Author: singingaboutcooking

If you've had my cooking or heard me sing, you've shared some of the happiest and most memorable moments of my life. But if you've been lucky enough to listen to me sing while I cook, well, then you've seen the real me. And if you've sung and cooked with me, you know what being loved by me is!
Posted in Children

Children’s Sermon for Luke 19: Zaccheus learns to share

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

Scripture: Luke 19

Props: 2-3 bags of easily identifiable snacks (carrots, cheetos, starburst)

Good morning! Wow, we really had a treat this morning. We heard the children’s choir sing our bible lesson for today. What do you guys remember happened in the song about Zaccheus?

[Look for: climbed a tree to see Jesus, Jesus told him to come down, Jesus said he’s going to Zaccheus’s house.]

Yep, you guys got it! Now the story of Zaccheus goes on for a little bit more than the song. One of the things we learn early on in the story is that Zaccheus is really, really rich; he’s got a LOT of money. And when Jesus goes to Zaccheus’s house, He gets to show Zaccheus some better ways to spend his money.

Now, let me ask you: what’s something you see mom or dad do when friends come to visit? [look for and encourage any form of response that indicates hospitality – offers drink, makes snacks, makes dinner, grills hamburgers and hotdogs, etc.]

Right, having some snacks or a meal is a really important part of showing guests that they are valuable to us, that we are thankful they’ve come to visit.

Now, here’s a challenge [hold up your 2-3 bags of snacks]: I haven’t gone to the grocery store, but I just found out that I’m going to have some friends at my house right after church, and these carrots, cheetos, and starburst are the only snacks I have. What am I going to do?

[expect responses that suggest each person choosing one snack, get really excited if they suggest giving each person a little bit of each snack and sharing; commend them if they get the sharing idea without you telling them]

[If they don’t give you sharing] what if I give each person a few carrots, a few cheetos and a few starburst? I’ve shared the best of everything I have with my friends.

Well, when Jesus visits with Zaccheus, who didn’t forget to go to the grocery store, Jesus is treated to a really fancy lunch and snacks. So Jesus shows Zaccheus that if he can feed Jesus such wonderful food, he can share some of this food and the extra money he has with poor and sick people to help them.

Pray with me: Dear God, thank you for sending Zaccheus to see Jesus, for letting Zaccheus learn to share, and for showing us just how easy it is to share what we have with others. Amen.

 

I delivered this children’s sermon on June 26, 2016; the children’s choir had sung “Zaccheus Was a Wee Little Man” earlier in the service.

Posted in Children

Children’s Sermon for Matthew 5:14-16 – You are the light of the world

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

Scripture: Matthew 5: 14-16

Props: enough LED tea light candles (dollar store) and 1 LED or flame taper (similar to Baptism candle)

Assistance: ask an usher or other worship attendant to turn the lights out at your signal during the Children’s Sermon

Action: As you greet the gathered children, light the Baptism candle from the Christ candle on the altar or table.

Who here gets nervous or anxious or scared sometimes? Maybe even in the dark? [allow for 3-4 responses]

Me too, which is why I light my Baptism candle. When we baptism children and adults here, most of the time Preacher Mike [name your own pastor/reverend] usually focuses on the water, but right at the end of the baptism, one of the elders lights a candle from the table and gives it to the parents or the adult.

Why do you think we do that? [allow for 2-3 responses]

Those are really great answers. Let’s look at the Bible to see what Jesus has to say:

In Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says “You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (ESV)

[If you’re using a flame taper, consider including a quick segment focusing on how the acolyte takes the flame from the Christ candle before snuffing out the candles and taking the light out of the church building into the world.]

Now I need your help with a quick experiment and I’ve asked Mr. Mark (sound tech) to help me [Mark turns out the lights in the sanctuary].

[Lead the children to the head of the center aisle so the most adults can see.]

We’re going to pretend for a minute that everyone here who’s not right here in our group, they don’t know who Jesus is or how good and important He is to us.

Okay, I need everyone to gather around in a really tight circle. [place the basket of LED tea lights in the center of the circle.]

Now I need 1 volunteer. Great, thank you, Connor! I want you to hold this one candle here in the circle.

[turn to the congregation] Now we need some help from the congregation this morning. What I want you to do is clap to help us know how much light you can see. So if you see a little light, clap a little. And if you see a lot of light, clap a lot!

