Best books for house cleaners are books that promote your maid services. Or make you a better housekeeper. Reading every day is great schooling for house cleaners and soon you’ll have your own list of best books. The House Cleaning Guru, Angela Brown shares her tip of the day. Among her best books are excellent material for weekly meetings.
Here you’ll find a great education for maids.
Change the way you think and talk and it will change the way you interact with the customers. Learn, teach and create a collection of your own great reference books.
Listen: Best Books for House Cleaners
Watch: Best Books for House Cleaners
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 Are Best Books for House Cleaners?
Today’s question comes from a franchise owner who owns lots of house cleaning franchises, and his question was “Angela what is the most influential book that you have read while you’ve been a housecleaner?”
Answer: There Are Many Best Books – Here’s One of My Favorites
Okay, that’s a very interesting question because I read a lot of books.
But one that comes to mind is one that comes back way back to 1992 when I had just started my house cleaning business I was very new to the business and I didn’t know anything at all about sales and marketing and I didn’t know about how to talk to people.
So the book that came to mind had just come on the market it’s a book by George Walther called POWER TALKING. It’s “50 Ways to Say what you mean and get what you want.”
And in this book, there are 50 different phrases that we use on a regular basis.
Here’s a link to it if you want your own copy. http://amzn.to/2s6HDgE
Now it hasn’t been produced in many years. It’s an older book but the information is just as applicable today as it was back in 1992.
And you can actually get copies of the book for pennies on the dollar. It’s very affordable.
50 Phrases To Upgrade Your Sales & Customer Service
Having said that, he teaches are 50 different phrases that you will deal with on a day-to-day basis. You will use these phrases when you close a sale. Or when you’re dealing with employees or difficult customers.
And so instead of saying for example “I’ll try.” You change the phrase to say “I will.”
So if a customer asks you; “Do you think that you could defrost my freezer today?” Don’t say “Well, I’ll try to get around to it.” Because when we say “I’ll try” we usually don’t get around to it.
Other things happen or something always comes up.
Take Responsibility in Your Commitments and Actions
But when you take responsibility and you say “I will do that.” Okay, now you’re holding yourself accountable to that customer. You’re making a commitment. And that customer now has a newfound confidence in you because you said “I will” instead of “I will try.”
Change this one phrase today. Give it a try and see how it works for you. You’re going to run into a scenario where you say “Well, I’ll try to get around to that.” Or “I’ll try to get that done.” “I’ll try to work that into my schedule.”
Instead, say “I will.” “I will do that.”
“Yes, I can do that for you.” And say it with confidence. And then hold yourself accountable to go do that. Changing this separates you from the rest of the pack of house cleaners who then say “Well yes, I will try to get around to that.” And then somehow don’t get around to working that in.
So, you want to take responsibility. And instead of saying “I’ll try.” say “I will.”
Take Pleasure In The Work You Do
There’s another one he uses called “Well, I have to.”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that.”
Instead of saying “I’ll have to.” say “I would love to.”
So, when a customer says “Do you think that you could use these cleaning supplies instead of the ones that you’re most comfortable using?” “Well, I’ll have to check with my supervisor and see if we can swap out the different chemicals or whatever.”
Then you say “I would love to do that. If this is your new found chemical that you would love for me to use in your house I would love to do that.”
And by switching that it changes your frame of reference.
Be Happy to Help
Even on this show, I say “You get to ask a house cleaning question, and I get to help you find an answer. “I get to do that. It’s a privilege, it’s an honor. It’s a pleasure I get to help you find an answer.” It’s very different than if I said: “Well, I’ll have to find an answer or I’ll have to look something up and get back to you.”
There are times I have to look up answers because I don’t have the answers to your questions. But the good news is I’m connected to the best and the brightest minds in the housecleaning industry. I know where to go to find those answers.
So, when you ask a question that I don’t have the answer to, it’s not “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” “I would love to get back to you on that when I can give you the attention it deserves. So thank you so much for your question. I would love to get back to you with an answer.”
