Episode 152: 385k/Month: This Is How We Broke Our All Time Sales Record

Episode 152: 385k/Month: This Is How We Broke Our All Time Sales Records

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:
Hey everybody. Welcome back 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. Take it to the next level and win. Thank you guys for jumping on the show with us. Thank you for your time. We're honored to be growing your cleaning company with you. Growing together. I'm your host, Brandon Chain. I'm joined by my co host Brandon Condre in the house. And today, guys, we are going to share with you how we broke our all time record of sales and how we broke through a huge new sales record, over 380,000amonth and how we're going to be sharing the breakdown.

Just got off a coaching call today. Everyone was asking, so we're going to share it with you guys live on the podcast. Um, so Brandon, let's celebrate this win and jump into the details and share kind of how we did this. So, yeah, so here's what happened. We over September, the entire month of September, we're recording this on October 3, 2024. So in September, the team sold 44.5

BWE, which is this internal metric we use, which is stands for bi weekly equivalent. So it's roughly 44.5 biweekly customers. That's calculated by a weekly customer accounting for 2 and a monthly customer accounting for 0.5 and a biweekly customer accounting for 1. So 44.5, their goal was 40 and they were over that. And then the way that we pay commissions on that is they have tiered goals. And so this is like the, they've never hit this goal before.

So they got paid out a lot of commissions this month that they don't normally get. So the goal we were thinking they were gonna hit was 35. They hit 10 above that. So they got paid out a decent chunk of change, which I'm really happy for them for. So the way that we schedule a buy, a team of three servicing biweekly customers can handle 45 BWE. So over the course of four weeks, we added another team, a whole nother team.

And so our average invoice right now is 237. So 237 per invoice. A customer gets cleaned 26 times a year. So it's $6100 per customer per biweekly customer every year that they stay on. And so for the 44.5 they sold that's $274,000 added to gross revenue, assuming all of them stay on for a year. But even if you divide that number by 12, it's $23,000 a month in extra revenue.

So even next month, if all of them canceled, we got $23,000 in revenue, you know, if they all cancel by the end of the month. So we just wanted to give you guys a breakdown of what it takes to do that and what we were doing previously. Yeah, we had a lot of you guys asking on the coaching call today, just like, what the heck did you guys do?

What does that breakdown look like? So we're going to give it to you guys so you guys can model success. Success leaves clues. And we're going to share with you guys what that looks like. Now, keep in mind, guys, when we very first started, what, like, where we all start? We all start at zero. We all started the same place, right? And we tested a lot of different things.

In the beginning, Brandon and I did sales. In the beginning, we were out doing in person estimates and then eventually virtual estimates. And then eventually we built a team. Right? And there's that acronym with team. The teamwork makes the dream work. Together, everyone achieves more. Right. And that's why we built the sales team to replicate ourselves, duplicate what we were doing. And we literally started with a very small budget, guys.

We had a few hundred dollars, maybe $500 a month in budget in our initial ads that we started testing paid advertising. And that just continued to grow as we up. So we're going to give you guys the breakdown. Brandon's got the numbers, so let's dive into what that looks like. The back end. Yeah. So to counter this, we had previously when we started, when Brandon and I were.

It was just me and Brandon in the office. We didn't have Claudia or anybody. I think our fastest time that we added a new team was six weeks. So it took us six weeks to get 45 customers, which is pretty fast back then. But four weeks is bananas. And so for September, we did 335,000 in gross revenue. And right now for October, we're doing 3 85. So huge jump.

So $50,000 more in revenue next month compared to this month. And so how do we do that? We are a customer centric company. We focus on customer experience, both on the sales, but also, like, customer service ongoing. Like, I need to cancel. And there's the whole gamut of things that the customer service reps do for that and then also customer experience with the cleaner. So part of it is like the brand speaks for itself, the service speaks for itself.

