Before I get started, I must acknowledge the incredible collective value of the sources of marketing expertise that I have had the privilege of being exposed to.
Experts like Dan Kennedy, Seth Godin, Chris Anderson, Rob Walker, Malcolm Gladwell, Dan Ariely, Robert Cialdini, Joe Vitale, Chip & Dan Heath, Max Lenderman, Martin Lindstrom, Leo Eisenberg, Garr Reynolds, Marty Neumeier, Nicholas Nassim Taleb, David Ogilvy, Claude Hopkins, Tali Sharot, David Eagleman, and many more have opened my eyes to the power of marketing over the years, and illuminated the path to applying powerful, intelligent strategy to our window cleaning and pressure washing industry.
I would like to officially go on record as saying that I offer you nothing brand-new in the world of marketing. I bring no never-before-discovered insights, or bleeding-edge realizations. All I can offer you is the humble migration of amazing, proven marketing reality into your window cleaning business.
Lots of books are out there on marketing and advertising. The problem is not the accessibility of awesome marketing information. The problem is figuring out 'how in the world' all this insight can be used in your window cleaning and pressure washing business.
As brilliant risk expert Nassim Taleb remarked in his iconic book Fooled By Randomness, “History allows us to better steal the ideas of others, and leverage them.”1
The world-class researchers and authors that I've listed above have spent thousands of hours discovering, testing and refining their theories and then reporting on their real-world results to provide nothing less than reliable marketing shorthand for the rest of us. It is this condensed and migrated shorthand that I pass on to you in this book, and that has been directly responsible for the business success that both myself and my clients have attained in the window cleaning industry.
It is a remarkable thing that the world around us pays us so much money for such a simple task as window cleaning. I am not too proud to admit that we are dramatically overpaid - as an industry - for what we do. Why should a guy with a squeegee be paid more than a chef? A plumber? An electrician? A doctor? It makes no sense, but thankfully, it doesn’t have to. Let’s just be grateful that the world hasn’t caught on.
That being said, please be aware of one more thing: I have written this book to change the way you think about yourself and your window cleaning business, with your best interests in mind. The sooner you make this change, the more profitable your business will become.
In my last book Why Everything You Think You Know Is Probably Totally Wrong, I stated in the introduction: “Time is not money. Time is the very guts of life. Life itself.”
That is still true. Time is the most valuable currency. Do you wish you had more of it? How would it change the rest of your life if you only had to work 2 or 3 days a week instead of 5? What if you could spend all that extra time doing important things that matter? Or spending it with your family and the people you love? Instead of “working for the weekend”, what if you could set up a life that you wouldn’t feel a need to escape from (as often)?
That’s the bigger picture here.
When you invest in your marketing, you buy yourself more time.
The American statistician and professor W. Edwards Deming once wrote: “It is not enough to do your best. You must know what to do, and then do your best.”
In my first book, I provided a big picture overview of window cleaning marketing, but so many details and strategies were missing, and so many questions unanswered. Thus the need for a fresh, comprehensive treatment of the subject, and my brand new book now sitting in your hands.
I sincerely hope that $600/hr gives you exactly what you’re looking for right now.
Kevin
P.S. A genuine student of marketing will be the first to admit that there is no such thing as complete marketing knowledge. The goal of this book is to give you a running head start, not the final word. Unfortunately, the final word does not yet exist.
