August focus: Domestic Cleaning Service
Seasonal Variations in the Industry
You may like to ask when is the best time to begin advertising your Home and Strata Cleaning business. Well, there are definitely certain times of the year that are better than others, and I would never suggest commencing your business during a school holiday period. You will discover these times of the year to be so slow that you may you feel that you are to blame for doing something wrong, when in fact you have very little control over the number of incoming calls and bookings.
It is my suggestion, depending on where you live in the world when you read this article, that you commence you new business just after the school holidays are over. In Australia, these times would be at the end of January, after the Easter break, after the mid-year break (around the end of July) or around the beginning of October. You may start at other times, but these are the times that are very good for getting your new business off to a great start. Financial year-end is not a good time to start, so wait a couple of months after it ends before you commence your promotions.
If you are anxious to start your business and it happens to be school holidays then you can always begin gathering together the things you need to get started. Set up your office, design your ads and flyers, and purchase your cleaning kit. Call your local newspaper and place your advertisement so that it begins to run the first week after the school holidays, and be ready to take your first few calls then. Have a dedicated phone number for work calls and keep your mobile phone switched on.
Hit your local area with an onslaught of ads and flyers (see Business Promotion Simplified) and be prepared to answer many calls. Have a script in readiness for the number of calls that you will receive and be prepared to go out and meet your prospects before they make a booking with you. This will give you a chance to see what state the home is in before you take on the job, and in some cases you can recommend that the client have a much needed Spring-Clean as the first service to their home. You should also work out whether you want to charge per hour or by the job beforehand, and how much this will be.
Once your diary and roster are full of new clients your business will tick along quite nicely – until you hit another holiday break. Then you will find that there will be a slight drop in the number of regular and one-off bookings because all your clients will be away on holidays themselves. You should always make allowances for this when you are in the peak seasons, and put some of your earnings aside to combat these quiet times. Don’t worry though because after the break things will again pick up. Just keep doing the things you should do in order to always have a constant flow of new inquiries and bookings – remember to market your business consistently. Let’s look at setting up your new small business…….
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