Selling Your Services On Value, Rather Than Price

/0 Comments/in /by

​

Selling Your Services On Value, Rather Than Price

Tips For Commercial Cleaning & Janitorial Companies

Lots of clients come to me with a straightforward problem that requires a custom solution: they’re sick of competing on price alone.

When the next company in town cuts their prices by even a small amount, some businesses feel that they have to follow suit and cut their prices too.

And that's a slippery slope...

​Is there a way out?

Yes, absolutely!​

​

I’ve identified five ways out of the price-based competition madness for commercial cleaning and janitorial companies.

​1. Narrow Your Target Market

Be able to say, in one sentence, what segment of the cleaning and janitorial market you’re going after. Don’t try to be all things to all clients.

2. Have confidence in what you’re offering.

When clients try to negotiate, explain how you’re different from the lower-priced competition. Communicate the immense value that you bring to the table, and show that the customer’s investment in your services will pay off.

Elite janitorial services keep a workplace clean and healthy and can help reduce​ employee sick-days. And what price can you place on reliability and trust-worthiness? 

3. Get in front of the right people, at the right time.

Where are your potential clients looking for a commercial cleaning company?

Well, you know it's not in the yellow pages. It's in a digital environment. It's online. Stop wasting money on outdated methods and connect with your target market online, where they can contact, and schedule an assessment or walk-through with you right away.

4. Use your satisfied customers as your extended marketing team.

Get a testimonial from every happy client, and immediately post it on your website or use it your online marketing.

5. Speak to your customers’ pain points.

Maybe your potential clients have had negative experiences with cleaning companies that didn’t show up, did a sloppy job, ignored specific instructions or left damage in their wake. Capitalize on that: show how you’re committed to doing an excellent job every time.

BONUS: Make it personal.

Customers want to know that you see them as more than a number. Personalize the relationship with handwritten notes, phone calls to ask how everything’s going, and make an effort to accommodate each customer’s specific preferences when it comes to cleaning.

At BR Marketing, we’re focused on one thing: great marketing results for our clients and generating ROI. Using our proven digital marketing strategies, we’ll help you find clients who understand the value you bring. If you’d like more leads, customers, and sales for your commercial cleaning or janitorial service, let’s talk today. Contact our Founder and Results Specialist - Bref McHugh at [email protected] to schedule your free strategy session.

Cost To Acquire Customers

/in , , /by

We created this free resource to help you plan, forecast and keep track on your business growth and cashflow.

You can see an explainer video below and download the tool with the link below:

http://bit.ly/bizplanner1

Follow Up

/0 Comments/in /by

​

​Are You Following Up?

[How to Increase Your Commercial Cleaning Sales Conversions.]

In a perfect world, your commercial cleaning sales conversions would go like this:

“Hi, I’m calling because I need a commercial cleaning service.”“Great, that’s what we do.

How about if I come out tomorrow and give you an estimate? Around 10AM?”

“Perfect. See you then.”

But in the real world, conversions are rarely that smooth.

Enter the key ingredient: following up.

How Important is Follow-Up?

If you run a commercial cleaning service, you will understand that follow-up is absolutely crucial.

As part of my client service, I regularly talk to commercial cleaners who lament that they work tons of leads from prospects who seem interested, but don’t ultimately turn into clients.

One of my first questions is always, “How are you following up, and how often are you following up?

”While there are exceptions, more often than not I’ll hear something like…

“Follow-up. Right. We should probably start doing that.”

Read any B2B marketing resources, and you’ll soon learn the importance of following up.

You’ll see things like,

“…follow-up is one of the most important aspects of B2B marketing” (Kinetic Business Marketing), and even, “…follow-up is why 10% of sales agents are closing 90% of the deals” (ringDNA).

Do you want your company to be getting those deals?

Then you have to start following up.

Don’t Waste Your Leads

Through modern digital marketing, it’s easier than ever to generate leads.

Instead of making annoying and invasive cold calls or sending out salespeople to knock on doors, you can automatically warm up leads and get interested prospects knocking on your door, using techniques like SEO, paid search, and informational content and our proprietary Commercial Lead Engagement And Nurturing (CLEAN®) System.

Once you’ve put in all of that up-front work to generate those leads, it’s much more efficient to follow up with them rather than generate a whole new batch of leads.

You already know that those prospects are interested, right?

Now it’s time to get that money in the bank rather than throwing it out the window.We call this avoiding the Leaky Bucket.

