Episode 157: Your Competition’s Blind Spots = More Customers for Your Business

Episode 157: Your Competition’s Blind Spots = More Customers for Your Business

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 to take it to the next level and win. Welcome to the show guys. We're super excited to have you here.

We've got an awesome episode today and we're going to be talking all about how knowing your competitors weaknesses can get you more customers. So you're going to want to stay tuned because it's going to be some amazing knowledge and insight. I'm Brandon Shane, your host. I'm joined by my amazing co host Brandon Condre in the house. What's going on, Brandon? It's Halloween today. I don't know when you guys are listening to it, but today's Halloween so I'm mentally preparing for trick or treat shenanigans later.

Yeah, we just had an awesome coaching call too and I showed up in my bank robber outfit and it was really fun. And my kids are all dressed up as bank robbers too. My daughter's a police officer, she's going to arrest us. And my newborn 4 month old is a bag of money. So we're going to steal the loot and make it fun. It's going to be awesome.

That is awesome. I love it. It's really fun. So yeah, speaking of Halloween, we did some really cool stuff in the community. Brandon was out. You can tell Brandon, but you're out handing out candy and cards and we do like different promotional things in the community and online as always. I think that's probably a good. Right, Brandon? Yeah, that's a good podcast episode on its own. So maybe we'll add that to its list.

But I stumbled upon a place where our ideal customer hangs out in droves. So we'll record another episode and talk about that one. Yeah, stay tuned guys. We'll hook you up with some amazing new knowledge on that one too. So yeah, but let's talk about how knowing your competitor's weakness can get you more customers. This is really, really key for sales. When you guys are doing estimates, when you're talking to customers, getting your customers on, why work with your company?

What do you guys, how are you differentiated? A lot of people think cleaning is just a commodity, right? You just like every other cleaner out there. It's just going to be the same thing, right? So why should I pay more for you? So when you kind of realize these objections. When you know the objection, you know the things that people are going to push back on. When you're doing an estimate, when you're talking to someone on the, on the phone who wants to sign up for services and you treat every objection like a complaint and then you transition and you help kind of like tell people things they didn't even know they didn't know.

Right. Just educating them and providing value. This is why you hop on the phone with customers. That's why we don't like giving an instant quote on our website, because these are the opportunities you guys have to explain how you're different, explain the value. Right. Brandon and I think us going out and doing those estimates in the very beginning, Brandon did like 90% of them. Brandon. We learned a lot of this stuff, kind of just doing it.

Right. We learned like who else was out there? They would give us like, hey, I'm talking to this company and this company and this company and they would give you the quotes even. So we would learn our competitors pricing. We would learn what they're doing on the side and it helped us come up with our pitch. Right? Yeah. So I mean, there's a difference than gathering like dirt on your competitors so that you can bad mouth them.

Like that's not what this is. This is more like an overall intelligence sort of exercise to know your market. So who else is in the market? What do they do that's different than you? So earlier when Brandon was talking about how cleaning is a commodity and we're all just going to. They're all do the same things. It's all about price. It is not. Not all cleaning companies are created equal.

And so the reason we don't do the instant quote is that I want to tell you what we do so I can differentiate us versus the competition. And then when I tell you the price, ideally you go, whoa, I thought it was going to be way more than that based on what you did. So that's why we tell them the price last. And over those years of doing those in person estimates, I learned so much about the competition.

So they fall into a couple different buckets really. So there's like the franchisee cleaners that have the word made in it that every city in the United States certainly has maybe two of them even. So there's two different versions of that franchise. There's solo sort of house cleaners. So oftentimes this is like under the table cash payments. And then there's other cleaning companies that are maybe more like you guys, which are a bit more organized and trying to be like a part of the community, local business.

So what are the differences there? So, like, it's just, it's not even that I went out looking for this, it's that people told me, so we do this, this and this. Oh, the other company doesn't do that. Or here. Like, I loved getting copies of other people's quotes where it had their checklists and things like that. That was always my favorite. So, yeah. Which one of those do you want to cover first, Mr.

