Get High Paying Customers by Going the Extra Mile

When you're sending staff out to those jobs, you can't be everywhere at once as the owner, as the manager, and so you really have to put a lot of trust and faith in your staff and give them the tools to be able to be out there and deliver that exceptional experience in all kinds of different ways. And hiring people who legitimately want to do that. As well. Care. Yeah. And that's really what it is for me, especially. I mean, they have to really, really care.

Welcome to Jobbers, masters of Home Service, a podcast for home service pros by home service pros. We are in sunny Las Vegas today. We're talking about getting high paying customers by going the extra mile. I'm your host, Adam Sylvester. Today we have Katie Pierce with us. She's the owner of Glimmer Cleaning Co and Glisten Academy. Katie, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Thanks for being here. Thanks. Tell our listeners who you are, what you do, a little bit about yourself.

Sure. I have been running a cleaning company since 2008, and I've also been a marketing instructor for longer than that, and I started GLSEN Academy in order to work with other cleaning business owners and teach them both in person and online. And I do business coaching and consulting as well. Great. Awesome. Long longtime jobber user too. Yes, we. Started working together in I think 2014. We started on some projects together, so it's great to be here with you guys again.

Good. Well, I'm glad you're here. So today we're talking about how to attract those high paying customers,

which is what everybody wants for the most part, but can just do your normal thing for them. You have to be on your A game. And so how does going the extra mile, let's start there. How does going the extra mile really start this relationship off onto the right foot?

Really what it is, is you can talk about sophisticated branding and all the wonderful things that will sell your services, but what really, really matters is taking all of that hard work and mental energy and all that stress off your customer's shoulders. So that's what they want from you. If they want a clean house, if they want their gutters cleaned, whatever it is, they want you to handle it for them. So everything you can do to make that experience really, really simple.

Everything from being able to pay their invoices online really, really quickly, being able to book an appointment online, get a price, a quote, all of that needs to be done just really, really simply for them. So it's just the most seamless, smooth experience. I totally agree.

I remember a couple years ago an HVAC company I had hired after the six, I didn't even know this was going to happen, but after six months of using them, maybe it was after a year, they sent me a paper in the mail to renew and I said, I'm, I'm not doing that. We don't do paper renewals anymore. They made it hard for me. And that's a great way to run away all the good.

Customers. Absolutely. And I think one of the important things and what I try and teach people is if you want really high paying customers, they expect a certain amount of personalization and customization. And that tends to be what's missing from really big companies. And what you can do as a small business owner is you can really get to know your customers. Everything from intake forms where you really get to know them.

They're the names of their pets and their kids and what's important to them. They really want to feel that personal connection and that's when people will pay a premium. Price. So I know that some of our listeners are probably wondering, well gosh, if I want to go to a million to $5 million, I can't know every client. That's not really realistic.

And so how do you balance not making it just so transactional, but also like, well, it is come transactional, we have a thousand people to clean a week. How do you balance those two things and make it actually personable? And that's a really good question.

I think that's the sweet spot as a business owner that you're trying to reach is how can you be get to know your customers really, really well, but then certain things have to be scalable like invoicing, and that's where something like jobber comes in really handy. So the things that can be automated, like invoicing, paying their bill are very easy for them to do.

And that frees you up as a business owner to ensure that not only you but your staff are also, they have enough time and the ability to get to know their customers and to really customize the services for them. Again, you just want to automate what you can and then to spend a lot of time on the personal, personal stuff. And you can do that through some automation, like a customer intake form. So when you have that information in their file, they can get to know all of those preferences.

The staff can write different notes about how that service went, and then staff maybe who are doing the service the next time or later on, they still know and they can access that information and they can make sure that they deliver exactly what that client expects. And one of the most frustrating experiences for a client is, well, I told the last guy that was here, but it clearly didn't get communicated to the next guy.

I would say communication is the most important thing as a small business owner with our customers, with our staff is we really have to communicate. And I am a communications and marketing professional, and I think that has been a huge reason why I've been able to be successful in the cleaning industry. Yeah, I think it's really important to keep our promises no matter how big, no matter how small. But. That's not the extra touch. There's even more than that than just keeping your promises.

