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It doesn't take a business advisor with an M.B.A. to
tell you that customers are the backbone of any business in the service
industry. Without customers to serve, your business has no income and
therefore no working capital or ability to perform any actions. In this
way, the level of customer satisfaction and depth of your support base
determines how successful you are going to be. A happy consumer base is
literally a marketing tool in and of itself; besides coming back, they
will recommend your service to other people in search of a pool cleaner.
On the flip side, a poor customer base will do exactly the opposite:
prevent your company from being successful by spreading a bad word about
you to prospective clients. For this reason, it is important you offer a
top-notch service with excellent customer support.
As mentioned before, it's crucial that your current customers are
satisfied; even more so than you locating new customers. To achieve
this, you must have a great service, and great troubleshooting in the
event a customer is unhappy.
Great Service
The first rule of having a good relationship with your customers is to
do exactly what you promised. Nothing frustrates customers more than
someone who doesn't achieve the benchmarks that they said they would.
This includes punctuality, as people have busy lives and can't afford to
be waiting around all day for you to show up after being promised a
specific time.
Besides just doing what you promised you were going to do, make sure you
throw in a couple little extras to win over their support- and let them
know it. Make sure they realize that most pool cleaners don't throw in a
free floating chlorine dispenser. The beauty of this approach is that
while this only costs you a little money, it can be a big difference in
the eye of the customer.
Great Troubleshooting
This is what truly separates the mediocre from the phenomenal. The
ability to deal with unhappy customers in a way that seems totally
unnatural will help you keep your customers around. Remember: the
customer is always right. Even for the most outlandish arguments
imaginable, you must always side with the customer unless it expressly
violates your contract. If this is the case, make sure your clients
understand that you already went over this, and make sure the contract
is well understood for future problems.
The second rule of troubleshooting is to never lose your head while
talking to a client. Regardless of the outlandish way they are trying to
get out of a payment, it is absolutely vital you keep your cool. If you
don't, not only will they use it against you, they'll spread the news to
any other people interested in your service. Your image is a powerful
tool. Keep it clean, and it will singlehandedly win over customers. Let
it become tainted, and it will singlehandedly deny you a large portion
of new customers.
Finding New Customers
Now that you understand the importance of keeping your customers, you
must go about finding your customers in the first place. While this may
seem like a gargantuan task, it's easily broken down into a few easy
steps and methods that will allow you to reach a broad spectrum of
customers. People love the personable nature of a small business, and
you need to use that to your advantage in any way possible. Keep this in
mind, and before you know it, you will have more customers than you
dreamt possible.
Before you can start advertising your business, you need to find people
to advertise your business to! As you own a pool cleaning service, you
have to begin building a list of pool owners that you can reach out to.
This is a task that, while basic in nature, can prove to be quite a
challenge. Your first stop should be the local record-keeping office in
your county. They will likely have a list of pool owners on file, as
pools need to be legally registered with the county and state. If you're
fortunate, they will give you the list after you explain why you need
it. If not, you may need to do some investigating. Locate the
neighborhoods that are more likely to have pools. Most neighborhoods
either have a significant number of pools, or no pools at all. As a
general rule of thumb, the pools are located in the more expensive parts
of town. Ask around until you get a feel for where they will be. At this
point, you can either drive down the street and record addresses (not at
the same time! get help for this stage), or utilize Google maps to find
the approximate locations of who has pools. These two tasks are best
used in conjunction, as Google maps has the potential to be outdated,
while driving down the street makes it much harder to locate pools in
people's backyards.
Getting Your Name Out There
The obvious next step after finding the potential customers for your
service is to contact them. As mentioned earlier, it's a good idea to be
as personable as possible. While this will take a little extra time, it
may be in your best wishes to stop by each house in person and hand them
a brochure while giving a brief description of who you are and what your
service is.
The Approach
After your brochure is completed (see next section) it is a good idea to
hand them out in person. Explain who you are (noting that you are from
this area as customers love local business) and what you do. Tell them
what you have to offer against other businesses or independently
cleaning their pools. One important tip is to advertise on the weekends,
as people are more likely to be home. This being said, it's never a good
idea to show up anywhere after 6 o'clock as people are eating dinner and
winding down for the day. If you interrupt meals or barge in at the most
relaxing parts of the day, people will dislike you from the beginning
and most likely not want your service. Don't get discouraged by failure!
More often than not, the person will be disinterested. Perseverance is
the key in this game.
The Brochure
This is the key space for information. Have these done professionally-
it will be a little more expensive but look great! Include a section
about your likes and interests, and mention your expertise and history
in cleaning pools. Mention all of the services you offered in as much
detail as the space permits, and mention how this is better than the
competition. Throw in a section about bonuses you give your customers to
further sway them. Finally, have a section about the pricing of the
different services and plans you offer.
While breaking into the market is always a challenging thing to do, it
is absolutely necessary in becoming well-known for your service. While
your first impression is at the door, you will really make your name by
the first couple times you clean the pool. This startup stage is where
it is determined if you will be able to make it, and, above all, how
well you will do in this industry.
Internet Marketing
One approach that needs to be considered as well
is advertising using google, yahoo, bing, or facebook for pool services.
When people do searches on pool cleaning services in the area, your ads
will show up and expose your business to potential customers at a
reasonable cost. Just make sure you do local targeting on your search
engine marketing.
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