Track Every Lead

Many clients come to me with no follow-up tracking system whatsoever. I ask how they’re tracking who to follow up with, when to follow up, and what the outcome was. I ask whether they’re making sure to follow up with every lead within the shortest possible amount of time, so that the competition doesn’t get there first.

Sadly, many commercial cleaning companies are so focused on their day to day work—cleaning, management and even cold-calling—that they fail to put lead management systems in place.Well unfortunately that can be very short-sighted and, over the long term, it can cause your business to fail.

But what if you could have a steady flow of warm leads, fresh contacts, sales conversations and an automated follow-up system in place?

You think that you have a solid client base right now, but what happens when some of those clients move on to a different service, relocate out of your area, or go out of business themselves? You need a steady pipeline of new leads to keep your business thriving.

If you’re current ‘system’ seems to be lacking effectiveness in getting desired results or efficiency in generating deals, you should review our free video case study. 

Get There First

When a potential client contacts you, they generally need you to solve a problem.

Maybe that problem is critical. Their current cleaning service didn’t show up, or the office is filthy and they’ve got a major client coming in tomorrow, or someone spilled a gallon of grape juice on the new rug and the landlord is furious. They’re in crisis mode, and you know who they’re most likely to hire?

The cleaning company that responds in five minutes, not three days.

I ask all of my clients this question: has a client ever complained about you responding to them too quickly?

Think about it.

Is there ever a disadvantage to following up immediately? No way. So, another key to effective follow-up is that it has to be prompt.

If you’re struggling to follow up on leads in a timely manner, let’s get a better system in place so that it doesn’t feel like such a chore or a dog chasing its tail.

Make It Easy for Your Clients

When commercial cleaning clients come to me for help growing their businesses, I diagnose a lot of them with a major problem: a surplus of optimism.

They’ve got a few jobs, so it’s only a matter of time until the referrals start coming in, right?

They fire off a quote, and then hope that the client will follow up with them.

But How Many Times Should I Follow Up?

I get asked that a lot too. And after testing many different methods, one thing is clear…

You need to follow up as many times as it takes to get an answer.

Now this doesn’t mean spamming or bugging the heck out of prospects. No.

It means showing up consistently, with valuable reminders of how you have the answer to questions. Or the solution to a problem. It means staying the course and staying in front of potential clients with value even if you get a ‘No’.

Success

One of the number one ways to succeed in the cleaning business is to make your clients’ lives easier.

Show up on time.

Be completely and totally reliable, every single time. Remind them of upcoming events: do they need extra cleaning over the holidays? Could they use some deep cleaning over the summer, when employees are on vacation? And the first place you make life easy for them is when you follow up on their initial inquiry.

Next Steps

Now that you understand why follow-up is important, it’s time to start doing it. Let’s turn your very next lead into your new favorite client. BR Marketing is here to help.

Review our new case study here: 

​How To Generate New Commercial Client Accounts Every Month & Stay In Front of Key Decision Makers - Without Working Crazy Hours or Getting Into Bidding Wars.

Then if it makes sense, we can set up a time to discuss your business further.

Find out why business owners have trusted Bref to generate more than $10 million in revenue, and let him get to work on those same results for you.

Contact us to find out if our Commercial Lead Engagement And Nurturing (CLEAN®) System is a good fit for your business. We have multiple strategies and over the course of your complimentary strategy session we’ll uncover which, if any, may make sense for your specific business.


Spaghetti Against The Wall & Commercial Cleaning Marketing

/0 Comments/in , /by

​

Spaghetti Against The Wall, or a Laser Focus?

Is Your Marketing Producing Results?

When companies get sub-optimal results from their commercial cleaning marketing efforts, they’re often working really hard for those results.

Their marketing is going nowhere, but not for lack of trying to do better. So what’s missing?

One word: focus. Let’s take a look.

Shotgun, or Rifle?

Clients often come to me because they’re investing tons of time, money, or (worse yet…) both and still not getting the business development and marketing results they want.

It’s a question of finding the right tool for the job.

These companies are marketing with a scattershot approach rather than a rifle approach.

They’re throwing the spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks, rather than focusing like a laser on their goals and how to get there.

So if you don’t have enough good leads coming in, or if you’re not converting enough of those leads into paying customers, you first need to take a look at your focus.