Prologue
Saturday morning. Mid-October 2008. Providence, RI. The gentleman in the back row had a full white beard overflowing onto his zipped up jacket. At the front sat a young man in his early 20’s, proudly wearing a Boston Red Sox cap. All together, 57 AUWC window cleaners were crammed into the small Convention Centre room on the second floor, and they were all staring at me, as I stood at the front, delivering the keynote address on Window Cleaning Marketing. I had just asked them to repeat a sentence they had never said before, containing a thought that had never crossed their mind. And as a few seconds of silence ticked by, those words started to sink in. If you were there, you probably remember the moment. I said “Repeat after me: It’s okay for me to earn $600/hr.” What? For window cleaning? Was I insane? Was I caught in an egomaniacal stupor? Nah, I was simply trying to open their minds to the power of marketing. In the 11 years that I’ve spent in the window cleaning business, my most profitable window cleaning job earned me $3,313.00 for 27 minutes of work, attaining a real-world hourly rate of $7,362.00/hr. Although - truth be told - I also bought that particular client an iced coffee for $3, so let’s accurately readjust that number to $7,355.00/hr. $7,355/hr for window cleaning. Not rocket science. Not brain surgery. Good ol’ fashioned window cleaning. Oh, and I did that job once a year for 4 years in a row. Pretty cool. The million-dollar question: How in the world did I manage to get away with that kind of price in a city with over 400 window cleaning competitors? What gave me the nerve to even try? Answer: I killed the unicorn, embraced the Koi, and used the herd. I did some other cool stuff, too, that I’m going to share with you, so that you can position yourself and your business to do the exact same thing. But I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. First things first.
Ripping People Off
Since this is a conversation about marketing, let’s begin by defining it. You first. What do you understand “marketing” to be? Because opinions vary so wildly, and it’s so easy to get lost in contrasts between advertising and lead-generation, or billboards and print ads, or uniforms and thank you cards, or the hundreds of other little things in between, let me provide some much needed clarity for you. Here is the official “Kevin Dubrosky definition of Marketing“:Marketing is anything and everything that you wittingly do to motivate people to separate with as much of their money as possible - as often as possible - for your window cleaning services, while leaving them completely satisfied with their entire transaction experience.
Or, put simply,Maximizing the revenue without compromising the integrity.
Get the idea? From now on, anything that looks like this duck, walks like this duck, and sounds like this duck, call “marketing.” It could be your voicemail, the way you groom yourself, the vehicle you drive, the look of your estimates, the web presence you maintain, or the kind of equipment you use. It could be your British accent, the gorgeous employee that heads up your residential crew, the video you record, the testimonials you share, or the kind of envelope that you mail your invoices in. It could be your unusual service package names, your bizarre postcard sizes, or the Starbucks gift card that you mail out every February. It could even be your insanely high prices, or the design of your logo. Everything can be and is marketing, once you understand the definition. Nothing else can so consistently increase your bottom line, practically on command. Nothing else can so quickly manufacture value out of thin air in the eyes of the consumer; vaporize doubt, reassure fear, inspire to pamper, and motivate to act. Ironically, this is a counterintuitive approach among business owners. You’re not operating a charity. The business of your business - and every business, for that matter - is to generate a profit. Do you believe that? Consider: Window Cleaners are the reigning champions of the Most-Boring-Conversations-In-The-World Contest, as awarded by all of our collective mates and family members. Put three window cleaners in the same room and they will easily burn through hours of time debating the latest WFP technology, the “fabricating debris issue”, or the right kind of squeegee to use on a certain difficult-access pane of glass on a sunny day. In short, we’re a big bunch of nerds. We are really into window cleaning. And I’m right there with you, too. I’ve personally attended and presented keynote addresses at no less than 4 different Window Cleaning Association seminars over the past 12 months alone, including WCR, AUWC, MWCoA, and the IWCA. So, yes, I understand the obsession with window cleaning. My blood also has Palmolive in it. [caption id="attachment_635" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Since October 2008, I've presented seminars and training for the window cleaning industry's most well-known associations and organizations in 6 US States and 1 Canadian Province. I also hosted the window cleaning industry's only 2-day conference on marketing, in Beverly Hills 2011, called "Squeegeenomics". So I understand the weird obsession with window cleaning. I get it."]
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And yet, technical expertise is not the key to rapid, profitable growth. Marketing is.
Here’s why:
Let’s say that two window cleaner’s move into Anytown, USA, this week, and both of them have shiny new trucks, clean uniforms, and new equipment.
