Transcription
[Music]
All right, so my presentation is all about everything I've done to take my business from zero to eight hundred thousand per year in revenue in two years. I'm gonna go over a ton of stuff today.
So first and foremost, before we start, I want you to have a pen and paper. Stop and go get that right now. Write down my email address on the screen there: stephanie@sereneclean.com. Take notes on any items that I say that you are not currently implementing, and any questions you have on anything I say, please write them down and email them to me at any point in the future. Whether you are watching this as a replay a year from now, I want to hear any questions you guys have on stuff. I'm going to go over a lot of things, and I can't exactly deep dive into everything because of time limitations. So anything that I say that you're like, "Oh, I want to know more in depth about that," just send me an email. I will be happy to help. I am not a business coach; I am a business owner just like all of you guys watching. I just want to help everybody else, and I'm especially passionate about young business owners, meaning those who are young in their business—like five years or less—but anybody can hopefully glean some information from this.
So, uh, write down my email. Pen and paper? Good, good.
Now, why listen to me? First and foremost, my name is Stephanie Zabel. I just got married last October, so formerly Stephanie Pipkin. I am 25 years old as of last month. I live and work in rural Wisconsin. I am in Black River Falls right now. I have an associate's degree—so no four-year degree in college or anything like that—just an associate's in marketing. I waited tables from age 14 to 21, which gave me a ton of customer service skills, but I had never run a business before this. I opened my cleaning business at age 22 just as a side hustle to bring in some extra money alongside my full-time job, and it exploded. That's what brings us to now: I have 22 employees, two going on three full-time office staff managers, depending on the day—you know how that rolls.
I work approximately 20 to 30 hours per week now; some weeks are higher. This next week, my operations manager is on vacation, so obviously, I'm going to be hopping into the office more. But for the most part, I have a very flexible schedule—tons of work-life balance now. This was not always the case, and I'm going to be going over a lot of stuff that helped me bring that balance back. I'll be, you know, as I have babies and things like that, backing off even more in the business, but I'm really enjoying this amount of work.
My company's current monthly revenue is between $65,000 and $70,000 and growing each month. Again, we just opened in April of 2019, so it has really exploded. To give you some demographics of my area to hopefully help impact and make you understand that these things work in a small town just as well as a large town: in Black River Falls, there are under 5,000 people. We have a second location that we opened in December that has 10,000 people, and those are our numbers. So, you know that these things work in small towns, so hopefully that perks your ears up and you'll want to pay attention.
First and foremost, from the beginning, I did get a few things right. From day one, when it was just me, something I did is, first and foremost, I took a course. A shoutout to Melissa Maker—I know she's spoken here before—she was a huge inspiration for me. Melissa, thank you for everything you've done for the maid industry with Clean My Space. I always used to binge-watch her cleaning videos on YouTube, and I took her Decision Maker course, which really set me up with the groundwork for understanding what needed to be done. Obviously, you're flying by the seat of your pants a lot, but one thing that she said that was awesome, and that I say everybody should do, is to create standardized checklists.
We leave behind checklists after each cleaning, even when I was the only cleaner, so that the customer knew what to expect, and the cleaner knew what tasks they should be doing. We have only two checklists: a standard checklist and a deep clean checklist for residential. They can add on like an oven cleaning or something, whatever. But for the most part, it's standard. This keeps it nice and simple. I'll show you what that looks like.
I have a million tabs open, as you can see, so I have a lot of stuff to show you guys. This is our standardized checklist. This is for normal residential—not like a move-out or anything. So we're doing all of these things; our cleaners are filling out all this info: safety checklist, you know, all that good stuff. Then this is left on their counter after. As you can see, asking for a review right there—you know we'll be talking about reviews a lot later. So that gets left behind and it's super snazzy, and it just sets that expectation.
That's something that I did get right in the beginning that I would definitely recommend—setting time limit expectations, responding very promptly to people, even when it was just me, to really show them that professionalism. Billing is done the next day after every first-time cleaning, doing a follow-up, trying to get them to book again because, again, we all start with zero customers. I had to just start from the beginning. Responding to emails and texts the same business day, et cetera, et cetera. And finally, oozing professionalism in every single interaction with the client. So I definitely would say I did well with this.
I had a separate business phone number. I couldn't afford a phone line at the beginning; I was running this from my couch in my living room. So Google Voice—that's what I used. And it got the job done until we were able to upgrade to, you know, a phone system, a business email. Instead of, you know, stephaniecleaning@gmail.com or something like that, you know, it's stephanie@serene-clean.com—formerly Black River Cleaning Services. Don't name your company after your town. You are going to get bigger; I promise.
We had to do a rebranding last October, so that was a whole big thing. Well worth it; we love Serene Clean now. Business Facebook page—everything. You must show that you're different than the rest. And if you were just a one-man crew, how can you do that? You've got to be professional.
For me, you know, having an email signature—it’s just little tiny things that are like, "Ooh, that’s professional." So that’s what my email signature looks like—super easy to make that, and Canva will hop into Canva in a little bit. So yeah, that’s what that looks like.
Now, what we do today to run it really well: everything is documented. If something keeps coming up that you're manually having to do, it should be documented. When we talk about systems, that's really all that we're saying: you're saving yourself time. If you're doing something over and over again, there should be a process document. And you know what that looks like practically—Google Drive. If we keep doing this, we need to type this out so that if I'm not here, somebody else can do it. That's the goal: to remove yourself completely from the day-to-day operations. At least, that’s my goal. And then we continually tweak these as needed.