You should keep your promises. That's a given. So what are some things that,

let's look at the cleaning industry. Let's look at some really specifics because I think at the end of the day, people get what they pay for. So they're paying little, they're going to get little and they should, but if they're paying a lot, they should get a lot. So what is that a lot for your company. Specifically? I would say we work with NHL players for example.

And something that's really important for them is, especially on a game day, is they might need to nap in the middle of the afternoon and then they have to be at the arena at a certain time. So you can't just be changing their appointments around. And a lot of times with really high profile clients as well, they want specific things or they might need extra help with something. So for example, I mean even with NHL players when they've moved into the city, they might need help unpacking.

So being able to customize those services and do extra things for them that are simple for you as a business owner, I mean something like helping them unpack is something quite easy for cleaning staff to be able to do and that gives them something really exceptional that you've done for them. Yeah, I think I heard a phrase a long time ago that I really liked and that was do what you wish you could do for everyone for a few. And so you might say, well, Adam, that's not scalable, so do it anyways.

Just do it for a few because they will love it. Just because you can't do it for everyone doesn't mean you shouldn't do it at all. And so something common for us is, oh, you guys can't come during that time. My baby will be sleeping and our listeners can maybe think, oh, is a bad client. No, they're not. It's important for us to differentiate between clients who are asking too much versus clients who are just normal human beings just like you. We've had special requests before they do too.

So I want our listeners to make sure that they see it as an opportunity to serve them over, above and beyond and not as a headache.

And I think that's how you learn and become to be a really, really excellent service provider. And that's what we're here for. I mean, we're home service providers. We are in the business of delivering an exceptional service in a very personal way, especially when you're doing residential, especially for cleaners. We're in their bedroom, we're in their bathroom. So it's a really intimate relationship and it's really, really important to

again, go that extra mile. Yes, I mean these are the realities. And if you can be the business who doesn't show up during nap time and wreck everything for those parents, then absolutely once again, people will pay a premium. Because a lot of times the people who are paying those higher prices, they're not new to this. This isn't the first time they've had a cleaning company or any other type of, they're already frustrated. They've already had nap time interrupted.

So it's like, oh, I just want a professional company that can listen to me and work around my schedule and give me what I'm actually looking for. And they will happily pay those, whatever your rates are, because you're going to do that for them. And.

That takes money. I mean, being able to train your staff, being as a business owner involved to make sure that your staff are delivering that or that you're following up with those people and you're making sure that their appointment doesn't get moved around, that takes time and energy and money as a business owner. So you have to be able to charge those premium rates and then you've got money to be able to do that.

Katie, this is a great conversation. I'm going to take a pause real quick so we can talk about jobber. What influence does jobber have on your business in terms of making it more appealing to high-end clients? Well, you instantly have a professional business when you're using jobber, give quotes, you can invoice all of that. I mean, that's the stuff that billion dollar companies have. And you can have that instantly with your own business.

So you can definitely command premium prices when you're a professional business and you need the right software to do that. Yeah, totally. You probably have had this too. I've had a lot of clients over the years say, are you guys a franchise? Yeah. They're basically saying, you have a big budget. The software you use is so good and so sleek and so awesome and so attractive. Say no, it's just jobber. So you can upgrade your business as well and go to the next level with jobber.

New users can get exclusive discount by going to jobber.com/podcast deal. Go upgrade your business, your software, and go get more high-end clients today,

Katie. It's very easy for the most part, as a sole proprietor, the owner of the business do all the work to go above beyond, oh, Katie's great. She's the one who comes to my house every time. As soon as you hire an employee, pretty much everything changes, right? Absolutely. And that's where people get this idea, oh, bigger companies aren't any good. Some big companies are awesome because they've figured out how to push down the quality from the owner down to the staff.

And so let's switch gears a little bit. How have you trained your team to go the extra mile, do these extra things for the client when in the worst case scenario, they're just an employee? I would say really empowering your staff. I look at my staff as being almost mini managers of their own client portfolio. So instead of me just treating them again, different clients all the time, it was like you are assigned these 50 clients. This is your portfolio.

You're responsible for these people. You get to know them, you get to know their families, their lifestyles, and giving my staff as well the ability to do things without me approving it. So I would say things to them, if you find out that their child has a birthday or they get a new pet, you are allowed to go and pick out a gift $50 or less without needing my pre-approval, let me know about it, get them a card, get them a gift, and now it's from the company. It makes all of us look really good.

