WCBO Issue 1

ISSUE #1

Pro Window

Cleaning Spotlight pg. 6

MarketingWith Kevin Dubrosky pg. 10

On The RoadWCR Takes You On Tour pg. 28

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06 Pro Window Cleaning Spotlight09 How I Roll10 Marketing14 Leadership15 In The Field16 Manage

17 Sales18 Money19 New Products20 Tech21 Web24 Manufacturer Spotlight

27 Thinking Outside The Bucket28 On The Road29 Safety31 The Hard Numbers34 Fun

WWW.WINDOWCLEANINGBUSINESSOWNER.COM

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27 28 29

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Table of Contents

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31

4 www.windowcleaningbusinessowner.comFall 2010

Alex Lambrinides

Alex has been in the window cleaning business for over 10 years, and not to mention one of the owners of Shop WCR on

the web.

Steve Stevens

Steve Stevens, owner of Sonlight Window Cleaning. Steve shares his insights as a window cleaning

business owner.

Doug MacDonald

Doug MacDonald works on improving SEO for many window

cleaners websites on-line. He can help you get on page 1 of

Google too!

In cahoots with Window Cleaning Resource

So we decided to start a magazine. A Window Cleaning magazine that focuses on the act of building a business and not the act of window cleaning, all from a window cleaner’s perspective. When I started my window cleaning business 10 years ago, I found the act of cleaning windows to be very easy. It was all the business stuff that I got hung up on. Hopefully through this magazine I will be able to help you learn from my mistakes and get right to making money.

The Window Cleaning business has changed quite a bit over the past couple of years. We have been able to cover the changes on our website, but we wanted to get it into the hands of the window cleaners who don’t have a chance to log in everyday. We intend for this magazine to be an extension of “Window Clean-ing Resource” but different. WCBO will have exclusive articles, information, and content not available on our website. I am also happy to say WCBO is the only for window cleaners by window cleaners publication.

This is window cleaning business owner magazine.

Chris LambrinidesEditor

Contributors

Editors Note 0

5www.windowcleaningbusinessowner.com Fall 2010

Kevin Dubrosky

Kevin Dubrosky is a Professional Window Cleaning Marketing Consultant, and is widely known as the WindowCleaning Business Coach.

Sean Dolan

Sean Dolan is All County Window Cleaning’s All Star

when it comes to sales. He has brought thousands of new

accounts to All County.

Tony Evans

Tony Evans, also known as Mr. Squeegee, is no stranger to win-dow cleaning. He owns his own business, A New View Window Cleaning out of Washington, IA.

Pro Window Cleaning Spotlight

We are talking to Tory today @ 5 am as he crosses the border into work. He says it takes any where from 10 minutes to 3 hours to get across the border each day. During our conversation, horns are beeping in the background and people are yelling. Tory has an interesting story as he is an American citizen who lives in Tijuana and crosses the border every morning to work in San Diego

WCR – Why did you decide to move to Mexico?Tory - I had to, my wife is a Mexican citizen, and she cannot cross into the United States yet. She ended up being denied citizenship, so I moved to Mexico with her.

WCR – How long have you been in the window cleaning business?Tory – About 6 years now. The dream came alive in 2005.

WCR – How did you get into the Window Cleaning business?Tory – I was working as a roofer in Ontario, California, but the money just wasn’t there. I ended up moving to Mexico with my wife and look-ing for different jobs in San Diego. I was only finding work 3 – 4 days a week for $10 an hour. I heard through a friend about a window cleaning company that was hiring in the area and they started at $15 an hour.

WCR – That’s a pretty good starting wage.Tory – Yeah it was, I really liked the job and worked hard at it. I worked up to $25 an hour in a short time. I put my time in and made advancements within the company quickly. But the thing about this company was that you had to get your own insurance (general li-

ability) before I was even allowed to pick up a squeegee, and mind you this was on my small starting salary. I had to buy my own ladder and tools as well. The whole thing ended up costing me about 2 grand before I even started working. Then paychecks were held back a couple of weeks. I lived off Top Ramen for about 2 months before I saw my money recouped. Basically, we were treated like sub contractors even though we weren’t. It forced me to come up with a company name and form a real company. About a year and a half later the economy went south, and I started to lose work. My hours started getting cut a little bit each week. But at the same time I was picking up more and more side work. Eventually I decided to go out on my own since I already had the tools, company name and insurance.

“It really helped catapult my business to a whole new level.

Everything changed...”

WCR – That’s cool Tory, great story!Tory - Yea I’m happy with it. Shortly after that I discovered WCR, and it really helped catapult my business to a whole new level. Every-thing changed, I was instantly able to network with window cleaners all over the world as well as find a bunch of new Window Cleaning friends in the San Diego area.

WCR- So is the company you started with still around?Tory- Oh yeah.

WCR- Do you guys ever compete on bids or anything?Tory- Nope they are in a whole other field. They work mainly with builders and construction companies. I’m not into that type of work, yet.

WCR – What type of work are you doing? Residential, commercial, high rise?Tory – At first it was 90% residential and 10% commercial, meaning a couple of little store fronts. During that first winter I was starving! Residential hit the wall, and I was literally waiting by my mailbox daily

5 a.m. Interview with Salvatore Marino

Look for access to Salvatore’s TV interview at the end of this article.

STATS

Name- Salvatore Marinolocation- LAAge- 38occupation- window cleaner


daily for my handful of little store fronts’ checks to come in. I knew I needed a change and turned things around. I started concentrating on low rise commercial and today we are about 80% commercial and 20% residential. I have a few high rise buildings in the mix.

WCR – How are you acquiring this mid-rise commercial work?Tory – Primarily through my website, some referrals but not too many.

WCR – No advertising? Fliers, direct mail, phone books?Tory- I’ve dabbled in it a little bit, but for the most part I have just concentrated on my website. I did just purchase a mailing list so I will be putting together a campaign in the near future.

WCR – Do you like the high-rise work?Tory – Oh yeah absolutely I love it. I am excited to get further into it. I have a friend Bobby who’s been training me. I work with him as much as I can to get properly trained. Safety is paramount, so I am taking my time with it and learning everything the proper way.

WCR – Last time I was in San Diego it was almost 80 degrees in the middle of the winter. Do you guys work year round or is it seasonal?Tory – Usually we work year round, it does drop off occasionally. If there is even the slightest chance of precipitation, cancellations pop up all over the place. January, February, and March are usually our slowest months.

WCR – We ship a ton of orders to San Diego, there must be hun-dreds of window cleaners there. How many competitors do you think you have?Tory – I have never counted but I would guess over 200 easily.

WCR – What’s your service area? How far will you travel for work?Tory – We will work to about 50 miles out from the border.

WCR – How many days a week to you work?Tory – 6 maybe 7, it depends. That’s not always squeegee time; I spend a lot of my time running around doing estimates. Then that could also be office work, accounts payable, etc.

WCR – Do you have any employees?Tory – Yep, I have a couple now, I’ve had up to 3 at times. I am look-ing to bring someone else on now.

WCR – They live in San Diego I’m assuming?Tory – Yep, I e-mail them the work the night before and we meet up that morning.

WCR – That must be interesting to manage.Tory – Ha ha, yeah it can be.

WCR – I’m guessing they need to have a pick up truck or something?Tory – That certainly helps, I’ll provide all the tools.

“Get the E-Myth mastery book as quickly as you can, that will change everything...”

WCR – So what piece of advice would you give to someone looking to take their business to the next level?Tory – Get the E-Myth mastery book as quickly as you can, that will change everything. Prior to reading that book I was going through employees left and right. Now there is a system for everything and things run very smoothly. In the past I would blame employees for mistakes and things that went wrong. But the book taught me that it was really my fault. I needed to create a system to stop problems before they even started.

WCR – Where will you and Elite Window Cleaning be in 5 years?Tory – I see 5 upper management positions being filled. I want to have the company on autopilot, and double our revenue. I want to be able take myself completely out of the work, if I wanted to.

WCR – So are you ever going learn to speak Spanish since you live in Mexico?Tory – Ha ha I can get by a little bit. It just doesn’t sound good.


WCR – Have you ever cleaned a window in Mexico other than at your own house?Tory – I’ve cleaned a couple down here, never my own though. The windows down here are all horrible. Plus all the windows have bars on them. So it takes a couple hours to clean and scrape a handful of windows. There are no professional window cleaners down here. Someone could make a killing if they set up shop. As an American I am not legally allowed to work down here, so I stay away from it.

WCR - What don’t you like about Window Cleaning?

Tory – Storefront route work, I can’t stand it. It is way too cut throat.

