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Making
Money With Commercial Window Washing...
You may be wondering why I'm talking about commercial window washing
since 98% of my
business was residential and the title of my manual is How to Start
Your Own Residential Window Washing Business.
Well...window washing is window washing and I've seen some folks out
in the field really
latch onto some great commercial accounts, so I figured I'd launch
into some aspects of
this side of the business.
And then you might be saying to yourself "What qualifies you to talk
about commercial
since all you had was residential?" Great question, and I'll answer
it by simply saying
commercial window washing is just residential window washing with a
few twists. You'll see
what I mean as we continue on.
Okay...let's get started.
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The Approach
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There are 3 primary ways to approach a commercial account.
1. This approach, in my opinion, is the best way. Just walk in,
introduce yourself, and
offer to provide a free estimate to get their windows cleaned.
Here's a sample conversation:
Store Clerk/manager/owner: Can I help you?
Window Washer: Sure...my name is Steve Wright and I own Clearview
Window Washing in town. I was wondering if I can provide you an
estimate to get your windows cleaned.
Store Clerk/manager/owner: Whaddya crazy?
Window Washer: Yabba dabba doo.
Sorry about that. Strike the last two from the record. :o)
Seriously though...this approach gets to the heart of the matter
very quickly, so if there's
any interest or lack of interest at all, you'll know about it fast
so you can move on to the next
location.
They may say "we currently have someone, so we wouldn't be really be
interested", or they
may say, "we have someone but he's not too dependable so go ahead
and give me an estimate", or they might say "not right now, why
don't you leave me your business card and I'll give you a call if we
need someone", or they might say "Man we've been looking for
someone...when can you do 'em?".
If they're not interested, always leave them one of your business
cards anyway. Timing is
everything and maybe at the present time, the timing isn't right. A
few months down the
road, their current window washer might screw up, so they'll be
looking to tap into a new
window washer.
You've heard me talk in the past about playing the numbers game. And
that's all we're doing
here. Say what you have to say, either do the estimate or not, and
then move on. The more
accounts you talk to, the more you get, and the more you can sing
"Hi Ho Hi Ho, it's off to
the bank I go."
Although I personally don't think there's a lot of salesmanship
involved in the above conversation with the store clerk, I have
spoken to window washers who don't feel comfortable just walking in
off the street and asking to do an estimate.
So this leads me to the second way of approaching a commercial
prospect.
2. What I did is take my current residential flyer and twist it
up a little bit to make it fit more of a commercial mold.
This will allow you to use the flyer as the door opener or "crutch".
And you can let it to do the "selling" for you. You can download the
commercial flyer from the
materials
webpage.
You'll notice the commercial flyer incorporates testimonials, so if
you don't have any, you may want to start working on getting some
from your customers.
With flyer in hand, I would say:
Hi...my name is Steve Wright and I own Clearview Window Washing
in town here. I just wanted to leave you this flyer introducing my
service in case you may ever be in need of a quality window
cleaning.
And then just leave the flyer and off you go to the next store or
business. Easy and fast.
3. This approach is a combination of the two listed above. You
simply walk into the business
with a flyer. I would say:
Hi, my name is Steve Wright and I own Clearview Window Washing
Service in town. I just wanted to stop in and give you this flyer to
introduce my window washing service to you in case you might ever be
in need of a quality window washing company. Oh by the way...Since
I'm here, can I go ahead and give you a free window washing
estimate?
I personally like number 1 the best but number 3 comes in a close
second. Asking them a direct yes or no question is usually much more
effective then just handing them something and then walking away,
like what happens when we use approach #2.
One last thing on the flyers...some window washers have created
flyers that offer an introductory special regardless of the true
estimate value of the store or business.
Overall the response has been favorable, but some window washers
don't feel like doing jobs for $10 (for example) when the true
estimate value is $40.
I personally think it's a great idea. It gets them committed to you
so there's a very strong
chance you'll be going back on a repeat basis. If not...you didn't
really lose that much. And
you did gain additional exposure for your business by being there
working in your company uniform. Anytime you can do that, it's a
plus for sure.