We use Google Drive religiously, so we can access and adjust everywhere. ZenMaid—since day one—they are not paying me to say that; I literally have used ZenMaid since I was the only cleaner. We could not run this business without ZenMaid. It's absolutely incredible. I’ll hop into our ZenMaid a little bit so you can see what that looks like with that many cleaners and kind of how we stay organized, but it is wild.
Call scripts and all calls are recorded, so that was a huge move too. I definitely suggest that—we'll get into a call script. And then track your numbers.
First and foremost, I want to show you call scripts. We use a program called ClarityVoice—write that down. That is an excellent service. It is internet-based phone, so I can literally plug our phone in anywhere with internet, and I can answer the business phone. It also has an app on your phone, and then you can just answer business calls from there as well. All the calls are recorded, which is key—not only for quality control of your sales and your office staff; it makes sure they're not acting a fool on the phone.
But we have had so many times, and I'm sure you've had this too, where customers have tried to say, "Well, they told me this price." Well actually, let me pull up that call—it shuts them up pretty quick. So definitely recommend ClarityVoice; they're fantastic.
So I'll give you an example of a call script. On every one of our office desks, including myself, we have this binder of call scripts. These have been tweaked and tweaked until we've got them to where, boy, do we close. I mean, you'll see our close rates in a little bit, but that’s what that looks like.
It’s literally, you know, like, “What do we say? What do they say?” Okay, and then setting up the needs, benefits, and then the close—pricing, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, if they have any objections, what does that look like? So this one is for residential. This one is for residential follow-up, so we need to follow a script to try to book somebody again because we all know the beauty of a cleaning business is in the recurring nature of it.
So after you have that first-time clean, are you getting those people to convert? Here’s the script for that. And there’s a process for that: After every first and second clean, we need to make sure we’re calling and following up. So what does that look like? Incoming call sales script—so this is just in general when people call.
And then, let’s see what else I have here. Oh! I made one for Airbnb! So Airbnbs have skyrocketed in our area. Last year we had one; now we’ve got like over 20. They come with their own hosts of problems, but they’re pretty good money if you can do it right.
So we have a script for Airbnbs because we do like to see that one in person. For all other houses, we never go and see them because that just wastes too much time, especially if they don't book.
So what that call script looks like, let me just pull up. This is our inbound call script for residential.
So “Thank you for calling Serene Clean! This is [blank]. How can I help you today?” Whatever they say. “Yes, I can definitely help you with that! What zip code are you calling from?” Because we have multiple locations now, we want to make sure that we’re booking appropriate cleaners for that.
And then, three very important guys—write this down: every time you're getting a call, a lead from anywhere, "Can I ask how you originally heard about us?" Make sure you're documenting that, guys, so you know where your advertising dollars are being spent wisely.
“Oh fantastic, that's so good to hear!” So needs, benefits, pricing, close, call to action, you know.
So yeah, it’s fantastic. And so by doing this, I know it sounds crazy to do a script; but once you get good at it, I literally have it memorized, and it sounds just natural—like, "Hi! Thanks for calling Serene Clean..." and so on. It just sounds super natural.
Even if I was hopping into, you know, they’re like, “Well, what’s the pricing?” and they say something that is not on the script in the order that I want, “Well, uh, first let me tell you a little bit about our company! First and foremost, we follow standardized checklists that we leave behind after each cleaning so you know exactly what tasks were completed. Second, we are fully bonded, licensed, and insured to protect you and your home and all of your belongings. And third, we bring all the tools and supplies; you don’t have to provide anything. The only thing we ask is that you give us a toilet brush—we don’t like taking those between houses.” Cue laughter, and then they laugh a little bit.
So literally, you know, I have it down. I don’t have to look at it; I can book people like crazy, but my office staff can’t, and I’m never answering the phones now, for the most part, so they need to be able to close like crazy too.
And if your office staff doesn’t like answering phones because my insurance didn’t—do you know what I do now? You know what people like? They like money. So, I give my office staff $20 every time they close a lead on the phone. Again, this is all I can always go check because it’s all recorded. This incentivizes them to really want to hop to that phone, pick it up, and kill it because they could have $20 after a five-minute phone call. I mean, it’s worth it to me because, all right, you know, a client who books us for recurring every couple of weeks—we're talking thousands of dollars over the year—well worth that $20.
So, you know, don’t be stingy; incentivize people to close.
That’s what call scripts look like. Track your numbers.
Alright, so if you guys go into my speaker dashboard, let's see if I’m still signed in. There we go. And go into my little description here, there are two links. One is for the group interview process, which I’ll be talking about briefly in just a moment, and one is for KPI tracking.
So these are deep dives into some of these topics that I do not have time to go deep into today, but I did want to note those, guys. So write that down to go back into this talk description and watch this video. Any of you guys can watch; it’s totally free. I just want to get deeply into those because, of how like those two things, are game changers. You have to do those two things.
If you don’t do the group interview process and you have some interview process and hiring process that works for you, that’s great, but this is what works for us to keep us going well. And then tracking—it’s non-negotiable; you have to track.
And what does that look like? Well let’s hop into the tracking sheet, shall we? Let's see here.
All right, so this is our tracking sheet, so you're gonna actually see my real numbers. Okay? I'm going to be fully transparent so you guys can see exactly what that looks like.
So let's see, January of 2020— we’re at about three grand a month. Okay, we're scooting up, scooting up, scooting up. And then COVID hit, of course, so we hit a little snag there. But now, as you can see, we’re at anywhere between like 10 to 21 a week now, what we're hitting revenue-wise.
Now, let’s see here—our recurring revenue, as you can see, is drastically increasing every month. So in February of this year, we’re at 40, then 43 at the end of March, April 56, 65, 69. So we’re just under 70; we’re going to hit that 70, I think. So that’s why I say we’re going to, you know, if this is all recurring revenue, so that’s going to keep going.
