Episode 147: Why Our Cleaning Business Doesn’t Offer a Menu of Services

Episode 147: Why Our Cleaning Business Doesn't Offer a Menu of Services

Announcer:
Grow your cleaning business. Make more money, have more time. This is the profit Cleaners podcast with your hosts, Brandon Condrey and Brandon Schoen.

Brandon Schoen:
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Profit Cleaners podcast. The only place where you can learn from the top 1% of cleaning business owners from around the world to take it to the next level and win. Guys, thank you for your time and being here to grow your businesses.

We're grateful to have the opportunity to grow with you on the journey. And I'm your host, Brandon. I'm sorry, I'm your host, Brandon Shane. And I'm joined by my co host, Brandon Condrey. I thought I was Brandon Condrey for a second there, but I'm Ron Burgundy. I'm Ron Burgundy. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, there's Brandon. There's multiple brandons up in here, but here we are, the b squared. We almost became b cubed.

But anyways, let's jump into it, Brandon. We've got a lot of people asking, why don't we have a menu of services? And why do we do a deep clean every single time? And I think there's a lot of great reasons. And we were just talking about why fast food restaurants do this. So let's jump into it. If you want to tell that analogy or that story, I think that's a great way to start it out.

So, yeah. So I think the idea here is, you know, we get asked by people, do you, like, what's the difference between, like, your regular clean and a deep clean? And the answer is, nothing. Like, we don't. I hate that term, deep clean. Deep clean, to me, implies that when the team's coming out to do a not deep clean, that we're not trying as hard. Like, we're skipping things.

That's all I see and hear when people are comparing those things. So I'm paying you, but you're not doing the full thing. And there are lots of competitors that have these elaborate menus or checklists. Like, I think one of the big franchises has an a, B and C schedule. And so on an a week, we're going to do these things, and on a B week, we're going to do these things.

You pay the same every time, but we don't do those things every time. And the franchise's pitch to customers is that if we did these things every time, we'd have to charge you XYZ amount of money. Like, it'd be more. So we're keeping your costs down, but we're just not cleaning everything. That's a very unsatisfactory answer to me as a homeowner. It just means that I have to wait three cleans for the whole thing to be clean, which is lame.

So why do we do it this way? A. I don't know. I'm kind of lazy. And training those complicated schedules is complicated. Like the teams has to remember, man, is this this house an a week or a B week? Is that house a B week or a C week today? I don't remember. So that's a complicated. And then the other thing that Brandon was talking about in the beginning was this analogy to fast food restaurants.

So if you have not seen the movie the founder starring Michael Keaton, I highly recommend it. It is about McDonald's and how it came to own the fast food realm before, you know, like, like up until a lot of competition came out. So the big breakthrough for McDonald's was they had this very complicated menu of things and it took people a long time to order because you had to look at this menu and pick.

And what they did that made it really simple was they cut it down to the bare bones. It was just like, we serve hamburgers. Do you want cheese? Do you want fries? Tada. You have ordered. And the one that is still doing it, that's kind of holding to the same thing is in n out. So if you happen to live in the western United States and you've been to an in n out burger and you go in there and order, the menu is very, very simple.

How many patties do you want? How much cheese do you want? In a weird way, on the secret menu, which like animal style and stuff like that. So that's kind of what we, that's kind of what we did with cleaning. We're just going to do the same thing every time and we're going to charge you the same cost. Your house will be deep cleaned whenever you want. You can have people over, they can look behind the toilet.

There's no hairs or stuff back there because we didn't skip cleaning behind the toilet for three weeks because it wasn't on the schedule. So that's kind of what we were shooting for. And it has worked very well for us. Yeah, absolutely. And then really what I hear you saying there, Brandon, is where it's complicated doing it that way, which means doing it the other way. You are reducing and you're simplifying, you're reducing the variables, which is what we talk about all the time with scaling a business.

If you want to scale a business, you have to reduce the possible mistakes that could happen, the things that could go wrong. If you have three different schedules of a house cleaning, what are the variables? Like, so many different things could go wrong. Right. So if you have one, one way you do things, there's one set system. There's a lot less that could go wrong. So while you were saying that just brought up another story of kind of a fast food restaurant.

But we have a local pizza chain in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I think they're up in Colorado now, too, called Dion's. It's, like, one of our favorite pizzas. We grew up eating as kids. And actually, I remember specifically when I was a little kid, being in one of their first restaurants, and you could watch them make pizza. And my dad, being in real estate, told me how he actually helped them get their new location set up and opened, and he worked side by side with the owner.