And then people are like “Oh, she would love to do that. Yes, I would love to do that. And the good news is when I changed the words to “I would love to” instead of “I will have to.”
Instead of it becoming a burden to me, and that becoming stressful, and I’ll have to get back to somebody, it’s extra work — “I would love to do that.” And so, what I’m doing is actually reinforcing in my own mind that I would also love to do that. So when you guys come up with questions for me, I love to get back to you with answers it changes the reference point in my own mind.
People Respond Differently When You Rephrase Ideas
Now there’s a story that he shares in the book that is a very interesting story. Where a lady was going to have her vehicle repossessed.
Her husband had purchased a car and then for some reason he had some kind of a brain tumor or something, and he was unable to make the car payments.
And he thought he was deceased.
And so, he kept telling the car company when they were calling for payments, that he was in fact deceased and he was unable to make his car payments.
Well, they know he’s not deceased because they have documented phone calls of speaking to him. And they were really frustrated and they kept threatening him and “we’re going to have to repossess your vehicle.”
So with the power talking skills that they learned, they were able to rephrase that.
Inspire People To Want To Help You Through Your Words
And when they called his wife who was an alcoholic and she didn’t care, and she wasn’t responsible, and said “that’s my husband’s responsibility. I don’t drive the truck. If you want to repossess it that’s up to you.”
They weren’t getting any help out of her and she wasn’t sharing with them how they could repossess the vehicle because she would not tell them where it was.
When they reframed that conversation, they were able to contact this woman back.
And say “listen, we understand how important it is for you to keep your credit intact. And if your husband is in fact terminally ill, when he passes we want to make sure that you are able to collect all the life insurance money owed you.
And so what we would like to do is come quietly, since he’s not driving the truck. (Because he’s unable to drive anymore,) we would like to come remove that truck from you so that you no longer have that responsibility. We would love to do that.”
She said, “Well, I would love to help you do that.” And then she told the collection agency where the vehicle was hiding. So they could come remove that without causing a big incident with a husband. He probably wasn’t going to notice that the vehicle was even gone because he was no longer driving it.
So just by changing the reference to what they said they presented it in a completely different manner. Where they were then able to elicit help from the woman who was so adamant about helping them in the beginning.
Power Talking is an amazing series of phrases that you can put in place on a day-to-day basis with your regular customers.
It is one of the best books I have ever read. Like I said, I read it back in 1992 and I still have a copy of it now because it’s in my reference library.
Create a Reference Library of Best Books for Continuing Education
Another suggestion for you as a franchise owner is you have a lot of house cleaners coming through your business. And as a result of that, you have a lot of different varieties of education.
You may want to think about creating a reference library. Where you have a collection of best books like Power Talking that you allow your employees to check out from you.
Use Your Best Books To Teach at Your Weekly Meetings
And if you do nothing else, get a copy of this book and every week at your regular weekly meeting, go through one of these new 50 phrases that you can change in your business.
That will keep your meeting going for the next year. There 52 weeks in a year and then 50 lessons here. Bam! That’s my tip for today.
Get a copy of Power Talking by George R. Walther. It’s an amazing book. I still love it and highly recommend it. So that’s it.
And until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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Okay, that’s a very interesting question because I read a lot of books.
But when you take responsibility and you say “I will do that.” Okay, now you’re holding yourself accountable to that customer. You’re making a commitment. And that customer now has a newfound confidence in you because you said “I will” instead of “I will try.”
Now there’s a story that he shares in the book that is a very interesting story. Where a lady was going to have her vehicle repossessed. 
And when they called his wife who was an alcoholic and she didn’t care, and she wasn’t responsible, and said “that’s my husband’s responsibility. I don’t drive the truck. If you want to repossess it that’s up to you.”
Another suggestion for you as a franchise owner is you have a lot of house cleaners coming through your business. And as a result of that, you have a lot of different varieties of education.
And if you do nothing else, get a copy of this book and every week at your regular weekly meeting, go through one of these new 50 phrases that you can change in your business. 
Disclosure