So, a year of if we don’t grow any more, a year of 70K—we’re going to be at 800K a year. So that’s where I get that number.
Tracking accounts receivable—how much am I making? What’s in the bank accounts? Alright, how much are you spending on advertising? How many clicks are you getting? Because if nobody’s clicking on it, you’re not getting anything. Maybe you should change your advertising.
The only place we spend ad money is Facebook ads and then retargeting ads—like that follow you around the internet or whatever.
Right here, guys—this is what I’m talking about when I'm asking in that call script: make sure you are tracking where people are coming from. So, as you can see, Google, you know, is really good for us; word-of-mouth and Facebook are our three main lead generators, if you will.
So I literally am writing how many, and then I make a little note. This is what I like to do so I can easily track who it is and did they say yes. So Lindsay hasn’t said yes; Tyrell, yes; Molly, yes; Becky, no; Billy, yes. So those are real names. It all sounds fake, I know, but those are real people.
Referral word-of-mouth—yes, yes, yes, yes; Elias just said yes, yes. So literally all six of those referral word-of-mouth have closed this week.
Let’s see—a few people have not closed: Aaran has not closed, Mary has not, Nikki has not. So as you can see, with this many people, it’s hard to keep track of it.
So now I know we need to follow up with Mary—what’s going on there? Why has she not closed yet?
So I know we have now up to at least 11 or 12. As you can see, we are adding approximately eight to ten clients a week now, and that’s just residential. So that’s pretty crazy, and that’s immediate conversions.
So you need to be tracking how many people you are converting, and then as you can see, our close rate is at about 70, so that’s pretty darn good.
And that’s after last month we did a pretty drastic price increase, and we’re still closing like hotcakes.
So write this down: raise your damn prices! Because I can’t believe I didn’t do this. I mean, I’ve raised prices, I think, three times in the past year, and it hasn’t affected anything. If your product is good, if your service is good, raise your damn prices! There will be clients for you.
All right, how many first-time cleans did you convert them to recurring? Like we said, we want to be converting them—tracking my reviews and ratings, video reviews, complaints, complaint percentage of job, number of employees. I went into a deep dive into this in that KPI video, guys, so do click on that.
Just briefly, you know, we got three complaints this week so far, and they all came through yesterday. What a good way to start Friday, huh? So, flash, Brannigan, and Brooks Wangler—what happened? What happened here?
Face sent back to, you know, we got to note this stuff, and I need to speak to Kyra on Monday, but she had Friday off, so I don’t want to bug her with complaints about newer cleaners.
So just knowing—and then I have an action item for Monday to talk to Kira about what happened with her cleaning.
So, you guys got to be tracking this stuff so you are totally removing the emotion out of it of—“I feel like the business isn’t doing well; I feel like we’re getting a lot of complaints; I feel like we’re not getting many leads; I feel like we’re spending a lot of money on advertising.”
Take all of that emotion out of it, guys! I’m a very emotional woman; that’s why I do this job because I love helping people. But you gotta take emotion out of it when it comes to the numbers and running the business because, I mean, it’s crucial. It’s a non-negotiable; you guys gotta do this!
It doesn’t have to be fancy looking like this; it could literally be pen and paper!
So, I don’t know if I can swear on this—sorry, I’m gonna (it's my talk, right?) All right, so that's what we're doing now.
I just want to briefly go over hiring. I know I have a video fully on our group interview process. Go watch that. I did traditional hiring styles at first and ran into all the typical struggles—nobody showing up for interviews and such.
I hired a business coach just over a year ago, and they have transformed our business, as you can see.
No, it is not a maid service coach; it is just a general business coach—Thrive Time Business Coaching in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Shoutout to them; fantastic. They have changed my life. So, you know, not every business coach is good, guys, and they don’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. Don’t hire one if you can’t afford it yet. I just barely could afford it—like I was scraping by—and now I feel like I should pay them about seven times as much as I'm paying them.
So, I’m just saying they’re great. So definitely look into getting at least a mentor, or hit me up with a bunch of questions, and I will answer them for free on a one-time basis. But I’m running a business, guys; I'm trying not to spend a bunch of time on that. But I would love to help you if you have some questions.
So, I was taught the group interview process. We've used this process for a year, and it has transformed our ability to grow.
One example of endless examples—literally this week I had a new cleaner who was a full-time cleaner. No-call, no-show on Monday—no notice; she was scheduled all week this week. I had her replacement, whom I interviewed two weeks ago, start Wednesday. There was no loss of service, and I didn’t have to clean at all because of that.
There you go. Let’s see, one of my full-time commercial cleaners—she is a great girl. She put in her two weeks last Thursday. I already have her replacement lined up and ready to go. So that's why we've been able to grow so fast, guys, is because of hiring.
So, until you get this hiring done, guys—like, and you know this past year has been wild for hiring. Even through that, we hit about a dry spell for about a month or so, maybe two months ago, but now we’re right back to it. I’ve had like seven new people start in the past two or three weeks. And they come and they go.
You know, one of those new people is the lady who called no-showed, but thank you, next. Thank you, next! Don’t get hung up, guys! If you cannot handle people screwing you, get out of this business. You gotta just brush it off and say next!
And really turning into thankfulness of, like, I’m so thankful that I didn’t spend months training her and then she leaves or something like that. You know, it’s all good; it’s all good.
So check out that video. I can now fire as I need to; employees do not hold me hostage. My great employees love this because they know I will not be keeping bad employees on our team. They know I will get rid of them, and I am much more ruthless with firing! Just get rid of them! If they are not working with you, they are actively working against you—all of your hopes and dreams and your business!