But we've invested heavily in the customer experience team. So there are. We have a customer experience manager and then we have 2.5 reps. So two full timers and a part timer. So altogether it's 3.5. And so here's the nitty gritty on the numbers. Okay, so 44.5 customers cost us the following in September. $3,000 in combined ad spend. So 2,000 of that is Google. Google spread across multiple product lines.

Like they have local service ads and pay per click and Adsense and things like that. So all told with Google, 2000 bucks and then another thousand spread across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube. So we're dabbling in YouTube just a smidge. So I doubt much of that came from YouTube this month. So 3K in ads because they hit that stretch goal. This is the most we've ever paid out commissions by far.

So we paid out $10,000 in combined commissions, which is a lot. I am really happy for the customer experience reps to be able to hit that goal. And when we were doing the math earlier, I told you how much those customers bring in, right? So they bring in $275,000 annually. If they stay for a year, I'm totally will to pay $10,000 in commissions in exchange for $275,000 of long term revenue.

We have sales coaching that we talked about earlier. So we have a company that we contract with, we pay them $2,500 a month to run weekly sales coaching and that boosts up the team. And then we have an outside company that we work with called tidy your sales. And you know, we're partners with them. And so we'll give you some more information on them at the end. And we pay 1250amonth to have them run the $3,000 in ad campaign.

And then there is of course the wages of the team across the board. And so these are rough numbers, but the manager gets 33, 60amonth basically with salary, that's before that commission. And then there are 2.5 reps, like I said before, and I think they make $17 an hour if memory serves correctly. And so fidgeting with a calculator over here. So stand by. So $7,300 in customer experience wages plus the rep.

Well you, sorry. Plus the manager. So $10,700 in salary basically over that month. And then you add that to the 3,000 in ads. So 3,000 in ads, 10,000 in commission, 2,500 for sales coaching 1254 admin so all told, we spent $27,476 to gain a machine that does $275,000 in revenue. And if you compare that to the September number of 335, it was 8.2%. But if you take that number, 27,476 and you divide it by the 385 for October, 7.1.

So somewhere between 7 and 8% all in ad budget, administration of ad budget, sales, coaching, wages. 7%. There you go. 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 7% was actually on our coaching call today. One of our students was thinking about spending 7% just on a TV ad campaign. And we told them you should probably reconsider and put that, reappropriate that in a place where you're going to like be able to track it better, have better results and not have to spend that much of your budget, you know, when you're smaller.

We're telling you guys these numbers, you know, when we're making a lot more money. But when we started, you know, we were doing a lot more. We were conserving that, managing those ads sometimes ourselves. But yeah, I think that's huge, man, those numbers are huge. And it's like when you look at the big picture, it sounds like a lot, but you guys are like, that's why we tell you guys, invest in your business.

Every investment in your team members and your ads, all that as an investment ultimately make you a return on that investment so you have an ROI on the back end, which is what we're showing you guys. Like, this stuff works. It's not easy to set up, which is why we'll help you set it up. We have our strategic partner tied to your sales. They've worked with us on these campaigns for the last seven years from the very beginning, like taking everything we did and continue to optimize it.

So we've literally spent, you know, tens of thousands of dollars and hours and hours and hours of our time finding out which campaigns work, which offers work and ultimately replacing Brandon and I from doing all the sales. Right. So that the sales just happened automatically. And we have a team, we have the script, we have the system to not only get the leads and ideal leads, but also convert those leads to real customers and keep them on a recurring schedule, which is the bread and butter of this business.

So yeah, that was huge. Brandon, thank you for sharing all those numbers, man. I'm feeling pretty excited, man. We have some great momentum because this is September. We normally have like a slowdown at the end of the year and this is like crazy. So yeah, so normally fall slows down the time we've put in with the sales coaching and the commission structure and putting a manager on it.

It's expensive as you gu just heard on the numbers. But all that pays dividends through making. This might be the first year where we actually add more towards the end of the year. Whereas years previously when it starts to turn cold, people just aren't interested in getting cleaning for some reason. And it's not ideal, but it's just the fact of the matter. The other thing with those numbers, we just did the math for you and allocated two and a half customer experience reps plus a manager's wages to income.