And they have that power really as employees to be able to pay attention to their staff and then deliver that customized service to them. So it's almost like they're mini owners of the company in a way, and they feel really, again, just a lot of power. And as though there's a lot of personal relationships going on, and when you're sending staff out to those jobs, you can't be everywhere at once as the owner, as the manager.

And so you really have to put a lot of trust and faith in your staff and give them the tools to be able to be out there and deliver that exceptional experience in all kinds of different ways. And hiring people who legitimately want to do that. As well. Care. Care. And that's really what it is for me especially. I mean, they have to really, really care and they have to really, really want to help people and make them really happy.

And that's sort of what I look for for sure, because everything else can be taught.

Right? Caught not taught. So one thing that we do that has been pretty effective is we read all the five star reviews we get every Monday morning in a meeting, and if the client says they were on time, they were nice, there was no cussing on the work site, I will highlight that. I'll say, Hey guys, look, the client literally said that he was friendly and smiled. And then what does that do? That reinforces that behavior. The clients will tell you what matters to them in the review.

It's really important to highlight that so that your technicians and your field staff see, okay, the clients are watching. Exactly. They are reviewing me. They are grading my performance, whether consciously or subconsciously, I'm not just cleaning their house. I'm here to serve this person. And I think it's that lack of anonymity that is so important.

I see so many cleaning companies that the staff don't even leave a checklist and imagine that not only your staff are leaving a checklist or an invoice or something that they some kind of leave behind, but they actually have to leave a business card or they have to sign off on the job and take ownership for that.

So as soon as you take that away and it's like, yeah, people really know who Sarah is, they know who the cleaner is, they know this person and they're going to talk about it in a review. My boss is going to talk about it at a meeting. Suddenly that really inspires people to perform a lot better too.

So something you touched on, I'm going to go there more. What do you leave behind? Do you leave behind anything? The house. Tell me more about that. So for us, and when I work with clean business owners, I think checklists are the most important thing to leave behind. What I have for all my customers is a cleaning binder that they get.

So instead of having staff carrying around breakage and damage forms or service agreements or any of these printed documents instead you could create that, and it doesn't have to be a binder of course, it can just be a folder or something, but you can give that to that client. And in that can be things like the breakage and damage form or FAQs, how the process works, how they're going to pay their bill,

any specials and promotions. And so they can have that folder, it can have their name on it, so again, they feel very cared for. And then that folder can just live in their kitchen and they can just bring it out on cleaning day. And the staff don't have to because so much, so many products and supplies and you don't want to bog them down.

So if you can just have the client leave that there for them, then they've got checklists, they can leave that behind if you have any promotional materials, any kind of neat sales or something that you want because you're in the home. So use that as an advantage with so much digital marketing and promotion, which I absolutely love, of course, but being in the house and being able to leave actual things behind for people,

we always leave small gifts as well. So what, it took me a long time to find something that worked, but we would leave Looseleaf tea staff, we would actually get together and we'd put it all together and we'd have it all branded and we'd actually do it ourselves. I'm sure it's a lot easier nowadays to do things like that too. There's lots of little promotional things, bath bombs or even bath salts you could leave on their tub.

Really just any sort of little thing like a hotel would leave any kind of little freebie for staff or for your customers. They just absolutely love it. And then if you miss something, you hear about it. They really like that. Those little presents. I was talking to a fellow jobber user about she has home cleaning and she leaves behind a small vial of perfume. Yeah, I was going to say not sure. But it smells good. And she said her clients love that.

It's brilliant because if you can also have a customized sort of cleaning smell, if you have your own essential oil blender, something like that, that's your signature scent. If you can leave that behind as a little room spray, very, very simple and cost effective to do. And now they're thinking about you every time they. Spray. Yeah, I'm thinking about the listeners who run businesses where the client can't see

the work. For me, it's gutters might be plumbing, hvac, whatever. The client just can't see it. If you cut the grass, they know if it's good or not. And if you clean their home, they know, but there's some business that they can't see. And for them, I like to give 'em a lot of photos afterwards. We use company cam and we'll send them a link with literally 50 photos of their entire job, their two hours technicians just took a bunch of photos.