Shane? Yeah, I mean, let's start with franchises because there's really the two buckets. We're going to talk about which franchises are like solo cleaners, kind of the weaknesses. Right. And so when you guys know these weaknesses, you can point them out as it's an opportunity to point out, here's how we're different, here's how. And then when you do this, people a lot of times will be like, oh my gosh, I didn't even think about that.

You're right. I didn't even know that they did that. Right. And it builds value and you're kind of like solving these issues. Like, first of all, if you don't work with these customers, you're doing them a disservice by letting them to go and work with someone else because they're going to have a bad experience. All these things you're going to educate them on, they're going to say, wow, thank you for telling me that.

I really appreciate you, like, being up front with me and telling me, like, a lot of people just don't know or they've had a really bad experience and that's why they're coming to work with you because they're like, yes, can't do this anymore. I need, I just need a better company. Right. So let's dive into it. Brandon. Yeah, Franchises, let's start there. So anytime that we were doing these estimates, we're kind of practicing this thing called question based selling.

So I'm going to ask you some questions and listen to the answers instead of just launching into this pitch. If you don't have any info to give me, I have a pitch. I have a pitch prepared to tell you. But if you called and you were like, I'm really sick of my current cleaner. Can you guys come out? Yeah. What are the issues with your current cleaner? And then you can just hit their pain points right away.

They never showed up on time, they canceled all the time, whatever it may be. So keep that in mind as we go through this list. These are things that may not necessarily be the case in every market, but you can learn this by talking to your leads, to your customers about why they, like, do better than the competition, why they came back after they canceled, whatever it may be.

So with franchises, technically speaking, it is a local business, I guess. Like, there's a local franchisee who's running the thing, but it's very corporate feeling. There's gonna be a corporate training video with a guy in a polo explaining how corporate wants you to do this. All the policies and stuff get handed down from sort of a corporate standpoint. The marketing is usually all the same and unified, which is good for a big corporation like McDonald's.

Like, you want consistency at McDonald's, but they're not nimble. So, like, franchises can't stand out in a local market because they have to run it through approvals, or their franchise fee is covering marketing expense and they're waiting for the quarterly update of the flyer or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, there's lots of different versions of it, but generally speaking, there's less culture. There's a lot of churn.

They pay people very low. They're running it on an algorithm or something like that. It's very rigid. And usually, like, the feedback we've gotten from all the employees that we have is that they're just not fun to work at. Like, there's some middleman manager person who's just not a good manager. Like, people don't quit jobs, they quit managers. So that's it. And then the other thing is, like, the customer service is totally hit or miss.

We've had so many interactions with you guys listening to this podcast, other cleaning company owners telling us what it's like when you're doing your competition research, where you're reaching out to these franchises and they're like, not getting back to you in a timely fashion, or they're answering the phone and being like, like, whatever. Like, I'm doing 10 other things right now. So sure, it's this much. Like, there just doesn't.

It doesn't feel like it's. They're in it. They're not in it to win it. They're, again, this goes back to the corporate policies and stuff and lots of cubicles and things like that. It's just not a local company. 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 a 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 you guys have walked into a business before and you can just feel like the culture's off, like people don't want to be there. People are like, what do you want?

Like, you know, and that's how it is a lot of times with these bigger companies. Companies, they're disconnected feeling. It feels like you're just a number to them. They don't answer the phone or they don't call you back or if they do, they're very short with you and like, what do you need? Okay, here it is. Here's the quote. See you later. So there's a lot of, you know, Pete, some people, obviously those businesses have been around for a long time, 30, 50 plus years, whatever it is.

There's one I know specifically, Brandon would always bring back the estimate and the checklist. So they would like rotate all these weird checklists every time. And it was just like, why would you do that to the customer? Like half your house got cleaned this time, the other half got cleaned that time. Like. But it's working on the corporate level, right? So it's working for these big companies, but it's just not a good experience.

And so again, you have such an opportunity. Like Brandon said, these companies are not nimble and quick. So another story too, when we very first started this business, you know, seven, eight years ago, Brandon and I were brainstorming, shooting darts and Brandon's garage, you know, having a beer and just talking about what, what business we're going to start. I remember at this time I was using one of these big companies, not going to say which one.