WCR – What are your recommendations to a new window cleaner getting into the busi-ness?Tory – Read the E – Myth (it will change your life), partner up with local window clean-ers, read everything you can on Window Cleaning Resource, and most importantly work harder than you have ever worked before.

WCR – Thanks for your time today Tory.Tory – Not a problem Chris, have a great

day.

Note: Right after we finished this interview, Tory and his company were featured on the Fox 5 morning show. You can watch his video segments on Window Cleaning Resource.com


Our sources at 5 Star Window Care out of the Phoenix, Arizona, area have given us the inside scoop on their fully loaded window cleaning and pressure washing rig.

Let’s drop the ramp and get a look inside at what Curt from 5 Star has done to make this every day trailer stand apart from the rest and keep him and his crew cleaning efficiently and effectively. 5 Star has designed a multi-functional fully enclosed trailer completely ready and able to tackle any job. Their rig is far from stock, boasting electricity and the capability to recharge their 5 stage water purification system while cruising from job to job.

Let’s move into what Curt has done with his water purification

system, turning it from a mobile battery-operated, two pole running, street-legal system into a water purifying monster! When the trailer is away from a power source or it needs to conserve power, the team can switch to battery operation. We all know this will not allow the system to produce a ton of water, but it will keep them afloat and working in the field. When the guys need to kick it up a notch they can switch to full electric and boost their water production way up allowing them to run up to 4 water fed poles! The poles are fed from over a whopping 350’ of pure water hose housed within the trailer, neatly wound around custom mounted cox reels.

“Being prepared on the job site seems like ev-ery tradesman’s motto, but Curt really practices

what he preaches...”

Next our attention is turned to the pressure washer, a vital part of 5 Star’s business. The washer is neatly stored under one of the many custom built racks near the ramp of the trailer. It is easily wheeled down the ramp and away from the trailer. Curt has done quite the plumbing job with the 5 Star trailer. One hose reel is fitted with garden hose to connect the customer’s water source to the washer, then its high pressure lines the rest of the way from the washer to the wand. Always prepared, Curt makes sure to carry an extra pressure

How I Roll 0

Curt Kempton From 5 Star Window Care Talks About His Sweet Setup

Check out Curt’s new setup here!

Read more about Five Star Window Care here: http://5starwindowcare.com/about-us/pros/

washing gun and wands with him at all times.

Being prepared on the job site seems like every tradesman’s motto, but Curt really practices what he preaches. At a quick glance you can see that Curt utilizes every inch of his trailer. No space was wasted when his custom shelving was built throughout the entire trailer: every shelf is the right height and depth to maximize storage. To top it off, every shelf is sprayed with rugged pick-up truck bed liner. The spray-on bed liner makes everything stronger, more durable and water proof. This will help the trailer last longer, look better and make for a more efficient work environment. Tubing mounted to the ceiling safely holds the crew’s extension poles for storefront work. Housed

within the trailer, sitting on the custom shelving, is every window cleaning and screen cleaning/repairing tool the 5 Star crew needs to get through the rough Arizona days. Smaller ladders in the 2’ to 6’ range are stored inside the trailer to protect them from the elements and theft. The day to day consumables have their place in the trailer as well. New squeegee blades and cleaning solutions fill up their fair share of space here, as well as a multitude of other handy, yet seemingly out of the ordinary, tools. You need custom sewn microfi-ber dusting mittens? How about caution tape labeled in English and Spanish? Look no farther than Curt Kempton’s trailer.

By Alex Lambrinides


On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being amazing, and 1 being horrible, how would you rate your window-cleaning skill set?

Randy Herbert is a solid eight and a half.

He’s been cleaning windows since 2003, and his company - Grime Fighters LLC - operates in and around Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. It’s a beautiful part of the country. You can learn more about Grime Fighters at www.grimeoff.com.

Randy is a friendly, down-to-earth guy that regularly over-delivers on his company’s promises. Getting the job done is not a problem for Grime Fighters. Any house, any window, anytime, no problem. Not surprisingly, Grime Fighters enjoys an extremely loyal residential customer base.

The bigger challenge for Randy is the marketing stuff.

Whenever people take the plunge and actually use his services, they are delighted and completely satisfied. The harder part is making the phone ring. To line up new clients, and grow Grime Fighters a bit bigger, he decided to get some effective marketing materials out there in front of his target market.

Sound familiar?

Earlier this year, Randy asked for some input on a flier design that he had put together in Microsoft Word. In many ways his flier design was better than most. Take a look at figure 1 and decide for yourself. As you can see, it had a lot of good things going for it.But the question was: Could it be made even better? Before Randy tested it, we took a long look at whether or not we could make some tweaks to the design to increase the likelihood that the flier would perform well right out of the gate, and we came up with a few ideas for changes. We took the same price points, the same offer, and re-engineered the rest of it. The result is in figure 2.What changes can you identify?

Before

1. Customer-focused headline. The headline is the most important part of a flier design. If it doesn’t capture the attention of the recipient within a few seconds, the rest of the message is ignored. This head-line includes the attention-trapping word YOUR, which is very good, and doesn’t include the name of his company, which is also good.

2. Deadline-based offer. Fear is a powerful motivator, and since people make buying decisions primarily based on feelings, it’s important to remind them that they will miss out if they fail to act before the date provided. The reader will feel fear of loss, and that can motivate a purchase.

3. Clear minimum pricing shown. This weeds out the tire kickers, and lets prospects pre-qualify themselves before they call you, allowing you to focus your time and energy only on the people that can afford you, and are okay with your price. Your phone will ring less, but your closing rate will go through the roof. This flier design is more effective for including pricing.

“Telling people what to do is rude in real life...”

4. Clear call to action. Telling people what to do is rude in real life. That is, unless they’re working for you, or about to be run over by a truck. In a marketing piece it’s essential, because people need clear direction as to what they’re supposed to do next.

5. Company information at the bottom. No one cares who you are until they hear what you can do for them, when it comes to buying stuff. This is a common mistake, but this design didn’t fall for it. It kept the company name at the bottom, where it belongs.

Overall, this flier design actually had a lot of good things going for it. But the question was: Could it be made even better?

After

1. Attention-grabbing, customer-focused headline. We incorporated a more powerful attention-grabbing word that has been proven to arrest the reader: Attention. Attention is one of the power words that stops people in their tracks and makes them read your stuff.

2. Addition of a text box at the top of the page. This design element is sometimes referred to as a Johnson Box, and for some reason, it works better than fliers that don’t have it. Might as well play the averages, right? As you can see, the Johnson box summarizes the content of the message, and packages it in a bite-sized format.

3. Addition of benefit-focused statements, subheadings. Citing that you carry 2 million dollars of liability coverage is explaining a feature of your window cleaning services. Explaining that it provides you with “peace of mind, so that you can sleep at night and not worry”, is focusing on the benefits instead. Train yourself to only focus on benefits.

4. Addition of “you” pronouns. When it comes to purchase decisions,

Marketing

A Flier Success Story


Figure 1


‘

Figure 2


consumers don’t care about your company; they only care about what you can do for them. They didn’t wake up this morning, hoping to learn about you. They care about how you can help them solve their problems. So focus on them. Did you notice how many times the words “you”, “your”, “yours”, “yourself” and “you’ve” are used? Answer: 29. Not to mention all the instances of the word “my” in the sequence at the bottom of the page.

“Unfortunately, people have reason to be terrified of being ripped off...”

5. Addition of guarantee. Unfortunately, people have reason to be terrified of being ripped off. There are disreputable window cleaning companies out there that will charge for work not completed, quote one price and bill another, or just plain not stand behind shoddy workmanship. The homeowners receiving your window-cleaning flier need to know they can try out your services risk-free. You remove the risk with a no-strings-attached guarantee like this one.

6. Multiplied calls to action. The more you can repeat what action the reader is supposed to take, without annoying them, the more effective your flier design will be. The mere exposure effect will make your calls to action sink in a bit more, and increase the likelihood that the reader picks up the phone and gives you a call. Several of these calls to action are in the form of embedded commands, as you can see.

7. Addition of coupon-look dashed lines. Why do these work? Who knows? Maybe because everyone everywhere wants to feel like they got a deal? All that matters is that they do work. When you use coupon-look dashed lines on your next flier design (did you like that embedded command?), make sure that they are big and bold dashes, not thin and dainty ones. Marketing tests have proven that the big and bold dashes work better.

8. Addition of YES sequence. Yes, you love cheese. Yes, you love toast. Yes, you love ketchup. Yes, that means that you’re going to love the grilled cheese sandwich I just made you for lunch! Using a YES sequence primes the reader to keep going with the YES responses, and makes your offer and call to action more compelling.

