August Focus: Domestic Cleaning Business

Assertiveness in Practice

Developing your Skills of Communication

Let us look at a few practical strategies on setting boundaries and delivering those boundaries using good communication skills. Once you know what rates to charge for the different cleaning services you need to stay within these boundaries with every client that you deal with so that you get used to setting boundaries and keeping to them. If you are asked to do extra work and the rate that you are charging does not cover these extra requests then just look your client in the eye and say ‘I can certainly do those things for you during a Spring-Clean. Would you like to order a Spring-Clean, Mrs Jones?’ If they ask again, just repeat your offer to do a Spring-Clean. Then, if they insist that you do the work they want without ordering a Spring-Clean, you simply say ‘no, these services will need to be charged at a higher rate’ clearly, calmly and without emotion. Stating what you will or won’t do for the fee that the client is paying needs to be done clearly and precisely, without any negative emotion. Good communication only becomes aggression if you add negative emotion to your delivery of what you are trying to say.

Over a period of time your aura will begin to exude an ‘I cannot be easily controlled or taken advantage of’ feeling about it, and when you say ‘no’ your clients will know that you mean what you say. They will, on an unconscious level, know that your ‘no’ means ‘no’. You will find then that fewer and fewer people try to push you to do things that once before you would find yourself doing but feeling resentful of because you really didn’t want to do those things in the first place. A really nice thing begins to happen. People can feel that they can’t manipulate you, so they don’t try. Occasionally you will run into someone who likes to railroad people into doing what they want, and under these circumstances you will need to be more firm with this type of person, but with practice you will find that you can even handle them as well.

Practice saying no whenever somebody in your life (outside the boundaries of good business relations) asks you to do something that you would normally say yes to doing. Just say no for the sake of learning to say no. It may feel awkward and difficult to begin with but after time you will learn how to say no without feeling any guilt or obligation around it. Then practice asking for what you want. This may also be difficult to begin with, but once again with time even this will become easy. Practice speaking up for yourself too. If someone pushes in when you are waiting to be served at the shop, speak up for yourself and say ‘I was next, thank you’.  Begin to claim your right to enjoy all the benefits of being a worthy individual.

Assertiveness can become an integral part of your being, if you take the time to develop it and to make your life special. It is only a matter of focusing on developing those skills, and with time anything can be learned and achieved. There is a whole workshop devoted to developing assertiveness that you can do as a follow up to this business development workshop. If you would like to attend this workshop or purchase the training manual that goes with the workshop, please email me to ask when the next workshop is being held.

You can read in next article about: Questions and Exercises 

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Free From the Gilded Cage is the education arm of the Loving Heart Foundation Australia where we teach the basics of self-employment and basic budgeting skills. This is so that women can learn the skills needed to manage their own lives without feeling trapped in a relationship with a man who is beating them up. With these skills they can easily leave him.

Update: The first novel in our series of seven written to raise funds for those whom we assist is now published. It is the courageous story of a young teen growing up in a home filled with domestic violence, and how she manoeuvres her way through such a difficult situation. Click here if you’d like to know more about this novel.

Click here if you’d like to be taken to the site where you can purchase this novel.