Why Your House Cleaning Business Needs Business Systems

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Documenting your procedures is one of the best ways to systemize your residential cleaning business. These documents should be as detailed as possible, with no steps left out. Over time they will be fine tuned and updated as your systems change and evolve.

These documents will become invaluable when you decide to hire employees, so don’t wait until the last minute to create them. Once you have routines that you follow on a regular basis, you can start documenting them. The key to creating good documents is to follow the steps that are needed for each task – don’t leave anything out.

For instance, you’ve taken the time to implement your cleaning routines which you follow in all the houses you clean. When it’s time to hire employees, you want them to duplicate your routines for efficiency and to keep your clients happy. Your documented cleaning procedures provide them with the information they need to successfully accomplish these cleaning goals.

Training New Workers

Having operating or training manuals in place can help the process of training any new employee much easier. It can also help keep employees happy so that they stay with you longer. Knowing what you expect of them means they know exactly what to do and how to do it. There’s no guessing and no room to deviate from your established routines which leads to better service and satisfied clients.

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What if You’re Incapacitated?

Even a small business, or a one person business should have manuals and procedures in place. Have you ever thought of what you would do if you couldn’t run your business for six weeks or more?

If you are incapacitated, you need a way to service your clients. You could hire a worker to take over your cleaning much easier when you have your documented procedures ready to go.

Selling Your Business

Training manuals allow you to handover your business operations at a moment’s notice with fewer complications. This certainly comes in handy when your life situation changes or you decide to sell your business. I was able to quickly sell my business simply because I had everything documented, which is what the buyers were looking for.

Document with Training Videos

Depending upon your systems and procedures you may find that it can be helpful to create training videos. This is sometimes much faster than writing out long winded instructions. The good news is, you don’t need fancy video equipment – just have someone video you while cleaning. You can then edit the video and upload it to one of the video platforms such as YouTube. On YouTube, you can set the privacy setting to “private,” which means only people you share the link with can view the video.

The advantage of video training is the person can stop and restart the video as necessary. Many people today prefer video over reading.

Delegating Tasks

Another great way to systemize your business is by delegating tasks. Yes, we know this can be hard for some people, but if you want your cleaning business to grow you have to let some things go. Learn to hand things over to someone else.

A good example of this is delegating the daily refill of your caddy products and the laundry of towels. I found it convenient for my employees to clean and refill their bottles, restock brushes and scrubbies and other tools daily. You can hire someone local to do the laundry or use a professional service.

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Marketing Using Social Media

Using social media to market your business without using Facebook Ads is a long game, but it’s beneficial to you and your community. Your business pages today are your “trust factor” like the Yellow Pages used to be. People want to know who you are before they do business with you. Yes, your website provides the necessary information about your service, but people want to know more today.

This is why it’s so helpful to link to your social media accounts from your website and even have a connection on your website that shows your current activity. You can see an example of this on my sidebar – CLICK HERE. When you scroll down, you can see my Facebook profile and current posts (if you can’t view these, change the security level in your browser). This goes a long way to earning trust with your website visitors and turning a visitor into a customer.

Many people are curious about what a cleaning service can do for them – others are looking to replace the service they currently have. If all you have on your social media pages is one discount offer after another, you’re missing out on the chance to build trust, instead of just attracting discount seekers.

When you post articles, quotes, and useful information to them, they are going to be more likely to give you their business. After all, who are they going to remember… the business who only posts their offers or the business who posts daily? Posting daily reminds your audience of your business and why they should do business with you. Whey they’re ready for service, they’re more likely to call you first.

Posting every single day takes planning and time. Do you have time to sit in front of a screen finding interesting things to post?

That’s why I highly recommend a service that can help you plan and post. The service I use even populates your calendar every single month with high quality, relevant posts for you to approve and images you can brand with your logo. With all the generic posts already on your calendar, you can review the month at-a-glance and schedule YOUR unique posts for offers, seasonal reminders, cleaning tips, etc.

And there’s a LOT more they do besides populate your calendar! CLICK HERE 

Monitoring Your Systems

Once you have systems in place you must still remember to monitor them. They will need tweaking and updating regularly. Any time you make a change to one of your systems, remember to update the training manuals accordingly.

Things to monitor include seeing if the tasks are being completed correctly. If you have to constantly fix mistakes, something in your manual is wrong. This could be the user misunderstanding your instructions, or that the instructions themselves were confusing.

You should also be open and encourage any team members to offer suggestions to help improve your processes. After all, they are the ones using them.

At the same time you should be taking advantage of technology and implementing new techniques when appropriate. Software is constantly changing and there may be a better tool for something that you have been using for years. Be willing to make changes.

Conclusion

If you consistently apply and use these business systemizing tips you will quickly be running an efficient house cleaning business that earns more.blank line

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