You’re losing so much money by not retaining your existing client base. Every business owner knows that the bulk of their profit comes from recurring clients and repeat bookings. Yet, many of them fail to utilize it to increase their cleaning business revenue. In this article, you’ll learn 5 actionable steps to convert one-time cleanings into recurring clients so that you save more time and make more money.
But before we dive into that, let’s quickly go over the basics.
The Basics
There only are two reasons why a client will not book your cleaning services again. Either they don’t need it, or you didn’t meet their expectations.
You can’t control the first factor. If they don’t need your services, they don’t need your services. As simple as that. However, you CAN control the second factor, and that’s where the basics come in. Without a strong foundation, the tips we are about to share are only as useful as an umbrella on a sunny day. So, make sure your basics are on point.
- Find out your client’s needs – Different clients have different needs. For example, if your client is the owner of an Airbnb property, they are more likely to book your cleaning services again, compared to someone who is booking your services for a birthday party or an event, in which case, it’s more likely to be a one–time booking.
- Set the expectations right from the start – You must talk with the client and find out what they are expecting from you and what you can actually deliver. This will help you set their expectations right from that start.
- Overdeliver – You know what the clients’ needs are, and you have set the right expectation. Now, it’s time to deliver on your promises. But if you want to leave a long-lasting impression on your clients and want to make the process of converting them into recurring clients easier, make sure you do something extra. It could be anything, depending on your business and how you operate.
Now that we know the basics, let’s get to the real meat of this article. Here are the 5 actionable steps to convert one-time cleanings into recurring clients:
Follow Up
We know it sounds obvious. Because it is. Yet, so many people fail to do this. No matter what, make it a point to follow up with every client you have worked with. Whether they made it clear that it’s a one-time booking or not, your job is to follow up without making any assumptions.
But there is a right way to do this and a wrong way. The wrong way is to follow up with a client after a week or month of the initial cleaning. You’ll lose them if you wait that long.
The right way to go about it is to follow up the very next day and ask for their feedback. Ask if they are satisfied with your services. If you get a positive response, continue with your pitch and offer them special offers and discounts if they book weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly cleanings, which brings us to the next point – Loyalty Programs.
Loyalty Programs
Offer a wide range of plans for your clients. Make it so that the more frequently they book your cleaning services, the more discounts they get.
You can go one-step further and offer additional features with different plans, like VIP maids, discounts on your other products or services, referral programs, and much more.
Email or SMS Marketing
Email or SMS marketing is one of the best ways to stay on top of your clients’ minds. With the help of this, you’ll sometimes close clients months after the initial cleaning. What email or SMS marketing does is it allows you to follow up with your client on a weekly or monthly basis without annoying them with phone calls.
As for what to send them, it depends. Generally, you would send periodic discounts, offers and coupon codes. But sometimes, you would also send an email or SMS wishing them Christmas and Thanksgiving. It’s a part of your branding, and it helps you stand out. Plus, these are also times when they may need your services again.
Expand your Scope of Services
Sometimes, all you need to do to convert a one-time cleaning into a recurring client is expand the scope of services you provide. Ask yourself what other services your potential clients may need that they have to hire someone else for? And can you add that service to your package?
Your clients may need pest control services along with cleaning services or vice versa. You can partner up with a local pest control company and expand your scope of services. You can also partner up with an event management company to upsell the cleaning services.
Bottom line – there are many ways to expand your scope of services. You just have to get creative and look for the right opportunities.
Fill your Cancelation Slots
Other than the regular follow-up that we talked about, you can also create a separate database of clients that you think might need your services in the future.
Now, what you do with this is whenever you have a canceled slot, you call each and every one of the clients from that database to see if they need a cleaning service. You might wanna check out our guide to closing phone sales to increase your odds of converting.
You’ll be surprised to see how often and easy it is to fill a canceled slot with this method. Though this might not help you convert these clients into recurring clients, it’s still a great way to get repeat bookings.
Check out Maidily, top-rated scheduling software for cleaning businesses that allows you to automate all your processes, including customer communication, online bookings, job management and calendar functions.
Final Thoughts
One of the major factors of making your cleaning business a success is customer retention. Sure, it’s still important to close as many new clients as possible but converting your one-time cleanings into recurring clients is where the gold lies. Make sure you apply a few or, even better, all of these in your business practices to see results.
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