Last month I talked about why it's important not to make price the
central theme of your
business, but that was for your residential customers. Commercial is
a whole different
ball game. That's one of the twists I referred to earlier.
Speaking about pricing for commercial jobs, here we go...
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Pricing
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Be cheap. How's that for a short answer?
Yes...you do need to bring down your pricing vs. your normal
residential pricing. The commercial side of the business is
cutthroat and there's some pricing wars going on. So you're going to
be up against some competition usually.
It's hard to give you exact numbers without seeing the glass, but an
average size pane of
glass would be priced at $3 to $4. Keep in mind that the average
size pane of commercial glass could be 2 to 3 times the size of a
window that you would see on a house. The good news is that it's
just one pane vs. a two pane (or more) regular double hung window at
a house.
And then adjust upward or downward accordingly. What I mean is your
final presented price is a judgment call based on 4 things...
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Are you desperate for the business?
-
Did the store seem really interested or was
it one of those "Yeah...you can leave us an
estimate if you want to" kind of sentences.
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Do you know or have an idea whether you
might be competing against another window
washing bid?
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Are you providing an estimate to a store
who currently has a window washer?
The best scenario obviously is if a store is desperately in need of
a good window washer or they currently have a window washer who
they're looking to get rid of because of dependability and quality
issues (you'll hear this a lot).
In the last situation, you may want to bump up the estimate a few
dollars (just a few). In the first 3 situations, you may want to drop your estimated price a little bit.
Again...use your judgment.
As you probably know by now, the estimating process certainly isn't
an exact science.
Just remember that commercial window washing is all about price.
There's always another
commercial window washer right behind you willing to do it for less.
With your residential customers, you'll generally have the loyalty
of the homeowner (unless you did a poor job), so they're not going
to make the change to another window washer to save a few measly
bucks as readily as a business owner or manager would.
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Presenting the Commercial Estimate
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I personally would still present the estimate using the estimate
package posted on the
materials webpage.
Most commercial window washers (similar to most residential window
washers) will just jot the estimate price on the back of their
business card, and then present it to the business owner/manager. Or
they'll give out a verbal estimate.
So we may as well be a little different and come across a bit more
professional than that, right?
The estimate package may need to be modified a bit so it leans
toward the commercial prospect. For example...if you already have
some commercial customers, and they're willing to act as references,
then I would list those instead of residential references.
And there's one saying in my cover letter for the residential
prospect that I would definitely remove for the commercial prospect.
It is "Our pricing may be a little higher than the average window
washer".
And your explanation within the cover letter on how you clean the
glass may need to be tweaked a little bit to accommodate how you're
going to clean commercial glass.
And finally, you won't really be able to personalize the salutation
on the cover letter like "Dear Mrs. Jones" for example due to you
just walking in off the street (unless they called you, which gives
you some type of advance notice), so a "Hello" will probably be the
best you can do.
Other than that, let it fly.
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Quality
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Because of the cheaper pricing described above, you do need to take
a few shortcuts when it comes to doing commercial glass.
Try not to use your scraper and steel wool if you can help it.
Unless it's the first time you're doing the glass and everything is
just filthy so you need to whip out your scraper.
Although you still need to do a quality job, you need to be pretty
speedy about it. Speaking of speedy, get a large strip washer and
use a large squeegee.
Most strip washers are 22" wide and that should be fine for you, but
ABC Window Cleaning
Supply does have one that's 30" wide. And your 22" squeegee should
be fine also. As a side note, ABC does have the Quick Silver Sorbo
channel that is 36" wide. If you do end up doing a lot of commercial
glass, getting this 36" wide squeegee would be a smart move.
A lot of the commercial glass you'll be tackling is definitely
larger than the basic 28", 30", or
36" residential windows so since your pricing is less, any way you
can save some time is to your favor.
And one of the top complaints that you'll hear is that the store's
current or previous window washer left water everywhere, so make
sure you towel everything up nice and dry.
Not much more to be said about quality so let's discuss...
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Service Contracts
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There are differing opinions on this, but I personally wouldn't
bother with getting a store owner to sign any type of a contract
unless they're a larger customer.
