Being self-employed as a window cleaner offers so much flexibility and the opportunity to earn good money. However, it can be difficult to have enough customers to keep you going, especially when starting out. What are the best, most effective ways to grow your round?
There is lots of work out there, and people are looking for honest, reliable people to work at their homes. Here are the best ways to get more customers.
Go out canvassing
This is the traditional way to find new window cleaning customers. Go from door to door and ask people if they need a window cleaner. Here are some tips to make this work.
Present yourself as a competent professional. Wear clothes with your logo embroidered on them. Take some fliers with you to leave with interested people and to push through doors where nobody is home.
Choose where to canvass carefully. Don’t go straight to the street in town with the biggest, most expensive houses. They probably have a window cleaner already, and you will most likely get these houses from recommendation rather than canvassing. Try to get work that is grouped in the same area to help with travelling time.
Be happy for people that already have a good window cleaner. Don’t try to under-quote others, and don’t undersell yourself. Be friendly, professional and persistent. Go canvassing when people will be at home. Don’t give up when the majority of people tell you they aren’t interested.
Keep on going and with patience you will find people that need a window cleaner.
Clean on weekends and bank holidays
You can get a lot of work from walk-ups, people that see you cleaning another house and come and ask you for a price. The problem is many people are not usually home during the day when you are working.
Working when more people are at home can make you more visible and help you pick up neighbours, which is ideal as they are local to where your existing work already is.
Make friends with other window cleaners
Try not to view other window cleaners as enemies. Be friendly and share advice. Chances are some of them in your area have been cleaning windows for so long that they don’t need any more work and may send some new customers your way if they like you.
Consider passing on their number to people too. It’s true when you are starting out you may be after any scrap of work that you can find, but if you get a call from a potential customer and you know the window cleaner that does all their neighbours it may be worth passing on their number instead of doing it yourself. Ask them to repay the favour and they will recommend you to customers in the areas you work.
Ask customers to recommend you to their friends and family
Often this will happen naturally. To speed it up you can ask for it and even incentivise it. It is surprising how much people want to see someone starting out by themself succeed.
Many customers are happy to recommend someone that they know does a good job. Certain customers are especially good at this. We have found that hairdressers will recommend you to many people. Often people will recommend you to their friends on social media such as Facebook or neighbourhood groups.
You can incentivise this by introducing a refer a friend scheme. Offer a £5-£10 discount or a half-price clean for everyone they recommend that becomes a regular customer. You can more than make up this discount with the first clean extra fee, that way you don’t even feel it in your pocket.
Ask your customers to recommend you to their boss
Almost everyone works for someone that earns more money than they do. Commercial cleaning contracts can be lucrative and bosses houses may be larger and more expensive than their employees.
Some will do it for free or you can offer a reward scheme where they get £20 if you get the commercial contract for cleaning their workplace.
These referral schemes are great to print on the back of your “I called today” slips.
Buy window cleaning customers
You can look for work that is for sale online, or if you are friendly with local window cleaners you can ask them if they have work to sell.
Many window cleaners are looking to consolidate their round and may sell work that is too much for them or in a less convenient area.
Generally, the price you will pay to buy window cleaning customers starts at 3x the monthly value and may go up to 10x the monthly value. That means if you are buying £1000 of work you will pay from £3000 – £10,000. This may seem a lot but you are getting regular monthly income that may go on and on for years.
When buying customers you are basically buying goodwill. There is no guarantee that they will stick with you. To make buying work successful communication between the window cleaner selling the work and his customers is key.
Ask to see a random few houses that you choose from the seller’s list to get an idea of the prices and if they are reasonable. You definitely don’t want to be buying work that is underpriced. Also, be clear on whether it is currently cleaned with a water-fed pole or traditionally.
The seller needs to communicate well with his customers, explaining in advance that someone else can be taking over. Think carefully about passing over personal data too so that you comply with the applicable laws.
The gold standard would be for him to go to talk to every single customer, explain they are cutting down some of their window cleaning round, and ask if they are happy to have them arrange a replacement window cleaner for them.
Sometimes this is communicated in a letter. The most important thing is that customers need to know that their regular window cleaner is changing and let them know the name of the new person and the name of their business.
As the new window cleaner, you can also prepare a letter to introduce yourself to new customers. Take extra care the first time to make sure that you do a spotless job, that is likely the time that the customer will check your work the most thoroughly.
You can arrange with the seller how much is an acceptable loss, and it is best to do this in writing. In other words, if you buy £1000 of work, what happens if £500 doesn’t want to switch to you, or stick with you.
Buying work can be a great boost to your business and needn’t be complicated. Just make sure that everything is well communicated to everyone involved and you shouldn’t have any problems.
Social media
Social media can be a far-reaching tool, but it can also provide low-quality leads.
Many people have successfully built an entire round from social media. You need to set up a business page and ask your customers to follow it and leave you a positive review.
You can post on community pages where the group admins allow this, but it is best not to overdo it and become a nuisance. Vary the time of day when you post to get different people.
This usually works best when people recommend you. It is surprising how many people in local groups may ask for a window cleaner. Get recommended by others and it can supercharge your round.
Google my business
Set up a free GMB profile here and show up on local searches.
You should add as much information as you can about your business, and include photos of you at work (not just of your van). Nowadays, you can allow people to message you through GMB and even allow appointment bookings.
Once your profile is all set up and live, you need to get reviews. Within GMB you can find a link to send to your customers that leads them to the review page. This makes it easy to send to your customers for them to add a simple review.
Make a special point of sending it to new customers after the initial clean. That is probably the time they will be happiest because there is a more notable difference after a first clean than a maintenance clean.
Get a website
Creating a website can bring a regular stream of new work, and can lead to you landing bigger contracts. You can make a website yourself or you can have it professionally made.
We would recommend Wix if you are making your own website. Their platform is quite easy to use even if you have no experience and you can make a good looking website. They offer good deals if you pay for a contract upfront. It also includes a free domain name.
The advantage of a professionally made website is that it is likely to make a better first impression and rank higher on Google, thereby paying for itself by bringing in more work. We recommend Clear Choice Websites that specialise in making websites for window cleaners and have great pricing options.
Either way having an online presence is becoming more and more important as that is how many people like to find things nowadays.
Avertising online
Ideally when people Google “window cleaning [your town name]” you would be top of the results page. However, this can be hard to achieve, especially if you are going the DIY route.
You can quickly get more calls with paid advertising.
Google runs a pay per click payment structure, where you only pay when someone clicks on the link to your site. The price can vary depending on the competition. It is easy to blow a large budget on advertising, but it can provide solid leads. If you want to try it out, perhaps it is best to start with a small budget and see if it works for you.
Remember that if your website ranks high on the Google search results page, you won’t need to pay for advertising, so putting some money into making your website rank higher can pay off in the long term.
Conclusion
We hope you found this interesting. There is work out there, and sometimes it can take some imagination and lots of hard work to find it, but it pays off in the long run.
Have you found another method effective? Share it with us in the comments along with any questions you may have.