Okay, Connor [name of the volunteer], hold your candle up so that as many people as possible can see it. [with all of the children standing, mostly only the children and a few really close adults can see, so the clapping is a little.]

Wow, I didn’t hear much clapping, so they must not be able to see just the one light. Can I get another person to hold up a second candle? Great, thank you, Caroline! Now let’s try again with TWO candles. [little more clapping]

Oh, wow, I heard a little more clapping that time. What if EVERYONE holds up a candle at the same time. [claps and cheers]

Did you hear that?! Wow! I think EVERYONE saw your light that time. That’s what happens when everyone who comes to church shares just one blessing from Jesus with someone else in the world each week. We make a huge bright light that everyone can see and want to follow with us.

Pray with me: Dear God, thank you for sending Jesus to be our light and for showing us how to be a light to others. Amen

 

I delivered this Children’s Sermon on June 19, 2016 at Palmetto Presbyterian Church, Mt. Pleasant, SC.

Posted in Business Articles, Small Business Tips

NY fourth state to add paid parental leave to employers’ FMLA obligations

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

NY Parental Leave graphicFMLA and paid family leave affects small businesses with 50+ employees this year or last year.

While a large percentage of cleaning businesses are too small to be covered by Family and Medical Leave Act requirement, those with 50+ employees for at least 20 weeks of the year do. According to the NPR’s Jennifer Ludden, “the only federally mandated leave covers just half of the workforce.” Currently, the Department of Labor does not require the leave to be paid, so most workers can’t afford to take it. For business owners, the financial burden on a company is limited to hiring and training a temporary replacement or divvying up the duties for a short time.

But an increasing trend may change that as New York because the fourth US state to mandate paid parental leave, the most generous of the packages. In addition, the city of San Francisco has also mandated paid leave at full wage or salary.

As cleaning company and maid service owners consider growth goals, keep in mind the FTE benchmarks for additional costs. In an industry where 90-95% of the workforce – in the field and in the office – are women, the costs are likely to be higher than in other industries where the mix is more balanced.

Here’s what cleaning business owners should consider tracking now to prepare for this cost in the future:

  • # births/adoptions by employees
  • average weekly wages of those employees
  • cost of hiring a replacement
  • cost of training a replacement

The latter two are recommended key performance indicators for any service business. The former are designed to help businesses establish a baseline for budgeting and bill rate increases when a similar mandate is implement in your state or nationwide.

Originally published May 4, 2016 at CleaningBusinessToday.com.

Posted in Content Marketing, Ghost Writer

Ladybug winners announced: an Iowa green cleaning company and a teacher and young adult author

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

600600p3069EDNmain1947Ladybug-winners-announced-600-x-250Advanced Vapor Technologies and Cleaning Business Today reveal the winners of the Ladybug Giveaway.

Drum roll please… The winners of the Ladybug Steam Vapor Giveaway are:

Stephanie Nesseth of Absolutely Clean

For the before-and-after photo with the most votes: Stephanie Nesseth of Absolutely Clean in Cedar Rapids, Iowa was the clear winner, with over 2,100 votes.

Jolene Buchheit

In the random drawing of people who voted: Jolene Buchheit, a teacher and young adult fiction author is the winner.

Congratulations to both winners and thank you to all of our 18 photo contest entrants and over 4900 votes!

The Ladybug Steam Vapor Giveaway is over, and whether you won this time around or not, owning a Ladybug is a win-win for both you and your customers. It’s a win for you, because the Ladybug is an incredibly efficient tool that can make your cleaners more productive and generate income for your cleaning service. It’s a win for your customers, because the Ladybug uses simple tap water. There are no harsh chemicals, so the Ladybug cleans and disinfects in a way that is non-toxic. For more information about the Ladybug Steam Vapor System from Advanced Vapor Technologies,click here. Or to learn how your cleaning company can use the Ladybug to make your business more profitable, watch the video below. And congratulations again to our winners.

Originally published May 2, 2016 at CleaningBusinessToday.com.

Posted in Content Marketing, Ghost Writer, Housekeeping

3 companies use steam vapor cleaning to make more money – and win a free Ladybug

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

600600p3069EDNmain1925Ladybug-steam-vapor-trio-600-x-250One amazing before-and-after photo is all it takes to win a FREE steam vapor disinfection system and start making more money cleaning.

Sponsored ArticleThe “green” movement is strong, no matter which of the common words you use to describe your way of being green: natural, organic, healthy, sustainable, safe, non-toxic, etc.