But basically, long story short, when Dion's opened, they were a mediterranean restaurant. They had, like, 50 items on their menu. If you go into the restaurant today, they have, like, three things. It's pizza, salad, and subs. So what they did was they confined that menu, and they reduced it down because there was so many options. What they actually determined was people only buy these three things the most, pizza, subs, and salads.

So what they did is they specialized in those three things, and that's what they became known for. That's what their brand became known for. And it's, you know, now when you go to Dion's, you don't think, like, am I gonna get this item or these other 50 items? You think, I'm gonna get a pizza? I'm probably gonna get a sub or a salad. That's it. And it simplifies what Brandon was just talking about.

That's what the big fast food chains have done as well. So it eliminates all these variables of thinking, uncertainty, oh, should I do this? Should I do this? I'm a confused mind says no. So instead of making no decision, you're just going to make it really easy for people. And so you see that in fast food chains and other restaurants. This is something you'll see in most businesses, because it is that very reason you want to make it easy to make a purchase, easy for people to make a decision and work with you and make it a no brainer and also make it a no brainer for your teams to execute and deliver the product.

It shouldn't be super complicated. It should be straightforward to the point, hard to make mistakes doing it. So it's duplicatable every time and consistent. Right? So anyways, that's why we don't have a menu of services. And I think another big question that comes up is, well, like, what happens if someone just wants their bathroom cleaned? Like, right. That would be like this menu of services you have and you just have line items or one time things people can pick out.

So why don't we do that, Brandon? Why don't we just do, we're just going to do the bathroom or we're just going to do this part of the house? Because I don't want those customers. I want the whole shebang, man. I want to do. I want to do the whole house. If you are calling me up, you saw the reviews. It's a highly reviewed cleaning company. They're the best in the state.

I'm going to call them up. Hey, you guys are great. How much is it? Oh, my God. That much? Can I just do a bathroom? That's a recipe for disaster. Out of the gate. They don't want what you're selling. They want someone, they want a housekeeper. That's what they want. That customer wants a housekeeper to come in and be like, hey, today can you just do this bathroom?

And then next week we'll just do the kitchen. And that's someone who is very, very price conscious. And, you know, like there's. I was very price conscious for most of my life. I'm not knocking those people that need to save money or need to budget, but that's not where we're at as a company. As a company, we are full service, high throughput. I want you to come in, be like, oh, my gosh, this is the best thing ever.

I cannot live without this. It is so much. It's so worth the money. But if you're calling me up to ask about, can you just clean the master bath? Or we don't even use this bedroom. Can you not just do it? So there's two ways to go about it. I don't want my customer visceral reaction that I just had. That's probably not how we would actually handle it.

On the phone. On the phone, we would tell them, we can do that. We do a flat fee by square footage. So we're going to have to estimate what the square footage is of your bathroom. Your bathroom is probably 30 sqft. If we do all three of them, it's 90 sqft. Well, we have a minimum. The minimum is 1000 for us to clean. 1000 sqft. It's this much.

But did you know for us to clean your whole house, it's only this much. And so the way our pricing model is built out is there's an economy's a scale here. So like the minimum is quite high for a thousand square feet, but for you to tack on the rest of the house does not increase it that much. The bulk of our cost is to drive out there, get to the door, unload the car and get going.

So whether we're cleaning 30 sqft or 1000, we're charging you the same. So you might as well just pay for the 2000 sqft, which is not double the thousand square feet. It's not a linear number, it just scales with this sort of algorithm that we got going on in the background. So yeah, that's the nuts and bolts of it like that. That's why we don't do that. Yeah, and it really also comes back to something very important you said there, which is we don't want those customers.

Why don't you want those customers? Because the people that pay the least demand the most. And they're also almost impossible to make happy. Like they're almost always unsatisfied, which is funny. But actually when you play in the premium space and you charge a higher amount, this is why you want to charge premium and you don't want to play the discount game forever because it's a race to the bottom.

Everybody can compete on price. It's really not that hard. And you want to compete on value, right? So when you actually switch from we're the cheapest or I from like, yeah, we'll just come out and clean your bathroom to actually, we don't do that. We want to give you the full experience and it's really worth it for you, mister customer, to pay a little bit more to get the whole house done.

