Latest / Cleaning Business Life / The Three-Minute Bid That Took Me Years to Build | Ep. 229

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The Three-Minute Bid That Took Me Years to Build | Ep. 229 · Cleaning Business Life

• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everyone.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Shannon Miller.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think I need to adjust the light here.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that I did that already.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's dark.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Going from dark to light.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: All I need is a flashlight, right?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I wonder.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome everyone.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is Shannon Miller with Cleaning Business Life.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And we are doing the non-paper method, is what I've committed to.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, reducing some of our resources.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: And today I'm gonna talk about the three-minute bid that took me years to build.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know, I'm getting ready to open up in a different market.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of things that I'm going through that I haven't looked at in forever.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those things that I'm looking at is my Jobber account.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: I've had Jobber since 2015.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when I first got Jobber, we were kind of like babies together, right?
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I was looking for something, it was the first thing on the market that I came across, and I was like, this is the bee's knees, right?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, Jobber has kind of grown and exponentially, and there are different price points to all of the offerings now, and it really has become a necessity in any business.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: So once you get to a certain financial point in your business, you're gonna want to either consider jobbers, in made, any of that stuff because it'll make your life easier.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And there, I believe there's a podcast probably from three years ago, and I talk about how when I had Castle Keeper Cleaning and I would have to call 50 homes at night.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I can't believe it's I can't believe A, I'm admitting this again, and B, I it's crazy for me to think that this was like what what my evenings were.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would make dinner, get the kids homework, and then I would start to do the hey, this is your reminder.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: This is Shannon from Castle Keeper Cleaning.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to let you know that we'll be there tomorrow around 9 a.m.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: blah blah blah blah blah blah.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I've gone into my jobber account a couple of times and wasn't able to do it all in one stretch because it's very tedious, and I as I've gotten older, I've realized that I am not good with linear tasks.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: And oh, here we go.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: This makes it much brighter for you guys.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Technology.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It so I have to do them in sections.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: I like to work in blocks of time.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um kid drop off and pickup is what I'm infamously known for.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: But I've tried to go in there and really revamp what Jobber is.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot of times where like I just did things the old-fashioned way because that's just how it's always been done.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then as I progressed with my business, and as I did a lot of volume, and as I had two locations, and then I had 27 techs, and all the all the stuff that went along with it.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then I I switched business models, right?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: So then I started to do a different business model, but I was still in the cleaning industry and I'm still very relevant.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: And now I'm doing I'm pivoting again and I'm doing another business model, but this time at a distance.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: So there's all of this dynamic in there.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I was like, I better clean out my jobber account.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I have like 5,000 contacts inside of my jobber.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of these guys are like one-time cleanings.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I will never have contact.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I have them um taken off.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: They're deactivated, but they're not active.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a lot of like cleaning text from 2017 in there.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, why are these guys in here?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot of cleanups that happened.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I created and sent a bid in three minutes flat, which was amazing to me because in the past I'd have to pull from here, pull from over there.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I did it on time, maybe I didn't do it on time.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, 20 minutes later into it, um, it didn't always go smoothly because I just wasn't prepared because I hadn't ever updated my Jobber file.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we've been going in there and creating a lot of things with my Jobber file, like um monthly maintenance cleanings.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the fact that we mentioned that monthly maintenance cleanings are every four weeks.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is mentioned in the monthly cleaning course that I have.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a clear description of what was included.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So in the past, we had always relied on the old school method of this is your document, this is where your, you know, your all of your bells and whistles are, this is what our policies are, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then established pricing has always been my thing.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: You guys know I love to talk about pricing, so that really wasn't a big issue, but updating a lot of that stuff.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: It hadn't been updated in a very long time.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: There was, and I had a lot of duplicate files, so 2018, 2015, you can imagine my pricing was like what 40 bucks an hour.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's way different now.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage you not to be at$40 an hour.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what our terms and policies are, and what I love the most about one of the best features of Jobber is the fact that there is a signature required.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we actually won't take on any jobs or do any jobs until A, we get a deposit, even on first-time cleanings, and B, we have a signature required.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: That means that they have read and they acknowledge everything that you have said, which is the most exciting to me.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to do a DocuSign, you don't have to do the old very old school method.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Believe it or not, I would send them over a PDF, make them print it out, and then photograph it and send it back because we didn't have the tech back then, right?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: But we have the tech now.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So if you have not tried either Zenmade or Git Jobber, please do so.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it was awesome because I was able to just put in the information, and three minutes later, the system that was behind that estimate was boom.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's been an interesting dynamic to go through and like, oh, I remember this house.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I remember this house.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: There were 27,000 addresses in my Jobber file.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of houses, that's a lot of different houses over time.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like, yeah, I don't have, you know, it just archive, archive, archive, archive.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was a pretty big file.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I've legitimately used Jobber for over a decade.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um, it's like cleaning out my old business closet, right?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm getting ready for a new chapter in my businesses, and I was like, I better do some spring cleaning.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: That three-minute bid was possible because I wasn't starting from scratch.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I had spent some time pre-doing a lot of the this is a regular maintenance cleaning, this is the refrigerator cleaning, this is what this is, this is what this is a specialized add-on cleaning.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: There's all of this stuff, and um, it's all clearly stated in writing.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there's no question, I just have to click, click, and click, and boom, those are the three things.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then which services require deposits?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: As I just mentioned, all one-time cleanings require a 50% deposit on day booking, which air quotes for those of you who are listening and not watching, that secures their spot on your schedule.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I also do it with first-time regular maintenance cleanings, and the reason for that is because I don't know them, they don't know me, so I'm getting a 50% deposit of whatever it is I've said.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now, some of you are probably going, that's a little overboard, but you have to remember, I my town has grown.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've almost doubled in size in the last five years.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a lot of people that I don't know, even though when I still go to the grocery store, I still know a lot of people because I've been here a long time, but I don't know a lot of these new people, and I'm taking a chance of not getting my cleaning tech paid by not taking a deposit.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, what happens when service doesn't properly explain?
