Cleaning-Success.com

Marketing Your Cleaning Business Through Volunteering and Community Involvement

As every business owner knows, people would rather do business with friends than strangers. So when you become involved in your community, you'll naturally gain more friends, which means eventually gaining more clients.

A word of caution; don't make the mistake of consciously marketing to people while you're volunteering for your community! Being involved in community activities puts you in a unique position to network with other people. However, it is about getting to know the people in your community -- who they are, what they're interested in, what makes the community tick. The marketing piece takes care of itself as you get to know more people.

Community involvement means getting out there and working with other volunteers. Joining a committee and not really taking part in the activities won't cut it. When people see you jump in and get your hands dirty by working side-by-side with other volunteers, they'll see your work ethic and will translate that into having a business and employees with that same work ethic. They'll be much more likely to use your services or recommend your services to friends and colleagues.

I challenge you to make a commitment TODAY to find a way to get involved in your community. If you don't know where to start, ask people you know if they have any recommendations -- clients, networking buddies, the Chamber of Commerce, church friends, your accountant, etc. The opportunities are there - you just need to go out and find them!

Wearing All The Hats In Your Cleaning Business? Here's Why You Need To Stop

If you've ever watched the show "Undercover Boss", then you know the CEO's of major companies go undercover in order to  work anonymously with their employees. They all struggle at most of the jobs they attempt, which is usually humorous, because it's a scenario that many people can relate to -- doing the job better than the boss. The CEO's have done a variety of jobs -- cleaning restrooms, call center operator, hotel admissions, assembly line work, arranging flowers, trash collector,  and many other jobs that people might consider "easy".

What they quickly discover however, is that the jobs are anything but easy. In fact some of these high-profile CEO's have even been fired by the employee training them! So what does this have to do with the owner of a small cleaning company? Plenty! As your company grows, you will wear many hats, and that's ok -- for a while. Some of the jobs that you will probably do include cleaning, marketing, sales, bidding, phone answering, bookkeeping, hiring, training, and payroll processing. But how many of these jobs are you really GOOD at? And how many of these jobs do you really enjoy doing? And most importantly, how is being a "jack of all trades" holding your business back?

If you spend all your time doing all the jobs needed to run a company, then your growth will be limited to what you can physically do yourself. So if you are serious about growing a successful cleaning business, then you need to do what the "undercover bosses" do. First, hire great employees and stop doing everything yourself. Next, observe your employees and talk to them regularly to stay on top of what is happening in the field. We often think things are running smoothly in our business, when in fact there are many things that could be better. The only way to know this is to listen to what your employees want and need to do their job more efficiently.

When you stop wearing all the hats and start empowering your team to do what they do best and love to do, you'll have more time to set long term goals for your business and implement those goals with the help of your team.