You guys know there's only a few big franchises out there. But I had a sheriff, a police sheriff across the street that lived across the street from me and he said, hey, what are you doing using that company? Well, don't. He's like, stop using those companies. Because we get so many reports all the time of these people casing houses. They have high churn, high turnover. So they come and work for the company for a week or two.

They get all the addresses they see inside all the houses. What's inside them? Well, that one has the big screen tv. This one has this. They tell their friends, they get the door codes, they make copy of the key, whatever, and they would, you know, they case these houses, and there's robberies all the time. So this is another reason why people don't like working with the franchise. Because there.

There's more risk, right? There's a potential. Maybe in your market that's not as bad, but in Albuquerque, we have a lot of crime, and this was happening a lot. And so we were like, boom, there's another opportunity, right? All problems are opportunities in disguise. And so the fact that there was a high level of distrust with a lot of these companies, Brandon and I were like, oh, man, they're arguing with people in the reviews.

They're robbing people's houses. Like, people want a company they can trust. So that's where we came in, right? With our local business and our family. Local business you can trust. Right? So exactly. And so that's franchise. Let's. We structured. We structured some of our marketing to reflect those things. Like, your marketing drifts over time as you listen to your market. That's how it should be. So trust is a problem.

How do we solve that problem? We background check everybody. We pay a living wage, so there's less incentive for them to need to steal stuff from you. We try to keep employees for a long time. We promote from within. That reduces churn. Like that churn thing where you need employees constantly. That's what leads to those situations where, like, sure, you have a pulse, and you walked in the door, I'll hire you.

You'll work for a week, get all that data, and then leave. Like, that's. You can counteract that by just being a place that people actually want to go to work at, which is not how those corporations work. So that's franchises. So we kind of covered all that. The next thing is, like, the house cleaners. And really, the idea for this kind of spawned. The idea for this podcast spawned from a conversation that my wife had with one of our neighbors who had called to ask Erica, how do you feel about your own cleaning company?

And the story she told Erica was that they've had the same housekeeper for 10 years. She started off great, but over time, she doesn't think she wants the job. She's, like, quiet, quitting the cleaning job. And so she's trying to figure out a way to replace it. But it. We came up with an ad idea, like, on the spot. What if we run an ad that says, is your housekeeper tired, quietly quitting after 10 years?

They deserve a break. So do you book a clean today? So that's kind of where we started. And so this is a very common story that I heard over and over and over again. We've had this housekeeper forever, but they just stopped trying hard. And so that's just being complacent. I came, I worked really hard to show you that I wanted the business. You kept paying me. Over time I stopped working as hard and you're non confrontational and I don't have a manager because it's just me.

So you didn't say anything and now it's whatever, 10 years into it and now you're mad, but you're not going to tell me you're mad because you've known me for 10 years. And so people kind of get stuck. The other side of that coin was people saying they had the same housekeeper for like 20 years, but now they're having health problems, they can't go up the stairs anymore.

I remember one of our customers paid for a knee replacement surgery for their housekeeper and then switched them from every two weeks to every four weeks. And then they had us come every four weeks on the opposite two week schedule so that it actually got cleaned. But they still got to feel good about paying their housekeeper. So these are things that people do. It sounds nonsensical to some people, but a lot of people treat their housekeepers like a member of the family.

And I'm not trying to get you to fire your family, but here's what you get by using one of these companies. A robust customer service set up where you can talk to us. Scheduling floaters to fill in when someone calls in sick. Maintained vehicles that are going to show up on time every time. And I think the big one is insurance. So the housekeepers out there that you're paying cash for do not carry workers comp, do not carry liability insurance.

So if they burn down your house by accidentally twisting a gas knob while they were cleaning it and it explodes, that's on you and your homeowner's insurance. And then in some cases they, your homeowner, your insurance company will go after the house cleaner to sue them to recoup their losses for like negligence or whatever it may be. And you don't want that to happen. But it doesn't matter.

