Cleaning specialist or Housecleaner? Call me anything, but don’t call me the “cleaning lady.” LOL
Today on Ask a House Cleaner we look at titles. How do you want people to refer to you? Are you hired help? A Cleaning pro? A Cleaning Authority? Housekeeper? Cleaning Connoisseur? Cleaning Specialist? A cleaning technician or just a good old-fashioned maid?
Does it matter?
Actually – it does for marketing purposes so customers can find you. We will discuss names such as cleaning lady and cleaning specialist today, and how that affects your business.
Listen: Cleaning Lady? I’m a Cleaning Specialist!
Watch: Cleaning Lady? I’m a Cleaning Specialist!
Hey there, I’m Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner. This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer.
Question: What is The Proper Term: Cleaning Lady? or Cleaning Specialist?
Today’s question comes from a girl who is livid.
The homeowner that hired her keeps referring to her as “The Cleaning Lady”
“And that is politically incorrect…” and she’s not taking it. She wants to call herself a Cleaning Specialist. And how can she “convince this customer that she’s a cleaning specialist and not the cleaning lady?”
Answer: Cleaning Lady, House Cleaner, Maid or Cleaning Specialist
So, (laughing) this is going to sound very disrespectful and I don’t mean it this way, I come from a place of love. So please forgive me.
It really doesn’t matter.
As long as the lady is paying you, she can call you whatever she wants to call you.
Whether you’re a cleaning specialist, or you’re a cleaning connoisseur. Whether you’re the cleaning lady or a cleaning technician, or a maid, or a housekeeper it doesn’t matter.
When she’s talking to her friends and she gives them a referral and says “Oh I’ve got the best cleaning lady in the world, you should hire my cleaning lady.” Are you going to get upset and go “I’m not a cleaning lady, I’m a house cleaning specialist.”
No. You’re not going to do that.
You’re going to say “Thank you very much for the referral.” And you’re going to go over and you’re going to clean this ladies house.
The Title That She Gives You Has Nothing to Do with the Job That You Do
As long as she knows that it means house cleaning. And as long as you know that she knows, that it means house cleaning. When she sends you a referral as the cleaning lady, to her friend, you can go over and clean their house. You know what it means, she knows what it means, who cares? Right?
In our society, we get really tangled up with the roles that we play. And the titles that we have on our business cards. And the reality is no one cares about your title. They care about the work they are paying you to do.
What People Care About Is How to Find You
If they are on the search engines, like Google, Bing, Yahoo. And they’re looking for a house cleaner, if you are billing yourself as a cleaning connoisseur they’re not going to find you.
Those words did not pop up in the search term “house cleaning.”
The search engine did not guess that you were a house cleaner or a cleaning lady. It didn’t find you. So if you’re going to do this business correctly, (this is going to sound super weird) but use them all.
Use Those Terms Interchangeably
Refer to yourself as a cleaning lady and a cleaning specialist and a cleaning connoisseur and a cleaning technician and a house cleaner and a maid and a housekeeper and all these different terms.
Because somewhere in that mix the search engine will find you and it will say “Hey, wait a second, I think this person here in your neighborhood is the best fit that I could send you because this person is all these things related to a house cleaner. I think this is what you’re looking for.
But if you are married to one particular title and somebody’s looking for something close, they’re going zoom right on by because your title didn’t fit in with exactly their search term. Right?
So, there are battles in business to fight, and the title that someone calls you is not one of them.
Use Whatever Search Terms People Will Use to Find You
If I were hiring a house painter off the internet, what is the search term I would use? House painter? Maybe he likes to call himself a painting specialist, that’s fine. But I’m looking for a house painter.
I want someone to come paint my house.
The terms that we search for are very simple. And as a result of that search is how people are going to find us.
So don’t get upset, this is not high school, this is not where people call us names and we get all offended and everything, we’re all grown-ups. You run a business.
Who cares what they call you? They could call you something heinous if they want to. But the fact of the matter is if they’re paying you money and it’s for you to clean their house, who cares?
It really doesn’t matter. So get over that already.
Now, that’s my tip for the day, I hope that you’re not offended. If you are I’m sorry.
My intention is to help not offend.
And until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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