That's what we do. And we totally get if it's not a good fit for you, but when you're doing that, you're actually attracting the people that will pay more. They actually are much better customers. They probably don't demand as much. They're already paying for what they perceive as a higher value. They're not going to complain as much. It's just overall a much better model of doing business. And you're going to attract better customers, have better experiences, more long term customers that really get what you're doing, that are happy to stay along and be retained as a customer for years to come.

So people that haggle on price are usually not that, they're usually tire kickers like the Groupon people that they're just like, I just want the one deal, the one time I'm going to get as much out of it as I can and then I'm going to hit the road. I'll never call them again. Those are the kind of people that usually want you to just clean the bathroom.

And unfortunately, that bathroom could also be horrendous. And it could take your team, you know, three times as long just to clean that bathroom. Or, you know, it's. Again, it's throwing off your entire system. So if you normally have a two or three person team come in, they clean the whole house. Well, now, if you're only cleaning one part of the house, what's the rest of your team going to do?

Right. It breaks your whole system. Now, they're probably standing around because it's unlikely three people are going to be in the bathroom cleaning together. Like, so again, more variables, more breakage. Like, there's so many problems that can be caused from this. Plus, you're not going to be getting as much revenue and it's going to screw up your schedule. I mean, all these things, right? So that's in a nutshell why we don't do the one off stuff on the cleaning.

Right? Brandon just breaks our system. Yeah. I think the comparison to Groupon is a good one. That's an apt comparison. I loved Groupon when it came out. And in the early days, if you were, you know, like a connected Internet type person, there were screaming deals to be had on there, and it was a super cool model, but over time, it just became like cheapskates. So not like the whole goal of Groupon is like, look, you're a new business.

Let's cut people a deal and you'll get some new customers in the door. That sounds great, but in reality, it's. Yeah, you're going to clean my house for $20. Score, I'll get my house clean this week for $20 and then never talk to you again. Like, that's exactly how it evolved over time. And those people are just a huge pain. Like, they're not fun to deal with those kinds of customers.

And, you know, it just. It is the way it is, unfortunately. And I don't want to be remotely in that space. I do not want people trying to nickel and dime us. Or how about I give you a shot and you just clean my kitchen? No, man. To get the full effect, you need to see all three coming in, doing their duty rotations, getting in, getting out, doing the inspection.

Like, all those things are super important and you're just not going to, you're not going to get that with, you know, like a one off. And so it just speaks to the mindset of the customer when they call you up and say, I don't want you to do this, that, or the other thing. So we're kind of talking about two things here. We're talking about why we don't offer a menu, but now we're complaining about the customers.

But like, this is the end result. The end result is to the customer why I want a deep clean, man, that's, that opening sentence from a customer is great. Hey, we actually don't offer deep cleans. We do this exhaustive checklist every single time we come out. We charge more the first time because it's going to take us longer to do it because we're going to clean a lot of stuff that hasn't been cleaned in a while.

But after that, when you're on a recurring service, we're just maintaining the same level of quality and so it takes us less time. And so that's why you pay less for the follow up cleans. And so there's, it's like a little game of chess. There's all these little bits and pieces that the customer experience team can throw out based on how we do things, which is not a piecemeal menu.

How many, if not all of the franchises do it. As you know, we don't love adding new services to our business, but in the case of breezy blue, we're all for it. It's easy to implement, affordable, and your customers will love how you can quickly sanitize every inch of their home in a matter of minutes. It's a great way to stand out from the competition so you can win more customers.

And it's eco friendly, too. To learn more about this incredible new product for your cleaning business, head to profitcleaners.com breezyblue. That's profitcleaners.com breezyblue. Yeah. And just imagine if you did just go into the bathroom, the customer walks in their home, oh, it's not actually all clean. Like, it's a big letdown. I got my house cleaned, but I only got this one part of my house cleaned. And now they're actually not experiencing the full extent of your product and your experience.

It's just this little tiny part of their home. And so they're really not, you know, it's not worth it for you to go out, deliver that for them to only experience that, and then on the other side of that we don't actually have this data in front of us, but you could. We know it, and our team knows it all day long. The people that call in and complain the most, most likely, the majority of complaints, probably the 80 20 Pareto principle.