So get rid of them! You probably have to fire somebody right now—I know I have to fire somebody. There’s always somebody you need to fire.
All right, number one, reputation marketing. This is a non-negotiable; you have to do this! Word of mouth will only get you so far. And when I hired my business coach, I was like, “I get all my business word of mouth. I don’t need reviews.” And they were like, “Haha, yes you do!” And yes, I do! Lesson learned; a year later, trust me, I’ve grown, I think, five times since a year ago. Just take my word for it; you need reviews.
What this looks like—let me pull up our Google locations for you.
So we have two locations. This is our main location—formerly Black River Falls Cleaning Services. So we have 123 Google reviews with a 4.9 average star rating—all of those are legit customers.
You know, happy customers who have less reviews—I won one star for my very first employee I hired who didn’t go so hot. So yeah, not only was she a terrible employee, but she then left me my only one-star review. It’s all good, though; it makes us look realistic, right?
And then here is our Sparta location—this is our brand new branch that we opened, I guess, six months ago. So, you know, it’s hopping; it’s getting there.
54 Google reviews, but there’s nobody else, you know, with companies with reviews, so that’s pretty darn good, and that’s a five-star because we kill it; you know, we do a good job.
So how do we get customers to leave reviews? Because I've had so many people tell me, “My customers just won’t leave a review; they don’t want to.” Yes, they will! You just have to keep asking and asking and asking until they legitimately say, “No, I will never leave you!” If you stop asking, um, so what this looks like is incentivize your cleaners so that they are helping get those reviews. Ours get $5 per online review that mentions their name.
So we have a little card that we leave behind after each view, and I have it pulled up on Vistaprint, so you can see what that looks like. Super cheap; just design something. It takes you 10 minutes to make this, and then the cleaner leaves this. There’s a QR code; you don’t need that if you don’t know how to make one of those—and then the links to leave a review. So that gets left on top of their checklist at the cleaning.
So that’s first and foremost, that first ask for a review. We asked for reviews during our follow-up call after each first-time cleaning. We asked for reviews on every single invoice. There’s a link that says "Happy with your cleaning? Leave our client cleaning a review," and they'll get a bonus.
And then we text and email clients with a link to leave a review and track who and who has not left them. So we are just hitting them multiple times until they leave that damn review!
Because just like I know for me, I look at my phone and I see something, “Yeah, I gotta do that!” and then promptly forget about it. You just gotta catch them at the right time, guys! Just because they don’t do it immediately doesn’t mean you stop asking— that’s like stopping asking for a sale if you don’t hear back from them. You gotta follow up!
Second, video testimonials—these are so impactful! So get happy clients to do a video review and put it on YouTube. It’ll show up in your Google search results when people are searching for cleaners in their area.
To make this happen, it must be optimized, and I'm going to show you exactly what this looks like, so got your pen and paper—write this down.
All right, so video reviews. So this is our website. Beautiful, beautiful—Thrive made this for me! All right, so if you go to our testimonials page, you will see all of these happy clients giving us legit, real reviews and recommendations. I mean, come on—you stumble on this website, you’re gonna buy; you’re gonna buy!
So what does that look like? So first and foremost, you ask them, “What is your name and how did you hear about us?” Two—“How long have you been using our services?” It could be their first time; they could have used you for two years.
And then three—“Why would you recommend Serene Clean to other homeowners, other business owners, other Airbnbs?” Whatever the client is.
So let me show you an example of that.
Let’s see here, let me find a short one, so it’s nice and easy for you. Here we go: “Jessica, what is your name, and how did you hear about Serene Clean?” “My name is Jessica Rockwell, and I have lived in the Black River Falls community for the vast majority of my life. I heard of Serene Clean through my mother, who has been using the service since the start of the company.”
“Why would you recommend Serene Clean to other homeowners?” “I would recommend Serene Clean because of the utmost professionalism that is used—from the levels of customer service to the in-home care to even the aftercare that we’re receiving. Stephanie and her team have been extremely professional, and they come into my home, take care of the things that I don’t have the time for right now. My husband and I commute for work, and so we’re not home the amount of times that we would like to be, to take care of a lot of those deep cleaning tasks. So for us to be able to bring in someone that we trust—someone who’s reliable, professional, and thorough—really means the world to us and our small family.”
Perfect! Thanks, Jessica. Thank you!
How impactful is that to potential clients, guys? I mean, come on! Don’t you want to hire me? Don’t you want to hire me? But for real, it is so impactful.
So super quick—just ask your customers. A lot of most of them will say no, but you just got to keep asking. So I set myself a reasonable goal of getting one video of review per week, and then I put that on my tracking sheet so I can see, “All right, it’s been three weeks, and I haven’t got one,” and I kick myself in the butt and just do the thing.
That’s what business ownership is—you just gotta do the thing even when you don’t feel like it.
And same with the Google reviews, guys; you just gotta get them! So I set a goal for myself of one per location per week and one video review per week.
So it doesn't have to be like, “Oh my gosh, I need 150 reviews!” No, you need one this week! You need one video review this week! So just, you know, set yourself that goal, guys!
So to optimize it, this is where I’m going to get into it a little bit.
So, in order for this to show up, I want it to be showing up specifically this video for Sparta, Wisconsin house cleaner. So there is my key key term that I am trying to show up for—Serene Clean needs to have your business name in there, and then it needs to have a unique title, just something related to, you know, professional cleaning for this busy couple. So it doesn’t have to be anything crazy—just simple.
And then in the description, make sure you fill that out. Between a long commute and a busy work life, Jessica and her husband are happy to outsource the cleaning to Serene Clean.