Right. And to revenue. But in reality those three and a half people are doing much more than sales. Those are not full time sales people, they are full time customer experience reps. So I think the majority of the stuff they do maybe 60% of their time is actually spent on maybe it's 50 50, but their most of their time is spent on customer service issues. So scheduling changes, I can't have it today, I'm sick.

Or issues with the team where they got there and they're like, we can't get in. And so someone has to call the customer to be like, hey, we're locked out. What's the door code again? Like we have this number, is that correct? And so a lot of that is on the back end. And then on top of just servicing sales that come in or leads rather that come in from tidy your sales, the customer experience reps do a number of other things which I don't think any other cleaning company is really doing.

We call customers on their anniversary to thank you for being a customer for the last year. You've been with us five years. That's so awesome. You know, is there anything you think we could improve upon? They do those kinds of calls. We're following up on old leads that never responded to ads. We're always running some weird campaign. Like we just gave away three months of cleaning in a contest online that was really just meant to drive social media engagement.

And that's all administered by the same team that does the leads and the sales. And so, you know, when we set this up, we had talked about do we need a dedicated sales person or do we need this, like, Swiss army knife that can do whatever is asked of them on the other end of the phone? And trying to be customer centric, we decided to go Swiss army knife.

I want whoever answers the phone to be able to deal with whatever's on the other end. And that's where we're at. They spend 50% of their time. So that 7% may even be an overshoot. It may be a little bit less than that because maybe half of their wages account for sales. Yeah, very true. And you know, if you look at like what most companies budgets are, even just advertising in general, like service companies, like, I think they're spending up to 10% just on ad spend.

So we're reducing that and leveraging that same time to what you said, Brandon, is like customer experience, which in a way is still sales, because in order to retain those customers and reduce your churn, reduce your cancellations, you have to provide an exceptional experience every single time. It goes back to how you answer the phone. How do you handle reschedules? How do you handle when people object about pricing and say they want to cancel, how do you keep those people on the schedule?

That's revenue as well. That's selling them again or altering their schedule or altering something to help them keep on the schedule. Right? So that training applies to that too. It's not only new customers, it's keeping our existing customers and keeping them happy. So they're thrilled and they're overjoyed and they want to tell people about this amazing experience. Right? So it goes a lot further than just the sales.

But as you guys can see, you know, it does pay dividends. Like, if you think about this analogy, guys, if you could put a dollar into like a money machine, and every time you put in a dollar, it spit out $10, how many times would you put a dollar in? Right? You would just keep doing it. So that's what we're talking about, is we built this machine. This is what we're trying to help you guys model in your cleaning business, think big and actually build a money printing machine.

You can put in a dollar, get 10 out every time. When you build the right structure and you have the right team in place so that you guys can focus on the business. Like, we should do a whole nother podcast about this, Brandon. But like six or seven years ago, eight years ago, when we were very, very first starting this business, we were doing everything. It was crazy.

We were running around doing everything, messaging, estimates, sales, sometimes the cleaning, you know, and you put that time in in the beginning so that on the back end after you build this machine, like Brandon mentioned, it's a machine now. We don't deal with that. We don't get messages all day long anymore. We don't have like our team does that. The system's in place, they're handling all of this.

And so just the value of that. What's your time worth? What's our time worth? It's priceless, right? We get to spend time with our kids, our families, go skiing, go do the stuff we love. And that's why we built this business this way. It's like some of you might not want to do it this way, but how much is your time worth? And that's why we're building these systems.

So I didn't want to do it this way. So when we tried to focus on customer experience, you come to like a fork in the road. All right, we've grown as much as we can with just Brandon and I doing this. How are we going to proceed? Some companies opt to be low contact. We want you to book things through the website, get pricing through the website, talk through the website.