For starters, do you have a clear positioning statement, like “We’re a commercial cleaning company, serving medical and dental offices in the Miami area,” or “Our commercial cleaning company serves salons and spas in greater Boston, providing high-quality work with a personal touch”?

Otherwise, you’re racking the shotgun and wasting a lot of your marketing budget and energy, because you don’t know who you’re trying to reach (and trying to reach everyone is a losing proposition).

Are You Marketing to 21st Century Clients Using 20th Century Methods?

Another typical mistake: focusing on print advertising (often a waste of money), or having employees grind out continuous cold sales calls inefficient).

Are your efforts 'outdated'?

If you’ve been running your cleaning company for years, or even decades, you probably remember the day when yellow pages listings, shopping cart ads, and clipper coupons were THE way to get results. Combine those with a few cold calls and you were all set!

Unfortunately, that was (literally) the last century, and digital marketing is a whole new world. Not only do you need to get on board, you have to: otherwise, your clients are going to be finding your competition, not you.

Yelp, the local business review service, reports that a whopping 85% of US consumers search online for local businesses. This can easily translate to business decision makers who are also consumers at the end of the day.

So if you’re sticking with your old-school marketing methods, you’re literally missing out on 85% of your potential customers; and that’s no prescription for success.

What’s The True Cost of Your Business Development Efforts?

I talk to lots of commercial cleaning company owners who THINK they’re doing low-cost, or even free marketing. “We have one of our administrative people make sales calls, because we’re paying them anyway.” Or “An ad in the local clipper coupon book only costs us a few hundred dollars a month.”

But after we do a deeper dive, they realize that the waste involved in those efforts is enormous.

That administrative employee could be focusing on keeping your current clients happy, for example.

We all know that it’s a lot cheaper to hold on to a current client than to land a new one. What if, instead of making pointless (and annoying) sales calls, that administrative person could call all of your current clients and see how things are going? What you’re doing well, and what could be done better? You might even get some new business ideas out of those conversations.

And instead of that clipper coupon ad, what if you could hold a customer appreciation event, or send all of your contact people a restaurant gift card as a thank-you gift?

What if, by hiring a professional to implement a robust digital marketing plan, you could actually save money while growing your bottom line?

Because the true cost of those misguided marketing efforts isn’t what you spent on the ads, it’s the opportunities you missed out on.

The true loss isn’t the $500 you spent on the coupon book ad, it’s the $50,000 contract that the other cleaning company in town just landed.

How A Professional Can Help

At BR Marketing, we specialize in one thing: results. If your marketing campaigns aren’t getting the results you want, something needs to change. We’ll work with you to determine:

  • Your marketing goals: do you need more leads coming in the door, more revenue in general, more leads that convert into customers?

  • Your constraints: what’s holding you back?

  • A roadmap for success: what do we need to do to make this your most successful year yet?

  • Are you ready? Like all great relationships, we make sure that there is full commitment to success both ends. We uncover this on our free strategy session call.

  • How to make our services pay for themselves. When it comes to digital marketing, your marketing dollars should be paying off twofold, threefold, or more. 

Find out why small business owners have trusted our founder, Bref McHugh, to generate over $10 million in sales for them.

Want to scrape that spaghetti off the wall and find your laser focus? Let’s chat.

The Leaky Bucket Syndrome

/0 Comments/in , /by

Imagine you’re driving around town knocking on doors to get new clients (we cover more on the problems with door knocking later).


This can hard enough as it is.


Maybe you connect with the decision maker but you probably don’t. At least you know the person at front desk.


You made 10 calls and it’s time to head back to the office. Just as you’re pulling in, you look in your mirror and to your disbelief, you see a bunch of dollar bills blowing out from the back of your car.


“How long has that been going on?!” you wonder.


All you can see is money blowing down the street.


If Money Was Falling Out Of Your Pocket, You’d Want To Know About It Too, Right?


At BR Marketing, we work with commercial cleaners and janitorial companies.


We know how hard it can be to work a list of leads and get new clients. But the work doesn’t stop there.


Many cleaning businesses are trying a shotgun approach and hoping that they can work the numbers game. (That in itself can be a problem, because you’re sacrificing quality over quantity and potentially wasting energy on bad prospects.)


But the main problem is they don’t focus enough on what happens after they connect with these people - which is crucial.



Leaky Bucket Syndrome

Leaky Bucket Syndrome

This is what I call the Leaky Bucket Syndrome – when we focus so much effort on getting more “into the bucket” but neglect to make sure that that bucket itself is still full.