Super simple! Again, just mention your company name. Learn more now at serene-clean.com, so your website or call our web—our phone number.
And then your little hashtags here—put some hashtags of your key terms in there too. And then when you do—um, I don’t think I can edit here—no, I’m not signed into my Serene Clean account.
But then when you go down to—when you're uploading the video, there's a section called tags. Make sure you fill that out! What that looks like is just every conceivable version of the search terms that you’re trying to show up for, so house cleaner, Sparta, Wisconsin, Sparta, Wisconsin house cleaners, best house cleaners in Sparta, Wisconsin, Sparta Wisconsin cleaning service—just every version of that. Make sure you’re putting that in there.
So it’s telling Google, “Hey, that’s a relevant video; show that in the web search when somebody searches for, you know, Dallas house cleaners,” or wherever you are. You need to be showing up because your competitors are going to be showing up before you, and then they’re not even going to see you, even if you’re fantastic. You need to be showing up online.
So that's what that looks like for video reviews, guys!
All right, so how I manage and grow the business. First and foremost, your service better be amazing! Get your hiring and staff figured out before you attempt to grow the business. So if you are continually getting complaints and it’s just—you kind of suck—get that together!
You need to systematize that and just get a checklist down and keep cleaning until you nail it, and then just keep training until they nail it.
Have a kick-ass culture! You shape the culture, not the employees. Everything comes from me. For me in this company, there is no gossip. It is 22 women, and there is no gossip; there is no cattiness because I shut that down! This is my culture, and if you don’t want to be part of it, you can leave! I will make you leave!
Because I'm the boss; you’re the boss! So don’t let these employees run all over you! I see so many posts in the Facebook group where I’m like, “Who’s the boss here?” You are, but you’re not acting like it!
Be very clear on your core values and stand by them. So for us, our core values are literally here; let me flip you around. Here on the wall, there. So the first thing you see when you walk into our office is our core values:
Family first: we put the needs of our clients and our staff’s family first.
Integrity: we do what is right, not what is easy.
Grateful and positive attitude: we greet each day in person with a smile.
I haven’t had caffeine, guys; I’m just this happy all the time! Honestly, and sometimes I get sad, but usually, I’m like this, and I want to work with people who are like me.
And then what else do you see?
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. If you don’t have that mentality of “You love to serve, and you’d love to help,” you’re not going to fit here! And I want people who don’t fit these things to kind of hate the minute they walk in here because I don’t want them to want to work here.
I want it to be very obvious that they’re not a good fit—and same with your clients too! You want them to be very good fits as well.
So there are different methods for residential, commercial, and Airbnb cleanings—how I get clients.
So we're going to hop into those.
All right, so residential—standardize all your claims with a checklist. Number one, Facebook—we do a ton of Facebook marketing because all of our target market—dual income families—are, you know, too busy, like Jessica. That is our ideal client is Jessica, that video you just watched.
So we do cleaning giveaways. Turn these into a boosted video. So anytime I want to drop some business, I give away free house cleaning.
So say I'm going to give an 8-hour cleaning away, and I just say, “Hey, like and share this to be entered,” and I get 200 shares—I’m going to get a ton of quote requests, and I'm going to book people from that video.
So let me just hop into that real quick so you can see what that looks like.
And then I also take those video testimonials and I post those on Facebook, and then I boost those. So that’s one right there. I spent $71; I got 162 link clicks to our website to get quote requests.
Here’s a cleaning video; let’s see. I spent $100; I got 261 clicks. I got a ton of clients from that guy, so it works super well.
Pro tip: if you have a dazzling personality—or even just a weirdo like me who can just kind of ramble and be happy—people like that! For some reason, you’re watching this—people like personality! And so people know that Serene Clean is Stephanie, and that I embody the brand.
So if you are like that, and even if you’re not, amp it up! I’m not always like this; I can be reserved at times. But I amp it up when, you know, when it’s showtime.
And get on, you know, just take a video with your phone. Talk about anything that comes to do with your business, like, “Guys, this is why I’m so passionate about this!” Boost that crap!
And then just show people what you’re all about and what your business is all about because then they know you! They know me!
I walk into anywhere now in my small towns; they’re like, “I saw you on Facebook! You’ve got that cleaning company!” Because my face is everywhere.
You need to be acting right if that’s the case. You know your face is everywhere! But you know that’s what I want: I want that brand recognition! Even when they see me, I want that.
So definitely do Facebook giveaways; boost video testimonials. We post five days a week—before and afters, testimonials, parenting memes—and then I boost those video testimonials.
So that stuff—that’s our Facebook advertising strategy. Super simple; it’s not difficult!
You just gotta do it.
Online reviews—set yourself a goal of getting at least one review per week on Google, on Facebook, and one video review. Start easy. If you get more, great!
But just have that baseline there.
Have a no-brainer offer—something they can’t resist to entice them to try us or book again.
So what does that look like? If we hop to our website again, you will see our no-brainer offer. Schedule your first appointment and get your second 50% off! Because we are trying to get people who try us once to get us recurring and just kind of get addicted to us. We just want to be the drug of the service-based industry!
And then if you click on the video, there’s a little "About Us" video—me talking about all of the stuff about our company.
Here is some social proof—Rental Rising Star under 40; we’re members of Cleaning for a Reason. I need to get—we won Emerging Business of the Year for 2020 in our area. I need to get that on here!
So anything that makes you sound impressive—even if you don’t feel impressive because I certainly don’t—just get it on there!
And then, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah about us, et cetera, et cetera. So that’s what that looks like.
I cry by or die. Call, text, email until they book or tell you a definite no. So you just need to keep asking people.
