Growing your business - part 4

Part 4
The basic elements

Ok, we’ve covered quite a bit on the background of the window cleaning industry in general. Believe or not there is more, much more but for now, we are going to move this series on to the essential parts of a window cleaning business.

Every business has basic elements that will not change throughout the industry, regardless of how individual companies within that industry structure their modus operandi. These basic elements are the building blocks of an industry, the functional and operational issues and opportunities that will be encountered. The modus operandi or mode of operation is how an individual company will deal with these opportunities and issues.

Focusing on the essential elements is vitally important for the business owner and entrepreneur. Without identifying these essential elements, it is impossible to plan your growth, and as we all know, growth is just a series of small but well planned steps.

Bear with me while I relate an illustration to demonstrate how important identifying essential elements are to a businesses health.

Over in the states, lived an entrepreneur an his business partner who’s dream it was to open a bar in the busy tourist area on the coast. However, the problem was the average bar business in the area had a life expectancy of only 18 months.
Undeterred, the partners spent the next year or so frequenting as many of the bars as they could in an attempt to identify the basic business elements for their bar businesses in the locality.
They were already aware that there were plenty of potential clients around, the area was a tourist trap and most of the new bars had no problem filling every seat when the bar was new.
The pattern followed in all the bars they observed however, with a new bar opening, filling for the first 6 months or so and then declining over the next 12 months until finally closing.

The pair finally identified the essential elements and then discovered that the current bars all made the same fatal mistake.
All the bars had very good looking female bar staff, meaning that all the bar stools located around the bar, were filled with hairy, male bottoms.
While the good looking bar staff kept the men entertained, every time a female, couple or group of females entered the bar, the fact that the bar stools were filled with male occupants made the females feel less comfortable than needs be, providing a ‘singles’ atmosphere. In this particular tourist area, this was obviously undesirable.

The pair decided to employ some good looking male and female bar staff. The result is that the business thrived, recently celebrating its 30th anniversary.

Planning for these business nuances is a vital step for any business and especially for those that deal with the general public. The basic business elements of the bar business in our illustration were;

Location
Atmosphere
Service

Without a full understanding of these elements, growth at best would be difficult and at worst, catastrophic. So what are the essential elements for a window cleaning business then? What actions make up the business and affect our decisions?

The three basic business elements in window cleaning cover the subjects;

· Client acquisition
· Logistical operations
· Client retention

Each of the above elements needs to be addressed, planned and developed in order to ensure business health and growth.

Client acquisition covers the how to grow your client base. What makes a valuable client, how to find them, how to present to them and win over their confidence and finally how to train them to help ‘click’ with your business requirements.

Logistical operations will include; how the rounds are structured, employment of staff, time schedules, equipment, hardware and software, technical improvements and innovations, training routines and further considerations.

Client retention is a simple matter of keeping all your clients happy! No seriously, its entails; How far to go for a client, how to inform clients of business practices, how to deal with complaints requirements and preferences and communicating price increases and new developments.

Each of these headings and subheading requires substantial explanations so as to understand why our own business operations are run the way they are, in fact over 30 years of experience led to such information and so it isn’t possible to cover each subject in full detail. However, I would like in part 5 to briefly cover one or two of the subjects and show how we as a company are on target for a 400% increase this year.

As always, if you feel like you would like to comment, post below!

Regards,

Carl Phillips
Director
Clear View Plus Ltd

Growing your business - Part 2

Well after reading part 1 I hope you have been able to identify some of the motivating factors for you when you are growing your business. The importance of these motivating factors cannot be over-stressed, identify them and you will be able to fall back on them time and time again, they will serve you well. If you’re unclear on your personal motivating factor/s, then please spend more time thinking on the subject, you will not be disappointed, I can promise you that.

Lets move on now to the window cleaning industry itself and why you should consider it worthy of your time, energy and investment.
Now when the general public think of window cleaning, what do you think springs to mind? Unfortunately for most of the public, the image of George Formby plucking a banjo singing that rather irritating song is the default image, followed by the ‘adventures of a window cleaner’ film of questionable repute.
For those of the general public who have never seen a television, the very mention of cleaning windows brings to mind unhealthy images of Joe flatcap with a set of ladders, old jeans and a holly t-shirt.

None of the above stereo-types are what you really want as a business owner as you can imagine, if your motivating factor is pride in your business you should justifiably be feeling a little uncomfortable at this point because the general public’s perception of the window cleaning industry at present is not that far from the truth.
In order to help us understand this issue and why things are the way they are we have to take a closer look at the industry.

Window cleaning falls into the category of home services. The home services industry at present is worth some 6 billion pounds annually and is one of the fastest growing industry sectors. Which is nice. A home service is categorised as a service carried out for the general public on their own properties.
As you can imagine, the sector is growing fast for two reasons. Firstly, the swing to ‘cash rich time poor nature’ of our society. People are working longer and harder than ever before and there is less time to do those laborious but necessary tasks around the home. Secondly, the population of the UK is growing at the fastest rate in many years, causing the home building industry to build far more new homes than ever, more good news then.

So why is the window cleaning industry viewed as negatively as it is then? Well firstly, using traditional methods, ladder bucket and a squeegee, window cleaning is a cheap to business to start. We have already provided some testimony as to the size and growth of the industry, so with plenty of work out there and cheap set up costs the industry is open to anyone. Even those of an unscrupulous nature unfortunately.

That is until they start to view it as a business. when a person decides to become a window cleaner, they find that gathering enough customers is not the issue. There is always work for a good window cleaner. The trouble is, is that window cleaning using traditional methods has a skill level, a skill which has to learned over time, even ladder work is suited to some individuals more than others.
This is fine if you just want to earn cash and work for yourself rather than for an employer and by far and away the greatest majority of the window cleaners in the UK at present fall into this category of individuals working on their own rounds.

As we said before the problem arises when that same individual decides that he or she has been cleaning windows for a long time and wants to grow their business by employing staff of their own. After all, there are only so many windows one person can clean in the day.
Now the same individual runs into all sorts of problems. They can always find someone to help out, but the training process is a long one and staff are never as fastidious with your clients as you are. Window cleaning with traditional methods is hard work and there is always the temptation to cut the odd corner or two.
Besides the training times and trust issues, the problem is further compounded by the fact that once trained, there is nothing stopping your new staff member from purchasing his own ladder and equipment and starting out on his own. From personal experience this can be very frustrating to say the least and the employment process has to start all over again.

Since the introduction of water fed pole technology some ten years or so ago, this was just the way it was and this state of affairs may account for the fact there are still no national domestic window cleaning companies in the UK.

Pure water systems have changed the status quo beyond recognition. They clean windows faster in a safer manner and provide substantial extra benefits for their clients.

In part three, I want to focus on how pure water technology affects the traditional window cleaner in a little more detail, in the meantime, as always, feel free to leave me a comment.

Best regards,

Carl Phillips
Director
Clear View Plus Ltd