“What’s on your menu?” What cleaning services do you sell? Is it clear to your customers or are you creating custom cleaning packages each time you bid a job? Here’s how to guide customers to the packages you offer so you don’t reinvent the wheel at each house you clean.
Listen: What’s On Your Menu Cleaning Lady?
Watch: What’s On Your Menu Cleaning Lady?
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’s On Your Cleaning Menu?
What’s on your menu? And I’m talking about your cleaning services menu. There’s somebody that wrote into the show. She asked this question, she said, “One of the biggest challenges for me in this job is figuring out exactly what the client wants and realizing that everybody wants something different.”
Now, I take issue with that because we cannot give everybody what they want. There is no way to produce that on a scale that we can then turn around and resell to our employees and grow a profitable company. We have to take control and decide exactly what our services are and then sell that to the customer. It is important to hear the customer out and hear what is important to them.
And then we can guide them in the package that is most appropriate for them. The reason being is this.
It’s Like Eating at a Restaurant With Friends
Imagine that you went to a restaurant and it’s you and eight of your closest friends. You sit down at the table and the waiter appears and he says, “Hey, what can I get you to eat?”
And you say, “Well, aren’t you supposed to take drinks first?”
“Yeah, I’ll get your drinks in whatever you want. What do you want?”
“Well, do you have a menu?”
“We don’t have a menu. Just what do you want?”And so one of the friends says, “I would like a tuna fish sandwich and some chips.”
He goes, “Great, tuna fish sandwich and some chips. Next person.” And the other person says, “I would like some macaroni and cheese and broccoli on the side.” And he says, “Okay, no problem.” And he writes it down.
And then the next person says, “I would like a sirloin steak.” “Okay. No problem.” And the next person, “I would like a ham and cheese sandwich.” “Okay. No problem.” And he makes a note.
With No Menu They Don’t Know What You Offer
And you go around and everyone has something different. He’s going to go back to the kitchen. And how do we know that he has the supplies in the back of his kitchen that we just ordered on this meal? It wasn’t on the menu. There was no menu. So we were just randomly guessing what we wanted to eat.
It would be hard to create inventory for that, and it would be hard to figure out how long it’s going to take because when you cook a meal, you know exactly how long it takes to prepare this and this and this. And so if you choose one of those three meals, we know it’s going to come out to you in 10 minutes or 12 minutes or 11 and a half minutes based on what we know about the food and our food prep and our cooking time. We know exactly how long that’s going to take.
But if everybody picks weird random things, we may or may not have them in the kitchen in the back. They may take different amounts of time to cook. Are you going to spend all your time focusing on the mac and cheese when really the steak should have gone in the oven first? There are logistics that have to be considered.
Restaurants Have a Menu So They Know What They’re Getting
For this reason, restaurants have a menu. And when you show up at the restaurant, you know exactly what you’re getting, because when you go to a restaurant, this happens for lots of people, they look at the menu, but they order the same two or three items every single time. They know exactly what they’re going to get and they choose the exact same menu.
Yes, they know there are other things on the menu, but they choose the same two or three items every single time they go to that restaurant. Are you one of those people? If you are, leave comments in the notes below. I know I am. I hate to admit that I am, but I am. It’s just easy.
I hate the guesswork. I hate trying to figure out something new and I hope it’s good. If I found something good and I landed on a great meal, I’m coming to that restaurant for that meal.
Customers Hire You for a Specific Thing
When customers come to you and they hire you as a cleaning service, they’re coming to you for a specific thing you offer. Question is, do you know what you offer? In house cleaning, we have a deep cleaning, we have maintenance cleaning, and then we have special packages or special projects.
The reason for that is because not every special project will ever fit into deep cleaning. And the deep cleaning will never fit into maintenance clean. There are two different types of cleaning. If you have a deep clean, oftentimes we bring chemicals that we don’t use on maintenance clean.
If there’s something icky, we might have to bring an acid, for example, or some strong chemical. Where on a maintenance clean, we might use a few shakes of a powdered cleanser and a little scrub sponge. When you maintain it, it’s a very different type of clean. So what are you offering? And is that clear to your customers?
Some Cleaners Don’t Know What They Sell
One of the biggest problems house cleaners have is they don’t know what they sell. And so it’s like all your friends showing up at the restaurant. Yeah, the restaurant wants to do right by you and they’re going to say, “What do you want?”
And then they’re going to go scrambling in the back of the kitchen to try to get it for you. When ordering right off the menu would have sufficed for all of your friends, it would have been easier certainly for everyone.
So I want you to stop and realize that yes, it is important to hear what the customer wants so that you can guide them to which menu item of services would be most appropriate to them. That’s how that works.
Resources
Business Plan Template and Example – https://amzn.to/3pUt6kn
BUSINESS PLANNER’S ROADMAP – https://amzn.to/3bITZT4
Creating a Business Plan for Dummies – https://amzn.to/3kpM94R
Starting a Business All-in-One for Dummies – https://amzn.to/2ZTNozM
The Secrets to Writing A Successful Business Plan – https://amzn.to/2PgueCp
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