9. Addition of a testimonial. Everyone, everywhere, feels the need to belong. They need to know that people just like them would make this kind of window cleaning purchase decision, and that people just like them have successfully received what it is that you’re offering. This is commonly known as social proof. You can leverage it by providing comments from your happy clients right on your flier design. This testimonial needed more contact information, but something was better than nothing.

10. Company logo sized smaller. Again, remember that people only care who you are once they are convinced you have something they want. Leave your logo for the bottom, and make it small, so that you can fill the rest of the space with juicy persuasive copy instead, as is shown on this flier design.

The Success Story

Randy selected a small neighborhood of just 40 homes to test out this flier design and see what kind of results he could obtain. Since all of the homes were very small and pretty much the same, the flat-rate price was reasonable for the homeowner and very

profitable for Grime Fighters. The fliers were passed out three sepa-rate times over a two-month period, and whenever Randy received an estimate and booked the job, he would knock on the neighbor’s doors and introduce himself.

As of May 2010, within 3 months, he had secured 18 of the 40 homes as clients for Grime Fighters, using just this flier, along with the door-knocking method. I repeat: 18 of the 40. That’s a remarkable 45% conversion rate.

The takeaway: Marketing matters. It can transform your window cleaning business.

If you’re already awesome at cleaning windows, then my hat’s off to you. But realize that all those skills aren’t profitable until more people decide to take a risk and actually hire you.

That’s where marketing comes in: it makes your phone ring. When done right, it can make it ring right off the hook, like it did for Randy.

By Kevin Dubrosky

If you enjoyed this article, then you’re going to love Kevin’s brand-new 255-page hardcover book:

$600/hr – The Ultimate Window Cleaning Marketing Guide

Download your free 52-page preview at:www.kevindubrosky.com/600

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Leadership

How to Take Charge in Your Business

“If you’re the main cog in the machine, you’re also the main clog in the machine.” I say that a lot, but the first time I heard it I was standing in the spacious living room of a prospective client. I was there to give him a quote on cleaning the windows at his newly built house overlooking a quiet cove on the lake shore. I learned that he recently retired after turning a small print shop in Chicago into a large printing and mailing service that did over 10 million dollars a year in annual revenue and employed more than 100 people.

Learning that my prospect was an accomplished businessman, I relished the opportunity to pick his brain a little. One of my favorite questions for the successful entrepreneur is “What’s the most important lesson you learned in your career?” To which this former printer answered, “If you’re the main cog, you’re also the main clog.” After some 15 minutes of business owner talk, I handed him the quote for the windows, thanked him, and headed home.

It was a long drive back to the office from his secluded lakeside hideaway, one that gave me plenty of time to think about what he had said about his business. I know I am the main cog in my operation, but am I also a clog? A clog in the way hair and grease combine to stop the water in the sink from going down the drain? Was I stopping the flow of money into my business by clogging up the operation?

These questions made me think of the time I worked in a drywall factory and remembered how the “take off drivers” were under the most pressure of anybody on the line. Their job was to lift stacks of finished drywall off of loading tables with a forklift, place them in the adjacent warehouse, and return for another load. Since it was impossible to slow down the pace of the finished stacks coming out, it was imperative that the drivers functioned flawlessly all the time. If they were too slow getting back or somehow got dis-tracted, the stacks started piling up which would back up the whole line, and on more than one occasion the poor performance of one of these drivers caused the entire operation to come to a grinding halt, usually followed by a career change for the forklift operator.

So it is with many business owners. Let’s face it, you like to be in charge, right? You started your window cleaning business for many of the same reasons I started mine: To have more say over your schedule, the freedom to achieve your goals, not living under the heavy hand of a bad boss, and a thousand others. But as your business grows you are finding that just like that forklift driver, so many things are dependant on you that the whole “factory” is frequently shutting down waiting for you. Whether it’s small things like answering the phone, paying bills, or big things like making sales, nothing gets done until you know about it, plan it, approve it, do it, oversee it, or have your hands in it in some way or another. Problem is: “if you’re the main cog, you’re also the main clog.”

Here are a few ways to unclog the pipeline of productivity for the window cleaning entrepreneur trying to grow their business.

1. Hire more people. We often think of hiring people as the big green monster lurking around the corner waiting to swallow up our hard earned dollars. Certainly there is a lot to hiring and retaining good people; if there wasn’t, large companies wouldn’t have H.R. departments. But hiring more people is inevitable to growing your business. It’s impossible to grow a business without people to do the work of the business. If you are a small operation and worried that you can’t trust people to deal with your customers or deliver a quality service, then start small by hiring people to handle routine or mundane tasks like washing your towels, cleaning your truck on the weekend, or handing out your flyers. Think about using temp workers for these chores if you aren’t ready to take the hiring plunge. This will translate into more time for you to work on growing your busi-ness.

2. Delegate more. There is much more to delegation than simply handing out random assignments. A successful small business owner learns what they do best and then does that to the best of their abil-ity. The rest can be left to someone else, provided they learn to del-egate. But figuring out what to delegate can be difficult for the busi-ness owner who thinks no one can do it as well as they do. If you fall into that category try this. Make a list of every task that needs to be done in your business. Opening mail, making phone calls, chang-ing squeegee blades, ordering supplies, paying bills, creating flyers, etc… (Just seeing all this on paper is eye opening!) Then ask your-self who in your operation could handle one or more of these tasks? Could one of your employees inventory your supplies for you? Could you ask your sister-in-law to drop off your bills when she makes her regular trip to the post office? Can your insurance agent fax that certificate instead of you? Try creative ways to delegate as much of the non-critical work as possible. It will save you time and spare you a great deal of stress.

3. Be a quitter. Well, not really, but another drain on the time of small business owners is all the things that really don’t need to be done. One sure way to clog up your business is to answer every e-mail, talk to every salesman, overdo things that can be simplified, or do things that are wholly unnecessary to begin with. If you made the list I mentioned earlier, go through it and ask yourself if everything on it is really necessary. For example: I used to write “thank you” and attach my signature to every invoice that I sent out. I felt this “personal touch” was one thing that set my business apart from the competition. Of course, I wasn’t really considering the costs to my cash flow or my time because invoices and statements were piling up on my desk waiting for my pen strokes before they were sent out. I ditched the practice and unclogged our billing system. We still give that personal touch but now in other more efficient ways. Ask your-self what tasks or processes there are in your operation that can be dumped because they are ineffective? By eliminating things that are not generating a good return on your time, you unclog your business and free yourself to focus on growth.

The path of the successful window cleaning business owner should be marked by quitting. Quit doing things you can hire others to do, quit doing things that you can delegate to others, and quit doing things that are not really necessary for the future growth of your company. By quitting these things you will “unclog” your business growth. By the way, I didn’t get the job at the millionaire’s lake house because my “price was too high,” but what I did get from him was a valuable concept that has earned me more money than cleaning his windows ever would have.

By Steve Stevens, window cleaning business owner from Murray, KY


In The Field00

Frame 1.

Mr. Sanchez makes us feel like we are watching a late night infomercial for a wonder drug.

Frame 2.

Sporting his fancy WCR shirt, Mr. San-chez demonstrates something we have all gone through… Nearing the end of a job and encountering a window that is just a little out of reach.

Frame 3.

Debating with himself about whether he should go all the way back to his work vehicle and get a small extension pole or stay and get crafty, Sanchez has a bright idea!

Frame 4.

Determined not to waste time, Mr. San-chez uses one of his secondary wide body squeegees as a makeshift “Mac-Gyver” pole. Utilizing the swivel action of the Ettore squeegee handle, and the girth of the wide body channel, Sanchez gently affixes his primary squeegee to the “MacGyver pole”.

Frame 5.

Mr. Sanchez has successfully reached the top of the window and saved himself a trip back to the vehicle.

Frame 6.

Sanchez also takes the time to show us that the same trick can be performed with a scrubber.


Manage

ed this new system nobody was happy with it at first. If I remember correctly 30% of the staff quit within the first month. The folks that remained flourished. They quickly realized they could make more money in a shorter time period. Instead of milking the clock and dragging their feet for 12 hours, the same amount of money was made in half the time. Jobs that in the past took us 8 hours miraculously were now done in 3 hours. My employees had been milking the clock for years and I just found out. I let it go and just looked forward! An amazing side effect of the percentage system, aside from the lower labor costs (in my case), is there was now more time in the day to do even more jobs. So not only were we making more money by paying less on labor, but we were also cram-ming way more work into the day.

The workers that were able to make com-mission pay work realized that they now had direct control over their paychecks. Instead of being limited to small incremental raises each year, they now had the ability to really start making some real money. They were able to do this through increased efficiency and improved window cleaning skill.