If you don’t hear back from them, maybe they didn’t get your estimate; maybe they missed their call; maybe their voicemail box is full and you can leave a voicemail. So you just need to call them until you get them on the phone.
And then if they say, “I need to think about it,” okay, I’ll call back tomorrow until you know. Like, just keep going and going and going!
One of my favorite sayings is, “Perseverance is going from one failure to the next with no loss of enthusiasm.”
And it’s just like, guys, if people tell you no, next! Next! That’s all you got to do!
So that’s what we do for residential—that’s how we get residential.
Commercial—Dream 100! This is a game changer! I got a ton of our biggest accounts—commercial accounts—during COVID when everything was shut down. We grew drastically through COVID!
I know a lot of you guys did, but some of you didn’t do so hot.
So this is what I would suggest for commercial. This is what we do to get new commercial accounts.
So we service several hundred thousand square foot manufacturing facilities a night. I don’t even know how many commercial accounts—I’d have to look how many commercial accounts.
And I literally just got two more this week! I got a trucking terminal yesterday. It took them all of 11 minutes to say yes to the bid.
So, you know, there’s commercial work out there, guys; you just got to call!
So what does that look like? Make a spreadsheet or write it down on paper if you’re old-fashioned and write down every single business that you would want to work with potentially.
Okay? And then you get your call script going. I’ve got, you know, I'll talk about call scripts later again. And then, you know, address; blah, blah, blah, who did you talk to? All right, they booked; now they’re a monthly client!
Millis Transfer—they handled the cleaning themselves, but I kept calling and calling, and they didn’t like me very much. And then all of a sudden, their janitor quit, and now they are obsessed with us because we turned around and got them cleaning within a week, and now we go there three times a week, and it’s a huge account!
And they are obsessed! They buy my cleaner their new vacuums and gift cards because they love her so much!
So I got all that by cold calling.
Jackson County Bank—I looked at how many times I had to call them. Now they’re a three-time-a-week account.
You just—you don’t know when they’re going to be unhappy with your competitor, so you’ve got to be in there.
So that’s what cold calling looks like. Then I also do drop-offs, so we have two things for Dream 100. You do cold calling and you do drop-offs!
So what that looks like is dropping off donuts—also cold emailing, et cetera, et cetera.
So I go buy a bunch of $4 boxes of donuts, and I drop them off at the front desk and say, “Hi, my name’s Stephanie. I own Serene Clean here in town. Actually, we’re one of the highest-rated and most-reviewed cleaning companies in the area, and we service a bunch of commercial accounts here in the area. How are you guys handling your cleaning?”
They say whatever. “Oh, how happy have you been with them?” They say whatever. “Well, who would I have to talk to to maybe get a walkthrough so I can put a bid together?”
And maybe they shut you down completely; you're like, “All right, sounds good. I’ll see you soon.”
You do it again because if you can get with that receptionist, you know they’re the ones who are complaining about the current cleaner.
So you got to get with that receptionist and kind of that gatekeeper.
And then they’re just, when—not if, but when— their current service provider pisses them off enough or they can’t get cleaner, like an individual cleaner—they’re going to call you because they’re going to remember you.
So those are the things you need to be doing, and this is what I do to get commercial work. This is, you know, commercial work. You guys know there’s a lot of money in that.
I personally prefer residential, just, you know, from an emotional side, but commercial is really where that regular income is; it’s beautiful!
A no-brainer for commercial works too!
So for us, you know, if you’re a commercial client who accepts our bid, and it’s a daily account—five days a week—you get 50% off your first month of service.
And that’s to entice them because, again, if it’s a long-term client, all right, I only, you know, can cover my cost that first month, and then we work for years together. Worth it!
So that’s what we do to get commercial clients.
And then, reputation marketing—we get a ton of commercial work from our online reviews. They’re looking there too, and from our residential clients for their workplaces.
That trucking terminal? We clean the manager’s house, and then when they needed a cleaner, that’s how they, you know.
So people work at businesses, so make sure you’re doing good work in all areas.
And then Airbnb/short-term rentals. So we get almost all of these clients from online searches, so reviews are number one, again, obviously, but search engine optimization.
So have your pen ready, and if you need me to go into more detail, email me about this. I don’t want to get too in-depth because I just don’t have that much time.
So search engine optimization—we upload at least five optimized images a week to your Google My Business page.
So if you go to our Google My Business page here, and then you scroll down to photos, oh, let’s see. I just wanted to click on photos.
Oh! See photos right there. And that’s our cute little office—that's where I am right now!
And we go to latest. All right, you’ll see all of these before and afters—everything!
So I get all these pictures from my cleaners, and then I turn them into snazzy little before and afters, and then I put them on Google My Business because Google likes content—they like frequent content!
So make sure, write this down: one review per week, five photos per week on Google My Business. How I make them pretty is in Canva.
So Canva is a free little online thing—you can pay for it, but we just use the free version.
Let me see. All right, so this is for Ladies and Laundry. I do all of her Facebook marketing stuff, so before and afters—just click them in there, and then, to optimize it, put your keyword that you want to show up for, so for her, Jackson, Mississippi house cleaners.
And then you need a unique file name, so a number. Then just number them, and that’s all you need to do to optimize it! Easy peasy!
Simple! You don’t want to make this complicated!
A lot of people know a shade are going to be trying to sell you SEO services. If you can’t afford it, first and foremost, get your Google reviews right!
That’s where you can get your Google reviews, and make sure you’re doing a good job before you go crazy into spending a lot of money on SEO.
That’s what I’ve got to say about that. I’ll get off my soapbox.
So, you know, just make sure you’re optimizing photos like that. So just saving the file appropriately.