That's how the insurance company is going to deal with it. The same thing applies. If they hurt themselves in your house, they fell down a set of stairs, incurred a boatload of medical bills, they took it to their medical insurance. The insurance company is going to ask questions. How did you hurt yourself? How did you fall down the stairs? Oh, I was working. Working for who? Myself. And then maybe that health insurance company that your house cleaner has is going to come after you to cover their medical bills.

So. I hate talking about this stuff. I do not like motivating people with fear. I don't like telling this to customers. But it's. I prefer to focus on the customer service. You know, we have insurance, they don't. Instead of going to the nitty gritty. But if they push back, I'm happy to unload more details on you that we learned by talking to customers for so long. 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.

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To learn more about working with the incredible team at Tidy your sales go to profit cleaners.com tidyoursales. That's profitcleaners.com tidy your sales right now. Yeah, absolutely. It's just like you're saving them from having this horrible experience. And so a lot of times people will be like, well, you guys are more expensive. Like, I could just get it down the street for a hundred bucks. Right? Like, it's like, well, you could, but actually it's going to cost you a lot more money.

And this is where the education comes in. Like when you just tell people these things, they go, oh, I didn't even think about that. And like, wow, you're right. I don't want to have that experience. Thank you for saving me the nightmare and the drama and all the here to solve a problem, not give them more problems. Right. And so, like, they're already going to be experiencing all these issues if they're using franchises or solo cleaners, housekeepers.

I have a personal story of this is I'm living up in a smaller town right now. Brandon and I don't live in our main headquarter town anymore. It's really hard to find a cleaner. There's no cleaning shop. Right. There's only like a thousand people in this town. So we've tried several solo cleaners and kind of the same thing. We're telling you guys, this is exactly why we built this company because it's horrible experience.

Every time one of these solar cleaners comes in, they spend all day at my house, right? I work from home, my kids are homeschooled. It's not convenient, it's a, it's a bad experience right off the bat. But especially if it's just one person. They're coming in and they're. The first time, maybe it's good, maybe it was great, but then it just drifts, right? The quality drifts. They come back and next time it's different.

They come back next time and they miss something else. And yeah, if you're confrontational, you'll tell them, but a lot of people aren't confrontational. They don't want to tell you these things. And all this like anger builds up and they're like, gosh, their cleaners are not doing what they're. I'm paying them for. And then they just want to fire them, right? But it's going through all this anguish of like every time they come, they don't do what I'm paying them for and they miss stuff or they don't show up.

Like, this happens, this happened last week. Can I reschedule on you for this day or this day I got a doctor's appointment or my car won't start or. And you're just like, I don't want to pay you to manage you. Like, I just want you to show up and do the thing and yeah, help make my life better, right? Give me my. So what, that's what it ends up becoming is.

And then you, you then when you mentioned things like cross contamination, this is a huge one, people go, oh my gosh, I didn't think about this. But a lot of these, like solar cleaners and other companies, maybe not the franchises as much, but the solo cleaners, housekeepers are not using systems, they're not using color coding systems, they're not using the green towel on the toilet and the blue one on the kitchen.

They might be using the same mop all over your house from five other people's houses. They might be using the same microfiber that clean the toilet on your kitchen sink and cross contaminant. People are getting sick now they're pouring bleach all over your house, whatever it might be. So again, they're using like the cheapest products and resources they can use versus what we're providing is eco friendly, it's non toxic, there's not off gassing chemicals all over your house.

We're not cross contaminating. We have insurance, we have all these things, right. All these systems and structures that make it a great experience for people. And then when you start to tell people just the thing we just listed off, we rattled off a bunch of things there. People go, oh my gosh, you're right. I could get it for $100 cheaper down the street, but I'm actually going to be paying a lot more like long term for like micromanaging the teams, maybe getting sick.

Maybe I have to pay for something if someone slips and falls in my house. Right. Who knows? There's so many. It's a can of worms really. So when you, when you provide this education to your customer, it will help you win more deals because customers are going to say, I get it, it's valuable. I get what you guys are doing different. You're different, you're more valuable. I want to be part of what you're doing.

