Amazing Upsells to Offer Your Cleaning Clients, Angela Brown

Amazing Upsells to Offer Your Cleaning Clients

Do you have amazing upsells to offer your cleaning clients but aren’t sure where to start? 

Odd jobs can keep the money coming in during slow times if you’re a professional house cleaner.

There are different types of upsells that range from gardening, yard work, and other forms of landscaping. 

Your work doesn’t have to end as a maid service if you’re a solo operator.

Podcast Rss Spacer Savvy Cleaner

Listen: Amazing Upsells to Offer Your Cleaning Clients

YouTube Spacer Savvy Cleaner

Watch: Amazing Upsells to Offer Your Cleaning Clients


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. You can find this and 400 other answered questions in this series on our YouTube channel.

Amazing Upsells for Professional House Cleaners

Amazing Upsells, Professional Woman Taking NotesWhat are some amazing upsells for professional house cleaners? 

Could you make a list of items and prices for upsells? For example, cleaning inside appliances, stove, refrigerator. Or removing hard water stains with Orbital and Brite Cleaner, from all showers.”

Not Every House Cleaner can Do Upsells

Amazing Upsells, Woman with Tools The answer to the question is going to vary, based on your skills and your status in your business. 

Your status in the business is if you’re a solo operator and you’re trying to get some money in the door. You’re trying to stop the bleeding from all the bill collectors calling, you’re trying to get your business off the ground.

You’re trying to figure out where you fit into the cleaning industry and the side skills, it’s a great way to upsell your services, to get more money coming in.

Upsells Aren’t Scalable to Many Employees

Amazing Upsells, House CleanersSo, what it’s going to depend on is, are you a sole operator? Because if you have a multiplicity of people working for you, most of the upsells are not scalable. This means you’re not going to train somebody to hang pictures, for example.

There’s not enough money in it. It’s great if you know how to do it, and you’re skilled at that, and you’ve hung lots of pictures in your own house.

Maybe you have a background in interior design, this is something that you’re skilled at, then that would be a great upsell for you.

First Make a List of What You’re Good At

Amazing Upsells, Woman Taking NotesFirst, you need to sit down and make a list of all the things that you’re good at.   If you are good with tools then you have a starting point.

When you would go to a customer’s house, and they needed a picture hung or a series of pictures hung. That could be a service you could upsell because you are comfortable with a hammer and a nail. You do not need to be a licensed contractor to do that task. And so, is it going to fit into your insurance, is it a skill that you have, is it something you already know how to do?

You don’t need to go learning new skills so that you can sell something to a customer. There are paid professionals that can probably do it better, so if it’s something you know, then great.

Use Your Background for Upsells

Amazing Upsells, Woman Pulling WeedsYou have to use your background in your start-up cleaning business. Maybe, you grew up on a farm.  You probably worked out every day in the garden and the yard, so you could make the outside of your house look as beautiful as the inside. Now you don’t need to hire more people to do landscaping because you know-how.

You can go out and pull weeds, and you could do little tasks that would dress up the front of the yard. And you could sweep the walk, or you could pressure wash the walk or whatever. So, there were tasks that you had practice and the ability to do that then you would add on as, “Hey, this is something I could offer you as well“.

You could have several customers that may need their hedges trimmed. And so they had a regular landscaping service, but the landscaping service mowed the yard. So you could go in with the hedgers and cut all those shrubs down because you’ve been doing that for yourself and a long time. It’s something that you knew like the backside of your hand. You had the tools.

Your Upsells are Different from Your Normal Work Week

Amazing Upsells, Calendar, Trim Hedges at Mrs. Smith's HomeNow the key is, do it on a Saturday. Don’t do it during your regular work week, because it’s going to take a little bit longer, which means the rules of the upsells change a little bit.

When you get to a customer’s house on regular maintenance clean, you’ve got 60 seconds to get in the door, say, “Hi, how are you doing?” and get to work.

On an upsell, it’s going to be a little bit different, you almost have to do another walkthrough. Where they can explain to you what their expectations are and how they will know when the job is complete.