While regularly searching for new leads is a good thing, it’s only worthwhile if those leads are being converted into commercial cleaning jobs or high-paying janitorial accounts.

You can get all the clients in the world, but if your systems aren’t set up properly to engage, nurture and serve those clients, then they will end up leaking right on out over time.


And this leak isn’t water either. It’s losing customers, market share and cold, hard cash.


How do you Solve a leaky bucket problem?


You’ve basically got got 3 options.

  1. Plugging the leaks

  2. Adding more water or

  3. Getting a new bucket.


At BR Marketing, we have a system that not only plugs the leaks in your bucket, but we can also provide additional buckets of customers and a tap with which we can control the flow of leads.


How does it work?

You can essentially break down our system into 3 parts:

  1. The Process
  2. The Parts
  3. The People

The Process


You won’t find our processes anywhere else. That’s our secret sauce. We design, build and execute a custom targeting, lead generation, engagement, nurturing and follow up machine that drives results and ROI.


All you have to do is follow the process, speak with prospective clients and schedule your demo or consultation.


The Parts


We use a proprietary business development platform combined with premium software applications to generate consistent client engagements.


The People


Our team are results-orientated and client-focused. Led by Bref McHugh, who has over a decade of business development and marketing experience - our people do what technology just can’t.

​

And the results of implementing this system correctly?


You’ll have a business development and growth engine that functions smoothly, steadily and effectively – so that you (and your team) can focus on the next job, key accounts and retaining happy customers who refer to others.


Feeling Stuck?


We know from speaking with clients that the same old methods won’t even get you the same results any more.


Grinding out more cold calls, door knocking, flyers, direct mail, networking, or going to more conventions. All of these and many more lack a crucial component - the ability to follow up effectively and to automate the process.


Traditional business models are becoming outdated and current business systems (or sometimes lack thereof) are losing them money.


At the end of the day the leaky bucket is a direct threat to not only growth, but to the very survival of your commercial cleaning company.


It was clear for some of our clients that this could impact the legacies that they hoped to leave for their children.

​

We want  to help you avoid that - sign up for a free strategy session today.


Leaky Buckets Don’t Lie When It Comes to Raw, Hard Math


How much does it actually cost you to acquire a new customer?


(Silence).


Don’t worry - a lot of our clients didn’t have an answer for that question until they started working with us.


Leaky Bucket Syndrome

It can be anything from 6 - 8 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to retain an existing one.


This makes attracting, converting – and keeping – existing leads coming into the business a must for anyone operating in a competitive environment such as commercial cleaning and janitorial.


To calculate your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), you simply add up your sales and marketing costs (for a specific time) and divide by the number of new customers. Your sales and marketing costs should include advertising, salaries, commissions, bonuses and overhead.


(COST OF SALES + MARKETING) / (NEW CUSTOMERS) = CAC


So if, for example, your annual sales and marketing costs were $50,000 and you gained 25 new customers, your CAC would be $2,000.


If your average commercial cleaning account generates say $6,000, then paying $50k to add $150,000, which is an ROI of 300%.

​

You’ll want a low CAC, obviously. But once you establish a benchmark, an increasing CAC will indicate a possible problem with your sales or marketing effectiveness and once you know this, it can be addressed.


Now consider how much more you could achieve (both in your business and at home with your family) if you had a system humming in the background, knocking on digital doors for you


(To access the CAC spreadsheet, please click here.)


To access more resources including Marketing Math & Metrics, click here)


Do You Suffer From Leaky Bucket Syndrome?


These kinds of holes in your bucket are truly draining. Mentally, emotionally and financially.


As Jim Rohn said…

”Either you run the day or the day runs you”

The good news is this: ALL of these things can be solved with the right systems and team in place.



Next Steps

So before you fill up on gas and hop into your car, consider reaching out to us for your complimentary business Strategy Session.


We’ll take 30-45 minutes to go through what you’re doing, challenges you face and opportunities that need to be seized. You’ll gain a clear understanding of what it will take to grow your business to where you want it to be.


You’ll understand how to fix your leaky bucket.


Then we can discuss our process. And don’t worry - we don’t do sales pitches because you are either a fit, or you’re not and either way is OK.


To your success.

​

​

__CONFIG_optin__{"optin":0,"color":"red","size":"small","text":"CONNECT WITH US!","layout":"horizontal"}__CONFIG_optin__