And that just feels impersonal. And more importantly, and this is what Brandon, I think pointed out that really made the shift is that everyone else is doing that. If you, we talk to you guys, the listeners of this podcast, a lot on strategy calls, and we look at some of your competitors in the markets you're in, and I don't know, three out of five times they have an online booking thing, which is great for running a low overhead business, but it is bad for running a customer centric business.

If I'm going to pick up the phone and call you, it'd be nice if someone answered on the other end. I'm taking my time out to do this, but we'll meet you where you are. We will talk to you on social media, direct messages, text messages, email, phone, whatever you want to do. But what we didn't want to do was just be like, I'll book it through the website.

And the problem with doing that is that if you're showing your pricing to them without explaining what you do and what sets you apart. They're going to look at that and be like $200. My next door neighbor Jeff gets it cleaned for 50, but Jeff gets it cleaned from a housekeeper. Cash under the table, no insurance. They do the bare minimum. 200 bucks compared to that $50 is insurance and peace of mind.

And dialed in systems with checklists and inspections and infrastructure backing it up and paying employees a living wage so that they want to come back to work and making sure that we have you covered. If someone calls in sick, we have someone to fill in for that person. That's not an apples to apples comparison. And so when someone reaches out to us and calls us on the phone, I want a human to explain to them this is what we do, why we're different.

And then when I tell them $200, they're like, I'm blown away. I thought it was going to be way more than that based on all that you do. And that's the difference. So we took this harder, more expensive fork in the road. But now 385 on the books for October. If you multiply that out by 12. Even if we just sat on maintaining the customers that we have now, if we just maintain the customers that we got, that's a $4.6

million a year business. And we're not sitting still. We now have the money printing machine built, which is the customer experience team and the ads dialed in. We're going to keep going, man. Sky's the limit. There are other cities in the state that we want to expand into. Neighboring states maybe like we're not slowing down. This is like peak earning opportunity right here. So that's where we're at.

Not only do you not know the best tactics for your market, but it's also all too easy to waste money and get zero results. Once we started working with Tidy youy Sales, all of this changed. We saved time on following up with customers so we can close more leads. We now have total control of our marketing system so we know 100% what's working for our market. And best of all, the team at Tidy youy Sales is incredibly knowledgeable and they'll work with you one to one to show you what works so you get results fast.

To learn more about working with the incredible team at Tidy your sales go to profitcleaners.com tidyoursales that's profitcleaners.com tidyouoursales right now. Absolutely. And I'm going to shift that now. I heard this recently, but sky is normally the starting point. Or the limit. Right. But the sky is actually the starting point. If you guys are thinking big and getting this system in place. Yeah, it's not easy, uncomfortable, to do something different, to have changed.

But when you have the end in mind, start with the end in mind. How do you guys want your life to look and Brandon are just sharing. This is why we built this business, so we were able to create the lifestyle and the freedom and the time, get our time back. Right? So you guys aren't just building a job where you're slaving away every day at a job and wondering why you did this.

It's like, build a real asset. Build a true machine that's going to set you free and make everyone's lives on your team, your customers, everyone's going to be happier. And that's why we're doing this. Like, so have that bigger vision when you guys are doing this and building it out. And just, we want to inspire you guys. Like, this is what's possible. When Brandon and I started this, Brandon, I'm pretty sure we didn't think we were ever going to make that kind of revenue.

We were like, dude, if we can make 10,000amonth or a hundred thousand a month, like, we'll be crushing it. Right? And like you said, we just kept going and kept showing up. And this is why you guys want to focus in the beginning on automating certain things and not replicating mistakes, right? So, like, put the systems in place and then add, right, so you're not duplicating mistakes. So in the beginning, Brandon and I were figuring out those mistakes or modeling success and having people help us, just like we're trying to help you guys.

So you can shortcut that time. There's no shortcuts in business, but you can compress time, take a smart cut instead of modeling something that's already working. And if, you know, if you guys want to have these results in your business, like, keep showing up to this podcast, work with us. We have a coaching group, we have an online mastery program, mentorship program that teaches you how to do this.

