Have you ever wished your clients would stick around for 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years? What would it look like to have clients remain with you for 20 or even 40 years? In this episode, we talk about turning your clients into superfans.
A) Your goal should be to offer value so strong, it hurts your prospects or clients to turn you down. There are several things you can do:
Refer business to them before they do business with you. When we do our walkthroughs, I'm trying to figure out how I can make them money (e.g. who can I refer to them for their business revenue) or what resources I can provide for them before they even do business with us.
Open up your entire network. Maybe you see a need that you can fulfill. On the cleaning level, if I see they're purchasing toilet paper, paper towels, etc. from box stores I'll tell them they can probably save 50% by purchasing from a local supplier. Or as it applies to their business, I'll ask open-ended questions in our walkthrough and I'll dive into a pain point if revealed. If I can solve that pain point through my network, I'll make a referral.
Offer a loss leader. We'll offer free services in exchange for a sign contract, like a free deep clean, specialty floor work, etc. Or if they have multiple locations, I'll offer to clean the first at a reduced price and then charge our rate for the remaining. Only do this if you can get a profit on the backend.
Provide extra value that others don't provide. In this episode I talk about a school client with junk along their property. I paid 1-800-GOT-JUNK to come out and remove it for them, for free, in exchange for a signed contract. Pain point resolved and new client won.
Do a strategic alliance. Sit down with a client or prospect you like, know, and trust, and exchange leads, resources, help, etc. It'll strengthen that bond.
B) Show up to their location and/or call and do a joint walkthrough. It's our goal to do a walkthrough frequently within each location.
C) Treat your client's staff well. Send gift baskets. Or even do something as simple as dropping off bags of candy.
D) Send a quick 1 minute video to update your service, to tell them you appreciate them, etc. I referenced Goat Milk Stuff and their video campaign when you order with them. Super personal and each video is tailored to the order. They use Bonjoro, but you could use something as simple as your phone and your email.
E) Offer to test new equipment or a new service on them, for free. We'll use our clients as a test run on new offerings, solicit their input, and use their testimonial on future projects.
F) Always reach out to your clients before they reach out to you.
G) Get you clients involved in a community project.
Resouces mentioned in this episode:
Superfans by Pat Flynn My Clean Pivot - I offer tailored, trained coaching in a one-on-one setting through Zoom whereby we'll cover together topics important to you and your business. Let's face it: it's difficult to go at this alone. So if you feel frustrated or you're stuck on a plateau, let My Clean Pivot help get you over that hurdle. For more info, check out www.mycleanpivot.com.
This is episode 7 of 8 planned. If you have any questions you'd like to ask and have answered over the podcast, go to www.speakpipe.com/beyondthemop. If we have enough questions, we'll do a bonus episode at the end.
Have you ever wished your clients would stick around for 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years? What would it look like to have clients remain with you for 20 or even 40 years? In this episode, we talk about turning your clients into superfans.
A) Your goal should be to offer value so strong, it hurts your prospects or clients to turn you down. There are several things you can do:
Refer business to them before they do business with you. When we do our walkthroughs, I'm trying to figure out how I can make them money (e.g. who can I refer to them for their business revenue) or what resources I can provide for them before they even do business with us.
Open up your entire network. Maybe you see a need that you can fulfill. On the cleaning level, if I see they're purchasing toilet paper, paper towels, etc. from box stores I'll tell them they can probably save 50% by purchasing from a local supplier. Or as it applies to their business, I'll ask open-ended questions in our walkthrough and I'll dive into a pain point if revealed. If I can solve that pain point through my network, I'll make a referral.
Offer a loss leader. We'll offer free services in exchange for a sign contract, like a free deep clean, specialty floor work, etc. Or if they have multiple locations, I'll offer to clean the first at a reduced price and then charge our rate for the remaining. Only do this if you can get a profit on the backend.
Provide extra value that others don't provide. In this episode I talk about a school client with junk along their property. I paid 1-800-GOT-JUNK to come out and remove it for them, for free, in exchange for a signed contract. Pain point resolved and new client won.
Do a strategic alliance. Sit down with a client or prospect you like, know, and trust, and exchange leads, resources, help, etc. It'll strengthen that bond.
B) Show up to their location and/or call and do a joint walkthrough. It's our goal to do a walkthrough frequently within each location.
C) Treat your client's staff well. Send gift baskets. Or even do something as simple as dropping off bags of candy.
D) Send a quick 1 minute video to update your service, to tell them you appreciate them, etc. I referenced Goat Milk Stuff and their video campaign when you order with them. Super personal and each video is tailored to the order. They use Bonjoro, but you could use something as simple as your phone and your email.
E) Offer to test new equipment or a new service on them, for free. We'll use our clients as a test run on new offerings, solicit their input, and use their testimonial on future projects.
F) Always reach out to your clients before they reach out to you.
G) Get you clients involved in a community project.
Resouces mentioned in this episode:
Superfans by Pat Flynn My Clean Pivot - I offer tailored, trained coaching in a one-on-one setting through Zoom whereby we'll cover together topics important to you and your business. Let's face it: it's difficult to go at this alone. So if you feel frustrated or you're stuck on a plateau, let My Clean Pivot help get you over that hurdle. For more info, check out www.mycleanpivot.com.
