Sample Contract for House Cleaning

The Ask a House Cleaner Show and Podcast with Angela Brown

"Do you have a sample contract for house cleaning? I'm trying to grow my cleaning business and wonder what my contract should say. Any cleaning advice on company policies or rules and regulations in a sample contract would be helpful." Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru in today's Ask a House Cleaner gives you a sample contract. Along with pro cleaning tips on your letter of agreement and tips on a welcome packet. Today's sponsors are Savvy Cleaner (House cleaner training.) HouseCleaning360 (connecting homeowners with house cleaners and maids.) Savvy Perks (employee benefits for house cleaning business owners.) And My Cleaning Connection (a hub for cleaning stuff and the sample contract mentioned.)

“Do you have a sample contract for house cleaning? I’m trying to grow my cleaning business and wonder what my contract should say. Any cleaning advice on company policies or rules and regulations in a sample contract would be helpful.”

Angela Brown, The House Cleaning Guru in today’s Ask a House Cleaner gives you a sample contract. Along with pro cleaning tips on your letter of agreement and tips on a welcome packet.

Today’s sponsors are Savvy Cleaner (House cleaner training.) HouseCleaning360 (connecting homeowners with house cleaners and maids.) Savvy Perks (employee benefits for house cleaning business owners.) And My Cleaning Connection (a hub for cleaning stuff and the sample contract mentioned.)

Listen: Sample Contract for House Cleaning

Watch: Sample Contract for House Cleaning

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: Sample Contract for House Cleaning

Sample contract. Do you have a sample contract for the house cleaning business? What does it look like? We’re going to talk about that today.

“Hi, Angela. I love the blog and the videos. I always watch them. I’m wondering if you can create a sample contract for us. I really loved using your sample fliers. They’re excellent and were easy to edit and plug in my own info. If you have like a sample contract that we can use, that would be great. Just to give us some idea of what information to plug in and stuff like that. All right, thank you.”

All right, sample contracts. Before we get into that, what I want to cover is this. There are a lot of house cleaners that start a house cleaning business and they over-complicate the process. They go to a customer’s house to do an initial walkthrough and they have what they call a welcome packet.

Let’s Talk Welcome Packets and the Sample Contract

I have customers and house cleaning companies that ask me about this all day every day. What should I put inside my cleaning packet or my welcome packet for a new customer? Well, the reality is this, I think you’re over-complicating the sales cycle.

Most customers don’t need a welcome packet. They don’t want one. It’s overkill. You’re making them think too much and it’s too much information for them to process on the spot. It’s putting too much effort and too much energy into the startup process.

Here’s how it works. You go to a customer’s house. The customer has a need to have their house cleaned. They want you to be the right person to come clean their house. They will pay you the money. They’re done. That’s the end of the transaction.

What Customers Want to Tell You

Nobody wants to sit through a two-hour presentation. They don’t want to ready about your policies and regulations. And they don’t care about your before and after photos. They called you because their friend referred you. They don’t need letters of recommendation. And then you’re going to bring contracts? That’s just overkill.

“I Just Want a Can of Paint!”

It’s like going to the hardware store and you need a gallon of paint so that you can paint your kid’s bedroom. When you get to the store, they don’t sit you down and explain what paint is. They don’t explain how paint can have toxic fumes. Or that it needs to proper disposal at the landfill. Sure, if you step in a can of paint, you’re responsible for the damage of tracking it across the floor. But you don’t need the store to remind you.

And they don’t make you sign anything saying that you’re not allowed to sniff it or inhale the paint.

They might try to upsell you to protective gear – but they are not going to give you a lesson on why you should wear it.

They don’t go through any of that stuff. You just say what color do you want, they mix it up, they sell you the can of paint. That’s it. It’s a simple transaction.

You and the Paint Company Are the Same

Just sell the customer what they want.

Now, it is a business to you. And you want to cover all your bases to protect you and the customer. The customer doesn’t care about most of it.

Just sell them a can of paint – or a cleaning.

