Are you offering any specials for house cleaning services? What do you say to homeowners who ask for discounted cleaning prices?
Is it okay to lower your prices to close a sale?
Listen: Are You Offering Any Specials?
Watch: Are You Offering Any Specials?
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.
Are You Offering Any Specials?
Are you offering any specials, discounts, seniors deals, veterans deals, holiday deals for the cleaning right now? Lots of house cleaners that are just getting into the business will offer all kinds of discounts and they’ll say, “I’ll give you $50 off, or $25 off, or 20% off.”
What you’re doing is you’re training the customer to always look for the discount. Now, they’ve already been trained. Whoever came before you already trained them, and now your job is to retrain them. And so what you need to do is think that “I am special.”
“When you hire me, I am a discount. I am that particular person that’s coming to your house that is going to wipe away the chores that you normally do.”
“That’s where you’re going to save the money if you get to go do other things, and I am the discount that you hired. You hired me to do the menial work so you could go do the important stuff. I am the deal.”
Focus on Value
The next thing to focus on is focus on value. You want to sell on value, not discount. What happens when you sell the discount is neither of you values your service. What you’re saying is you’re not worth the price you’re charging, and you’re telling your customer they can have a better deal because you’re not confident in your abilities and your work to ask for the price you deserve.
So you’re training both of you to not respect the value that you’re bringing to the table. So when a customer says, “Well, are you running any specials right now?”
“Yes, I am. The special that I’m offering right now is a 100% satisfaction guarantee that every single time I come to your house when I leave, you’re going to come into your house, you’re going to look around, you’re going to take one look around and you’re going to go, “Oh wow,” every single time I come. How much is that worth to you?” And they’re going to say, “Well, I don’t know.”
Break the Pattern of Not Valuing Your Services
But what you’ve done right now is you broke the pattern. And when you break the pattern, what happens is you have an opportunity to introduce other things. “When I come, I have a 37 point checklist of things that I do personally on my pre-inventory before I get to your house. Before I even ring the doorbell, before I insert that key, before I hit your alarm code, I have a 37 point checklist that I personally go through to make sure I am ready for your home.”
And they’re going to go, “Whoa, that’s really different from other people.” Now, what you’ve done is you’ve sold value. “When I get to your house, I have this checklist that I go through and I’m going to mark off as many of these different priorities that you’re about to share with me as we walk through your house. I’m going to hit as many of them as absolutely possible in the time that you are hiring me for. And so that is my promise to you. And everything that I check off, I am guaranteeing 100% satisfaction on.”
Raise Your Value
They’re going to go, “Whoa.” All of a sudden you’ve raised the value. You can say to them, “Now, let me tell you about the cleaning suppliers that I use, and about the process that I use. Let me tell you about this system that I use. Let me tell you about the training that I’ve been through.”
As you go through the walkthrough of their house, what happens is you’re going to ask a series of questions. Over at Savvy Cleaner, there is a program that we came out with on how to do a walkthrough. And it has all of the questions listed, the pre-qualifying questions, and the questions that you ask on the walkthrough itself. So check it out at savvycleaner.com.
But when you are on that walkthrough, you’re going to ask a series of questions. And there are questions about the deep clean, how are you managing your leather care for your leather sofas? And what you’re doing is you’re seeding. What that means is I’m planting a seed that we offer another service for an upsell.
Plant Lots of Value Seeds in Customer’s Minds
By the time you get ready to give them a quote, they’re going to think “Oh no, this is going to cost me so much money.” But what you’ve done is you’ve planted lots of seeds, and those are value seeds. So when you go and they say, “Oh, that’s way too much money,” great.
“Of the things that we covered today, which of these things do you want me to take out of your package? Which of these things are not important to you?” And they’re going to say, “Well, it’s all-important to me,” but in the back of their mind, they’re thinking this is going to cost me a lot of money.
So when it doesn’t cost a lot of money and it costs a reasonable amount, suddenly they feel like they’ve got a bargain. Because they hired your company and you have these things that you provide according to the next person that came in and said, “Oh, this is my price,” and they gave a price, and the customer has no idea what that price involves. What are they going to give me in exchange for what?
You Have Created the New Standard
But now you have created the new standard. And so when they go price shopping from here, “Oh, I’m going to look around for the price.”
“Great, please look around for the price. And when you call me back, here’s what I need you to say. I need you to say this because this is the price I’m guaranteeing for the next two weeks, I can honor this price for the next two weeks, so I need you to say these exact words when you call me back to book the job.”
Again, you’re planting a seed. What you’re saying is you will be calling back and I need you to say these exact words so I don’t forget that I’m honoring this for the next two weeks. What they’re going to do is they’re going to go to all the other companies and they’re going to say, “Do you have a 37 point checklist that you do before you come to my house?” People are going to go, “What on earth? No.” All of a sudden, the value went down. Now it’s a price shopping game.
The Customers Have to Choose What’s Most Important to Them
And now they have to say what is more important to them? The value, the quality, or the price. And so if they get the value and the quality, suddenly, guess what? There are people that spend ginormous amounts of money when they get the quality and value.
And so you want to sell on value. So when somebody says, “Are you offering any deals?” “Yes, these are the deals I’m offering,” and sell them on the value, not a discounted price. The minute you go for the discounted price, you’ve trained you both to not value your service.
Resources
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When you click on the links and buy the items you pay the exact same prices or less than if you found the links on your own elsewhere. The difference is that we make a small commission here at the show for sharing these links with you.
Worth Every Penny: Build a Business That Thrills Your Customers and Still Charge What You’re Worth – https://amzn.to/2RMBOVq
Stop Being Disrespectful by Low-balling Your Fees: A Guide to Pricing Your Service-based Business Within Industry Standards – https://Amzn.To/30v1fvo
True Worth: How to Charge What You’re Worth and Get It – https://amzn.to/2Uh48MN
Value-Based Fees: How to Charge – and Get – What You’re Worth: How to Charge? And Get? What You’re Worth – https://amzn.to/2UdC2Sq
Handbook on the Psychology of Pricing: 100+ Effects on Persuasion and Influence Every Entrepreneur, Marketer and Pricing Manager Needs to Know – https://Amzn.To/37mnsq2
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