This is episode 7 of 8 planned. If you have any questions you'd like to ask and have answered over the podcast, go to www.speakpipe.com/beyondthemop. If we have enough questions, we'll do a bonus episode at the end.
Unknown:
Have you ever wished your clients will stick around for next year, five years or even 10 years down the road? What would it look like to have clients be with you for the next 20 or even 40 years? In this episode, I'm gonna dive in deep about turning your clients into superfans. But first, I'm Mark Lineberry. With beyond the mop and with each episode, I offer a pro tip a guide or resource, something that can really help your business out. Well, let's face it, your business has grown, especially if you want to have 40 year old clients. You're trying to clone yourself, but you're having a tough go at it. cloning technology is just not where it needs to be in the year 2022. You're using some systems and processes they're well written down, maybe. But you get stepped that up. What do you do? Well, make your life 10 times easier with loom. Go check out www.us loom.com loom is a screen recording program that enables you to record video on proprietary platform that you can then share with others. How's this apply to your cleaning business? Well, you might have a multi step process like preparing a proposal or sending out certificates of insurance when requested. You can record your screen step by step with or without you and camera view to show one of your team members exactly what to do and how to do it. Well imagine this. Imagine if a beer truck ran over you tomorrow? Would your team continue your business without you? Could your team know what to do and how to do it? And would they even know what you did on the back end to run the company? Well, loom can record those processes on your screen and make hiring delegation automation and your company's processes that much easier. I use loom to record explainer videos and I'll embed those links within our processes. Whoever works with them particular role, they'll have a dedicated Google document that they can have. All they need to do is see the step by step instructions and then click on video links and see what to do by video on the screen. So another example says I also use loom in my coaching through my clean pivot. It's a great way for my clients to see what I do to accomplish a particular process. Go check out loom today use loom.com. Don't let your business die with that beer truck incident and looms great. They got paid version, they have a free version. I've used both I use paid but you can certainly get by with the free version and share it and I think you could even download a mp4 video format or whatever. And email the video around if you needed to. Really cool stuff. Really cool. So back to creating superfans. The reason I came up with this as thinking I did proposal recently. And the RFP for that proposal, they asked me to list some of our clients. And they asked for an average of how long we've been with our clients. And so I naturally had to sit down pull up spreadsheet and how many years we've been doing business with particular clients and I came up with an average, on average, we've been with our clients, over 10 years, on average of our 40 clients, 40 active clients 10 years on average. And some of our clients have been with us while our longest serving clients been with us for 44 years. So that inspired me to come up. Well, what was the secret sauce to keep them around 44 years. And I put together this list here I have several items of what we did to help that cultivate that client relationship and to keep them around that long. Well, first off, what is a superfan? I like what Pat Flynn defines it from Smart Passive Income and his book superfans. They'll follow you around, and your business and all that you do, and they'll evangelize for you. Definitely go check out that books in the show notes. And the concept of the cleaning industry, it means this. First and foremost, you're offering value so much it hurts them to turn you down. So if you were increasing the price, it would hurt them to turn you down. If you offered a proposal, and that price was a little hefty, and they didn't quite agree with it. Well, it would hurt them to turn you down. So there's different ways he could build that value into them. Remember, I talked about pricing the pricing episode, the goal is to create a perceived value. So there's a lot of things you could do here. Number one, you could refer business to them. So even though we do a walk through, we talk about cleaning, they show us what's going on. I'm trying to figure out my ways well, what can I do to provide value for them? How can I help their business grow. And I always offer that in a walkthrough. Another thing you could do is open up your business network right here are walking talking Rolodex of information. So if you walk to a school, maybe you know someone who's looking for private school, make that referral, right, or maybe they own a particular company, and you know, someone who could be a client for them, refer that person to help them grow. Now, another thing you could do is offer a loss leader, if there are multiple locations. For example, maybe it's a, let's say, it's a bank, and they have six local branches or what have you. Maybe it's a small town bank, well offer a lost leader on the first one, and then charge your premium on the remainder. They'll be loyal because you start working with them the first time around at a lower price. And then you could charge your regular price for a second or offer like a free deep cleaning or free disinfecting in turn in exchange for new contract. We do that all the time as well. You can also provide extra value that other people don't provide. years ago, we we did bid on school, and we end up winning the contract. Well, when we did the walk through it to school in the behind it, it's where you're asking where the dumpsters were at. And it behind the school. It's just filled with junk old desks, old tables will chairs they never throw it away. And so we offered them the value of hey, we'll pay for one 800 got junk, if you guys sign a contract, and we'll remove all this away for you. And they signed the contract. So we got the new contract just because we offered junk removal when our competitors went do it. Nothing you can do is do a strategic alliance in Episode Six I talked about that where you get sit down, and face to face over zoom with someone you like know and trust or in this case, a client or potential client and offer them value, offer them resources, offer them referrals, offer them whatever it takes to help their business grow, always figure out how can I help their business grow with outside of cleaning. Here's another thing, you can