And occasionally it's mostly good. Occasionally people say, you didn't come today. You didn't come. I was here all day. I didn't see you. Well, we did, and here's 50 photos in your visit that we took over the course of an hour and a half. And it blows them away in a more positive way. People just love that. Wow, you took all those photos that they can see, they can see the valve of the plumber fix. They can see the gutter clean,

they can see all these things. And it's like the last guy didn't do that. And so it's really, I love that feature going above and beyond. And I think even with cleaning, it seems like what you're saying is that, oh, they can see a clean house, but they also don't know every single thing that's dirty in their house. So did they notice that there were paw prints on the back door? Not necessarily.

A lot of cleaning is invisible as well because the customer themselves don't even know what they're looking for. That's so true. The floor is clean, it's clean. They're not looking all the really up. Close stuff mean you. You're pointing out something that's so important because a lot of what we do is kind of invisible work, and it's almost the opposite. We're not showing them something, we're showing them the absence of something. So they don't understand necessarily, of course,

what you're actually doing. So photographs, and again, even a checklist, if you're saying this is everything that we do, it kind of blows people away. They don't realize how much hard work goes into it. So I think that's just brilliant, right? I mean, you have to educate your customers as much as you do your staff. Speaking of educate, something that we recently rolled out my company is we have a photo book. It acts like a sales book.

So it happens before we even book the client and we're at the house and they say, well, what's drain flushing? And then we pull by our book and we, let me show you, and we flip to page eight and it shows them like, oh, now it's worth every penny. They understand it now before they're like, well, that sounds, I'm not doing that. But once they see the humongous truck that we have to use and this huge hose and all these different things, and you pay them a picture. Exactly.

A picture is worth a thousand words. And so the photo book we have found has been really, really effective in going above and beyond because people are like, oh my gosh, absolutely. What is this? This is awesome. This shows everything we do and really, really, really good. If Masters of Home service has been a game changer for you and your business and we want to hear from you, go leave us a review and tell us what you think. Help us build this community and level up together. What about,

let's change gears a little bit. How does marketing and sales factor into high scale, high paying clients? Because from the first marketing message they see to the packages that we offer them, all that stuff is intertwined and related. How do you integrate that so that people, their first thought is like, oh, this is a high-end company.

A lot would have to do with as a professional sort of branding and marketing expert, the first thing that I teach business owners is really that if you expect people to invest in you, you need to invest in them. And that means investing in your business so you're not just whipping up a logo yourself necessarily, unless you have some of those skills, but you're investing. So you're investing in software, you're investing in a graphic design, or you're investing in a great website.

You have to put even if you're doing it yourself, but you have to put all that time and energy into it in order to expect it. And I don't know if it's kind of just a law of attraction thing too, but the more work that you do, I feel like the customer realizes it because it's the less work now for them to do. They don't have to struggle. One of the things that I send people automatically, and I found this over the years, is preparing for your first appointment.

People don't know how am I supposed to pay? Are they going to invoice me before the appointment after a, so yeah, I created this document that's simply like how to prepare for your first appointment. It just goes out with the email or the text reminder, simple, PDF, and it says your appointment's in a couple days. Do you have to clear off the clutter? Do you have to do this? What time are they going to show up? Is there a window?

Everything you can think of. Again, it's so much about communication. If you can just communicate everything so clearly, not only is the customer informed and do they just really like and appreciate how much work you've put into it to make it such a great experience for them. But now they are informed and they know everything. And what an amazing company to work with when they feel like they know. Everything. They know what to expect.

That makes me think in the church world, the number one reason people go to the website is to see what people wear because they don't know what to wear when if they go visit this church. That's very good point. What do I wear? And so the number one thing is a photo of who's, and so just like our clients, they're wondering. They don't want to, how. Does this client, how does it company work? There's so much anxiety around everything, you just don't know.

So if you can, again, alleviate all those fears and all those things, people understand exactly what to expect. They know when the team's going to show up. And so much about paying for things is awkward for people. And they don't know, do I pay the staff that are coming? Who's even doing the service. You tip? Is it the exactly. Do they tip every single thing? And then people are like, oh, okay, I don't have to stress about any of this. I'm in good hands.

