Common Questions Asked and Answered

1. How do I get new busi­ness?

1st you need to have a clear busi­ness plan. Part of the busi­ness plan you will need to indi­cate the type of jobs you will be chas­ing. This will help you to nar­row down your search list and tar­get your pre­ferred mar­ket.

2. When do I employ staff?

Employ­ing staff can be dif­fi­cult and place a finan­cial strain on your busi­ness. Do you get the work before staff or retain staff and hope you get the work? You need to have an on-board­ing process in place where you can have a selec­tion of qual­i­fied work­ers ready for the time you are award­ed new busi­ness. 

3. How do I adver­tise?

Adver­tis­ing can be achieved in mul­ti­ple ways. The most effec­tive per­son sell­ing your busi­ness SHOULD be you! Face to Face with the cor­rect mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Social media and search engine plat­forms will require dif­fer­ent mar­ket­ing skills and con­tent writ­ing.

4. Who can I talk to?

Reach­ing out to dis­cuss your busi­ness can feel very per­son­able. You need to devel­op trust with the oth­er par­ty and ensure they have the same morals and goals as you. Some peo­ple, although sound good on paper, may not be the right fit for you. The per­son you are talk­ing to about your busi­ness does not nec­es­sar­i­ly need to come from your indus­try. All busi­ness own­ers have sim­i­lar strug­gles. Giv­ing oth­ers your hard-earnt infor­ma­tion can be dif­fi­cult and some­times like get­ting blood from a stone. You need to remem­ber; it can be embar­rass­ing let­ting your defences down and express­ing your lim­i­ta­tions as a busi­ness own­er.

5. Why will no one give me a chance?

When approach­ing a new poten­tial job lead, you need to remem­ber they do not know you. You are try­ing to sell your ser­vices over a com­peti­tor and you may all have the same sales pitch and price is the only dif­fer­ence. Remem­ber to add val­ue to your ser­vices. Sell them the dream, do not sell your­self. (No-one wants to talk about you, peo­ple want to talk about them­selves). Under­stand their pain points and help them under­stand how your com­pa­ny can remove the pain for them.

6. Do I need train­ing and where do I go?

Con­tin­u­al train­ing is key to growth and suc­cess. Under­stand­ing as many aspects of own­ing, run­ning, and devel­op­ing a busi­ness required con­stant changes and growth strate­gies. Work­ing to a struc­ture and repeat­able pro­gram will help grow and devel­op a strong base for your busi­ness. For addi­tion­al growth and expan­sion, the devel­op­ment of new struc­tures and repeat­able pro­grams will need to be imple­ment­ed. Growth with the busi­ness own­er and staff = con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion and train­ing. CARSI is devel­op­ing an online plat­form to ensure the growth in your busi­ness can be man­aged and supercede your require­ments for con­tin­u­al growth.

7. What train­ing do I need?

Look at your cur­rent mod­el and try break­ing down each of your offered ser­vices. Can you add addi­tion­al val­ue to the client with­out adding addi­tion­al costs. E.G can you pick up rub­bish and cig­a­rette butts around the entrance of the build­ing? Can you offer a ser­vice to pres­sure wash the con­crete walk­way to the front door every 6 months, etc. These ser­vices may only require some addi­tion­al in-house train­ing and changes to your clean­ing pro­grams. Fur­ther edu­ca­tion when spe­cial­is­ing will be required depend­ing on the task. Look at require­ments for OH&S train­ing, work­ing at heights, etc.

8. How do I learn to upsell?

Upsell; to increase sales. Addi­tion­al ser­vices for your client. How to; sell­ing can be looked at as hard sell­ing — cold call­ing, pres­sur­ing into a ser­vice, or soft sell­ing — advise pro­vid­ed, brochures left behind, video mar­ket­ing, etc. Remem­ber the most expen­sive cost for a busi­ness is labour. Once you are already onsite, the cost to acqui­si­tion a new lead is dimin­ished. A good tac­tic for upselling is a soft approach. Leave a brochure behind with your addi­tion­al ser­vices, ensure your receipt shows your addi­tion­al ser­vices and you can also sup­ply a free quote for addi­tion­al works you think may inter­est your client.

9. How do I charge more for my ser­vices?

The for­mu­la for pric­ing a job cor­rect­ly is easy. You need to under­stand the cost of the acqui­si­tion to under­stand your busi­ness­es hourly charge rate:

• adver­tis­ing costs
• busi­ness costs includ­ing office space, admin, phones, vehi­cle, main­te­nance, fuels, etc. 
• labour time includ­ing get­ting to the claim, on the claim, return­ing from the claim
• mate­ri­als and chem­i­cal costs
• insur­ances
• super
• tax­es
• and oth­er cost

​If you do not under­stand your “Cost of Busi­ness” you can quick­ly go broke. Now you know the cost of busi­ness, you need to sell the val­ue of your ser­vices. Once you can clear­ly advice your clients of the excep­tion val­ue for mon­ey for your ser­vices (and you believe this) you will be able to cost jobs appro­pri­ate­ly. Aus­tralian laws pre­vent com­pa­nies from under pay­ing their staff. Do not let your com­pa­ny get caught in under­pay­ment. It is bet­ter to lose a good quote than to win a bad quote.

10. Can I add addi­tion­al ser­vices with­out spend­ing any fur­ther funds?

Grow­ing your cur­rent busi­ness with the tools you already have can be as sim­ple as re-edu­cat­ing your­self on the appli­ca­tions of your tools. Most tools are designed to have sev­er­al dif­fer­ent func­tions. It may be an oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tact our sup­pli­er, intro­duce your­self, and ask for fur­ther demon­stra­tions. Some time you may need to think out­side the box. There are many things clean­ers can offer with only their own two hands. Rub­bish pick­up and keep­ing high traf­fic areas clean­er would be a cou­ple.

11. Is it bet­ter to be “The Boss”, an employ­ee, or a sub-con­trac­tor?

All have advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. Being “The Boss” can allow you to have more time for oth­er things dur­ing the work­ing day only if you have set your busi­ness to oper­ate with­out you. Not hav­ing the wor­ries of when I am going to get paid for that job, where is the next job com­ing from, how am I going to pay for adver­tis­ing, etc. can be a whole lot less stress­ful at times. Not every­one is suit­ed to become a boss and not every­one is suit­ed to be bossed. As a sub­con­trac­tor, you need to play both sides of the fence. You need to be the boss of your enter­prise as well as the employ­ee. Job secu­ri­ty is not as a direct employ­ee, but you are able to have more free­dom and pick and choose your work load.

12. Do I need to build a busi­ness strat­e­gy and is it impor­tant?

All train­ing is rel­e­vant to your busi­ness strat­e­gy. You need to have a clear out­look at the present and future growth in your busi­ness. Think about this anal­o­gy; you can fill your car full of gas and just dri­ve. With­out a plan or des­ti­na­tion, you may get there some­how, but you will get there quick­er if you have mapped out your trip. The same in busi­ness. Map out your busi­ness trip, it can and most like­ly will change as you go on your jour­ney, but hope­ful­ly it will cost less to reach your goal. It is very impor­tant.