The Drawbacks – and how to fix them - One of the most common thoughts against percentage pay is the potential for quality to go down. We suffered from a little bit of this at first, but quickly nipped it in the bud. If a crew gets a valid customer complaint they are simply to go back for free on unpaid company time to correct the problem. This worked for a little while, but we realized that sometimes customers simply didn’t want the same crew back. Then it got to the point of me saying to myself there shouldn’t be any callbacks at all, it’s opportunity cost. They shouldn’t be driving around fixing their own mistakes all day instead of out making money doing new jobs. Last year I took it a step further and instituted a new policy. “Any customer touch ups required will by default be done by another crew and that other crew shall receive half of the original crews com-mission.” That changed everything again. To-

Commission vs. Hourly

I never really heard of commission pay before I started my window cleaning busi-ness. After reading the forums I found that it was a pretty common practice. How it works: A fixed percentage of revenue collected for the day is paid to the employees as their salary. Typically I found it ranges anywhere from 25-40% of gross revenue. Disclaimer as you read forward, be aware I am a strong believer in commission pay.

I was about 4 years in to my window clean-ing business and I had about 15 window cleaners on staff. I was noticing that on some days we were paying out 70% of what was made to labor. We were quickly becoming unprofitable and I hadn’t even paid myself yet for the 12 – 15 hour days I was put-ting in. We were barely breaking even and something needed to change. I had tossed the idea of commission pay around for a couple years and it was finally time to take the plunge.

We started fresh the next year with a newly constructed commission plan in place. 30% of each job (not including tax) would be split up unevenly between the members of the crew. Unevenly you say? Yep unevenly: the person in charge and senior staff take a higher cut than a new guy assuming they are performing. Currently we have dozens of dif-ferent pay scenarios but we started with just a few to keep it simple. It looked something like this:

$1,000 Revenue for the daySupervisor 20% - $200 PayTechnician 10% - $100 Pay

Or

Supervisor 15% - $150 PayTechnician #1 - 7.5% - $75 PayTechnician #2 - 7.5% - $75 Pay

The scenarios are limitless depending on the role of the workers in the crew that day and how much money is made. You just need to make sure everyone is always compensated properly. Supervisors and lead people should always get a bigger cut and no one can ever dip below minimum wage.Everything changed – When we implement-

day we have almost no customer complaints because of this new policy.Everybody hates the new guy! There is noth-ing like an untrained worker to really throw a wrench into the smooth running window cleaning operation, especially if you are an experienced crew leader making bank every-day. So what we did to be fair was increase our in-house training from 1 day to 3 days, and keep all newbie’s on a small hourly sal-ary for a 2-week period. This helps quite a bit in keeping the existing staff happy.Is commission pay right for your window cleaning business?

ProsBudgeting – You can now do a proper budget a year in advance because you know exactly what you’re going to be paying out, assum-ing you can predict your revenue.Less salary expense to the staff – No more milking the clock.More work able to be completed in the day.Increased profit margins.

ConsIncreased administrative workload.Possible dip in quality and speeding through jobs.Warning – make sure you are minimum wage compliant, and check all the labor laws in your state. Occasionally something will go wrong on a job and someone on the crew’s salary will dip below minimum wage. In this case you must compensate him or her for this and it will drive your pay scale over 30%. It’s pretty rare that this happens, I’m just letting you know it is possible. Also be aware that implementing a percentage-based system will be a greater administrative workload. It takes much longer to calculate all the different pay scenarios on each day then it does to simply pay hourly.

By Chris Lambrinides

Go to shopwindowcleaningresource.com and search “Forms” to download your

free percentage pay spreadsheet template

Use Offer Code 2539 Expires 1/1/11


Sales

Maybe some of you love it. Maybe some of you hate it. However, love it or hate it, it is a necessity. It is what keeps your business growing and brings in more and more of that all mighty dollar. If those dol-lars aren’t coming in, your business will fail. So, it stands to reason that without sales, your business will fail. I’ve heard arguments/read articles that people are born to sell, that it isn’t learned. I may have been guilty of thinking that myself at one point (I have quite a few family members who have seen great success in sales positions and seemed to take to it like a fish in water). But, honestly, I think anyone can learn how to sell and if you are a business owner who thinks he/she can’t sell, well you better get on board and start learning. So, let’s go over few things you should work on if you are learning to sell window cleaning or would just like to improve in certain areas.

Just Do It*

Jump in and get your feet wet. When I began commercial window cleaning sales, I barely knew anything about commercial window cleaning. I went out and looked at our existing customer base, what we charged them and went from there. I based my prices on what we already had and went for it. Practice, practice, practice. I believe it took me about a week to land my first account. I’m sure I sounded like a bumbling school child giving his first speech in front of an au-

Selling!

ditorium. But I kept at it and with the practice in those first few months became more and more comfortable with myself and what I was doing.

Keep It Short and Concise

One thing I realized right off was that I was constantly changing my approach to people when beginning a sales pitch. Early on I sup-pose this was fine because I was trying to find what worked best for me in a field I had no experience in. This also sometimes made me sound like I was rambling without a clear thought in my head. Business owners are busy and don’t always want to be bothered by any solicitation. So keep things short and sweet, know what you want to say and get to the point. A good idea here would be to write down exactly what you want to say and

practice it until you have it memorized forward and back. Then maybe even record yourself to hear how you sound. This will be a big help because trust me, you sound different then you think.

Numbers, numbers, numbers

Sales tends to be a numbers game. The more no’s you hear the closer you are to that yes. Keep it up, don’t be discouraged. People are going to tell you no, it’s a fact of life. But somewhere out there is that person waiting to say yes. If you give up too soon you may never meet them.Persistence: Kind of ties in to number three. Be persistent, return regularly to people that have turned you away in the past. Even if it is just to say hello and not even to make a sales pitch. Eventually, you will canvas your entire territory. Is it time to give up at that point? Absolutely not! Start back at the beginning and go after everyone again. Don’t be discouraged by the outcome of the first attempt, this time around they may be ready for you.

Well, I was told to limit this to one page and must cut myself off. Once I get myself going I find it hard to stop. I’ve been accused of liking the sound of my own voice in the past, what of it? I will be a regular contributor in this publication and will touch on this subject further in the future. But I feel this would be a good start for anyone trying their hand at the sales game. Game? There’s one last point to wrap this all up with. Think of it like a game. Take that human feeling of rejection out of it and tell yourself it’s all a game. Don’t take it too personally. If someone rejects your sales pitch, they aren’t rejecting you; they sim-ply don’t have a need for what you are offering. Take that home, hone your skills and get back at them. The next time may be the day.

*I checked with Nike and they were totally cool with me using that line. I swear, I know a guy inside.

By Sean Dolan of All County Window Cleaning

Practice, Practice, Practice...


Money

If you aren’t collecting money from your customers each and every time you perform a window cleaning job, you are essentially extending credit and risking never getting paid. The longer an invoice stays in accounts receivable, the chances of you getting paid get even worse.

Residential

Start accepting credit cards right away. Get a credit card deposit for your minimum charge when the job is booked; keep that card on file to charge the remaining balance if a customer isn’t home at the completion of service.

If you don’t have one, institute a clear-cut company policy on receiving payment. I would recommend full payment upon satis-factory completion of service. Explain your company policy at the initial contact with a customer right after the job is scheduled.

When we instituted the 3 techniques listed above, our accounts receivable dropped by 70% within 2 months. Our cash flow increased dramatically, making day to day operations a lot smoother. At first I was a little bit hesitant to ask the customer for a credit card number before the work was completed, but once I got past that mental hurdle there was no looking back. Heck if airlines and hotels can do it, why not us? Not only did our cash flow increase, but also this had freed up hours a week from my schedule that used to be spent calling for payment. We have experienced 3- 4% of our customers don’t have a credit card or absolutely refuse to give one before service. In this case we check their file, and if it’s a repeat customer with no history of late or non-payments we let them slide. If it’s a new customer we make a judgment call based on their proximity to us and our schedule.

Storefront

Use a service agreement or contract that clearly states your payment policy. I would recommend allowing net 30 on reoccurring storefronts.

Use an Ez Pay form, which states you are allowed to charge their credit card at the end of each month for that month’s service.If they always pay by check or cash, give them the invoice before you start service that day. Walk in up to the counter, hand them the invoice, and tell them you’ll be back in a few minutes to grab payment. This will speed things up quite a bit. There’s nothing worse than getting delayed an additional 10 minutes at each stop while they get your payment.Use a standardized route sheet. Not only will it allow you to better organize your route that day, but it will have a space for the person behind the counter to sign off that the work was completed to their satisfaction. Make sure they write their name next to the signa-ture as well.