It’s important to ask the question, “How will you know when this job is complete? because we’ve never done this project together before”. So, in your mind, if the curbside service looks a certain way, it might look different to the customer, if their expectations are different. So, it’s kind of like a mini walkthrough where you still have to understand and come to terms of the agreement before you agree to do the job.

You Have to Agree to Terms with the Customer for Every Upsell

Amazing Upsells, Women Shaking HandsYou’ve got to agree on the money that is going to be paid to you. You have to agree on when the money is going to be paid, what the expectations are, and how they will know the job is complete. Having said that, what are some of the upsells you can do?

Okay, well you can bring decorations down from the attic for holidays, for example. You can help them decorate their Christmas tree, for example. You can also decorate any of the outsides of the house. There are a lot of things like that that a lot of house cleaners will do because it takes an extra few hours and they already know the customer.

They already have insurance. The customers have a relationship with them, so it’s great. Regular upsells that go along with house cleaning would be things like cleaning inside the oven and refrigerator. Maybe defrosting the freezer, or cleaning out the dishwasher.

You Can Package Upsells Together

Amazing Upsells, Woman Cleaning MicrowaveThere’s a small appliance package that you can put together. It says you’ll clean out the Keurig machine, the toaster oven, the toaster, and all the small appliances that are inside the kitchen. You can also do an upsell where you clean out the insides of the cupboards.

This is not a deep clean, because on a deep clean you still don’t have a chance to pull everything out of the cupboards, wipe everything down and put it all back. That’s kind of like a deep, deep clean, right, so you could do the insides of the cupboards.

An upsell is to clean out from underneath the bathroom sinks. Lots of people have gunk and junk underneath the bathroom sink. It’s been there for years. They have no idea what’s underneath there, so it’s a great upsell.

What Can You Do to Help the Customer?

Amazing Upsells, Woman and Worker Looking at ComputerSo, it comes down to what are your skills, what do you know, what do you want to do, and how can you help the customer? Now, there are other skills that are going to need different licensing.

For example, professional organizing. There are trained professional organizers. The difference between house cleaning, in house cleaning, you go in and clean people’s houses after it’s already been picked up. Everything has been removed and you can actually go clean the floor, and the baseboards, and the windows, and the blinds, and all that stuff.

Professional organizing is going through all the clutter and finding a home for it. Or removing the emotional attachment, so that the family can move on and give this away.  Don’t offer professional organizing as an upsell, but there are things you can do that don’t have emotional attachments to them. For example, you can help a customer a one-time sort their collection of nick-nacks as a special project.  You can sort through and found a place for their nick-nacks.  As long as there are no emotional attachments to them,  it’s a great way to upsell that service and make an extra couple hundred bucks.

Find Out What Skills Your Employees Have

Amazing Upsells, Woman MoppingIt’s not scalable for you to try to train your employees in all these weird projects. But as you hire people, you can find out, do you have any extra skills?

And if you do have somebody that has been a licensed contractor, and they’re great with handyman work, that would be a service you might be able to add on. Then use them as a freelancer, instead of an employee. And so, that way you would have somebody in your network, that you could refer to for the side projects.

There are a bunch of different ways to do it.  You need to sit down and make a list of the things that you want to do. It’s a fun way to keep your business full, during the slower months of the year. Because right now it’s spring cleaning time. This might be a great time to up-sell some of those services, so you can clean inside, while they’re outside playing in the yard.000 Savvy Cleaner Spacer Bar 2020Resources

Upsells Unleashed – https://amzn.to/2UrrRwz

Good Economics for Hard Times: Better Answers to Our Biggest Problems – https://amzn.to/3bEmQX0

Lawn Care Business Bidding Tips, Upsells, And Disasters to Avoid – https://amzn.to/2UL3Nno

Words that Sell, Revised and Expanded Edition – https://amzn.to/3dFijpq

What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence – https://amzn.to/3bDrc0Q

Permissions To Share

You Have Our Permission To Share This Episode

Show Sponsor

Savvy Cleaner Training – House Cleaner Training and Certification

My Cleaning Connection – Your hub for all things cleaning.

HouseCleaning360 – A hub connecting homeowners with house cleaners

Savvy Perks – Employee benefits for your employees.

Turnover Cleaning Tips – for Vacation Rental and Airbnb Hosts

Scroll to Top