This Free Tactic Generates $2,000/Month For Our Window Cleaning Business

 Learn how we generate an extra $2,000/month in our window cleaning business using free marketing and customer referrals. In this episode, we break down exactly how to ask for referrals, build word-of-mouth momentum, turn happy clients into repeat business, and create a simple referral system that actually works for window cleaners and service businesses. If you want more recurring clients without spending money on ads, this episode is for you. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to Clean for Profit. Appreciate you tuning in today. I just wanted to talk real quick about something that has been, you know, dollar for dollar by far our biggest return in the marketing world. And you know, there's a lot of ways to there's a lot of ways to talk about maximizing the value of each client. And one of the ways that's super obvious is talking about different upsells or cross-selling services. So in the window cleaning business, it's not uncommon to offer services like gutter cleaning, um, Christmas light installation in the off season, solar panel cleaning. Um, you know, we've never done Christmas light installation specifically, but gutter cleaning and solar panel cleaning, we do a little bit of. Actually, solar panel cleaning in California, at least, is by far our most valuable upsell and hour per hour what we make the most doing. But there's other ways to maximize the value of your clients as well. Um, and that's through turning your clients into your evangelists, basically, um, and learning how to acquire referrals from your clients. Now, no matter what, if you're doing good work, this is going to happen to some degree. People are going to talk about you and your services. So the first thing I would say is it's very important to have people to be easy to access, basically. And that means having the absolute basics with you at all times. Don't get caught without a business card or three that you can hand to a client. Um, every time I do an estimate for a client, so which is the first time I meet them in person, when I come up to the door, I have a business card in my hand, and it's the first thing that I hand to them. It just allows them to make sure that they're keeping track of you. And um a lot of the times when I'm finishing a service, my clients will specifically ask for a few cards. So that's just something that like naturally happens. But the other thing is making sure that you are being known and that your clients know that you are open for business and referrals. So you can do this uh during or after the service. Um, like the service is completed where you ask your clients, hey, who do you know uh that might want to get their windows cleaned before XYZ date, you know, 4th of July, whatever it may be. Um and that's extremely helpful as well, because you know, if if you ask them uh do you know anybody, uh it kind of might stay open. If you ask them who you know, that's much more likely to get you to a result pretty quickly. Um so that's one way, just asking them straight up at the service during or after uh the service is complete. Um, and another way is you know, if you're doing quality assurance follow-ups, which uh is very important to make sure that your quality is being controlled, especially after you hand off work to employees, that's another great time to ask them. You know, you call them, you make sure that they're happy with the service, ask roughly uh when they would like to rebook, uh, and then before hanging up, saying something like, Hey, um, do you know somebody um or who do you know um that we might be able to reach out to to get on the schedule? Um that's a little bit I wouldn't say pushy, it's a little bit direct. Another thing you could do is um ask how many people that they know that might benefit or might want your services, and when they tell you a number, you know, two, three, um, you can send them a little like gift certificate. We have these little gift certificates that we printed off for our business, um, where they're nice, it's a nice, nice paper stock. Um, and you can put whatever amount you want in here, and those are really nice. So if you send if you give these new clients in person or send them a mailer, um that can be very effective as well. Um, you know, this this year we haven't really invested into this all that much. I just have some of these scripts kind of like in my head so they come up. But um we've made about, let's see, I'm looking at my lead attribution here from just direct referrals so far. We've made $4,000 from referral from one specific real estate agent, which is something we'll talk about in a second. We've made $3,500, so that's $7,500. And from our yard signs, we've made $3,000. So four, seven, that's ten thousand five hundred dollars total from referral related. You know, you could take out the yard signs if you wanted to. That's technically not, you know, a person-to-person referral, but we put those out at our jobs and then take them down when the job is done. Uh, and so that's like we're at we're there, we're making it known that we're there, and people that know those people call us because we're there. And if our neighbors trust this window cleaning company, then maybe we can too. Um so being able to ask for referrals is incredibly important. Making it known that you're at