I know exactly what to expect. I know how everything, I don't have to feel silly or dumb. I think that's so much a part of it is exactly what you said. People actually understand the service that you're providing and they know exactly what to do. Now it's a great win-win relationship for everyone. People who feel dumb or people who feel afraid do not buy anything. Will not buy anything. Our. Listeners.

And you realize that if you need to think about your sales process and if your sales process doesn't answer the 10 most basic questions people have about your service, then you're missing the mark big time. And to the degree that you do, that determines how people place you on the scale of high-end or not.

Exactly. And what you need to be showing them is that you are the expert. And that can be a little bit easier in some industries like trades where what you're discussing, what you said with drains and stuff, I don't know anything about that with cleaning. Everybody already thinks that they're a great cleaner and they're just hiring a service. They don't have time, but they could totally do this themselves if they wanted to. I just don't want to, I love that I'm too busy.

We have to educate even harder to say, you know what? These are the tools and this is how you clean efficiently. And we might be really expensive. My business is quite expensive, but we're also way more efficient than somebody who doesn't have a professional cleaning process in place and hasn't studied this for years and years and doesn't have the best tools and equipment. So if you can sort of take that idea that yes, you mentioned we have specialty equipment.

We come in here with a dry steam machine or a carpet cleaning machine that's expensive. This isn't just normal household equipment and supplies. We have professional stuff and we're really trained and we're really educated on how this works. That can go so far, showing people that you're an expert and even things like you don't want the customer telling you that, oh, I only need a monthly cleaning. You come in and you assess that and you say, you know what?

You need us in twice a month. You do, or you need us every week or twice a week. There's no limit to how much we can clean up after people. So yeah. One of my favorite things to do when people ask any kind of question that's a little negative, well, why does it cost so much? Or whatever the question is, if it's negative, I love to just say, how much do you know about gutter cleaning? How much do you know about house cleaning? Because then they're like, well,

not very much. And then it positions you as the expert. Well, do you want me to take a minute or two to tell you a little bit about how it works for us? Most people say yes, and then you have the stage for 60 to 90 seconds to tell them every reason why you're awesome and why everyone else is not awesome. But if you say, well, you're just arm wrestling with them at that point.

But if you come across as the expert and the person who listens and then explains and teaches a little bit and understands their situation, they might say, well, I know a lot about house cleaning. I've had my house clean for years. Oh, great. Tell me what you like about it. And then they say, well, they tell you all the answers to the test And then you can cater your service to what they like and what they don't like. And one of the questions I ask my customer intake form is,

have you had a professional cleaning service before? If so, what did you like? What didn't you like? And that is so interesting because they will name names, they'll tell you exactly the companies that they've had, and they'll tell you exactly what went wrong and why they're hiring you. Tell me more about your intake form.

It's my absolute favorite thing. So it's called a client and property profile, and you don't do it at the beginning. You do it once they've booked the appointment. So again, we don't want to put any barriers in place when somebody wants their house cleaned, they need it cleaned now, so they're sold. You're getting in your own way if you're making it more complicated for them to book that appointment and get you in the house, take away all those barriers.

But once they've booked that appointment, now you've got them and they're so excited. And what they want to do now is tell you everything about their house, everything about their kids, everything about their pets, everything that drives them nuts about their house. And they'll tell you. So they'll sit down and they'll spend five, 10 minutes completing an intake form and they will tell you everything. They'll tell you what matters to them, what the other cleaning companies have missed,

what's frustrating and priorities. And then you share that with your staff, and now your staff are in a position of educated. They're empowered. So empowered. And. Instead of pulling up to the house and being like, I don't know anything about these people, I don't know anything, right? It's like, oh, is that they know the name of the cat. They know this is hairy.

So I mean, imagine how impressive that is to customers when they feel like the staff have prepared in advance and they actually care enough to know things like that. There's three bedrooms, but one of them is a guest room and you don't really have to go in there. So. When. They actually come in there and they know that, again, this is just a completely different experience from what people are used to. And you're in their home, it is a unique thing with being in the client's home. It is.