What if you could truly strip your cleaning procedure down to just one ingredient: simple tap water? That’s what cleaning business owners across the US are doing: simply reducing the potential for error and harm to the lowest possible denominator.

You read that right! Water, specifically tap water, is the only ingredient that powers the Ladybug series of steam vapor cleaning and disinfecting systems by Advanced Vapor Technologies, the most widely-adopted chemical free* cleaning tool across the US.

Now, you’re wondering just how these folks can possibly be competing on time and price with traditional apply-and-wipe cleaning procedures, right? Well, let’s hear it in their own words – and find out how they plan to win a FREE Ladybug to help them grow even more.

Amy Wiggs King
2 Green Chicks of Norman, OK

Ladybug-dolly-photo-300-x-300A little over a year ago we learned about the AdVap Ladybug with TANCS, and we have been able to upsell and use it for hard-to-clean areas: first-time cleanings, ovens, showers (especially with hard water buildup), grout and the list goes on!

When our cleaning chicks started working with the Ladybug, Chick Christine wrote her middle name “Dolly” in an oven vent! The amount of grime that can be steamed away is amazing, and our clients love the results. And since we are a green cleaning company, we love that the system only uses water and no harsh or unnecessary chemicals.

Mona Gatens
Windsor Maid Service of Houston, TX

I spent nearly 30 years in healthcare before opening Windsor Maid Services, so the plan for my company from the very beginning was to use equipment and products to make my clients homes healthier. We focus our marketing on the healthy benefits of our cleaning methods, and subsequently many of our clients have small children, compromised immunity, are post-surgical or are severe allergy sufferers. We are delighted to have found the AdVap Ladybug dry vapor steam cleaners with TANCS as they are a primary piece in our healthy homes initiative. Having the ability to disinfect surfaces in clients’ homes without using chemicals that they might be sensitive to is a huge benefit to us.

Another advantage of the dry steam vapor system is that there aren’t any chemicals involved; there also isn’t any residue. This makes our maintenance cleaning quicker and easier, saving us money in payroll expenses.

The Ladybug is also an extremely effective cleaning device with the ability to far surpass many more traditional methods and tackles the hardest of jobs. We’ve never found any other device, tool or chemical that can tackle really badly baked on ovens and showers and tubs that are severely hard water stained anywhere near as effectively as the Ladybug does, and it does so completely chemical free – no harsh or mild chemicals or vapors for my staff or clients to inhale!

Troy Knight
Castle Keepers of Greenville, SC

Before starting my business, I committed to being a green, eco-friendly company, and there are a lot of ways to be “green.” Our focus is to use products and processes that are less toxic and have lower VOCs than many traditional cleaning methods. Specifically what this means is that we started off building our cleaning procedure on the use of deionized water and dry steam vapor to enable us to incorporate a chemical-free process into our cleaning for clients who prefer non-traditional cleaning methods.

Without the DI Water Kit and our AdVap Ladybug with TANCS, we’d be running inventory weekly and purchasing supplies likely monthly – forever. It’s just too easy to see the savings of a one-time equipment purchase, especially one that just uses the same water supply we’d have been using if we had to dilute chemicals or in the rinsing phase of the cleaning procedure. Since we get to skip those steps, that’s time we get back in our pockets – either in cash savings not paid out to labor or to re-invest in other, more productive activities like marketing and ongoing staff training.

See more from Troy and The Steam Lady Diana Henley in this webinar about why and how companies have made a successful and profitable transition from standard or eco-friendly chemicals to a steam-powered cleaning procedure.

But you’re ready to find out how you can get your hands on the amazing AdVap Ladybug for free, right? Who wouldn’t want a chance to have this top-of-the-line, $2000 piece of premium cleaning and disinfecting equipment!

It’s so easy – and we hope you’ve been gathering as many before-and-after photos of your Ladybug cleaning jobs:

  1. Submit your best, most dramatic before-and-after photo of something you’ve cleaned with your Ladybug – only one submission per person, so make it really, really good!
  2. Come back and vote every day – on your own submission or a friend’s!
  3. Share your submission daily to remind friends, family, and clients (if you’re a business) to vote – folks can vote once a day!

Contest opens MARCH 29th and voting remains open until APRIL 29th! Good Luck!

Be sure to follow Advanced Vapor Technologies and Cleaning Business Today on Facebook for contest updates and the second half of our 2-month education series on the benefits of adopting the Ladybug with TANCS® to maintain a healthy home for yourself and for your cleaning clients.