Storefront window cleaning can be very lucrative if you have a proper system in place. Profits fly right out the window if you are spending all your time chasing little payments around. Much like the residential system I mentioned above, once we got a proper system in place our financial standing changed dramatically.

When dealing with builders and large com-mercial jobs, a deposit is always advised. With these two types of clients that can be tricky, though. A contract is highly recom-mended, but from experience a percentage of them will simply refuse to sign. At that point it’s up to you to decide whether or not to take on the work. In our case it would depend on a previous relationship with them and how bad we needed the work.

What about the 2-3% a credit card com-pany takes off the top? We found it to be well worth it for the increased cash flow and almost guarantee of full payment.


Getting Paid on the Job

Both our EZ Pay and service agreement template is available for download just Search- FORMS

WCR Community Survey


New Products 0

The Aqua-Dapter

Aqua-dapter is a brand new water fed pole flow controller, developed by win-dow cleaners, for window cleaners. Since their introduction to the industry, water fed poles have been a successful and hugely useful tool for cleaning. However, there are problems with existing methods of water flow control. Aqua-dapter hopes to solve this problem by fitting to the top section of your pole and connecting to your brush. The control mechanism is operated from the handle by pulling the hose to switch the water flow on and off. The tap can also be turned manually if you are working on ground level windows.The Aqua-dapter comes in a standard size to fit the top section of most water fed poles. The unit comes as standard with 32 feet of high-quality low-stretch hose, which stays consistent in hot and cold weather. The Aqua-dapter adds about 3.5 ounces to your pole and is constructed of aluminum and stainless steel injection molded plastic. The unit comes with a 12 month warranty.

Track and Sill Brush

This new track brush makes cleaning tracks and sills effortless. Great for everything from light dust and debris to larger chunks of debris. The bristles are just the right stiffness to easily get in all those hard to reach cracks and grooves. The handle is ergonomically shaped and is just the right size: it fits perfectly in your hand, in your pocket or in your pouch with ease.

New Product AlertFrom Shop Window Cleaning Resource .Com


Tech

When I first started my window cleaning business in 2000, I didn’t yet have a cell phone. I remember coming home and checking my voice mail, can you imagine that? Ten years later in 2010, a Window Cleaner basically runs his entire business from his or her mobile phone. Phones from Apple, Android, Palm, Rim, and Nokia make cut-ting the cord from your office a breeze. The advent of the iPhone and the Android operating system are pushing the boundaries of what you can do with a phone.

We compared 4 of the most popular phones and have come up with some pros and cons of each. Experts, users and the WCR commu-nity give their feedback and hopefully it will take the guesswork out of your next phone purchase.

Flip Phone, Pros – Cheap, small, great receptionCons – No apps, no good mobile Internet

RIM Blackberry, Pros – Great typing, quick email pushCons - Smaller screen, poor mobile Internet, lack of great apps

Android, Pros – Independent operating system that can be put on most any phone, lots of great apps, open source, available on VerizonCons – Clunky un-polished operating system

iPhone,Pros – Highly polished, the most apps, the best appsCons – Only works on AT&T

There are also other brand phones that work very well, Nokia and Palm mainly. My recommendation is to always first look at what car-rier has the best reception in your area. Then look at what phone or operating system you like. Of course I don’t follow my own advice. I have the iPhone, which I love, but Verizon by far has better service in our area. A couple other factors you want to look at are:

Battery life - Will it get me through a whole day?Life time cost - Monthly cost X 24 months + cost of the phone.

Must have business apps:

Evernote - Free – Jot down a note, a picture, a thought. Evernote is the ultimate to do list.

The Weather Channel – Free - view live radar and weather forecasts.

Dragon Dictation – Free - Allows you to transcribe your voice into text messages or e-mails.

Ixpenseit Lite – Free – Tracks all your in the field expenses with ease.

Invoice2go - $9.99 - The fast and easy way to invoice, estimate, bill, collect and report.

Thoughts From Window Cleaner Alex Lacey

I view my phone as just another piece of equipment- a very power-ful, and sometimes distracting, tool. It all depends on what tasks you would like to accomplish from the field! In addition to having the functionality of a computer and a communication device, new phones can also be used for navigation- where I’m from, this is very handy for finding new customers. Not to mention being able to take pictures and be able to send them to customers (existing conditions, before/after shots, etc). I also find that having one device that I use for all my note taking, communication, and task organization keeps me more organized and less stressed in the mornings.

Thoughts From Software Provider Kate Baker

So what is the answer, what is the best device to buy? All smart phones have one thing in common and that is, they all have access to the Internet with their inbuilt browsers. We have all heard the term ‘Cloud Apps’ but seen very little sign of them or don’t yet understand the concept. ‘Cloud Apps’ will work on any smart phone you choose to purchase, as there is no installation required. They allow you direct access to your business data from any hardware and browser. So the best device to purchase for a business has a large touch screen, battery life that can last a full working day, is sturdy and will give you a minimum of 18 months usage, and has an inbuilt browser.

http://www.acacia-technologies.co.uk

Is that an office in your pocket?

Other

IPhone

Android

Blackberry

Flip Phone

What Kind of Phone Are You Rocking?WCR Members Survey

38.78% 14.29%

18.37%

10.20%

18.37%


The Internet and espe-cially search engines like Google are the Yellow Pages of today. 20 years ago if someone needed a window cleaning service, they would have picked up the phone book. But consider this… the last time you needed a service provider, where did you look? Odds are you didn’t

thumb through the phone book, but instead searched on Google or Yahoo. It’s quicker and easier to hop on the computer and run a search for “(your city) window cleaning” than to pick up the old phone book. Not only does the Internet make it easier for our potential customers to find us, it also allows them to get information and become more comfortable with our companies via our website than they ever could with a simple yellow pages ad. And for this reason, more and more people are turning to Internet when they are looking for a service provider.

But how on earth are our customers ever going to find your site if it’s stuck on page 15 of the search results? 90% of people don’t ever look past page 1! Perhaps your website is already on the first page of Google, and you want to solidify your ranking so that your competitors don’t start outranking you. To accomplish either goal you need to better optimize your website for the search engines.The process of making your website visible on the Internet so that your customers can find you is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I get e-mails and phone calls weekly from window cleaners all around the US and Canada asking me to take a look at their website and figure out why they are not ranking well in Google. 9 times out of 10, the Window Cleaning websites that are struggling with their Google ranking have one mistake in common. What is it? It’s the way the “Page Titles” are worded. Improper use of page titles (also called title tags) is this single most common mistake I see websites that are struggling with search engine ranking. Not coincidentally that one mistake, when fixed, will have one of the (if not THE single) biggest im-pacts on your Google rankings

What are Title Tags and how can you optimize them?The page title or “Title tag” is what shows up in the search results as the blue text, as well as at the top of the web browser. This is one of the first things Google looks at when trying to determine what your site is about.

In order to rank well you need to make sure to include your

Web 0

keywords in your title tags. If you are Crystal Clear window cleaning and you are based in Dallas, Texas, don’t use “Crystal Clear Window Cleaning” as your title tag. Most people in Dallas looking for window cleaning will search for “Dallas window cleaning”, not “Crystal Clear window cleaning” Unless they are specifically looking for info on your company.

You want Google to understand that your site is about window clean-ing in Dallas. Here are a few tips you need to keep in mind while writing title tags for your web pages. Search engines like Google first look at the title tags on each page of your site and then compare them with the content and links on the web page. If all these are in sync, the search engine will love it, and rank your site higher than the websites that don’t do this.Try to include your primary keywords for each page of your site in the title tag of the page.

Order of keywords / phrases in the title tag: Make sure that the primary keywords are given priority in the position. Ideally, you can start your title tag with the primary keyword for that page. This gives strong signal to the search engine about how important you feel the keyword is, and you’ll rank higher in the search engines.

Make your title is readable: The text you write in the title should be short and readable (84 characters or less). Avoid using ALL CAPS.

Have unique title tag for each page of your website: Keep title tags unique for each page of your website. This will help in proper index-ing of all your web pages within a website.

Points to keep in mind:

1. Never leave title tag BLANK or UNTITLED. 2. Write only relevant text in the title tag. 3. Don’t overdo it with the amount of keywords in your title tag. You should keep your titles under 84 characters. Google’s only going to look at the first 84 anyway, so anything over that is going to be use-less at best and potentially harmful if you really over do it.

How do I change my title tags? Title tags go at the top of your html code, right after <head> the code looks like this: <title> put title here </title>

Whether you’re stuck on page 15 or just want a higher spot on page 1, dialing in your page titles is the first place you should start, and will usually help you more than any other one SEO method alone.