And it's a different level. I imagine when people get that intake form at first, they're probably their initials. Like, wow, this is long. I'm so glad it's long. And that's the thing, it's not super long. It can be, I am not big on forcing people to answer questions. So if they want to skip something, you can toggle that off or they don't have to say that, right? But they want to know things like, okay, yeah, simple stuff is number of beds,

number of bathrooms. But then after that, there's things like, oh, well, sometimes my mother-in-law visits and she'll stay in the basement for a week. So there might be people just love because they want to talk about themselves, they want to explain what they're looking for, what they're spending their money on, and they want you to listen to them. And that's again, what most companies do. And sometimes we just don't have the infrastructure and people fall through the

cracks. But if you have that client intake form, you always have that. It's always there. You can access it. Any of your staff, new people, some cleaners might quit. You've got a new team in or anything like that, but everyone can just click on that, take a look and get to know that customer and be caught up. And then you can make notes. So maybe they had a baby, just one baby. Well now that baby's five and there's another baby.

So You can update that as you go along, and it's a living document and that can stand that client binder that exists right in their house as well. Okay. I was going to ask you, okay, so that's nuts and bolts here. Really nitty gritty because the stakes are high. Once you get all that information, if John shows up to clean their house and he doesn't know any that they're going to be mad. I spent all that time filling that thing out. The guy doesn't know my cat's name. So very functionally,

how do you communicate that? Is it in jobber? Is it it in a binder? Where is that? It can be in jobber. Again, people have different comfort levels with things, so I like to give people options. One thing is yes, staff can absolutely go into jobber, call up the client profile, and there can be notes in there and lots of information and different staff can update that as things go on with. Notes, information in jobber notes. Information in the notes. Got it.

Okay. That sort of idea. And then as well, you can also have something that is just literally a printed document and it doesn't, because of course there can be confidential information. This, right? You don't want it floating. Around. So instead of giving it to your staff and they're carrying around a binder with 500 customer intake forms, we don't want that. Something else that I do is when I do have a printed document with staff is the customer just has a number.

So it can just simply be the profile. So maybe we have, it could be something as simple as a Google form. So maybe this is form 834, well, that's the customer, so that's it. So you can redact that information, but that customer 834 is John and Mary. But again, that form can simply be in that client binder. And again, that can just live in the customer's house. They can look at something maybe online or you can prepare your staff before

they go to an appointment. Again, I've always done everything online, but again, that can also be printed and live there, so they can simply open the binder when they get to the house and they can do a quick consult if they forget. Take a look. So business owners who are leaving a binder in the client's home. Oh wow, okay. I'm a big tech guy. I wouldn't do paper myself. Me too.

Let's roll through a little example here. Field staff gets the house, the client meets them, Hey, by the way, we changed the code to the lock. It's now 5, 5, 5, 5. What does your field staff do then? I'm really curious. So what the field staff would have to do is contact us to update it, or they can go into jobber themselves and update something like that. Again, with any kind of customer database,

the staff should be able to go in there and edit. But if not, I mean, again, there's a million different tools out there, and some of the ones that I've used in the past, my staff haven't been able to edit themselves, so they would just send me an email or they would let me know. And then again, this is where it comes into charging premium prices because I am more hands-on with managing this stuff and making sure it doesn't fall through the cracks. Right? Yeah, stuff.

Like had an office, that's really important, office person that has to do it, all that kind stuff. So they could either text in the office and say, please update client number 8 52. Absolutely. I also tell customers themselves, if there's something that needs updating on their client form, and it can remind them in any kind of automated email, text reminder saying, Hey, you've got an appointment, has anything changed? Just like the doctor asks you every time you go, is your address updated?

Has anything changed? No, same thing. Okay, great. So again, everything can be automated with those emails and text reminders.

If there's anything that needs to change in your client profile and you could suggest that, is there a new kid, somebody staying with you, just different needs, different priorities, different code, alarm code, anything like that, tell your clients that so they know to simply respond to the email or call, leave a voicemail, anything, and then you can update that for them.

Yeah, I think empowering your staff to take care of those kinds of things, you could rely on your client to call in and tell 'em that or a little bit better. It has to hit. Up from all angles for sure. Yeah. I'm just going to tell the guy when he gets here and then he'll take it. He's part of the company, he should take it. And so empowering your staff to handle that kind of stuff is really key because those little things is what the client remembers. I love them.