We give you all the details, we give you all the knowledge, and we give you a community. We're doing it with you every day, which is really fun. So we're all doing it together. So, yeah, I would say let's tell them a little bit about that, Brandon, because you guys are probably like, hey, how can I do this? Like, we want to help you guys do this. We want to help you model this.

So what does that look like? Brandon, you can learn more about that@profit cleaners.com masterclass. But what we do is there's a course we sell which is kind of like compartmentalized lessons about all the things that we've done to get us to this point. There's a weekly coaching call that we just got off of where the hive mind gets together. You ask questions, we will answer them for you.

People sit on the hot seat sometimes. Like today was troubleshooting a TV ad. Should I spend 7% of revenue on a TV ad with no guaranteed results? Maybe not. And then we do events too, like we've done behind the scenes tours of Sandia Green Clean, where you can kind of meet in person, meet your fellow business owners that are on, you know, doing the same thing that you're doing.

There's other things in the pipeline in the future. And then the other thing that we bring that Profit Cleaners brings to the table is partnerships. So we have a partnership with tidy your sales and you get some preferred marketing experience. Behind the scenes. We have a partnership with a company called Build With Robots that makes a sanitizing robot that no one else is using in the residential space right now.

And, you know, we've got other ideas for things to expand that in the future. But the point is, just like San Diego Green Clean doesn't stop and we keep going. The same is true of Profit Cleaners. So we will continue to grow this, podcast, this audience and provide value to you guys all the time so that we can make things bigger and better in the future. Yeah, and a lot of you guys are like, why in the world are you doing this?

Well, a few reasons. First of all, we learn just as much when we're on these, these coaching calls with you guys. We learn. And a rising tide raises all ships. So just as much as you guys are learning, we're learning from you. And we're gaining more knowledge of what works. And through teaching it, we're actually understanding our business model better and how to improve it. So that's number one.

The other reason we do this, guys, is because quote by Tony Robbins, I don't know what the exact quote is, but he basically says the highest form of achievement and level of success is you helping other people. Right? You helping other people achieve the results you've achieved along the way. And so that's a huge reason why we're doing this. It's changing your life. It's changing our life. We want to change our lives and we want to help you guys, like lots of people reach out on the show and be like, you guys saved my cleaning business.

You've changed my life. And that's why we're doing this. One other reason, I just want to say we haven't really announced this officially, but, guys, there's a huge potential future option here that we can all benefit from. Working together, doing this together. We're not a franchise, but there's potential exits in the future that we can all benefit and profit huge in the future. So just. I'm not going to spill all the beans and the details of it yet, but jump on board with what we're doing, guys.

We're creating a movement here, and you guys want to be part of this. If you guys want to do something big, finally hit some major strides and success, maybe have, like, the ultimate legacy business you always wanted to build, or maybe just build it up and exit someday, this is what we're showing you guys how to do, is build a true asset, a true machine that will replace you, keep running without you.

Brandon and I are hours away from our cleaning business right now. And our whole team, we're cleaning, like a hundred houses today, like, almost. So it's just like, put the systems in place, empower your team and get it done. And we're here to show you guys how to do that. So like Brandon said, if you guys haven't watched, there's a new masterclass out. It's a lot shorter and more concise and to the point.

So if you guys are like, I didn't have time to watch the masterclass in the past, go watch it. It's 15 minutes long. Go to profit cleaners.commasterclass we're going to break down how we do this. We're going to show you the inside of our business, and then we're going to get on a call together and strategize how to help you, even if it's just on the call. But if you guys want to go further with us and jump in and have us mentor you and coach you and show you how to do this, too, Like I said at the beginning of this podcast, success leaves clues.

Just follow the clues, guys. Model success. And that's what we did, too, and we're here to share that with you. So anyways, great podcast, Brandon. I thought that was huge. So, yeah, keep it clean. Keep it clean, guys. 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.