Self-confidence Without Self-importance

 

Not everyone is naturally cut out to own a business and, in essence, make something out of nothing. However, if you now find yourself new in business and trying to convince homeowners or business owners to let you clean their windows, you will need to have enough confidence in yourself if you want to get somewhere. And when you start gaining traction and you string together some victories, the challenge may shift to avoiding overconfidence or eventually becoming too self-important for your own good.

 

Educating yourself on how to clean a window has never been easier. YouTube and Facebook have opened up a way to do this in the comfort of your home. At the risk of making my eyes roll, when I started cleaning windows, the World Wide Web hadn’t even been introduced. I bought the minimum amount of equipment, including some paper towels for detailing, and just started visiting stores to get jobs. I had no experience in selling anything, good or service, and no self-confidence an expectation that so many storeowners would love to get on board. I didn’t grow quickly, but I did grow. I learned pretty much all techniques the hard way and was a veritable sponge when it came to passersby telling me what they use to clean windows. If someone suggested using vinegar, I tried it. Newspaper- tried it. A realtor one time assumed I used a brush to scrub the windows. I got worried that she would not send work my way if she found out I used a scrubber on a t-bar. But by that point, I had at least some self-confidence in my methods. I knew that my scrubber was just fine as the main way to wet a window, and I just did it that way. 

Still, even with all the tutorials on techniques and sales at your fingertips today, self-confidence is only theoretical until you prove to yourself by completing jobs successfully time after time and getting paid to come back that this is real.

You learn ways to cut down on time, energy, materials and so on, and consequently boost your self-confidence. You build in your brain a database of success after success, on easy jobs and on ones that require more effort and thought- perhaps proper use of a scraper, steel wool, and specialty chemicals. You more clearly realize that you ARE the professional and offer real value to those who are interested in your services. 

Think about this: Whether you started literally at ground zero, that is created your business and grew it to where you are all by yourself, or went from employee with expertise to business owner with no guarantee of work tomorrow or a safety net if you get hurt or sick, you have proven to yourself that you have what it takes to go ever onward with this fruitful undertaking. Increasing self-confidence, when controlled and used properly, will have a good effect on the way you present your services to your market. Can you justify saying you’re the best choice? If there is some specific way that you shine, maybe even outshine your competition, why not say it or imply it if you feel comfortable doing so? If you consistently gain new customers from word of mouth and have moved beyond just a few 5-star reviews on Google (the ones everybody assumes are your buddies, mother, and uncle), you have every reason to stand your ground on price and at the same time throw aside those that are in every market who tell you that your price is way too high. 

I’ve had many potential customers over the years try to downplay the value of professional window cleaning by saying things like: “They’re not hard windows to clean,” “It only takes me an hour to do all my windows,” “be easy on me”, etc. I even had a customer many years ago who had sold a successful business and certainly knew what it takes to be profitable tell me I’d better not raise prices, or I’ll lose customers. I had enough self-confidence at that point to stick to my guns. He kept using me for that house and then the new one he had built. It was only when I passed on donating to his church, which was incidentally not even my denomination and also 30 miles away, not even local, that he never called me again.

This was no reason for me to lose self-confidence.

There are always people who don’t appreciate you, and you don’t need to lose heart about that.

 

As a bridge to the final thoughts in this article, contemplate this: customers need you as much as you need them. This is just a generality, of course. When someone contacts you, there is some reason for doing so.

Two popular reasons are to alleviate a problem, as in dirty windows they can’t clean themselves, or to indulge in the luxury of treating themselves to sparkling views. They truly need you or one of your colleagues. At the same time, you need to get ‘them’ to choose you often enough that you have a viable business. This is where the contrast between self-confidence and self-importance may eventually show up. Self-confidence fuels your ability to sell and do so at your price. It also helps you to schedule an appropriate amount of work for each day. You know, after hundreds, even thousands of completed jobs, about how long each job should take and thus not over or under-schedule days. While you likely want to optimize your time by how you schedule, you also want to realize that the customer’s needs and priorities come into play at least enough to make reasonable concessions where fitting. Are you serving them or are they serving you?

 

If you develop an unhealthy air of self-importance, you may begin to treat your clientele as if you are clearly the more important party in the transaction. A well-known figure who provides our industry with software,  Curt Kempton of Responsibid, started off with a window cleaning business. Their tagline was “We are a customer service company who happens to clean windows.” I must admit, I thought that was kind of silly at the time. But over the years, I’ve chewed on that statement and realized that the spirit of that is 100% sound. Customer service is equally as important as cleaning a window. Granted, you may get to a point where you truly can pick and choose what jobs to take on, and there is no indication that you will ever run out of prospects for your schedule. What may happen is you take on an attitude, a bad one. Perhaps some customers are no longer a good fit for your business model. Do you approach the ‘breakup’  with graciousness or disdain? Would you allow pride in what you’ve built to cloud your vision of customer service or create a sense of entitlement? These are just a couple of examples of how self-importance could supplant self-confidence. It’s your business and your rewards to reap.

 

 

I encourage you to keep it real and keep on trucking! -DW

 

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