Let’s call them Joe and Bob respectively.
Joe, an expert window cleaner, but an average marketer, runs ABC Window Cleaning.
Bob, an average window cleaner, but an expert marketer, runs XYZ Window Cleaning.
Within 6 months, which one of the two is going to be busier with work? Joe or Bob? Which one is going to be earning more dollars per hour? Joe or Bob? Which one will have more clients than he knows what to do with? Joe or Bob?
Answer to all 3 questions: Bob. No contest. You agree, right?
You agree because marketing always trumps technical expertise. Remember that.
Stop obsessing over technical stuff, and start obsessing over your marketing. In a way, I am preaching to the converted, because you’re reading this book right now, so kudos on that. Keep it up.
Speaking of obsession over technical details, let me let you in on a little secret. I have to warn you, it’s one that you don’t want to believe. Here it is: There is a huge difference between what you consider to be a “perfectly clean window” and what your client perceives to be a “perfectly clean window”.
Anytime spent traversing the gulf between their satisfaction and your satisfaction is unnecessarily costing you revenue.
I know you love detailing with your Q-tips, just realize it’s costing you profit, not making you money, unless the customer happens to be as equally obsessive-compulsive as you, which I highly doubt.
What I’m not saying is to stop caring about workmanship, or to slack off in your quality control. What I am saying is that your standard’s are far higher than they need to be, and that as long as you are delivering a high-quality cleaning service, you don’t need to deliver a “crazy, obsessive, cleanest window in the world” level of workmanship. See figure 1-1
[caption id="attachment_564" align="alignright" width="331" caption="Figure 1-1 : I recommend using a Quality Assurance checklist like this to reassure customers that you’ll do a great job. The truth is, they are expecting that from you anyways, but this can help to prove that you can be trusted. Consider using something like this for your window cleaning company, too."]
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Put away the Q-tips and clean the next window already!
Let’s get back to this marketing focus for a minute. Isn’t it kind of weird and borderline shady to be spending so much effort and attention on trying to overtly manipulate people? To many window cleaners, it just feels wrong. Can you sympathize with those feelings? Have you ever felt guilty for trying to persuade people to give you their money?
If so, then first of all, I love the fact that you are so honest and committed to being above board in your business activity. I have the same commitment.
Perhaps the only difference is that I have found the right question to reframe this concern:
Is it wrong to generate a profit if the
customer benefits from your services?
Providing people with things that make their life easier, more stress free, or that create an environment that helps them relax, is far from wrong. It’s good stuff that you are introducing into people’s lives.
Persuading them to spend their hard-earned dollars on it doesn’t make you a bad person.
Window cleaning is a luxury service. It’s not as if you’re selling bottled water at a premium to rural Africa. You’re providing a non-essential, luxurious, convenience-based service for people that want to treat themselves, and/or protect their valuable assets.
As long as you keep your word, stand behind your service with a genuine, no-strings-attached guarantee, and deliver on your promises, than you have nothing to be ashamed of. There is nothing unethical about providing premium services at a premium price point.
That is, unless you have something against Lamborghini, Gucci, Apple, LVMH, Viking, Ritz-Carlton, and every other luxury brand/company, too. If so, then perhaps we should agree to disagree, and move on in our conversation. See figure 1-2
[caption id="attachment_568" align="alignright" width="336" caption="Figure 1-2 "THE LAMBORGHINI LESSON": Lamborghini understands that it is selling a luxury item at a premium price. They have no reason to feel guilty for charging big bucks. Why should they? Lamborghini owners choose to do business with the company. Automobili Lamborghini has enjoyed a strong year in 2011, with their latest supercar - the Aventador - selling out the first 12 months of production following it’s debut at the 2011 Geneva Auto show.1 Do you feel guilty charging big bucks for your professional window cleaning services? If so, why? Remember, window cleaning is a luxury service, with a price tag that is completely subjective. Your clients can choose whether or not to do business with you, and whether or not to pay your prices. Stop feeling guilty, and focus more on how to overdeliver on your promises, instead."]