And then write at least one, but preferably three to five thousand word articles a week with your search terms in it. That sounds crazy, I know, but what that looks like—if you go to our website and go all the way down to the site map, you'll see that every page, every main page has at least 500 to 1,000 words of content with our keywords that we’re trying to show up for.
So if you go to our site map and, again, no, okay—first, I haven't said this yet—nobody's gonna read any of this stuff ever, because anytime they come across one of these, they're gonna be like, "That's a lot of words!" And then they’re going to hop up to your logo and get to the get a quote.
So as you can see, look at all these articles we have to show up top in results.
So say I wanted “Best Black River Falls cleaning services.” All right? So image there; and then there is a FedEx guy—Lily, hey!
It's okay, baby; we have lots of dogs in the office at any given time.
If you search here, the keyword I'm trying to show up for here is “Best Black River Falls cleaning services.”
So “Black River Falls” is the town cleaning services. So, and then you need a unique title here, and then you just need 1,000 words and just blather out about anything!
Nobody's gonna read this!
Make sure your phone number is in there, and then make sure that that keyword is in there at least six times.
And I can go into more depth than that if you ever have some questions—just email me, guys, about that.
And I can get you that. Let’s see here.
So that is content writing. Again, I can get more into that if you need me to.
And then optimize your video reviews. I went into that on YouTube. That’s what you look like; that’s what it looks like to do that.
So that’s how we get Airbnbs. Like I said, we’ve got about 20 of them, and they’re a lot, but they’re good money!
Okay, so what does that look like each week? What am I doing every week to organize all the stuff I’ve talked about?
So every day, basic management of the business. So deal with burning fires—that's the first thing I do. As soon as I wake up, as soon as I walk into the office, my managers and I are dealing with burning fires.
The only thing burning fires really are employee call-ins, cancellations, and then complaints, of course. Those are all burning fires; those should be handled ASAP before you do anything else.
Number two, we email estimates to bookings that came overnight. We like to email estimates so that we can really lay out our value proposition; they can look it over. And most importantly, we can send out our checklist because then we can impress them.
And let’s see… Number four—call all leads from the prior day to ensure they got the estimate and book them. So if they didn’t get that estimate, it went to their spam or whatever, now this is when you close them!
You’ve given them time to get over the sticker shock, frankly, because we want to charge nice and high so we can make some money!
And then that call—we’ve got a call script for that, and that’s where we’re calling them there.
So number three—call out first and second time cleans from the day prior and ensure satisfaction, ask for a review, and book them for recurring.
So we want to make sure, before we charge cards or bill anybody, that they’re happy.
And if there’s anything we need to go fix, we do that before we charge them.
Number five—charge cards/invoice all cleanings from the prior day.
Six—quality check all newer cleaners and one older cleaner.
So we are doing quality checks every single day, and that’s why we have so few complaints. I know that sounds like a lot, but just make it part of your daily routine where you're taking half an hour and driving out to your closest client.
Or I have some of my more seasoned cleaners doing quality checks as well because they never get complaints. So then I go have them check the newer cleaners if they’re in the area.
So that’s how we manage that!
Then we update our lead notes in ClickUp. If you’ve never heard of ClickUp, hit up Courtney Wisely. Thank you, Courtney, for all of the info on ClickUp!
That’s where we track all of our leads and everything like that. I’m not gonna get into that today; it’s just it’s a little much. I could make another video on that at some point!
Every week for marketing, I do Dream 100 activities—so at least one hour of cold calling or cold emailing and five drop-offs, so dropping off donuts, dropping off one sheet.
And I’ll show you what that looks like in just a minute.
We text at least ten clients asking for a review with the link.
We upload five to ten before and after pictures to Google My Business.
I schedule and take one video testimonial, and I upload it to Google My Business and YouTube.
I’m updating my tracking sheet; I do that typically every single day so we can stay on top of leads and just complaints and things like that.
I schedule all my Facebook posts out for next week, so I batch that. I’m not posting manually every day—I’m just batching that all at once.
I review process documents and update/add as needed.
So, for you, if you don’t have anything documented, dedicate at least one to two hours a week to starting to document your processes. Just think, “What do I do every day?” Okay? I need to write this down! Write one to five content articles per week for the website—just depending on how much time we have.
And then we also write thank you notes to current clients—that's one of my managers’ jobs; we do that to make, you know, just it really personal!
And we’re just—and we also look for opportunities. Did somebody have a baby? Did somebody die? Did, you know, somebody have a birthday?
We’ll send them flowers, we’ll give them gifts, and that’s really for kind of like high-end clients, like our weeklies and our bi-weeklies. We spend money on them to just show them appreciation!
So really, we don’t ever want to feel like a big corporation—we want to feel very homey, even as we grow!
So that’s what we’re doing every week.
Let me see if there’s anything else that I wanted to show you guys.
Oh! Yeah, here’s our commercial cold call script. So this is what I’m cold calling people, and this is what I follow. You know, and then I send them an email—objections, facts, you know, just everything that you can think of. It’s in there.
This is our one sheet, so this is what we’re dropping off when I am doing drop-offs with donuts, and I'm also, when I'm doing cold emailing, I'm sending them this.
So this is super snazzy—it’s like, “Oh, look how professional they are!” So this is what sets us apart from a typical cleaner.
Alright, so you need to be able to set that difference.
And then on the back of this, this is what that looks like.
So we have all of our commercial references that any of these people could be called; these are, you know, just a handful of our commercial accounts, and these are large accounts.
I mean, this is a huge facility; this is a huge facility, and you know there’s their number, there’s their email—that just shows it’s like, “Dang! That company, they mean business! They got it together!”
Checklists—this is something we do for all of our commercial accounts.
