3 Tips for Getting Personal with Your Cleaning Clients
Why are so many cleaning businesses seemingly ‘afraid’ to show who they are and get personal with their prospects and clients? They hide behind ‘corporate speak’ all over their website, and not a personal photo or bio in sight…
How can your prospects and clients connect with you, if they don’t know who ‘you’ are..?
What would your prospect’s or client’s experience be like if you put something of yourself into your marketing – what about into your “thank you” notes after your new clients’ first visits.
If you’ve been in the cleaning industry a while, you probably have a system to thank new clients for choosing your cleaning business. If you don’t, you should. Every contact with new clients increases the odds of them remaining your clients – if you do them right.
That’s where the “personal” comes in. Way too many thank-you notes are written in business-speak. You know: “Thank you for choosing Joe’s Cleaning. We hope we exceeded your expectations and that you will continue to choose us for all your future cleaning needs.”
Blah…how bland and uninspiring.
Look, I guess it’s better than sending no card, but the point I’m trying to make here is that there’s no “person” in that message. People don’t really have relationships with brands or companies…
People buy from people –
Attracting and retaining quality cleaning clients depends on the relationship you and your staff develop with them.
New clients aren’t selecting you over your competitors because of your mopping or vacuuming skills. It’s fairly safe to say, they assume you’re capable and competent in that area. So why do they select you?
While clients may not consciously realize it, they hope that there are people in your business who will take good care of them.
Your new client follow-up needs to keep the personal aspects, because that will help keep new cleaning clients coming back.
Putting the personal in follow-up to your new clients isn’t always easy. It will require you to reveal a bit about yourself to maintain that personal connection.
Here are some ideas to get you started
1. Tie your thank-you into the reason they reached out to you
If someone’s home was a mess before you came in and cleaned it up and made it lovely for them for the Holidays, that’s a great place to start – you can mention why you got into the cleaning business in the first place – to help people.
Maybe a new corporate client asked for a special clean up before the CEO from out of town comes into the office for a visit. If they mention to you how happy they were with the whole process, or how satisfied with the results, use that as a personal tie-in in your thank-you. After all, those kinds of reactions are really gratifying to hear.
2. Focus on the results for them
For a commercial cleaning client who’s spilt photocopier ink on their new carpet, will feel better after you’ve returned their carpet back to clean and ink free, or for someone who’s time poor, but house-proud, they’ll be able to enjoy their fresh clean home after you’ve been in to do their cleaning service.
By focusing on the benefit for the client, you’re implicitly expressing concern for them.
3. Bring the visit back to the client.
If your new client was a pleasure to deal with, mention that. If your new client was super organized, and efficient, congratulate them for how much easier that makes your job on the day…
Remember, to write your cards as if you were chatting to a friend, and always keep it personal. You can automate this whole process if you like, Send Out Cards, offer a great solution, which you can combine with a customer relationship management system, to do this automatically if you like.. (our favourite is Infusionsoft – check out how well they help cleaning businesses here.
So what’s your verdict, would be more personal help your cleaning business? If you’re already doing this, I’d love to hear how you personalise your interactions with your clients in your cleaning business – what’s working (or not working…) for you right now…? Let me know in the comments below…
That’s the great thing about the Cleaning Industry, you meet so many people who’ll join you for sections of the journey. It’s a relationship business, where happiness and business success comes from within. If you think well, you’ll do well..
Today’s quote:
Action alleviates anxiety. Unknown.
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siaosi
I think that becoming familiar with clients is an important thing. Weather it be dealing with friends or dealing with carpet cleaners. There can be networks built upon relationships.
Sam Solo
I like your tip about making sure that you have personalized interactions with your clients. This way they can be comfortable giving you the feedback you need to modify your cleaning services. Thank you so much for the helpful cleaning service tips!
Lisa Macqueen
Thanks Sam, appreciate your feedback and I’m glad you found it helpful… All the best, Lisa
End of Lease Clean Melbourne
I love your writing style truly loving this website.
Lisa Macqueen
Well that’s very nice of you, thank you for the feedback!