Why Your Business May Be Destined to Fail Without This Strategy
Have you noticed lately that it is getting harder and harder to get clients to sign up for recurring service? If so, you are not alone. Depending on where you are located, the house cleaning business competition is getting thicker and thicker. It seems like there is a competitor (individual or company) on every corner. Maybe you need to improve your ranking on Google organically? That sounds great! But, expect a fight to keep that great spot. And what about those long lasting clients who have been trickling off with vague reasons of “finances”…isn’t the economy improving and the standard of living nearing an all-time high? Savvy business owners are keeping their eye on their slumping recurring close rates and increasing costs per customer acquisition.
The marketplace is competitive and getting more competitive by the moment. The housecleaning business is like countless other industries that are becoming somewhat “commoditized”. With the age of automation and the internet, people have access to so many competitors and automated tools that there is pressure for prices to drop. In fact, a new study by Dr. Carl Frey and Dr. Michael Osborne of Oxford University has concluded that 47 percent of all U.S. jobs could be automated within the next 20 years. There is competition and elements pushing prices lower everywhere, even … robots.
“The market for personal and household service robots is growing by about 20 percent annually… As robot costs decline and technological capabilities expand, robots can thus be expected to gradually substitute for labor in a wide range of low-wage service occupations, where most US job growth has occurred over the past decades. This means that many low-wage manual jobs that have been previously protected from computerization could diminish over time.” Oxford University Study
Smart business owners that look to be well prepared for the future realize that good customers are hard to find and worth fighting for.
If you want the best customers you have to be committed to leaving blood on the field! Service, service, service is the key to stand out. But, customers will not have any idea about how unique and wonderful your service is if they never give you a shot in the first place. The real secret is that “the money is in the list”. If you have the list of the best customers who really understand, appreciate and are willing to pay an appropriate premium for great service, wins the race! So the big question is how do I build a list of these great quality customers?
Pay to Play
After you have developed a rock’in service, and you have packaged a super introduction offer, then you can use to the awesome intro package to introduce your service to potential clients. The offer needs to be so enriched with value added that it is such an amazing deal that nobody would want to pass it up. Offering something like this, might mean you make less money on your first sale, or even no profit on your first sale, which is a bummer, but you can’t deny the world is changing, but instead get ahead of it. If you have a great upsell program that virtually ensures qualified prospects will convert, then it is well worth the investment in “buying” your qualified list… and not telling prospects you are great, but instead proving your worth with your Intro Wow offer.
It is really a very different way of thinking. Instead of asking can I afford to take a deep discount off of my first service, you look at that entire transaction as part of the advertising process that will solidify long term sales. Many skeptics may claim that too deep of discounts on devalue your service. True…when it is done frequently, with unqualified prospects without looking at the whole picture of proving your worth to clients. Consumers don’t have time for anything these days, and for many the idea of bopping around from company to company is not convenient, nor the service experience that they want. But, they also don’t want to feel like they are missing out on a better deal. They want to feel like a smart consumer that is getting a lot of value for the savvy pact they made. If you can make the customer feel like they really scored, then you will be the winner of the big money list.