Connect with Rick Hoverson on LinkedIn
Connect with Randy Zielsdorf on LinkedIn

Originally published March 29, 2016 at CleaningBusinessToday.com.

Posted in Business Articles, Housekeeping, Small Business Tips

12 cleaning upsells for 12 months – part 2

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

UpsellingIt’s never too late to implement your upselling strategy. Get yourself ready with these campaign ideas for July – December.

As you’re pulling up to the end of the first quarter or 2016, let’s finish up a year’s worth of monthly upselling and cross-selling campaigns. Remember, you can choose to run your program less frequently – say quarterly for 4 upselling promotions a year – to get started. There’s no need to overwhelm yourself with planning or your staff with keeping up right out of the gate. You can check out the first six ideas here.

July: Christmas in July Pre-paid Service Deals

Instead of competing with all of the Fourth of July themed promotions, pick up a Christmas in July theme and focus on beating the heat with good ol’ Saint Nick at the beach, the lake, or the park – and push your gift certificates or pre-paid cleaning services and programs. Another play on a summer/winter mash-up is to use a design with holiday evergreens made out of watermelons or pineapples.

August: Sweet Thank-Yous

August boasts both National S’mores Day (10th) and National Marshmallow Toasting Day (30th), so play up nights around the fire pit or camp fire and the last days of summer before school starts. It might feel like taking a break from promotions and selling, but I recommend breaking things up with a soft upsell on referrals, something that appeals to your existing clients’ hearts and senses. For this promotion, leave a thank you note along with a S’mores kit; to alleviate food allergy concerns, it’s best to purchase pre-packaged kits. It’s the kind of thing that they’ll talk about to their friends – OH, you could leave a note about sharing S’mores with friends and leave extras!

September: No-Labor Day for Mom

Why does Mother’s Day have to happen only in May? Encourage mothers to celebrate themselves and their labors-of-love by leaving the cleaning to you – especially the extras like refrigerators and carpets and pressure washing and even a one-time special on laundry.

October: Silver Polishing Cross-sell

With two often-formal family meal holidays coming up, many clients will be looking to pull out the good silver…with all of its tarnish. Imagine a leave behind with a Victorian-inspired dinner scene dripping with Halloween cobwebs to start getting clients in both a cleaning and silver frame of mind.

November: Thanks-Giving Referral Promotion

The holidays are one of the easiest times to close sales on referrals from your current customers because the holidays just simply demand a clean and tidy home. So make November an entire month of Thanks-Giving by offering to donate 10% of the cleaning fee to your charity of the month or to the charity of their choice when customer referral gets his/her first cleaning. Extend the promotion to the new client for an immediate upsell: 10% of the regular service fee (weekly or biweekly) to charity when they upgrade to regular service (fine print: donation to be made after the fifth regularly scheduled cleaning is completed).

Tip: ARCSI members should consider the November promotion as a way to create awareness of ARCSI’s Kleaning for Kids charity with the Ronald McDonald House in their local area.

December: The 12 Gifts of Christmas

Folks love gifting others with the items and services that they enjoy the best, so remind your customers of the various “extras” you offer that they’ve found valuable. Run 12 different deals-of-the-day, just one each day: a small discount or 2-for-1 with the offer expiring that same day. Repeat something if you don’t have a lot of extras, and change up the promotion for it if you do. Traditionally, the 12 days of Christmas run from December 25 – January 5, but many businesses use the 12 days leading up to Christmas: December 12 – December 24. Alternatives: The 8 Gifts of Hanukkah, The 7 Gifts of Kwanzaa

Between these and the first 6 months of upsells, you now have a complete annual upselling calendar to keep your existing clients reaching for – and paying for – more. This is an easy program to set up and put on autopilot year after year, with maybe a few tweaks and switch-ups. And don’t forget that a successful promotion begins at least 2 weeks before you intend/expect for folks to need that special service.

CeCe Mikell is the Editor-in-Chief for CleaningBusinessToday.com, coming to the cleaning industry from a 15-year career as a college professor of communication and business. She also consults with cleaning business owners on business development projects.