80% of our complaints come from people that did a one time clean, people that did a move out clean, you know, people that just tried us out one time, or they're monthly, or, like, they're extended, they do it as needed right on the frequency. So the people that are every two weeks, the people that are every week, we never hear from those customers. Right, Brandon? Like, they're our best customers.

They're super happy. We probably never hear from them. They give us the most revenue. Those are the highest paying customers. This is exactly why this works, guys. Is the highest paying people. You'll probably never hear from them. They'll be your best customers. That's it. Yeah. So get more of those people. That's what we're talking about. You don't hear from them because ideally, you don't want to hear from them.

You don't want to hear from your customers. Every week, we send out a text message after every clean. Hey, how did it go? Let us know if there were any issues. A lot of times I'll just reply quickly back, like, no, it was great. Thanks. And that's it. Which is fine. But oftentimes, like, when we're talking about the ones that complain a lot, like, this goes back to when we were getting Eos off the ground, you have to kind of reimagine what your ideal customer looks like.

And so for us, the ideal customer is, you know, like, two. It's a married couple that both work full time. They're professionals, they have disposable income, but they're also pressed for time. And they have young kids. And so that customer just does not have time to clean on the weekend to the level they want it to be clean. They want to spend more time with their kids. And when you find those customers, those are the ones that are like, oh, this is great.

I'm never leaving, and I'm never complaining. And those are the awesome ones. The ones that complain all the time are not the ideal ones. Those are the move out cleans, which is not part of our focus. They're the, I tried you once, and it was so expensive. Like, I know we charge a lot for the initial or the one time you're supposed to be on a recurring service.

So, you know, when they push back a lot during the sort of customer onboarding process. We don't necessarily need to keep going with that. Like, we don't. We're not trying to force a round peg into a square hole or the other way around. A square peg into a round hole. We just want to find the people that like what we do and the ones that like what we do appreciate that.

We don't offer a deep, clean. We do the same clean every time, and it's awesome. Yeah. And that brings us back to, like, not everyone is your customer. If you're speaking to everyone, you're speaking to no one in the marketing world. And lots of the people you talk to are not. They're just not a good fit. And you don't want to be kind of like, I don't know, desperate to attract any old customer.

Same thing. Like, you don't want to be desperate to attract anyone on your team. You want to be patient to find the right people. And so with all the debate going on in the group and everyone talking about this, we just want to leave you guys with that. Like, ultimately, this is why we're doing this. This is why we don't have a huge menu of services. We've actually thought about doing maybe a marketing campaign where we.

That is one of our differentiators that kind of makes us unique, too, is we, we do it every time we over deliver. And it's so excellent every time. It's basically a deep clean every time. Maybe even more than that. But that's why we don't want to under deliver. You never want to, like, have your customers feel underwhelmed. And I feel like if you just offered them one service, one thing in the house, first of all, if they have 50 things to look at, they're going to be confused and overwhelmed just being like, I got to pick a few of these.

I don't know, versus if you just give them one option, we over deliver every time. We do everything you could possibly want and need. It's excellence every single time. That's an amazing experience. Right. And that's what people are willing to stick around for long term and pay top dollar for. Cause they don't even have to think about it. Right. It makes their whole day and their whole life easier.

So you're saving up time on that, too. Not just giving them their weekend back, their time back, but saving them, like, mental brainpower of, like, how to decide and make this decision right for their life. Right. You're eliminating the decisions they have to make. So we're going to give you these options they can ask questions, like, what do you guys do? Oh, man, we do all this stuff.

You do that every time? Yep. Great. So what do I need to do to get started? Just tell me how often you want it. Once a week? Uh, every other week. Every four weeks? Which one? That's it. So, I remember in the early days when we were still doing in person sales, one of my favorite parts about that job was getting to see competitors quotes and the hoops that they jumped through.

And, like, one of them, the one that has the ABC cleaning schedule, had, like, a portfolio. Like, it was this branded thing. So they were spending marketing money on this, like, high gloss print thing with the logo on it, and on one side had this menu of services, and the other side had a business card and. And the pricing, and, man, it was just, like, so much work.

And your. The customer's like, which week is this again? Like, did the blinds get clean? And the other thing, I mean, maybe this is part of the design, but as a customer, you come home, they came today, they came to clean. So you walk in your house like, man, those blinds are dusty. And then your spouse is like, well, was today, like, the week where they do the blinds?