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In one study of inflation in France, the French government cut thousands of cheeses in half and put them on sale. One half were priced normally, and the other half were priced 51% higher. Guess which group sold faster? The more expensive ones.
Commenting on the French inflation study. advertising legend David Ogilvy unsurprisingly remarked: “Consumers judge the quality of a product by the price."
People love to treat themselves, and there is a personal sense of ‘splurge’ that accompanies every expensive purchase. Hamburgers that I’ve paid $17 for taste better, and wine from expensive bottles seem to have more robust flavor.
In a study performed at Caltech Stanford, researchers asked novice wine drinkers to sample and then rate five different kinds of wine, priced from $5/bottle to $90/bottle. In a previous blind taste test, they rated all five rather equally. When another group was shown the prices during the taste test, they showed a preference for the more expensive ones.
And yes, you guessed it. The five wines were all in fact the same wine.
But when it was labeled with a higher price tag, it affected their actual experience with the product, for the better. Spending more money enhanced their experience and satisfaction.
Think about that the next time you feel guilty for raising your prices.
Behavioral Economist and Duke University Professor Dan Ariely, in his revolutionary book Predictably Irrational, experimented with this same theory. He attempted to determine whether or not the price of a “pain-relief” drug would affect it’s perceived value.
In his “pain-relief” experiment, half of the test subjects who were given the pill (a placebo masquerading as real medication) for pain were told that it was an expensive drug. Amazingly they experienced substantially higher levels of pain relief than the other half of the test subjects who were given a pill (also a placebo, naturally) purported to have been developed as a low-price solution for poorer third world markets.
High prices positively affected their satisfaction and experience with the product. The price tag alone had a substantial effect on their perceived value and actual experience with the product at hand. Think about that. A high price can totally change our perception of value. Let’s play a little game to illustrate this point:
Imagine that you are in the market for a well-deserved gift for your hard-working wife (or husband), and decide on a surprise Spa package. You’ve been thinking about it for a little while, and you have some money set aside for it. You quickly find two options:
Marie’s Spa has a mani/pedi/massage package for $295.
Josie’s Spa has a mani/pedi/massage package for $195.
Based ONLY on this information, which of these two Spa’s seem more desirable to you? Which one seems more credible? Which one are you starting to imagine your mate experiencing in your mind’s eye? Which purchase would ‘feel’ more special? Which purchase would make you feel better, as the giver of the gift?
Weird, isn’t it?
High prices alone powerfully increase perceived value.
By being more expensive, Marie’s Spa instantly has the upper hand of credibility. What if Marie’s advertised that they were the most expensive Spa in town? That would make their services even more desirable, wouldn’t it? This is craziness! And yet, somehow, it works on us.
What about window cleaning, though? Same kinda thing? Let’s give it a try and find out.
Imagine that an upper-middle-class homeowner in your target market is looking for a window cleaner to clean all the windows of their modestly-sized home, and it needs to be done in the next two weeks, in time for the family wedding that’s scheduled to be held in their backyard.
After a quick search, they find out about two window cleaning companies in the area: Bob’s Window Cleaning, and your company.
Your company will clean their windows for $295.
Bob’s Window Cleaning will clean their windows for $195.
Which company instantly looks like the more competent one? Which one seems more trustworthy? Which one appears more successful, and in demand?
What if your company also overtly advertised that you were the most expensive window cleaning company in the city?
What does that do for the perceived value of your services?
And the desirability of your services?
And her overall experience with your brand, as you exceeded her expectations?
High price tags powerfully influence perceptions of value. And they become invaluable transformative marketing tools once you realize that perceptions create reality.
If you think that brussel sprouts taste gross, then they do, period. See figure 1-3
If you think that your barber is the best in the city, then he is, period.