I get asked this question dozens of times a day, “What should I have in my welcome packet?” You don’t need a welcome packet.

Welcome packets come from realtors who sell houses and introduce people to a new neighborhood.

You’re not selling them a new house. You’re just cleaning the home they already have. There is no welcome packet.

In the 25 years I’ve done business and with all the employees we’ve had and all the customers we’ve had, we’ve never once had a welcome packet. There’s no reason to have a welcome packet with all these instructions and things.

Take the Pest Control Guy

It’s like if a guy comes over to your house to control pests. He’s going to spray for bugs. He doesn’t give you a great big welcome packet with all these instructions and things.

And if he did – would you ever look at it again after he left? No. You would put it on the back of your kitchen cupboard where it would live for the next three years unopened. Or you would immediately toss it in the trash.

What he gives you is a little sheet that gives instructions for the day before and the day of his pest spray.

“Make sure you open the windows to air out the place after we leave.” And if you see dead bugs for a few days – no biggie. It’s expected.” That’s about it.

The same rules apply to house cleaning.

Your Clients Want a Simple Transaction

When you show up to clean somebody’s house, what they want is a simple transaction. Now, you are going to do a walk through and you’re going to go through and explain some of your rules and regulations but that’s pretty much it. For me, the sample contract that I’m going to give you is my worksheet.

I have a worksheet that I give the customer when I do the initial walkthrough. And I say, “Hey, here’s the worksheet that I use. If you like, you can follow along.” Now, we go on a walk through the house and I have a worksheet, they have a worksheet. It’s the exact same worksheet. I make notes on mine. At the end I say, “Hey, here’s all the stuff that we covered. I’ll just have you initial it and we’ll get started.”

What the Customer Needs to Know

That’s it. On that worksheet, there’s a breakdown of every room of the house and the things that we’re going to do in that room. As they walk through the house with me, they’re going to tell me if something in that room doesn’t apply. Or if there’s something special they want me to add on to that room, that’s fine, I just make a note on my worksheet.

The last page of my worksheet is my contract or letter of agreement. And it covers things like if I’m sick, here’s what I do. If you’re sick, here’s what you do. Here’s my cancellation policy and here’s how you pay me. It’s pretty much it. It’s super simple.

The Client Doesn’t Need a Contract, They Need Confidence

The purpose of a contract is to make sure that everybody gets what you agree on. The client needs to be confident that you’ve got their back. That you are going to take good care of them. And that you will do what you say you will do.

You do this by carrying insurance and offering a satisfaction guarantee.

If you’re bonded and insured, you’re covered if you break something. A satisfaction guarantee, you’ll want to highlight because they’re covered. If they don’t like the work that you did, then they get their money back or you come back and re-clean. That’s pretty much it.

Your Welcome Packet is Your Website

There’s no need to create a big slick shiny welcome packet. It’s all online now and it’s called a website. On your website and on your social media, you can put before and after pictures. You can put any frequently asked questions. All that stuff along with booking and payment forms is on your website. So that there’s no need for a welcome packet.

The welcome packet is overkill, so you guys are over thinking things. You’re trying too hard and it’s not a hard business. Keep it simple. Now, I will tell you this. My worksheet is three pages and I take all three pages every single time I go to clean a house.

And the reason is this, the customer can review those rules and regulations at any time because it’s right there in front of them. Also, they can pass that on to a friend and say, “Hey, here’s what my house cleaner does.”

Your Worksheet is Your Contract, Your Invoice/Receipt, Your Checklist…

…and it’s your best marketing pieces. When your customers pass your worksheet on to a friend, the friend can look at it and see your rules and regulations. It’s simple. It’s concise. And it’s exact in its strategy. I’ve gone into so many customers house where I see their neighbor’s worksheet on their counter.

It’s a great sales and marketing tool but that’s it. We don’t have any before and after pictures or any letters of references. We don’t have any of that stuff. All that stuff is now on social media and it’s on your website.

We’ve been using it for 25 years and for all the companies that we’ve trained, we’ve been using it and it works well.

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