By Doug MacDonald

SEOWeb Secrets Revealed

To view more search engine optimization tips from Doug visit his

blog at: http://www.getonpage1ofgoogle.com/


thing, but a number of 6 or higher could indicate people are having trouble finding what they want. Take a look at how your site search and navigation are structured. What can be fixed

An Opportunity To Expand Your Territory

Are you getting a lot of traffic from an area just outside your service zone? This could be a good place to expand your reach.

Step 1: Get a banging website

Step 2: Install Google Analytics – Yeah, it’s free!

Google Analytics is a free, easy to use tracking system for your website. Basically how it works is you or your designer add a little snippet of code to your website, and from that point on everything that happens on your site is recorded. It keeps a real time record of how potential customers find your site and convert to paying customers. The depth of data is so great: you might learn that the major-ity of your sales come from the south side of town, on Wednes-day afternoons, from people using Safari browsers on 21 inch monitors. The data can be completely overwhelming, but if you learn to look at what’s important and test, test, test, you can improve your sales dramatically.

Why is this important?

Let’s say you make $20,000 per year off of your website and you learn that you have a 1% con-version rate. What if you could, through reviewing and testing, up your conversion rate to 5%. (Meaning that 5% of your visi-tors used your services). If you could convert 5% instead of 1%, your $20,000 in sales could be $100,000 in sales. Do I have your attention now?

Interpreting the Data

Daily visits – how many people are hitting your site daily? What can you do to get more people there? This data can be filtered down to your local market. I recommend doing that so you’re looking at relevant information.

Pages/Visit – You might think a high number of views is a good

Web Again

Improving Your Sales With Data


doing something right and that’s the point they decide to pick up the phone and call you, but it could also help spot potential problems.Watch your conversions – Conversions mean different things to dif-ferent people. You can set your conversion goals to anything you like. A few I could recommend would be: Using the contact form, down-loading a free white paper, or even successfully booking an appoint-ment through your website. (Yes, that’s possible and we’ll touch on that in the next issue).

Conversions

Taking action

Test, test, and test!Through another free tool called Google Webmaster tools, which ties into your Google Analytics, you can do split testing. It allows you to show different versions of a webpage to different people. For example, it can show 50% of the people that show up to your site a green background and the other 50% of the people a yellow background, or any different compilation of text. The fact is that one of those pages is going to out-perform or out-convert the other. After a month of testing you scrap the version that got out-performed and you test the winning page against a new page. In a month again one of those pages will out-perform the other. Scrap the loser and keep testing and tweaking until you’ve raised your conversion rate to a level you like.

Try it out for yourself. Go to Google.com/Analytics to con-nect your website to Google Analytics. If you’re web savvy the whole process can take as little as 5 minutes. If you’re not, that’s okay because there are simple instructions avail-able right on the Google Analyt-ics website. These instructions will show you how to implement it as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Oh Yeah! Did I mention that it’s 100% FREE?

Good luck and enjoy!


Everybody has heard of your company (unfortunately) – Check out your keywords, if one of your top keywords is your company name then not too many people are stumbling on to your site when search-ing for terms like “window cleaning”. This is a good time to start ranking for more generic terms like, “window cleaning your area” and “your town window cleaning service”.

A troubling bounce rate

If you are seeing a bounce rate higher than 20% you have room for improvement. A bounce rate of 20% means that 20% of the people

left your site after only viewing that one page. What can you do to keep them around longer?

When and where are people leaving – Check out your exit pages, meaning the last page they view before they close their browser or go on to another site. Take a look at the very top exit page carefully. Is something happening there to drive people away? It could be you are


WCR - Hey Cody, how’s it going man?

Cody - Great, stoked to do the interview.

WCR - So how did you get into the world of glass resto-ration?

Cody - It’s funny, prior to starting GlassRenu I worked in the Aerospace defense industry. My company got bought, and my job was about to disappear. So I went to work with my brother who was a home builder. We were talking and one of the big problems he was running into was damaged glass. We were finding that 3 – 5 windows on each job site had some type of damage; it was causing massive delays in getting the house on the market.

So I looked at it from an engineering standpoint; I thought if we can build a remote control airplane that can be piloted in Langley, Virginia, and flown in Afghanistan, why can’t we take scratches out of this glass?

WCR - What did you actually do at the company?

Cody - We manufactured avionic control systems that controlled missiles and predator drones, and I worked on the F22 Raptor for a while.

WCR - Were you in the military or just college-educated?

Cody - College-educated and grad school. I just sort of walked into

that job after working at X Box. I basically just moved out to Austin, Texas, to be close to some of my buddies that were living out there.

WCR - What did you have a degree in?

Cody - MBA in business with a major in Strategy and a minor in Mar-keting as well as my under grad degree in Genetics.

WCR – Damn, you’re a smart guy.

Cody - Ha ha

“He is kind of like the MacGyver of manufacturing...”

WCR - How did you build the scratch removal machine? What was the research design process? How did you bring it to market?

Cody - I met this guy Rick through my brother and he is kind of like

Interview with WCR and Cody,

CEO from GlassRenu

Manufacturer Spotlight

STATS

Name- Cody Thomaslocation- San Francisco BayAge- 30occupation- CIO to ceo of Glassrenu co.


scratch removal. Everything we tried with the existing systems available wasn’t really working quite right, and we weren’t totally happy with the results. Or it just wouldn’t work at all. So we started searching EBay and Craig’s list for spare parts and old systems. We ended up creating a first gen-eration system out of a bunch of parts we bought online. We ended up only selling one of those, to a company in Spain.

In May of 2007, we got a Google alert about scratch removal at the Denver conven-tion center. It was a big deal because the Democratic national convention was showing up about 2 weeks later. Folks from the party were showing up to sign paperwork for the 2008 national convention. We drove out to Denver and there were guys out there using all the competing machines. We ended up winning the demo because when we were finished, the glass that was done with the GlassRenu machine looked the best. We realized then that our First Gen system wasn’t going to be able to work fast enough, so from there we developed our Second Gen system, which we called the contractor grade. It was the concept of complete dry grinding to damp polish-ing, instead of using more traditional methods. I got back from the convention, had our first commercial system built by June 5th, and had it sold by June 7th to a guy in Colorado that found us through our website.

“It was definitely mom and pop, but perception is

reality and every product we shipped out looked

amazing...”

WCR - So is this the point where the company really took off?

Cody - Yeah pretty much. I rented out a cu-bicle at a local marketing firm. My condo was the warehouse and manufacturing facility. I spent the day from 8 - 5 in the office, and from 5:30 to midnight I was up making disks and cutting foam for the cases. It was defi-nitely mom and pop, but perception is reality and every product we shipped out looked amazing. We are now in a real warehouse and office space, though, and it’s all ours.

WCR – That’s cool, I love a good story about building a business up from nothing. Are you guys just a US company?

Cody - Nope, we now have a team of 3 guys and an office in Australia, then another set up of 3 guys and an office in Europe in the Netherlands region.

WCR - Did you see window cleaning as a natural fit for this service at first?

Cody – Not quite at first, but then one day it hit me. I was talking to a window cleaner and he said that he sees scratched and dam-aged glass every day. Window Cleaners are on the frontline, they see it all. From there it just clicked; not only is it a great add-on service, but it’s also a nice insurance policy with all the fabricating debris issues.

WCR - Do people buy these machines and strictly run a restoration business, or are people mostly using it as add-on service?

Cody - I would say roughly 40% of the people run strictly a restoration business;

the rest treat it as an add-on to their existing business. We sell these machines to window cleaners, painters, pressure washing guys, you name it. We have customers that started off with 1 system that they bought to use as add-on service, and a year or two later they are now running 7 - 10 systems.

WCR - Wow that’s a lot of systems! There’s enough work out there for that?

Cody - Absolutely, there is a huge market. It all comes down to recognizing how much damage is out there, and getting potential customers to recognize that replacement is not the only option. Restoration costs can be just 30% the cost of actual replacement.

PRICING

WCR - I’m glad you mentioned prices. How do you recommend that window cleaners price a scratch removal?

Cody - You have 3 main options here: hourly rate, by the square foot, or by the job. It’s very similar to window cleaning where you would bid it per pane or per job. Of course there are different advantages and disadvan-tages to each method.

WCR - What would some of those be?

Cody -The GlassRenu system was designed to work very fast. If you price by the hour you end up leaving a lot of money on the table. Which isn’t always a bad thing, it depends on the client or what mix of services you are

looking to provide them. The square foot-age method makes sense when you are doing a very large project, anything over 2,000 square feet of glass.

WCR - So what’s the best formula to use when you want to make restoration ad-vantageous as opposed to replacement? Is there a percentage or a formula?