If you think that Shih Tzu’s are cuter than Pugs, then they are, period.
[caption id="attachment_574" align="alignright" width="336" caption="Figure 1-3 "PERCEPTION IS REALITY": In my world, brussel sprouts taste awful, even if they are slow-roasted, and spritzed with lemon and herbs, like the ones in this photo. My perception is my reality. On the other hand, if you love brussel sprouts, than in your world they are amazing. Your perception is your reality. We are both correct, because the value we assign them is completely subjective. Malcolm Gladwell likes to call this “the plural nature of perfection.” Like anything for sale - including brussel sprouts - price must be based entirely on perceived, subjective value. As neuroscientist David M. Eagleman notes in Incognito - The Secret Lives Of The Brain, “reality is far more subjective than is commonly supposed.” Okay, enough about brussel sprouts. Yuck. Although I will admit they do look good in this photo above..."]
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And if your customer thinks that his window cleaner is the best, and well worth every penny, then by golly, you are, period. Even if your prices are $100 higher than Bob’s.
It also feels good to buy high priced items. Because we irrationally assign them a higher value, we experience a heightened physiological result when we buy and consume them. It’s entirely a matter of perception, and yet somehow real to each one of us. In short, your customers like it when they buy expensive stuff, so let them have their fun.
Researcher Lee Eisenberg observes in Shoptimism - Why The American Consumer Will Keep On Buying No Matter What, “We buy because buying is fun, sociable, and diverting. An escape from boring, predictable existence.” Eisenberg adds, “Buying [has] to be positioned as a tonic, a pick-me-up.”2
Just make sure you keep your word.
Never rip your clients off.
At what point are you ‘ripping off’ a customer?
One of the major window cleaning associations approached me with this very serious concern in early 2010. A nervous Jack Nelson, Director and Founder of the MWCoA, wanted to invite me to be the keynote speaker for his March 2010 Baltimore event, but he had heard that I was encouraging window cleaning professionals to “rip off customers by charging them way too much money”, so I gave him a call.
I reassured Jack that nothing could be farther from the truth, and that I was simply encouraging window cleaners to look for ways to create and deliver enormous amounts of value to their clients. Of course, delivering maximum value justifies charging the highest possible price point. Jack agreed, and I presented the keynote at his event, as planned.
I never suggest that you wake up in the morning and ask yourself “How can I fleece my local market of huge amounts of money?”. While the saying is true that “a fool and his money will soon be separated”, I do not suggest hunting down or preying upon such fools with your window cleaning business.
It’s not about that at all.
Instead, realize that people within your local market are keenly desperate and responsive to anything of value. Anything that makes them feel better or that makes their life easier or more enjoyable, either in a tangible or intangible way, is catnip to them.
As long as you never misrepresent your service, or maliciously overpromise and then under deliver, you have nothing to be ashamed of, and you won’t have to hide your face when bumping into your clients at the mall.
Instead, you’ll see them smiling back at you. Consumers love companies that deliver on their promises.
Build that company.
Be that company.
Advertising legend Claude Hopkins went so far as to say, “I analyze my [value] proposition until I make sure that he [the client] had the best end of the bargain. Then I had something people could not well neglect.”3
He added: “Our success depends on pleasing people.”
The famous and highly profitable entertainer P.T. Barnum was recorded as saying: “Never promise to do a thing without performing it with the most rigid promptness. Nothing is more valuable to a man in business than the name of always doing as he agrees.”
I couldn’t agree more. Great advice. That’s marketing with integrity. Legendary Advertising Executive David Ogilvy similarly muses in Ogilvy On Advertising: “Advertising is only evil when it advertises evil things.”
Since we’re on the topic of marketing in a way that will let you sleep at night and be profitable, let’s add two more things to your marketing “mindset” that will help you achieve that dual-goal.
1.Start from a position of empathy.
