The start of a new calendar is always a good time to reset and reinvigorate your goals for the year ahead.
Have clear direction
It is very easy to take new clients for granted. But are you stopping to review the sort of customers you have now, the clients you are winning (and losing) and if your clients are profitable?
Why you win new business will be related to how you are positioned in the market. What are the main claims you make? How do you differentiate from your competitors? And, is this clear to prospects?
You might also consider if your services really are value for money. Review your website and proposals with a clear head and ask, what can you do to make your proposition stronger?
Enhance operations
Many companies now offer visit and task verification with software that is improving all the time. Managing staff in the field requires us to know where staff are, what task they are completing and when it was completed. If you are not providing this real-time information you are falling behind the leaders in this industry.
Leading cleaning companies are now able to prove to customers that staff were on site and doing the work as required. And they can do this 24/7 and in real-time. This enables you to demonstrate to clients when and where work was completed. As you continue to build trust with clients you can make commitments to them that your competitors can’t.
Scaling your business
To scale your business you need to be taking on customers faster than you lose them, and you need to do the work for each and every customer profitably. As you grow, inefficiencies creep in, such as more supervisors for larger teams. To beat this you need digital marketing, IT and software to help you do more with the same team.
Digital marketing is now the largest marketing tool having become larger than TV, print, outdoor and radio. It is time to look at your website with fresh eyes and ensure it is working to raise the profile of your business.
With 70 per cent of marketing for all new businesses being online, of which 65 per cent is spent on Google and Facebook, you must be exploring both of these platforms to learn what works for your business in generating new leads.
IT should be your savior, but it can be a curse if you get it wrong. As you get larger this year you must be sure your IT will scale, you can add more of your team to your business software and your hosting and other infrastructure maintains privacy and security of your records and your customers. Consider getting an IT audit so you know where the cracks are going to appear as you grow.
Hopefully these few tips give you some inspiration to get under the covers of your business and see if you can break it before your staff or your customers do!
All the best for 2018 and as always we hope that at freshops.com.au we are building the sort of tool that helps you tick all the boxes above and squeeze more out of your business.
*Mark Jones is director of www.freshOps.com,au, an Australian made mobile workforce application and management portal built for cleaners by cleaners. He can be reached at mark@freshops.com.au.