Originally published on March 23, 2016 at CleaningBusinessToday.com.
Posted in Content Marketing, Ghost Writer, Housekeeping

2 Ways to Win the Best Disinfection System Available for Your Cleaning Business

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

600600p3069EDNmain1903Ladybug-Giveaway-How-to-Enter-600-x-250-REV230 days to find your best “horrible” mess to win a free ADVAP Ladybug 2300 in our Before-and-After photo giveaway

Sponsored ArticleIt’s not often that something truly new is invented that dramatically changes the cleaning process, so when ADVAP introduced its Ladybug with the patented TANCS® dry steam vapor disinfecting system 10 years ago, we knew we had a revolutionary product but that we also had a responsibility to educate cleaning professionals and consumers. After all, military-invented bleach, ammonia, and similar chemical solutions had been the standard for generations, certainly long enough for them to create a space in our memories as the “smell of clean.”

But as science often does, it shows us better, safer, healthier, easier, and faster ways to accomplish the tasks that are integral to our lives. The ADVAP Ladybug with TANCS® is

  • Better at penetrating soils and microbial films, resulting in a truer clean
  • Safer to skin, eyes, nostrils and lungs than high-VOC chemical cleaners – even the “green,” “natural,” and “organic” ones with scents that re-contaminate indoor air
  • Healthier because more soil and microorganisms are removed and there are no chemicals in use to leave residues behind accidentally
  • Easier to use than the old standard “spray-and-wipe” method of cleaning, which requires multiples: spray, dwell, wipe, rinse, dry and sometimes repeat
  • Faster to disinfect in 2-7 seconds as opposed to 2-10 minutes for most disinfectants – plus the dry steam vapor cleans at the same time, reducing 2 steps (cleaning then disinfecting) into one.

And the best news is that you can win a FREE Ladybug 2300 with TANCS® in our upcoming photo contest and giveaway!

The photo submissions and voting starts March 29, but you’ll want to start getting your Ladybug out and practicing your before-and-after routine. You never know when that great contrast situation – you know, the really gross ones that don’t look that gross at first – are going to show up in your schedule. And you’ll want a good collection of before-and-afters to choose from as your final submission to the contest:

The Ladybug before-and-after submission with the most votes wins 1 ADVAP Ladybug 2300.

And a second ADVAP Ladybug 2300 will be awarded in a drawing from among the votes – and ANYONE can vote, not just Ladybug owners!

Here’s what you can do to get yourself ready to submit the best Ladybug before-and-after photo on March 29th:

Practice Your Photos

To ensure that you capture clear, well-lit photos in a high resolution format, let’s make sure your camera settings are ready. Whether you are using a digital camera or the camera in your smart phone or tablet, navigate to the settings and adjust for these levels:

  • Flash: Auto
  • Filter: None

Oh, and one more thing: to set the scale of the area or fixture select a standard sized item like a yard stick for large areas of flooring or a 12-inch or 6-inch ruler for smaller areas or fixtures like faucets. Other universally sized items that may be used to show scale include

  • Unsharpened pencil
  • Dollar bill or quarter
  • Battery (with the size visible in the photograph)
  • Hand

This will also help you to focus your photograph in nearly the same way for both the before and the after shots.

You want to take at three different shots of the soiled area and later the same cleaned area with your camera/phone:

Physically close up – zoomed all the way out so that every detail appears clearly in the photograph

  1. Physically farther away – to give perspective of the soiled area within the larger space
  2. About halfway in between those two shots – this shot often includes enough soiling detail and spatial awareness for a great contrast in the after photograph

Prepare Your Clients

If you don’t already have a photo release written into your standard service agreement, this may be the time for you to add and implement that.

And if you’re not ready for that step, gain permission from clients before taking photos to take photos and use them for marketing purposes using a simple 1-page release like this one.

Find Your Scene

Arguably, the trickiest part of any before-and-after photo contest is finding the best “before” situation, especially when you don’t always know what you’re walking into.

In general, the places that get the most visually dirty and go neglected for the longest times are “wet” places:

  • Bathrooms – especially kids’ bathrooms
  • Kitchen sinks
  • Exterior door frames
  • Sliding door tracks

Also check your add-on cleaning items like

  • Refrigerator door handles, grills, and especially the seal around the door
  • Oven interior
  • Outdoor grill
  • Deck or porch floor
  • Grout

Get more great ideas here.

Start searching for your best scene today by taking before photos of all of these common areas, even if they don’t look terrible. Particularly in the case of grout, you never really know if it’s supposed to be white or a surprising color instead of that dingy dark grey.