Cody - From our experience we get the highest close rate when we bid the resto-ration at 30% of replacement cost. I have had jobs in the past that I simply bid sight unseen, and just told the customer to get me your best price for replacement and I’ll take care of it for half of that. There are also other formulas you can use that fac-tor in regional costs of replacement. The general rule of thumb is to try to save the customer 70% the cost of replacement. If you come in at 20%, you’re not going to get much of a higher close rate, and if you come in at 40%, your close rate will start to dip. 30% has proven to be the magic number.

WCR - Who’s making more money with this system, Commercial or Residential window cleaners?

Cody - I have found the guys that make the most money in restoration are doing it on commercial windows, but I’m not say-ing there isn’t a lot of money to be made in residential. You have pet scratches on sliders, random scratches from construction, anything really.

WCR - You mentioned fabricating debris earlier. Are you saying fabricating debris scratches can be removed? Can they be removed 100% of the time? How does that work?

Cody - As a disclaimer I am definitely not the Dan Fields of the world, he’s the expert and


the MacGyver of manufacturing. He also had some experience in there are a lot of guys out there that know a lot more about the subject than I do. What I know is how to remove the damage that results from it. There is a lot of money to be made repairing this bad glass. Even if all the tempering facilities cleaned up their act today and never produced another bad piece of glass, all that bad existing glass is still out there just waiting to get scratched.

“We have never come across a piece of glass that we couldn’t

restore...”

WCR - Interesting, so it can in fact remove fabricating debris. Does this work in all cases, or have you seen glass that has just been too badly damaged to restore?

Cody - We have never come across a piece of glass that we couldn’t restore. Obviously this doesn’t include glass with structural fail-ure like cracks or chips. The issue is not so much the intensity of the damage, it’s do you want to take the time to take the damage out.

WCR - I have heard with fabricating debris there is an opportunity to make the problem worse, because you’re moving around other particles on the glass that have yet to be dislodged.

Cody - This is the great question, it leads into what makes GlassRenu different than other systems that are available. Scratch removal in the past was about polishing. Everything out there was essentially us-ing different grades of polish to remove the damage. There was a spinning felt pad with cerium oxide applied, and little bits of debris would stick to the pad and make the prob-lem much worse. We realized that the glass that has been manufactured in the past half century has been able to be manufactured on a very consistent basis, and it is very structurally sound. People are unfortunately trained to treat glass like their grandmothers bone china. The reality is glass nowadays is more akin to something like plywood. If you understand the rules of glass you can drill it, you can cut it with a saw, you can bend it. You just need to understand what the rules and limitations are.

If you had a wooden table that had a gouge in it, what would you do to remove it? You would start out sanding with something very excessive like a 30 or 60 grit sand paper, you would then step it back to 240 or 400 grit. We basically do the same thing with the glass. In the first step we use a very aggres-sive disk, and if there is fabricating debris

we are going to remove it in a few seconds and turn it into 1.5 to 2 micron size particles of glass dust. Through the final stages of sanding and polishing that damage is simply going to be completely removed. The occur-rence rate of creating more damage in the glass from grinding simply isn’t an issue with our machine. Anything you do to the glass with the GlassRenu system can be removed with the GlassRenu system.

WCR - Wow that’s pretty cool! So what’s in the future for you and GlassRenu? What’s coming down the pipeline? What can we expect to see from you?

Cody - We have been expanding by leaps and bounds on a global level. In the past 6 months, we have opened a few distribution

hubs in Europe, we are just about to open up in South America and Africa, and the Middle East. We have a pipeline of new products that not only will be able to remove more aggressive damage quicker, but also help us refine our existing process even more. I’m a big believer in anything we come out with must be backwards compatible, so our existing users won’t find out their system is now obsolete. We have a new brand that is a little hush hush at the moment. We are also working with a lot of national and interna-tional insurance companies trying to raise awareness of glass restoration issues. The goal, from an insurance standpoint, is that if a customer’s glass gets damaged there will be a zero deductible to have someone come in and fix the problem. The only time they would have to dig into their deductible is if

the glass is broken. Once we get it squared away on the commercial landscape we are going to try and bring it to the homeowner market. This will have a huge effect on win-dow cleaners, mainly because of fabricating debris damage. Customers won’t have to come out of pocket, they could simply file a claim with their insurance policy. This is great because it becomes another stream of work for GlassRenu technicians.

WCR - Wow sounds like you have a crazy amount of stuff on your plate. How are you balancing it all?

Cody – It’s funny, it’s one of those things I do. Every time I turn around I have a new project I’m working on. I’m actually in the process of interviewing a few people now to come on the team and handle some of the US business development. That will free me up to work on the international stuff. My mantra is I won’t bring someone on until I have 100 hours of work for myself a week, then I’ll pass 50 of those hours on to them. Even if I’m doing 100 hours worth of work a week, there is still probably another 100 hours of stuff I didn’t get to. In the beginning, that’s how it is.

WCR – Yep, when you are in maximum growth mode that’s what happens.

Cody - Oh yeah. The funny part is that I could certainly make a much better living and work fewer hours if I was just out there removing scratches all day. But I believe in the long run, this is a better bet.

WCR – That’s always the catch. I fantasize once a day about cleaning glass all day by myself and making way better money. I have a feeling in the long run this window cleaning resource nonsense will pay off better. It’s a gamble I’m willing to take right now.

Cody - Ha ha exactly.

WCR - So wrapping up here, what do you do for fun? What goes on in your time off?

Cody – I’m the head coach for one of the lo-cal high schools lacrosse team. I’m a fanatic about watches: I’m just fascinated from an engineering stand point. I collect rare and crazy watches, I love them. I play roller hockey, garden and hang out with my wife and daughter.

WCR - Well thanks so much for your time man, have a great day.


Thinking Outside The Bucket 0

Early training

We are told from an early age that sharing is a good thing. Later we are told that a little competition makes us better at what we do. These conflicting viewpoints are with us for the rest of our lives and for those of us who start our own businesses they are ever present. The real question though is which is better for our business? Will a competitive, crush-all competition spirit cause us to thrive in business or is there a better alternative?

The Wal-Mart Equation

Since its beginnings Wal-Mart has had the “lowest price wins” philosophy. It has seemed to be a successful way to build their empire and to a certain aspect many of us have benefitted from it in that we can get a variety of products at rock bottom prices. But let’s look below the surface – when Wal-Mart enters a new town the immediate reaction is that the small “Mom and Pop” type stores are affected for the worse. Many will go under and those that don’t merely scrape by. Now, in that community the only option is Wal-Mart. But even though the prices are rock bottom what are we getting? Much of the time we get sub standard quality products. Is that really what we wanted? The competition that Wal-Mart has introduced to the market-place has in effect been a detriment to the consumer.

Business as usual?

Many window cleaning companies view others in their area as intruders at best, and enemies in some cases. Why? Perhaps the other company has engaged in targeted efforts to take your customers or employees.

Sadly, this happens. But most of the time it’s the early training or Wal-Mart equation that are present. They’ve been told the same thing we were – competition is good for your business. But is it really? And more impor-tantly, is it good for you in general?

Ask yourself how much time and energy you devote to worrying about how to stay ahead of the competition. Sometimes it’s just a nag-ging thought in the back of our mind, but far too often it can be all consuming. Especially if the competitor is as successful or, and here’s a scary thought, more successful than us. We may even begin doing marketing based on what our competitor isn’t instead of what we can do for our customer. The good news is that there is an alternative.

Cooperation – the alternative

It may seem to go against the grain but why not look at your competitor as another resource for your business? Let’s face it – you can’t possibly handle all the glass in your area. So why try? In our area we have window cleaners that specialize in storefront, residential, hi-rise, you name it. I personally prefer to do residential and when I get calls for storefront work I have at least two clean-ers in my area that I can refer those calls to. The best part of this is that they don’t look at me as a competitor and they refer business to me. I have now effectively increased my marketing presence by forming a coopera-tive spirit between myself and other local companies.

Add to this that when I see these guys in the area I don’t have to worry “are they trying to steal my customers?” because I know we are on good terms. It takes me back to when

Competition or Cooperation?

Which is Better For

Your Business?


I was little. I – like many of you no doubt – was taught to share my toys with others. I couldn’t play with every toy I had at the same time and really didn’t want to. That has be-come my business philosophy – sharing. We can’t clean all the glass at the same time and probably don’t want to either. Cleaning glass is just something we do to make a living and it’s the same for other cleaners in our area. There’s another great reason to cooper-ate instead of compete – price! Instead of competition driving price down a coopera-tive spirit allows us to get good prices for our work. I’m not advocating price fixing or anything like it, but let’s face it we all want to make a decent living for our family and the work we do can be dangerous. Add to that the fact that we are self-employed and must take care of our own health care and retire-ment concerns. Do we really think we can do this if prices for our work are constantly going down?

