My client is moving, how do I raise my prices? Is it better to leave your comfort zone and find new cleaning clients?
Travel expenses cost time and money that add up fast when commuting between houses.
Your cleaning service means you find new cleaning clients when the others move.
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Watch: Client is Moving, How Do I Raise My Prices?
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.
What to Do When Your Client is Moving
My client is moving; how do I raise my prices and still make money? A house cleaner has this question. “The family I work for right now are moving to a much bigger house, and is a lot farther than I drive right now to get to the house they have now. I need to know how I can increase my price and not lose a customer?
The house I clean for them now is three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and the house they are moving to it’s a five-bedroom, four full baths, a study, and a game room.”
Don’t Travel Too Far for a Cleaning Job
If it is too far for you to travel, it would be best to end the working relationship. Now you don’t have to end the relationship itself because that’s what Facebook is for, so you can stay in touch with those customers. When you’re talking about a three-bedroom home, how many three-bedroom homes are there near where you live? The answer is probably a lot. So go find another customer.
Now not everyone is a fan of traveling because every time you get in your car and you drive there are risks. And many of them are calculated risks. But there are also some un-calculated risks like you cannot tell how the rush hour traffic is going to be if there’s an accident. And you cannot tell if you are going to be the one in an accident.
There are a lot of unknowns. Are you going to run out of gas on the way, or are you going to lose a tire on the way? Is your car going to break down on the way? There are a lot of things that can happen to get a house cleaner from one job to the next. When you increase that by mileage between, the risks go up.
Traveling Too Much Raises the Risk
There was a house cleaner in our organization and she traveled many miles to a customer’s house. What happened is she broke down one day on the side of the road, there she is a single female stranded out in the middle of nowhere, not safe, near anywhere. She didn’t have any mace on her, she didn’t have any cell phone service because she was out in the middle of nowhere. Now the risks for her have gone up.
So you shouldn’t be commuting any more than you have to. There are lots of things that can happen, so its best to try to work where you live. If something happens and they cancel on you, then you haven’t driven out of your way, only to find out when you got there that you got locked out, or that they canceled, or that something came up.
Now you’ve got to come all the way back unless you charge a lockout fee you didn’t make any money. The lockout fee usually doesn’t cover a whole lot anyway, maybe your gas. The reality is this, work where you live if there’s a possibility for that at all.
Keep Renewable Contracts Incase Clients Move
Then the next thing to mention, in Savvy Cleaner we train our house cleaners to have what we call renewable contracts. And a renewable contract is, get out of your comfort zone. At the end of every single year, we are going to reevaluate our relationship, and we’re going to see if we’re a good fit for each other.
If we’re not a good fit for each other we’re going to go our separate ways. At any time either party can cancel the relationship. But at the end of the year, there’s a guaranteed moment where we take a look at each other and we go, are we still a good fit for each other? Oftentimes the answer is no.
But here’s the reason why, when as house cleaners we become complacent, we get inside this comfort zone where we think “Well, I have to move with the family. They’ve been a customer of mine for years, I’ve been their house cleaner for years, I’m part of their family.” The reality is you’re not, you are a paid employee. They may have treated you like family, you may love them like family, but they are not your family. This is a business transaction.
Renewable Contracts Keep You on Edge
The renewable contract keeps you on edge. Every single time you show up, you’re like, ooh, I could get fired today. Every single time you show up you’re re-auditioning for the job. You’ve got to fight for their business, not get in a comfort zone where now you’re willing to travel all over a creation.
Because you’re going to lose customers, and you’re going to lose billable time because you’re going to your comfort zone. Get out of your comfort zone, there’s no room in house cleaning for a comfort zone. There never was, there never will be.
So, the answer is you’ve got to end it. Raising your prices, and trying to commute, and trying to make it work, at a bigger house that’s further away is only going to take away business you have right now where you are.
Resources
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The Business and Practice of Coaching: Finding Your Niche, Making Money, & Attracting Ideal Clients – https://amzn.to/2zEAyLRT
At Personal Risk: Boundary Violations in Professional-Client Relationships – https://amzn.to/3bxXdqp
Exactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact – https://amzn.to/2WqePjM
How Clients Buy: A Practical Guide to Business Development for Consulting and Professional Services – https://amzn.to/2WS8DQH
The Marketing Book: A Marketing Plan for Your Business Made Easy via Think – https://amzn.to/2SYOE1p
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