Prepare Your Before-and-After Photo Submission

Use a free photo app on your smart phone or table to create your before-and-after photo. We’ve found these to be widely adopted for just this kind of use, easy to use, and available free from iTunes and GooglePlay:

  • Photo Grid
  • Pic Collage
  • Before After Collages

And don’t forget to compose a great caption for your photo.

Be sure to follow Advanced Vapor Technologies and Cleaning Business Today on Facebook as we embark on a 2-month education series on the benefits of adopting the Ladybug with TANCS® to maintain a healthy home for yourself and for your cleaning clients.

Connect with Rick Hoverson on LinkedIn.

Connect with Randy Zielsdorf on LinkedIn.

Originally published February 26, 2016 at CleaningBusinessToday.com.

Posted in Business Articles, Housekeeping, Small Business Tips

12 Cleaning Upsells for 12 Months

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

UpsellingUpselling to your current customers is easier, less expensive and more profitable than relying only on new customers to raise your revenue. Part 1 of 2.

Pull out your annual marketing plan – if you have one. Take a look at the promotions you’ve slotted in for each month because, let’s face it, most promotions line up with the primary holiday each month.

Who’s your target consumer for those promotions? I’m betting you’ve designed your monthly promotions to get new clients on your schedule and even include in fine print at the bottom of the email, postcard, or flyer “New clients only” or First-time clients only.

I challenge you to add a second, concurrent promotion of either an upsell (add-on to an existing cleaning appointment) or cross-sell (add-on or big enough to be a separate appointment) specifically designed to entice your current clients to buy more from you. And I’ll even make it easy with 12 great upselling promotions you can deliver via email or leave behind with your current clients.

January: Refrigerator Cleaning Add-on

Once the New Year celebrations have ended, your clients have refrigerators that have weathered three food-based holidays in three months, and that refrigerator is pretty icky with spills and smells. A simple company magnet with your number makes a great leave behind – especially when it’s holding a simple note with the refrigerator cleaning rate right on the refrigerator.

February: Loyalty (or Frequency) Upgrade

Make use of the “love” theme in the air to focus a campaign on your happiest clients who haven’t yet committed to weekly or bi-weekly service by confirming a primary cleaner or team to take care of them when they upgrade their service. Remember to add a little fine print to allow for a proxy cleaner or team to occasionally visit to allow the primary team deserved time off.

March: Window Cleaning Add-on or Cross-sell

Consider a play on the Luck o’ the Irish and a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for a window cleaning cross-sell. If you can offer only interior window cleaning, this promotion works well as an add-on to an existing appointment. But if you can offer exterior window cleaning (or whole house pressure washing), often a separate appointment is useful. Add a simple coin chocolate to a printed leave-behind for a bit of whimsy.

April: Spring Organizing Add-on or Cross-sell

As you’re pitching traditional spring cleaning to get new clients, your maintenance routine makes that unnecessary for your regulars. But often by this time of the year, especially at tax time, clutter presents more of a challenge than dirt. If you haven’t offered organizing before, consider starting small with linen closet, pantry, and toy organizing since those are usually focused, contained spaces that can be unloaded, sorted, and reloaded within a few hours.

May: Porch Cleaning Cross-sell

By May, most of the spring pollens around the country have completed their yellow dusting and left porches unusable – at least until someone hoses them down. Keep tabs on the visible pollen activity in your local area and time this cross-sell with enticements of favored outdoor spring/summer nights, but only after the porch or deck has been de-pollened.

Tip: This is a great opportunity to partner with a local pressure washer in a cross promotion, gaining you access to his/her clientele and broadening your reach.

June: Kids’ Room Deep Clean Up-sell

School’s out and many kids get to spend a week at a sleep-away camp during the summer. This can be a great opportunity for parents to have you come in to specifically deep clean just one room – every nook and cranny and even the scariest place on earth – under a kid’s bed. And it’ll probably take you long enough to include laundry service for this highly unique service.

Naturally, any one of these upsells and cross-sells can be re-framed as a “new clients only” promotion, but it’s nice to be able to make your customers feel special when they see that some services are only available to them.

And remember, just because you’re featuring or promoting a particular service doesn’t mean you have to offer a deal or discount. The awareness factor alone is often enough to drive conversions.

Oh, you noticed that that’s only six months, did you? Check back frequently at CleaningBusinessToday.com for the second installment. Type “upsell” in the search bar to see what other resources are available.

CeCe Mikell is the Editor-in-Chief for CleaningBusinessToday.com, coming to the cleaning industry from a 15-year career as a college professor of communication and business. She also consults with cleaning business owners on business development projects.