Some will say that it’s good for the consum-er. Is it really? NO. Why do I say that? Again the Wal-Mart equation helps us. We pay low, low prices that’s true. Of course the quality is also low, low. If we are lowering our prices rest assured the quality is going down as well. In a marketplace where we share and cooperate the prices stay up and so does the quality! Our fellow cleaners will make sure of that.

So, the ball is in your court. What do you want? Do you want to work in an area domi-nated by aggression, bitterness, and fear? Or would you rather share your toys?

By Tony Evans

Window Cleaners and pressure washing contractors from all parts of the country converged on rural Coralville, Iowa, for the 2nd annual Mid West Window Cleaners conference. Like most WCR on the road events, attendance was completely free. There was also a huge comic / anime convention going on at the same time in town, so it wasn’t uncommon to see a dinosaur or Jedi walk by.

Kevin Dubrosky was the keynote speaker and gave a brand new two and half hour information-packed marketing seminar. Chris Lambrinides gave a 45-minute seminar on building and growing your business through direct mail. Tony Evans gave a seminar on fabricat-ing debris, and Alex Lambrinides gave a seminar on add-on services. Folks moved back and forth between the main conference room and the outdoor demo area. They were able to get hands-on with a huge assortment of water fed poles and pure water carts, as well as try their hand at scratch removal courtesy of our main event sponsor GlassRenu.

Aside from the great seminars designed to take your business to the next level and the hands-on equipment demonstrations, these events are really all about just getting together with a group of people that do the same thing for a living as you do. That ends up being a really beneficial thing, because when you think about it Window Cleaning is a super niche market. Even if you have a lot of window cleaners in your area, chances are it’s competitive and you don’t get down to talk shop anyway. So these event roundtables end up being the perfect venue to talk shop and share tips and techniques in a safe environ-ment.

On The Road

WCR On The RoadCoralville, Iowa - July 30 & 31st 2010

Let’s not forget all the great swag. Thousands of dollars in free window cleaning equipment was given out as well. Thanks to the sponsors: Unger, Simpole, Mr. Long Arm, Hook um Dano ladder locks, Booty Boots, Titan Labs, Screen Mouse and Garelick. A special thanks to GlassRenu for donating a scratch removal machine valued at $2195. The winner has been thinking of adding scratch removal to his business so it’s a perfect fit.

What did you think of the event?

Nick Klatt – Invisa Clear Window CleaningWhat a good job guys, you really made this happen. The speeches, demos, food, and giveaways were just great. We had one hell of a time.

Jesse Martin – Green Window CleaningHuge thanks to:Chris and Alex of WCR for sponsoring this event and for all the giveaways. Tony, thanks for sharing your equipment to play with, your knowledge of Fabricating Debris. Kevin, amazing and powerful marketing insights as always.

Kyle Ballweg – Clear Vision Window CleaningA special thanks to those that made this event possible! These guys are more than willing to give us information that took them years and years to learn. It is a pretty special thing to be able to meet and chat with others in the same industry. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have never sat around a table and spoken with my competitors like I did in Iowa. I have my calendar already marked for this event next year!

See coverage from the 2010 Iowa Convention at www.shopwindowcleaningresource.com/midwest

To see upcoming WCR events visit:www.shopwindowcleaningresource.com/events


Safety 0

MSDS. You may have heard these 4 letters strewn together before, but do you know what they stand for? Material Safety Data Sheet. Material safety data sheets contain printed material concerning a hazardous chemical as prescribed by law. They contain basic information needed to ensure the safety and health of the user at all stages of its manufacture, storage, use, and disposal. In the state of New Jersey it is mandatory that material safety data sheets are kept on board any commercial vehicle that transports or houses chemicals. Taking the time to read and understand the MSDS sheets provided for every chemical you use in your window cleaning busi-ness could save your life.

“He never would have thought that the stain remover mixed with a seemingly common stain could create some nasty by-products that would

put him in the hospital...”

I would like to share with you the happenings of a New England win-

dow cleaner who got a little too comfortable with his chemical usage and landed himself in the hospital.

The New England based window cleaner was attempting to re-move stains, like he had done many times before, from a residential window during a routine cleaning. The chemical in use consisted of hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid, and alone of this concentra-tion, the two do not fall within the toxic or corrosive hazard classifica-tions. But on this day, our friend the window cleaner was attempting to remove heavy lime build-up and would learn firsthand that there is much more chemistry involved in stain removal than he had previ-ously conceived. He never would have thought that the stain remover mixed with a seemingly common stain could create some nasty

What You Don’t Know Could Kill You


by-products that would put him in the hospital. Mixing the three reac-tants, 2 acids (hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid) and the one base (lime), would prove to be a very dangerous combination.

Our friend the window cleaner thought he would waltz into the hospital, get a shot for the pain, feel better and be on his merry way. Not the

case at all.

As the day went on, the window cleaner began to feel an ache in his hands; the sensation persisted and became increasingly painful with every passing hour. Feeling fatigued and achy, the window cleaner headed home for a shower and some rest, thinking that in conjunc-tion that would ease the pain. But the pain persisted still. The next morning the window cleaner awoke in what he described as “unbearable pain”. Fearing for his health, he left his home and rushed himself to the hospital, where doctors contacted poison control and eventually had him transported to another hospital where they were better prepared to treat his condition.

Our friend the window cleaner thought he would waltz into the hospital, get a shot for the pain, feel better and be on his merry way. Not the case at all. The doctors determined that the two acids in the stain remover he had been using the pre-vious day in conjunction with the lime stains on the windows, had made for a near fatal health crisis. It was determined that his body was depleted of calcium and he was in desperate need of replenishment. The extremely low levels of calcium then threw off his electrolytes which could have lead to heart failure. How were the doctors able to diagnose the window cleaner so accurately you may ask?? By reading the MSDS the window cleaner brought with him to the hospital. The MSDS provided the doctors with an accurate knowledge of the product he used the day before and enabled them make edu-cated decisions pertaining to the window cleaner’s treatment.

The MSDS clearly states that this product is incompatible with certain materials: specifically strong alkalies, alkali metals and organic materials. I have to admit, I did not know what those materials may be so I had to do some research myself. My findings, and from what our friend the window cleaner found out from the doctors at the hospital, showed that lime is an inorganic material similar to the incompatible alkalies listed in the MSDS that triggered the chemical reaction. These reactions which permeated the hands of the window cleaner caused the initial pain and calcium deficiency.

After speaking to the window cleaner about his ordeal, he has no ill will toward the stain remover he used that day. Look-ing back, he only wishes he knew more about what it was capable of and what he was getting himself into. The window cleaner learned a firsthand lesson in why we all need to be knowledgeable of what we are working with and how to use it properly, what safety precautions to take while in use, and what if any side reactions could take place. I am told that the window cleaner will continue to use the product, but plans on implementing some very basic safety precautions that will keep him out of harm’s way in the future.

So please my fellow window cleaners, know what you are working with and how to protect yourself. Wear long-sleeved shirts and pants. Get gloves that come up to the elbow. And wear goggles when using any chemical that could pose even

the smallest threat to your health. Slow down and realize that no job and no amount of money is worth risking your life for.

By Alex Lambrinides

Look for this icon next to all chemicals in the WCR store. Simply click it for a free MSDS download.

Or go to the following website for a complete list of downloads:http://shopwindowcleaningresource.com/msds


The Hard Numbers 0Take A Look At What Some Other Window Cleaners Have

To Say In These Great PollsFrom The WCR Community

Has it worked out the way that you had imagined it would this year? What does your revenue look like? 66.7% of window cleaners that completed this poll already met or are completely satisfied with their 2010 revenue goal. How do you feel about yours?

Sometimes you start to wonder if you made the right decision when things get rough. How do you feel about your career move into window cleaning? 80% of window cleaners that took this poll love the choice they made!

Fabricating Debris is a pretty big topic in the window cleaning industry. Do you think about when you’re out on the job? Do you think that you should get a Fabricating Debris Waiver signed before you do a job? 40% of window cleaners that took this poll have never had a waiver signed.

Does your family help you out in your window cleaning business? Maybe they do the accounting or the hiring or maybe they work right on site with you daily. 44.83% of window cleaners that took this poll say that a mem-ber of their family helps them out on a strictly part time basis. How about you?

The vehicle that you drive for your window cleaning business can be a very important tool. It can be a marketing tool, an organizing tool, and a tool to help you incorporate an add-on like pure water clean-ing. 46.03% of window cleaners that took this poll decided that a pick up truck was the perfect window cleaning vehicle.


Fun 0


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