show up to their location, unannounced or even schedule a walkthrough. I did this recently with a church that we clean in rockville. I gave him a call Why didn't give him a call. We just showed up. We're on our way to another project to do a walk through we're early. We're happened driving by that location. It's like hey, let's just stop in and say hi. So we stopped in. We said hi. And the church secretary's face just lit up. And we had issues in the past in terms of quality. We gone through some staffing changes there. But when we showed up, it's like best friends together again, you know, we were just short getting each other hug or whatever. But we're just helping them out trying to figure out what do they need to? Or what do we need to do to improve our service to them? How can we make them a better fan of our service? And she gave us some pointers we hadn't considered before. If we did, we thought we're doing and it turns out we weren't doing them. So we're able to make corrections just because we showed up on a whim. Another thing you could do is treat your client staff very well. I love doing this. I love sending out gift baskets on a whim to our clients. I love showing up with something simple. I have one church client we'd show up. Their favorite thing to eat was peanut m&ms. That's all it was. I didn't have to bring in fancy wine or this or that. I just showed up with a few bags of peanut m&ms individual serving size they keep it their desk or keep it sealed or put into or whatever. And is really cool. Their face lit up. They loved it. And that client paid regularly month after month after month, early every single time because we treated the church Secretary right we treated their accountant right. We made sure everything's good. Another thing you could do this is really cool. This is a shout out to a buddy of mine that I used to mastermind with he owns a co owns a company called goat milk stuff. So they make everything out of goat milk. So like lotions, shampoo, so everything. It's really cool the company that they're at, they have way way what they do in their sales process. When you go to place an order with them. They'll do a quick one minute video saying hey, thank you welcome aboard and done by all the team members or their family members that that's working in their business. It's so cool how they draw everyone in another example I'm in a mastermind called iron sharpens iron and the facilitator that mastermind Aaron Walker, he'll send out cards like birthday cards and anniversary cards on cue each and every time to each and every one of us. And I can't imagine all the work they're doing. They also hire VAs to do like birthday messages for people right on Facebook. Really cool. Here's another thing you could do to create super fans offer to test new equipment or new services on them for free. You know, for example, maybe you want to experiment with a new for machine, right offer to use them as a guinea pig on their property for free. As long as you don't ruin anything. You got to make sure you don't do that, then you'll create a anti superfan, but you wanted to go in, just serve them offer a free service. We did this for disinfecting all the time. They'll say, Hey, we got a new piece of equipment here. Can we try this new equipment will disinfect for free won't cost you a penny. And they'll say yes, every single time. So it gives you a chance to get feedback from them about the quality of your service, and gives you a chance to experiment yourself but also when super friendly super fans at the same time Argos Superfriends again and should go without saying. If there's a complaint, if there's an issue, reach out to them right away, reach out to them before they reach out to you. Right because it shows you care more than they care about their own service or their own building or what have you. So be that triggered and turn them into superfans by treating them right immediately. And then also get your clients involved into a community project like a cleanup or fundraising. I mentioned this, I believe an episode or two ago where I talked about in the marketing one, where we talked about universal we hosted a fundraising day where we brought in $12,000 from all of our clients and prospective clients $12,000 And we donated all the charity. In fact, we're doing that again. this coming May. Yeah, maybe next month, no June. We're doing it in June. So we're doing this big fundraising thing within the community. We're doing a repeat, we're looking to raise about $14,000 to charity, that is our goal. And finally, above all in everything. Consistency is key. Because you could do one of these things and create a superfan. But if you don't follow up with them, if you're not following up with complaints, if you're providing a crappy service, well, all that work is for naught, they're gonna focus on the bad over to good. So consistency is key, making sure you treat them right and help them grow. If you're looking for more information about this topic, by the way, I'll be speaking in Chicago weekend or a week of May 25 and 26th. And cleaning and cocktails live event hosted by Ricky regulat own team. And my talk is three strategies in turning your clients into superfans. If you're up in Chicago area happened be around there, definitely go check out that conference I went last fall. It's really cool. It's really fun. He puts on a well planned event. So that's all I have for you. This episode was brought to you by my clean pivot. I do coaching coaching within the cleaning business. So whatever issue you have challenges, you need full cup you need resources come to the table. I do one on one coaching fact your first session is absolutely free, no obligation to buy or anything like that. I just want to get to know you and your business. For more information, you can go to my clean pivot.com. Well, if you liked this episode, if you liked the content, I would appreciate if you rated review and even share this episode with your friends. And if you felt this was worthy of five star, definitely let us know as well. You could find us on all the platforms on Apple podcast, Spotify, Google, wherever you listen to this podcast. Thank you again for listening. And as a reminder before I forget, don't forget, if you have any questions and you'd like to ask a question and have this recorded and presented as a podcast episode, I'll answer it on the air. Go to www.speakpipe.com backslash beyond the mop. You can record a quick 92nd or less audio, nothing to install on your computer or anything like that. It'll record it'll send it straight to me and then I'll present it in a future episode. And again, this was episode seven of eight plan. Maybe I'll do one more beyond as a bonus and thank you for listening. I appreciate you guys.