Originally published on February 17, 2016 at CleaningBusinessToday.com.
Posted in Business Articles, Content Marketing, Housekeeping, Small Business Tips

Top 4 Active Facebook Groups for Building a Better Maid Service

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

Facebook networking pictureProfessional discussion groups jump from LinkedIn to Facebook.

In the past year, you may have observed the slow death of professional discussion groups on LinkedIn; though a few continue to receive a steady flow of new discussions started, the conversations are often a rehash of old ones.

So where have all of the veteran CBOs gone to keep their edge? Why, to Facebook, of course, where the posts and discussions and ideas flow freer and faster. No longer is Facebook simply the realm of our “social” lives but, rather, is now the critical intersection of all facets of life.

Want to check for yourself? You can find out pretty easily which of the LinkedIn groups you’ve joined over the years are actually active. In preparing this article, I check out my own groups and found only 8 active discussions (active = has at least 1 comment in the last 24 hours) out of 45 groups; in fact only 8 of those groups had a new discussion posted in the last week. Four were in ISSA and two were in ARCSI, so I’m definitely staying in those groups.

To check on your Facebook groups, navigate to your groups menu on the left side of your Facebook News Feed; make sure you are scrolled all the way to the top of the page. Hover to the right of the word Groups and click on More. Now you’re looking at a complete list of the Facebook groups you’ve joined or been added to. You can see the currently active one – with recent notifications you haven’t looked at yet – by the number to the right of each group name.

What we learned at CBT is that our Facebook group, CBT Cleaning Industry News is far more engaged than the exact same posts and probing questions to our LinkedIn group.

Toward helping you find your next amazing group to help you move your business forward, here are 4 of the most active and engaged Facebook groups with exclusive or very heavy emphasis on cleaning and maid services:

 

Groove Learning

Started by Rohan Gilkes, owner of MaidsInBlack.com as well as several SaaS platforms and subscription boxes

Closed Group: request to join and an admin will have to approve you. This group is highly focused on digitally automated customer interaction and employee management, and could be a good resource for those maid services adding or converting to online booking from traditional in-home or phone estimates.

Quality Driven

Started by Martha Woodward, owner of DustingDivas.com, and Maria Dorian, owner of WelcomeHomeCleaning.com as well as Quality Driven, an SaaS platform for maid services

Closed Group: request to join and an admin will have to approve you. This group is focused on the quality control and continuous improvement systems you need to ensure that the performance your technicians deliver meets/matches up with customer expectations so that both groups of people are more likely to stay with you.

The ZenMaid MasterMind (Exclusive)

Started by Amar Ghose, owner of Fast Friendly Spotless as well as ZenMaid, an SaaS platform for maid services

Closed Group: request to join and an admin will have to approve you. This group is focused on all aspects of starting up a cleaning or maid service – from how to post recruiting ads on free job sites to handling your first breakage claim.

Turnover. Help for Move In/Out Property Managers and Service Providers

Started by Kayla Storlid, owner of Kayla’s Custom Cleaning as well as turnoverapp, an SaaS platform for maid services

Closed Group: request to join and an admin will have to approve you. This group is focused on helping other cleaning services establish a profitable turn-clean process, whether as an annual division or as a seasonal project, such as with local college dorm and apartment turns before the start of term.

Keep in mind that nearly all online discussion groups – even those on Facebook – are started and operated by individuals who have a product or service to sell. Keep this in mind as you choose new groups to join. There are also a number of groups you can join when you purchase or subscribe to a particular technology or service; these groups are often “Secret,” so you won’t be able to search for them.

As always, what happens online, stays online – forever – in a digital format that someone can always get to no matter your privacy settings. Be social responsibly.
CeCe Mikell is the Editor-in-Chief for CleaningBusinessToday.com, coming to the cleaning industry from a 15-year career as a college professor of communication and business. She also consults with cleaning business owners on business development projects.

Originally published on January 27, 2016 at CleaningBusinessToday.com.

Posted in Business Articles, Housekeeping, Small Business Tips

10 Best Tips for Winning at College House Turn-Cleans

Posted on by singingaboutcooking

College move out cleaningCleaning business owners weigh in on how they make college dorm cleaning an annual revenue booster.

As fall term comes to a close, college students across the US are past mid-terms and looking forward to the final stretch before a nice, long vacation break before spring term. And as soon as spring term gets started, that’s when college maintenance departments go shopping for cleaning companies to contract for their annual student housing turn-cleans.