One little $45 restaurant is fine with no contract, but make it a
chain of 12 restaurants, and it would be a good idea to protect both
parties with a contract.
A contract should just spell out each parties responsibility. Things
like how often you'll be cleaning their windows, what kind of
materials and equipment you'll be bringing to the job site, the fact
that you're an independent contractor and not an employee of the
commercial customer, when payment is due, and of course the agreed
upon price of the job.
One of my guys out in the field in Hawaii sent me a contract that
was provided by a builder to him so he could sign it. The contract
was for 21 buildings at $1,200 per building. Not too shabby. Way to
go Matthew.
I've placed that contract in addition to another contract that was
sent to me on the materials page, so you can download them
here.
As I mentioned, Matt's contract was provided by his customer, so
it's primarily geared towards protecting the customer. It's filled
with a whole bunch of legal mumbo jumbo spreading out over 17 pages.
For this reason I personally like the other contract that is
shorter, sweeter, and says what needs to be said in 3 or 4 pages.
But then again, you may have no choice. Many larger companies,
builders, property managers, etc have their own contracts, so
they'll ask you to sign theirs.
Before signing it, my only recommendation is to make sure you feel
comfortable with your estimated price of the job. If you come in
with too low of a price, you may regret it, because you won't be
able to just walk away. You will be committed to do that job for a
certain length
of time at that set price.
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Making it all work
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I'll let the cat out of the bag right now and say that if I had to
do it all over again, I would
build a commercial division in addition to the residential part of
the business.
Yes...there are certainly disadvantages to dealing with commercial
customers:
--not as much loyalty
--pricing has to be less
--cutthroat competition
--accounts receivables vs. getting paid at the end of every job with
our residential customers.
But one important advantage is the fact that you'll be doing their
glass more often. I know of window washers doing some of their
commercial customers every week, although usually it's at least
every 2 weeks to a month. Talk about repeat business. Yowee!
It'll give you a good consistent cash flow if you can mix up your
business with a sprinkling
of commercial accounts in addition to your tried and true
residential customers.
But what you need to do to really make this work for you is to hire
a person or two to deal with your commercial customers. You focus on
getting the accounts because that should
always be your responsibility (no one can do it as good as you), and
let your subs handle
the cleaning of the glass.
You would set up routes based on the locations of your commercial
accounts. You then point
your subs in the right direction, wind 'em up, and let 'em go.
Of course, they need to go through a little window washing training,
but they don't need to be as high quality or as high caliber of a
person like you need when you're doing a residential customer.
A residential customer is not too fond of having someone in their
house who has 14 tattoos, multi-colored hair, or safety pins
sticking out of the side of their nose, whereas that's not that
important to your commercial customers. As long as they get clean
glass, they're a happy bunch.
So that's what I'm talking about when I say "wind 'em up and let 'em
go." When I brought
someone on board my window washing business, due to the fact that my
customers were
residential, in addition to being presentable, it was necessary to
always monitor or have a
crew leader monitor that person until there was a comfort level and
we trusted them. But
again...you don't have to be this diligent with your commercial
helpers.
And by having other subs do most or all of your commercial jobs, you
can still focus on your residential customers where you make the
most money. So you're essentially getting a pretty sweet override
for every job your commercial subs do. Can you say "Jackpot"?
Earmark some time to go after commercial accounts. As I said a
minute ago, if I was doing it all over again, this would definitely
be part of the mix. It may be hard to say yes to a $10 or $20 job,
but if you have enough of them being done on a frequent basis by
your commercial subs, those small jobs can add up to one big
paycheck.
Make a goal every day of just visiting a set number of businesses.
If all you have the time for is to visit 10 stores, then go for it.
And we're not talking about a great deal of time here either. In,
out, next. But as with everything else, you have to be consistent
with it. Visiting 10 stores or spending 1 hour prospecting for
commercial business every 3rd month won't get it done.
If you just visit 10 measly businesses every day 4 days a week,
that's 160 stores every month you stopped in, said hello, and
exposed your business to. That will surely translate into you
grabbing some commercial accounts. And more importantly...put moolah
in your pocket.
Sincerely,
Steve
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