I don't know. Was it, like, then you have to go back and find this thing shoved in a drawer to decide whether or not it's okay to call and complain? So maybe that part is by design. But our whole point is, like, when you come home, it should be clean. Everything is clean. Don't worry about it. We got you. Everything's fine. And that's what we want. That's what we delivered in the end, and that's worked very well for us.

The logic, I guess, is there, like, it's a cost saving measure. This is actually kind of, like, a form of, like, shrinkflation, in my mind. So, shrinkflation, if those of you don't know, they keep the price the same on a product. Like, last year, Rice Krispie treats were $3, and this year, they're also dollar three. But instead of you getting 3oz by weight, you're getting 2.75. So you're paying the same money but getting less product.

This is kind of the same concept. You're paying the same every time. And that makes us cheaper than the competition. But it's because we're not cleaning the whole house every time. We're cleaning 60% of it. And, like, the kitchens and bathrooms get cleaned every time. But we're not necessarily vacuuming under beds every time or cleaning baseboards every time. We're trying to do that every time so that you just know that it's clean and so there's different ways to skin a cat.

You know what I mean? But if you're looking in New Mexico and you look at our reviews, I think our we're cleaning your whole house every time method is working better than the I'll do menu a this week, please. Yeah, I just want to leave everyone with this, too. Going back to the experience. If you come back and your only bits and pieces of your home are clean, not the entire thing.

Again, if we're over delivering every single time, what this does psychologically in the customer's mind is it builds rapport, goodwill and reciprocity. Like, they're like, oh, my gosh. Every time I come home, I can't believe they did this extra thing. I can't believe they also made the bed. They also did this extra thing over here. It's amazing. They over deliver every time. I can't believe it. Right? That's what you want.

You want this overjoyed, surprised feeling every time that they come home. Maybe there's some little handwritten note or something fun you leave behind, too. That just makes their day, makes them smile, makes them laugh. But at the end of the day, guys, when you're constantly over delivering, that is what creates retention. You're always engaging them, you're always over delivering. You're always creating this sense of reciprocity, of like, oh, my gosh, this is way more value than I paid for.

And it's always, it's always consistent and it's always sustainably there and it's peace of mind, and it's like, I don't have to go looking for problems. Or like Brandon said, like, which week is it again? Like, you just eliminate all those variables and you focus on over delivering excellence every single time. And now people aren't going to want to go anywhere. If you do a price increase, if you screw something up, if your team does something wrong, no big deal.

Because every time you're there, you're over delivering. And people are like, I can't help it. Like, they're so awesome once in a while, if they make a mistake, no big deal. I don't even care. That's what you want to do, is build up that reserve of reciprocity and goodwill with your customers so that they don't want to leave. And even if you're not perfect, which you're not going to be, they're not going to go anywhere.

And that's how you build long term retention in your business is just by doing this, don't offer like a menu of services where they can one off and nickel and dime you and, you know, mess up your whole system and break your structure of your business, like actually over deliver and just make it easy for people. Yes. So I think that's what we want to leave with with you guys today is like the method.

We want to simplify, simplify, simplify. So that's, yeah, that's what we're doing. We're simplifying the whole situation. Yeah. So, you know, simple is better. And don't over complicate it. Guys, don't get in your own heads about this either. It's actually much simpler to just be the best and over deliver every time. And ultimately that will become your story, your reputation, what you become known for. Do you want to become known for just doing the bare minimum or over delivering every time you want to be excellent and that's what we're talking about is being excellent and just keep showing up and doing that, guys, and you're going to build an amazing, huge business of loyal, raving fans that love your services and don't want to look anywhere else.

So, yeah, anyways, if you guys are getting value from the show, yeah, I think that covers it. So if you guys are getting value, if anything we said on this podcast or any of the past podcasts have inspired you guys in any way, please let us know. Like the podcast, share it out to someone that needs to hear it. Leave us a review. That's probably one of the biggest things you could do is take out your phone right now, leave us a review and tell us how we've changed your life, changed your business, change something you're thinking about how you're growing.

That's really powerful for us. So we can keep making these shows for you guys and just getting better. So let us know and go watch the Masterclass. If you guys want to learn even more about how you can grow your business, how you can improve these areas and take it to the next level, check it out@profitcleaners.com. masterclass. And I think that's pretty much it. Brandon, right? Keep it clean.

Keep it clean. Thanks for joining us today. To get more info, including show notes, updates, trainings, and super cool free stuff, head over to profitcleaners.com. and remember, keep it clean.