the jobs that you're at is also very important. So at least having a sticker or magnet on your vehicle, but ideally having a full wrap um, and at minimum having a nice sign that you can have out uh at all of your jobs. These signs aren't cheap. Um, I got an 18 by 24 um sandwich board style sign. We have two of those, and then we have one that's bigger. I want to say it's two feet by three feet, something like that. It's a big one. We keep it in our van. Uh collectively, I've probably spent just shy of $500 on those three signs. Um, but you know, those have had almost a 10x return, and we've only been putting them out as of this year. It's been like two and a half months, that we've been putting them out consistently. Um, so that return is fantastic. Um, and then lastly, I want to talk about how to approach real estate agents. You can, you know, obviously you can do this however you want. You can cold call real estate agents if you want. Um, you can just go in cold and give them gift certificates. I will say, as somebody that grew up around real estate agents, they're very, very sensitive to being solicited because they are being solicited to all the time. And so um instead of doing that, my approach is to make sure that when I get a client that is selling their house, and that's why they're getting the windows cleaned, I make sure I know who the real estate agent is, and then I send them a Loom. Um, if you don't know what Loom is, get on board. It's a really powerful tool. It's usually used in tech so that people can do like demos and walkthroughs and uh bug reports and stuff like that. But as a home service business, it's a really, really professional way to be able to reach out to real estate agents. So what happens is anytime that I have a client that's about to sell their house and that's why they're doing it, I ask who's listing the home, um, and then I find their number. Uh, once the service is done, I shoot them a quick loom so it's a video outside of the client's house after it's done. And I say, Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Real Estate Agent, my name is Colby. I'm with Sierra Window Cleaning. I'm just calling to let you know your client, John Smith, hired us to clean his windows, screens, and interior tracks before the sale of the home, before the home goes on market. I just wanted to let you know that it went great. They know that they can reach out to any to me if they have any issues or would like to reschedule, but I just wanted to also let you know who I am so that we are on speaking terms and so that if you have any questions, uh you can feel free to reach out to me anytime you'd like. Um so best of luck selling the home uh as quickly as possible for above asking price. Um and I hope you're having a great day. Boom. Hit send to that uh on that to that agent. Um a lot of the times you won't receive a reply back. Um, but I mean I I did that to one agent um I want to say in late January this year, maybe it was February. And since then, um from that work, I have gotten um, you know, about $3,500 of business just from that one real estate agent. Um so this is worth doing all the time and just worth like remembering to ask these things, like who who's listing your house? Because um, you know, like I said, this is gonna be something that's like hit or miss, but agents, real estate agents are are very much so in a especially the older ones, like people that are like 50 plus, are very much so a referral-based culture. Um their clients are always asking them who they use for plumbing or window installation or window cleaning or HVAC or drywall or handyman, like you name it, if a homeowner needs it, a lot of the times they're asking their local real estate agent. And that just keeps happening again and again. So um, inevitably, if you're getting any amount of business over time, you're going to get people that are selling their houses, and chances are you're going to run into some high-volume real estate agents uh that have people every single week asking them who they use for whatever service. So um, yeah, that's just kind of my two cents on getting referrals. Um, obviously, you need customers to begin with to even start asking for referrals, but it's an incredibly powerful way and free way to increase your value per client. And you'll find over time that, you know, similar to this particular real estate agent, uh, but also with homeowners, that if you have, you know, 10 people that regularly refer you work, you're gonna find that one or two of those are basically contributing like 80% of the they're like that's where 80% of your referrals are coming from. Some people are just mavens in that way. Um, they just are always talking about who they use and uh who they know, and they're sharing it with others. Um so it's a very powerful way to increase the amount of business that you're doing for free and essentially turn every customer that you can into an evangelist for your services. So um I hope this blesses you. Start asking for referrals. Um, and uh, I would absolutely start employing some of these techniques. I know I need to make it a little bit more systematic so that we can further capitalize on this. Uh, but I hope this was helpful. It certainly produced a lot of income for our business, uh, and I know it can for yours. So this has been Clean for Profit, and we'll see you in the next one.