My money is going to go further working with you because you also have a mission and a purpose in your business. It's, you know, you're doing good work in the community too. So these are the reasons you guys want to like understand these. Because you can really relate it back to your customer and make them say, wow, I didn't even think about that. I would rather pay more money for a great experience.

Even if it's the same product, it's a better experience. It's in less, more and less time. Right. Things like that. People are going to pay more for that and stay on as a long term health. Yeah. So you can get this information from talking to your customers. But I think one of the best ways to do this is to actually go hire the competition. Like especially if you're brand new and you haven't started yet and they don't know your name.

Hire the franchise, take notes. What did they say during the sales call? Were they rude? Were they approachable? Does the checklist get done every time? How much is it? You know, ask questions, how much do you pay people? Are they paid a living wage? You know, do you have this kind of car insurance coverage? Do you carry? You know, are you going to protect things if they break things?

Like if they break something and I call to tell you, how do you deal with that? Ask those questions. Same thing with the housekeeper. Hire a housekeeper, see what they like, you know, and then just take notes. And then when you go to start your own company, you'll already have that experience under your belt. And Then over time, you gather so much more when you're talking to your leads.

And so I just think one of the important parts when you're doing that is to just retain that information. They're going to give you little nuggets of knowledge in those conversations about why they're not going to hire you. I'm not going to hire you. Why? The other one's $100 cheaper. Okay. Do they have, how long are they going to spend in your house? How many people do they have on staff?

Yada, yada, yada. So there's lots of ways to do it. I just think the important part is a lot of companies gloss this over and you definitely need to be taking notes and using this for your thing. I love talking to people when they tell me, oh, I use so and so I'm really happy with them. Like, oh yeah, have they done this, this or this? Because I have stories, you know, and like, then they're like, maybe, like, maybe I should give you a try.

That happened just this week at one of the Halloween things. Someone was using a different green cleaner in Santa Fe. And you know, we exchanged some stories there and I told them how we were different and then they reached out to our customer service team today. So it's interesting. It's just, you know, I just like, it's just part of knowing your market. That's part of being a good business owner.

Absolutely. And there's a great book you guys should pick up. It's called the Art of War by Sun Tzu. I believe he's like one of the old Chinese military directors or whatever. And he talks, you can relate a lot of this to business. He talks about using your competitor's weakness as a strength. Right. Like in your. For yourself. Right. So if you know competitors weakness, you can flip that on and you can use that to your advantage.

And so this is all we're just describing you guys, is like, know your market, know what the potential options are, what are the choices your customers have. If you already know what they're thinking, you can answer the questions they're already thinking in their own mind, even ahead of time, even answer the things they're not even thinking about. And that's so valuable, right? Cause that, that means you save them time, you save them research, you save them experiencing that on their own and having a horrible experience.

And so again, it's just so valuable when you know these things. You can educate your customers. Another way to provide value is educate them, ask the right questions in your sales process, find out what they're needing and those pain points, like Brandon was saying at the beginning. But ultimately, this is going to make your sales process so much easier because you're really just solving a problem. You're just having a conversation.

You're just trying to help them out. But when you know, here's what you're going to run into, Mr. Customer, like, you know, what's the uncertainty of not working with us? Now, let me just tell you what's going to happen when you work with this one or this one out here. Here's what we hear a lot about and here's how we're different. Don't talk badly and poorly about your competition.

Just point out, here's the difference. Here's why we're better and different. This is what's going to happen with the other guys. And when you do that the right way, people are going to respond and reciprocate and want to work with you. So it's just going to help you get way more customers and work with the people that are the better customers, too, because they're not just shopping around for the cheapest price.

They're not doing this for price. They're doing this for the experience, for the results, to get their time back, which is priceless. Right. So, yeah, help them solve the problem, give them this education, and I think it'll really help you guys get more, way more customers. So there you go. That's the name of the game. All righty. Well, we'll see you guys on the next episode. Be great.

Keep clean. See you guys. Next one. 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 profit cleaners.com and remember, keep it clean.