Route (any job done more than once a month) is one of my favorite types of window cleaning. I’m not sure if its the relaxed cleaning or the awesome frequency of it. But route is great. Once you build a nice route, it will fill up your schedule FAST. You are looking at cleaning every week, 2 weeks, or once a month.
1. Always do your sales in person
Route is different than commercial or residential. You can’t get a good ROI with a mailing or postcard, you have to do a door knock in person. I know this may be hard for some of you to do, but an in-person cold call is 1,000% better.
I know this sounds strange, but read books on sales. You are selling the fact that they want and need your services. LISTEN to what they say and that will allow you to respond directly and solve their problems. If they say the last guy wasn’t very reliable then you want to sell them on the fact you are 100% reliable. If they say the last guy left drips, let them know you guarantee your work and leave them with your personal cell. If you listen close enough they will always tell you what you need to hear.
2. Leave your info
Always leave your info and a price. Even if you don’t think they will keep it you will always be better off leaving them with info. I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but leave them with a bid, trifold, and business card at the least. Show them your business is legit. Remember, route is going to be bombarded with bucket bobs.
You need to break through the noise. Show them you spend time on your image, and time on your brand. Remember, you are competing against the BOBS.
3. Weeks vs months
Credit: Dodge Frederick
This is a simple concept, but a lot of people do this wrong. Schedule everything in weeks, not months IE every 4 weeks, every 2 weeks, or every week. This makes your schedule SO much easier to mix all of that together, AND as a perk, you will get a couple of extra cleanings every year.
4. You will lose money
Well although it’s sad, it’s true. You will always LOSE money for the first few cleanings. You have to think, you may have a job for $10 bucks and NOTHING around. Once you make that route super tight it fixes all of that. I want to have a route that is so tired that I can spend an hour or two in one spot. The most efficient way of having a route is to not get in the truck. Just get out there and clean. One place after another, boom, boom, boom. Money. Just like anything in business though, when you start up you’ll lose a bit of money so plan for that. But I’m telling you it’s well worth it.
5. Follow up
That wasn’t the big one. This is the part that most people mess up on. What they do is they go knock a bunch of doors and leave a bunch of documents and then never follow up. This is where people fail in selling route. Anytime somebody says that they can’t sell route in their area, it’s almost always because they didn’t follow up. Our close rate on follow-ups is 83%. Just think about that percentage, it’s huge. That means that 8 out of 10 closes, come AFTER we call a week later. If you’re going to go through the trouble of selling, go through the trouble of following up!
I’m Telling You If You Don’t Do Route…Start!
Getting up and running is a little bit of a headache, but after that it is money that is almost guaranteed to flow into your company.
~Jersey
WCR Nation Podcast
