I do not want your clients. I mean that as a good thing, and give me a minute to explain why.
The other day I posted on my personal Facebook page that Just Peachy Clean had a few openings this week and a promo running. My profile is public on purpose. I like people to see what we are doing. A handful of folks commented that they were interested.
Then someone slid into the comments and privately messaged the people who had commented, pitched themselves as a cleaner, and dropped their phone number. I do not know this person. They are local, somewhere. One of the people they messaged happens to be a friend of mine, and she screenshotted it and sent it to me.
My first feeling was not anger. It was that this told me something. Not about me. About how that person runs their business, and probably about how they feel inside the business they are in.
Here is what I believe, and I have said it a hundred times. The other cleaning companies around here are not my competition. There is more than enough work to go around. I am not fighting you for the same client, and you are not fighting me for mine. When someone calls me needing a clean tomorrow and I cannot fit them in, I send them to a cleaner I know and trust. I would hope you would do the same for me. That is an industry that lifts itself up instead of clawing at each other for scraps.
Poaching comes from a different place. It comes from scarcity, from fear, from the feeling that there is not enough and you have to grab it before someone else does. I understand that feeling. I just do not run my business from it. I do not want your clients. I want to earn ours by actually earning them, not by sliding into someone else’s comment section.
Now here is the part almost nobody says out loud.
If a person will jump to a brand new cleaner that fast, over a few dollars, from a stranger in a comment thread, that is probably not a client you want in the first place. Think about it. Somebody who moves on a dime to save five bucks will move off of you on a dime to save five bucks. The client who is only ever chasing the best deal is usually the same client who becomes the headache later.
The clients worth keeping are the other kind. The ones who see what we actually give them. The time back in their week. The peace of mind of walking into a clean house. The Saturday they get to spend on the boat or at the ballfield instead of scrubbing baseboards. Those clients understand the value, and I will do just about anything to keep them happy. You cannot poach those people with a cold message and a lower number, because price was never the thing holding them.
And then there is the small town of it all. I was born at the hospital right here. I have lived within about ten miles of the house I grew up in my whole life. I live next door to it now, next to the house my grandparents built in 1958. People know my name. And people are going to know yours. They are going to know how you treat the other small businesses around you, because in a town this size, that gets out. It always gets out.
So do not be that person. Not because I think the universe is going to come collect on your behalf. I am not counting on that, and neither should you. Do not be that person because how you conduct your business is how people see you, and how people see you is the actual business. That is the whole asset. You protect it by earning your clients, treating the shop down the road like a neighbor instead of a target, and being the kind of operator someone would not want to leave in the first place.
Earn your clients by earning them. It is slower. It is also the only version that lasts.
So here is my question for you. If someone in your town described how you do business when you were not in the room, would you be proud of what they said?
I will see you on the next walk.
Jen