One of the Most Profitable Businesses to Own

How do you start a home cleaningservice?

Now how do you start a home cleaningservice? You do it one job at a time.People are rightly fussy about who theylet in their homes. Once you earnsomeones trust, word of mouth completelytakes over and it won't be long beforeyou'll have to turn down jobs.

The key to it is going overboard to pleaseyou clients, and go beyond even what youpromised to make them happy. It's theultimate customer service job to go intosomeones home and clean it, but onceyou're in and you please the customer,you pretty much have them for life.

Think of why that is. How many times would you want to go through the hiring process of havingsomeone come into your home? You would have to build trust all over again, and there's stressinvolved, especially if the person is cleaning while you're gone.

So if you do a great job and win someone's trust. Other than personal tragedy, you have a customerfor as long as you want to.

Put everything on paper

One thing thing about cleaning someone's house, if you're not willing to bend over backwards toreasonably satisfy them, don't bother doing it. Remember, these are people's homes, and they canafford to pay you to do it, so rightly expect a great job to be done.

With that in mind though, the other thing you must do to manage that reality, is to put everythingthe client wants you to do in writing. There's no reason they wouldn't do that unless they purposelywant to take advantage of you.

Assuming they're people of integrity and honesty, it still needs to be done because the human mindcan very easily forget the terms of a deal, as there are so many details to consider.

Good clients can be lost if you don't spell out the terms of the deal specifically. In other words, youmust live and act like a professional, and should consider yourself as such.

Amateurs just throw things out there without any safety measures in place. You could either forget

the terms of the deal or your client could. If that happens, either or both could think someone istrying to screw the other, when in fact it was just miscommunication and poor handling of the dealupfront. Get everything in writing! Period!

Another benefit of that is when a client asks for something different to be done, you can confidentlysay to them you'll do it at no extra cost for one time, or renegotiate the contract if it's somethingsignificant.

Don't underestimate what it'll take to do something extra, and make sure if you offer it as good willand a sweetener, that they understand it's a one time deal.

Customer satisfaction key house cleaning services growth

Once you get your house cleaning service off the ground - even if it's one client - you make surethey're completely satisfied with you work, and from there ask them if they would feel comfortable ifyou used them as a reference. Almost always the answer is yes.

The next step will be the key to a house cleaning services business' growth and success: you ask theexisting client for leads to friends or others that may like to use your very good services.

People that can afford a cleaning service move in certain circles, and these circles are somewhatclosed. Once you get your foot in the door to clean someones house, you can just about relax for life,if that's what you want to do for the rest of it, as there's constant communication about the variousservices used by people, and word quickly gets around.

These types of references are worth their weight in gold, and will open up enormous doors for you.

Should you grow?

Should you expand? It only depends on you and your goals. Like I said, a house cleaning service isdifficult to get into, in the sense of getting your first client (that's mostly dependent upon yourconnections though), but once you're in, the sky's the limit.

While all successful business built primarily by word of mouth, house cleaning services are more sothan most others, because of the element of trust in trusting someone to come into your home, andusually clean it when they're not there. That is the great impetus behind a successful house cleaningcompany, and as long as the house cleaning prices are done correctly, you've got a great thing goingfor life if you choose to.

Things to consider before expanding house cleaning services business

One other thing to decide before you start hunting up house cleaning clients, is to determine if youwant a lot of jobs or just a few. You may have to start off with smaller jobs and build up, but you cankeep the strategy in mind as you go forward.

For example, house cleaning prices by the hour would be higher for someone that wanted you tocome by once a week, than someone that had you come for an entire day a week. It's like buyingsomething from a wholesale. The more you buy the better discount you get. So it should be with yourhome cleaning service also.

An expense to take into account is the time and travel you'll need to go to jobs if they're scattered

around your area. That would determine your prices, and is part of the reason you need to decide ifyou would rather land several larger jobs than numerous smaller ones.

Of course there's the strength of having a lot of clients because if a couple of clients decide to stopusing you or move out of town, etc., you wouldn't absorb too much pain and could easily get a coupleof more.

If you have larger clients, you could lose one and maybe lose 20 percent of your income if you werecleaning their homes for an entire day.

So those are the factors you need to weigh before getting your feet wet.

Can you grow your house cleaning business?

Can you grow your house cleaning services business? Absolutely. Again, it depends on your personaland professional goals.

When I say grow you house cleaning company, I mean by that that you get into other things beyondhome cleaning itself. You can stay in home cleaning within what I mentioned above, and have a solidincome for as long as you want.

Sometimes people like to go beyond that and try a few different things because of wanting gettingout of a routine, or maybe landing some lucrative contracts.

One way I did this was to get into some carpet cleaning. If you have a vehicle that could carry themachine, you're in business, as you wouldn't need to take drastic measures or pay high prices for avehicle to do that.

Probably a better route to take would be to look into office cleaning, which is relatively easy, notmuch different than a home, and really no learning curve.

The downside there is you'll have to change your hours to early nights usually, and so unless you'reinclined to, or need to do that, you may need to think that through.

Lay a solid foundation and you can take it where you want

The point is once you've laid the foundation of a house cleaning service, it's not hard at all to expandinto other areas if that's what you want to do. Just realize that while cleaning is cleaning, there areother factors to consider when making a move into other cleaning areas. Make sure you understandwhat they are before taking the plunge.

So there you have it. One of the most profitable businesses you can start and own, and you neverhave to go through the pain of hiring an employee if you choose not to, and all the paper work andheadaches that come with it.

You can make a great living, have a lot of tax deductions, and guide your life in the direction youwant it to go. You can't ask for much more than that.