CleaningBusinessToday.com caught up with several CBOs who have turned this “down and dirty” job into an annual summer revenue booster, and here are their tips for getting the bid, preparing for the 48-hour to 1-week “Hell Week,” and surviving to look forward to doing it again the next year.

Kayla Storlid
Kayla’s Custom Cleaning
Madison, WI

Kayla’s Custom Cleaning, LLC has been doing large turnover projects for several years. This year we did over 140 units in 5 days. Each month we complete on average 10-30 units. The key to an effective turn-over is being prepared. You need to be organized! It is crucial to make sure you have enough sets of equipment, plenty of product, lots of extra people to help and a great manager. Your manager needs to have the ability to stay one step ahead of the team at all times and is capable of understanding where everyone is at in the completion process. We have developed an app to automate this process. It saves us a ton of time and money and allows me to manage the entire project remotely.

  1. The key to having a successful turnover is to under-promise and over-deliver. We find it very effective to have a checking team for every unit to ensure quality and make sure no units go missed.
  2. It is crucial that you over-staff and that you do not cut your staff too early in case you run into last minute additional units or several call-ins.
  3. If you keep organized and one step ahead of the game, you can make great additional revenue and your team has a lot of fun. The key to getting the job and not losing it is to never, ever miss a deadline!


Amy Wiggs King
2 Green Chicks
Norman, OK

This summer (2015) we did our first set of college dorm/apartment turns ahead of the campus opening for fall term students. I had several great CBOs to help me through it, and now that I’ve had some time to reflect on how it went this first year, three things jump out as having made the difference between breaking even (or losing money) and making good money with this special project:

1.      Be Detailed and Meticulous in Your Bidding

When bidding, ensure you include business references that can vouch for the great work you have done and can do for their business. You want to make certain the bid clearly explains if you will be using the client’s supplies and cleaning products/equipment or if you will be responsible for providing the products. Lastly it never hurts to ask if the company you are bidding for has other properties or campuses that need your services.

2.     Over-prepare with your Team

Forecasting how many teams you will need is crucial, as well as deciding how many people to have on each team and assigning them tasks. Having a huge “let’s do this meeting” beforehand really helps as well to set expectations and to answer questions. I made binders for each team that had FAQs to help them while out in the field, things such as “what to do if…,” contact phone numbers, map of apartment complex, checklists for notations (for communicating issues back to client), timesheets, etc. Also ensure you have plenty of supplies at hand for the job and that you have staff to help wash cloths, fill buckets, clean vacuums at the end of each day. And investing in less expensive lightweight vacuums is a good idea; they are much easier to lug up and down stairs – and there will be a lot of stairs!

3.     Over-communicate with Everyone

As in any special project job, communication with the client is crucial to ensure you do not have any issues at the end of the cleaning period; things are so chaotic, and it’s easy to lose track!  My Quality Manager and I had a sign off sheet that we used before we considered the unit “done.” We performed a walkthrough and checked for anything missed. Each night, we emailed updates to the client to provide status of what units were cleaned, what units had issues (broken blinds, needed new burner plates, etc.). I believe this communication is necessary for a smooth transition and to get payment!


Kyle Walker
Real World Services
Logan, OH

I start the marketing process for new college housing cleans at the beginning of every school year. If you think about it, this is really when the housing managers start looking for a new cleaning service, as they have just finished a turn season and know if they are going to be looking to hire a new service next year if they were not happy with the results the previous cleaning company provided them.

I also start marketing to them again in February, as most housing managers want to have a signed contract by the end of March or early April.

Our turn season lasts from April until the first week of September. We begin the hiring process in early March or as soon as we know we have a signed contract. In 2015, I hired an additional 40 staff members just to handle the cleaning of our 600 apartments during this short time frame.

Here are some tips for someone doing this for the first time:

  1. Over-hire by several FTEs.
  2. Always count on people not showing up and calling off sick when you have strict deadlines to meet. (NOTE: this is not specific to college/apartment turn cleans.)
  3. Provide your staff with all of the supplies and equipment to do their job well.
  4. Check in with each tech/team daily to make sure the cleaning list is correct before dispatching the job.

The reason we at Real World Services come out smelling like roses is because we are constantly communicating with our property managers both throughout the year and especially during the turn period to make sure things are going smoothly.

Originally published on November 4, 2015 at CleaningBusinessToday.com.