I've been using for years and I told them he code changed and they just took care of it. I didn't have to call in because I don't want to call my company if I don't have to. I just want to not have an. Easy No, you see them. And so you need those different communications channels because of course everyone's different. So some people do like to pick up the phone and leave a voicemail to tell you that their alarm code change.

Some. People just want to face-to-face conversation with the tech at their house. So I mean, just having different ways of doing it, but ultimately the responsibility should be on the senior person at that appointment. Whether or not they're a solo cleaner, then it's all on them. If they're the team lead, then it's on them. But either way, yes, somebody definitely has to take charge of that. Yeah.

One thing Katie, I want to talk about is how does making payment easy, how is that relevant to paying customers? I would say, I mean that's really the most important thing for all of us. The customers just want to pay for their service and we want to get paid. And. There's a lot of barriers. Often I see people will post on Instagram like, oh, I have 50 outstanding accounts and everyone needs to pay. And it's like, that shouldn't be a social media post. This is your problem, not your clients.

Right? That's true too. Yeah, no, that's not quite the right channel for that. So back to what we talked about with email marketing is you need to be able to contact your customers. So if you can send out an email or you can send out specific emails saying, Hey, your payments behind. But really in this day and age, especially if you can't take a credit card on file and just process that yourself or have it automated, that's really what people expect nowadays.

I find that with the payment, just like when you're had a great meal at a restaurant and now you're waiting around for the bill, that's the first thing they teach you as a server that can ruin the whole experience. Nobody wants to wait around. The kids are getting fussy or you've got to get out of here. You're in a rush. So that payment needs to be instant. It needs to be automated. I highly recommend, and they don't have to think about it.

Right? Yeah. We used to use automatic invoicing for my long company, but then I realized they can't tip if we do automatic invoicing. So what we do is we'll send them the invoice because I think that's ethical to give our technicians a chance to get paid extra, but if they don't, within 24 hours, we charge. And the clients never complain because it's easy and it just makes

their life a little bit simpler. Katie, this is a great conversation, talked about a lot. I'm going to summarize it in three steps here. Number one is know the intimate details about your clients. You can have a strong intake form, Katie, I like how you don't have that big robust form at first. You have a small form, and then the big one, you really to find out what they care about, what they need, and that builds value in your service.

Number two is do what you wish you could do for everyone for a few. If someone has a special request, don't view that as a headache. Do that as an opportunity to go above and beyond. That's where the five star reviews come. That's where memories are made. Exactly. And you don't need 50 NHL players. That's not how we're building our business.

But if you can put yourself in the position of what an NHL player or the president of a university or the CEO of a company, what those people need, that's how you are learning and adjusting the way that you do business so that now everyone can experience that VIP service. I like that. Yeah, empower your staff to care for that. And number three, address the fears and anxieties that your clients have as early and as robustly as you can. If they have 10 anxieties and fears, concerns,

how's this going to happen? How am I going to pay? What am I going to do? The better you address those, the more clients you'll get. Exactly. So a lot of times people are nervous, they don't know what to expect, or they just kind of chicken out at the last minute. They're like, yes, I want my house clean, but am I going to have to clean before they come? Are they going to snoop through my things? All of these fears can be alleviated by simply explaining that we don't judge.

You work with people from all walks of life. We love to clean. It's our honor to clean for you, that sort of thing. And overcoming all those objections that you might hear. You can even survey people and find out why they haven't booked. And then you explain that you have to be scared for any of this. We'll take care of everything, and you will just absolutely love us. We guarantee it. And yeah, you'll sell out your calendar really fast. Totally afraid clients do not buy. That's right.

Katie, thanks for being here. Thank you for having. We'll find out more about you. So you can go to glisten academy.com. It's like, listen, but with a G. So most of my training is audio, so you can listen to things just like a podcast. You can go right there and lots of free resources and educational stuff for cleaning business owners. Yeah, our listeners, go check that out. Thank you for everything that you're doing for your clients, for your team,

for your followers. It means a lot. So thank you. Thank you very much, and thank you for listening. I hope you heard something that will make your business more profitable and more efficient, and I'll help you go the extra mile. I'm your host, Adam Sylvester. You can find me@adamsylvester.com. Your clients and your team deserve your very best, so go give it to 'em.