sit down dinner, music, and elegant décor, only to hear employees complain that they didn’t want to go. If they did commit to coming, many just never showed up. She was tired of wasting so much money that she was considering making the event “mandatory”! I helped her see that she had it all backwards. Her employees complained that they’d much rather have the money than the banquet. This banquet was for her, not her employees. It was a demonstration of her own success and did not reflect her staff’s wishes or style. She needed to come up with another plan. That was a long time ago and I don’t know how she resolved it or if she followed any of my advice. But if you are hosting an employee party that no one wants to attend you may need to re-think the format of your program. It doesn’t have to cost mint to do it well. In fact, we’ve hosted our banquet for years for under $1,000 for 40 to 50 attendees. We use a restaurant with a nice candle light atmosphere, cloth napkins, and a buffet dinner. We encourage our employees to dress up or come as casual as they like to insure everyone is comfortable. Some come in formals, others come in jeans. We make sure they feel accepted in whatever attire they choose.

We’ve had great success year after year with our Annual Employee Awards Banquet. We hold it at Christmas time in order to “kill two birds with one stone”. We’ve held our employee "Awards Banquet" every year for the past 17 years. Our employees love it and talk about it all year long. If you start this tradition, I encourage you to keep your expenses to a minimum so you can afford to do it year after year even as you double and triple in size. You can watch my YouTube video from last year’s event: holiday party

I’ll have another one up soon, as our banquet is this coming Tuesday night, December 9, 2008! Here are a few things we've done that you might consider:

1. We usually have a "Santa" who pulls funny gag gifts out of his big black bag and hands them out with a funny dialogue to various employees regarding the things that happened through out the year ("Santa heard you found a dead snake under a pillow in the Smith's home this Spring, we'll I brought you a bottle of snake oil to carry in your cleaning caddy....." for example). Come up with half a dozen funny things and gifts to give out. Never a “put down though” (like a watch for someone who is always late), make sure the gag gifts don't hurt feelings or make people laugh at someone else’s expense. Santa makes them come up to him in front of everyone while he presents them with the gift.
2. If someone on your staff sings, writes poems, or plays a musical instrument (well), include them. We always do. It's a nice touch to see their other side!
3. We include an "optional gift exchange" for those who want to participate.
4. The HIGHLIGHT of our banquet is the "DOOR PRIZE TABLE". We fill a table with about $300 worth of goodies (ranging from $10 to $50), things like lovely wine glasses, pretty place settings, Christmas wreath, lovely wall hangings, inexpensive DVD player, mp3 player, tools, decanters, platters, just all kinds of pretty things for the home, etc. Each employee gets a door prize ticket when they arrive, and we call numbers throughout the evening all the way to the end. The first winner gets first pick on the table! and so on until the last ticket is called. They LOVE this. About 15 people will win. Odds of winning are good, and they love it!
5. Since this is our Christmas party and Awards Banquet, we hand out our 3-year watches, 5-year watches, 6-year pearls, 10- year trophies, and “Cleaning Tech of the Year” award, as well as other recognition milestones.

Believe it or not, we actually charge for this event. We make the charge very low, but I believe people don’t value what costs them nothing. People will be more likely to no-show an event they didn’t pay for. We charge $4.50 per person for a dinner than would cost them $15 to $20 if they ate there on their own. We allow them to bring one adult guest only (no kids under 17). We only serve tea & coffee, but there is a cash bar if they choose to purchase an alcoholic drink. This keeps expenses low and limits our liability. By the way, we barter this entire event! Only the tip to the wait staff is paid in cash.

Employees want to be recognized and appreciated. This entire evening is centered around them, for them. We try to reflect their tastes, their styles, their wishes. It’s not a time for us to show off our style! I hope this helps you throw a successful and meaningful employee holiday banquet or party!

A little clip of last year's holiday party:

(pictured: Olga, Cleaning Tech of the Year - 2007)

Debbie Sardone
Maid service Business Consulting