Persuasion expert and author Joe Vitale reflected in his insightful book There’s A Customer Born Every Minute: “Most of us treat our pets better than we treat our clients. If you truly loved your customers, what would you do? If you treated them as well as you treat your best friend, what would you do?”5
This empathetic approach works well with window cleaning, too. If you were selling your window cleaning services to your family, what would you change in your approach? (Besides cleaning Aunt Maggie’s windows for free, of course) Would you explain their options more clearly? Look for ways to save them unnecessary expense? Be more open and honest about what you are going to do and not do? Find the best fit between your various service offerings and their real-life budget? Skip fewer windows?
I bet you would. I know I would. Why not do the same for every client?
Advertising Legend David Ogilvy once said: “Never write an advertisement which you wouldn’t want your family to read. You wouldn’t tell lies to your own wife. Don’t tell them to mine.”
When you treat your customers like friends, and make them feel good, they’ll continue to give you their business, and their money. Sounds like a solid way to recession-proof your window cleaning business, if you ask me.
2. Your customers are intelligent, so give them credit.
Never believe that you can pull the wool over your clients eyes by saying one thing and doing another, hoping to fast talk your way out of accountability. As researchers Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery reflected in Do You Matter?, “Bottom line is that your customers are smarter than you think...people are learning to be aware of empty words.”6
Kevin Roberts, CEO Worldwide of Saatchi & Saatchi, said it even more succinctly, in Lovemarks - The Future Beyond Brands: “Never try to fool the consumer.”7 Never promise what you can’t deliver.
If you claim to be a window cleaning company that obsesses over customer service, than you better have your act together, and your entire crew on the same page with customer care. If you claim to offer meticulous window cleaning workmanship, than you better have some skills to make that window sparkle, bucko. And don’t you dare hire students and send them off to a client’s home or business with a measly 2 hour training program under their belt.
In short, simply deliver on your promises, whatever the cost.
I repeat: Whatever the cost.
Did you break a window, and promise to repair it? Fix it. Do you offer a money-back, no-strings-attached guarantee, even to unsavory customers? Honor it.
Do you offer a 7-day rain guarantee? Show up and come through for people who whine and complain, and who see water or dirty spots that an electron microscope would have problems finding. Give your customers credit. Deliver on your promises.
And please promise yourself that you’re going to actually do something with all this marketing insight and strategy that we’re gonna get into. Learning without applying is like eating french fries for dinner every day, and wondering why you’re getting flabby. If you don’t put these ideas to work, they will never earn you a penny more.
Start scribbling in the borders of this book and writing notes about how you’re going to apply at least some of these tips and strategies to your window cleaning business. If you read something you like and that gets your creative juices flowing a bit, make a note while you think about it, and then keep track of them all on one of the few extra pages I included in the front of the book for you.
As you start to see some additional revenue roll in, you’ll get excited about trying some more marketing things, and you’ll soon be off and running. Remember, the business of every business is to turn a profit, and nothing works better at generating profitable revenue than churning out some well-thought out and effective marketing.
[caption id="attachment_588" align="alignright" width="360" caption=""It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things." - Leonardo Davinci (1452-1519), Inventor, Artist, Scientist, Writer, Visionary"]
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So use, apply, implement, migrate, amend, tweak, adjust, change, and do something with this information. Successful business people are do-ers. Become a do-er with your marketing.
“The world is perfectly organized to create the results you’re currently experiencing”, muse the five authors of Influencer - The Power To Change Anything. If you’re looking for new results, then it’s time to make some fundamental changes to your world.
Leonardo DaVinci once said: “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
Are you ready to start happening to things? If so, I hereby present you with your first official marketing task of this book:
Perform a Brain Transplant.
P.S. If you enjoyed this exclusive excerpt from my newly revised and expanded 441-page hardcover book "$600/hr", and would like to read the next part in this series, make sure you click the "wanna stay in touch?" button at the top right of this page and enter your email address.
In the meantime, please feel free to share this exclusive excerpt with your friends. I would not recommend sharing this with your competition.