So you might wonder, “How do I handle all this commercial work too?” We make checklists for these guys as well. This is a little bit more tedious, but these accounts are bigger, and it’s worth the money!
Or worth the time, excuse me!
So depending on how large the account is, we'll determine how, you know, big it is. We also take video walkthroughs of different Airbnbs and anything that’s more difficult, and then we show that to our cleaners or send it to our cleaner.
So this is an account we just started last week—Sparta-Toma Broadcasting; it’s a radio station.
And so, you know, things that the cleaner needs to know, we put this stuff in ZenMaid. But you may have found, all of ZenMaid users—your cleaners don’t like to read the notes necessarily, so make them take this checklist and hold them accountable to it because if they screw something up, it’s on the checklist. You’re supposed to read the checklist, therefore I can write you up because, you know, you’re supposed to read the checklist.
So, you know, things that are super important to know—do not clean in the recording studios; they will set out garbages that they want them emptied.
So little stuff like that will end up in a complaint if you don’t have it. So super important to be making those checklists! I know it’s tedious, guys!
But, you know, once you do one, you just—you just get going!
I also wanted to show you—okay, so that’s my tracking sheet.
So really, what I want to sell to you people—and I don’t really care if you buy it—but I just thought that this—I was like, "What can I offer to you guys that would actually be useful?" Because I, again, I don’t want to get into coaching, really; I’m happy to help any of you with any questions.
But this is what I—if I ask myself “What would I want if I was just starting out or if I was struggling to get my business in order?” And this is what I would want!
So I put together this document here, and this is everything that I want to give you guys.
This is what I want to give you guys!
So I basically—a documentation and systems bundle. So everything I’m going to include—I’ve went over some of it, some of it I didn’t even show you—but this is everything that we have worked, I can’t even tell you how many hours—hours and hours and hours have gone into everything that’s included here.
So all of the call scripts, and then you guys can just tweak them as you need to reflect your business, your prices, etc.
Our client guidelines that we send to our clients, and then they have to sign beforehand.
So I wanted to bring up this program here—write this down, guys. SignRequest, this is amazing!
So this is like $8 a month, and it’s just like DocuSign except super-duper cheap.
So then all you need to do is create little templates. So every time we hire a new employee, we send all of this new hire paperwork to them and then we got them on all of the stuff that, you know, can be an issue when you fire them or they quit or whatever.
And then our customer guidelines—so we send this to every single client when we bring them on, and they have to read through it and electronically sign it!
So everything from estimates, working in the home, safety, cancellation policies, payment, quality control, pets, breakage, blah blah blah—everything, you know, everything.
I think I got this from Courtney Weissland; I just tweaked it for myself. So again, thank you, Courtney, so much for everything you do for our industry!
SignRequest, use that, guys!
So that’s what our customer guidelines look like, and I’ll send those to you as well—included in this.
Estimate email template. Oh! That’s something I forgot to mention.
So we, again, we don’t want to be typing up all these manually, so we have a little template that works really good, and this typically closes. As you can see, there’s that guy; he just booked yesterday at 5:42 p.m.—great! You know, like that’s how easy it is to book people.
We don’t have to try! This took her approximately two minutes to book a $600 clean. Pretty awesome!
And then there is my beautiful operations manager, Crystal.
So you’ll get this template here—weekly task sheets for sales, office management, marketing, customer relations.
So we have those plastered on the wall back there; it’s what I hold my office staff and myself accountable for.
Let me see if I can find one of those for you. So pass-fail…
Just a second, I’m not in my right drive! Never mind!
But it’s basically all the lists of everything we do, and it’s a quick little checklist—it’s super-duper nifty.
Blank KPI tracking sheet so you don’t have to make that, and it’s exactly what I went over in my tracking sheet—you’ll get that.
Our standard and clean checklist—you’ll get copies of that so you can make your own off of those, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
Our one sheet—those are those snazzy sale sheets that I showed you, like this.
You’ll get a copy of both a residential and our commercial bid template for commercial.
This is something that is super-duper useful!
So when you're bidding people, let me see if I can find you a copy here of my messy, messy…
Here we go!
So every time I do a bid, it looks beautiful because I made this awesome template of what I say.
So it looks super-duper professional—professional janitorial services! You know, thank you so much, blah blah blah, one sheet, pricing—everything you need to include in there—your insurance.
So again, this is all our information; however, you just need to switch it out, and this will give you the template for what you need.
And then job specifications, and then we finish it off with our testimonials and all of our contacts for commercial that they could reach out to.
So you will get a bid template for that as well.
Let’s see here—content article procedures for SEO kit, layout diagram of supplies, employee manual, new hire paperwork.
So that’s all everything you saw in SignRequest—all of that stuff we will send over with that.
Yeah, so it is literally every document that I could think of that would be super useful for your company.
That's what we’re doing.
So in order to get this, I am selling this for $200. I thought that that was a fair price for everything included. Just email office@sereneclean.com with the subject line bundle.
We’ll send over an invoice; you can pay online, and then we will email you all of the documents that I have listed on there.
Quick and easy!
And again, I’m not a coach, guys; this is literally our only thing we’re selling.
Anything else, you can just email and ask questions about! I would have killed for these documents all laid out in the beginning instead of having to create them manually.
So I just think that it would be super useful, and it will just really transform your business to be able to have all of these things in place, especially if you're starting out. But even if you're, like, you know, seasoned and you just feel like you're kind of a mess, these things will help keep you organized!
So thank you everybody so much for watching! Please leave any questions below in the chat; I will be watching that. Just email me any questions you have; I am an open book as much as possible, and I really do appreciate everybody watching.
It's been a fun chat! Just hit me up with any questions you have.
Thanks so much!
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