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And this has been an eye-opener too, because I thought I had it covered and there was been a couple of things.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh, well, we should probably change that.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we had to go in and change that really quick.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then um, this makes it so not all the information lives in my head.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: So that way, if Mary answers the phone for me in the afternoon, she can go right into Jobber and go, oh, it's right here, monthly regular maintenance cleaning.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what this is included, and this is why it's every four weeks instead of once a month, right?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's 14 visits versus 12.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then we got to streamline a lot of what we already had.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of the file was still very usable.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it makes it, like I said, it makes it easier for me, it makes it easier for Mary or Susan or whoever's answering the phones that day.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And deleting the old files made it nice or archiving them so that I didn't have to go, well, what's this thing from 2018 and why wasn't it paid?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna remember from 2018 if that person paid or not.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm keeping my fingers they did, but there was a couple of those types of files in there too.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, how can I not have put job completed, right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, creating consistent service descriptions is super important because then you get scope creep if you don't.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why can't you clean the inside of my windows?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that big deal, it's just a broom suite.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: We'll just kind of right and then it really does help with establishing the pricing that we already had in there.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then adding terms and signature requirements was the chef's kiss.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: I just love that.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: There's no more required DocuSign, all the crazy stuff.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then creating a repeatable quoting process makes it easy.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: For those of you who don't know, I actually have a thriving binder for the person who's answering the phones that day.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if there's any question and they have a hard time and they can't, you know, because I'm not always available, I'm in meetings and stuff, they can reference from the binder, or I'm gonna actually move it over to a digital file so that if someone doesn't come to my office answer the phones, they can do it remotely.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I know.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know, I know.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: But it'll make it easier for everyone when they have access to that information.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: Like this is what a two-bedroom, two-bath, single-level home that is wood floors versus laminate floors, right?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: That or four dogs versus two dogs.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's all of these different price variances, and they can always get it close.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason why they can get it close, and I don't have to worry about it because just because I bid you a flat rate price doesn't mean that it's final.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's probably the most important thing when you're bidding flat rate, it's it's open to discussion.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: I don't walk any properties.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't walked one in over three years, I'm guessing.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a while.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you're 97, I'm happy to go chat with you, but I'm really not interested in looking at your property.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I pretty much know what the scope of is gonna be and then how we can adjust that price.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And what I have found more interesting is the fact the last three customers that we have taken on, as you know, if you saw my social media posts, I got 167 phone calls.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: 167 phone calls.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: 100 of them were spam, but 67 of them were not.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what I found interesting is they got my phone number from my website or wherever, and we did a transaction entirely through tax.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've never spoken to this person, I don't know their voice, and I was able to collect the deposit, get all their information, put them on the schedule, and have it be that.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of, I need to remember to reach out to one of my cleaners and hopefully that cleaning went great.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't hear from anybody this morning, so I'm sure it's fine.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then my Google My Business profile is also set up for text messages.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if you land on my Google My Business profile, you can text me right from there, and it it reaches my cell phone if it's on me or if I haven't forwarded it to someone else.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that way potential customers can contact us.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so they didn't want a lengthy consultation, they just wanted to be able to purchase.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: They had seen what was on my website, they didn't want to buy a cleaning package, which is a reduced rate.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys want to check out my website, that's PreskitTiddyClean.com.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's no longer the maid broker.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: We sold that name and it's going through the transition and the final phases of what that is.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that just makes it nice and easy peasy, right?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm all about making things easy and scalable so I can get out of my own way so that I can really concentrate on what I want to do next.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of customers I am finding don't want to talk on the phone anymore, like at all.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if it's just a societal thing or generational thing, but a lot of people are just like, I want to do this, and you can do this back and forth.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I text I'll take customers through text.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: No problem, right?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we provide phone and text-based estimates.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: We primarily provide estimates over the phone or through a text message.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: We collect all of this essential information, and um, it's all done text.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's not one voice note shared unless it's something that's pertinent.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, type of service requested, cleaning frequency, condition of the home, pets, pet hair, that type of thing, clutter or excessive belongings, buildup or deferred maintenance, and special requires requests for areas of concern.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, the last couple houses we've been in, there have been pieces of fine art in bronzes.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Pieces of fine art and bronzes have to be handled a little bit differently because some of them are pieces of antiquity, right?
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody wants to be responsible for ruining a piece of history.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so we have to be very careful, and there has to be a lot of things around that.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: So, because our pricing and services and templates are already built inside of Jobber, we can use that information to easily create an estimate in around three minutes.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like tickled pink that this was so easy to do, and there wasn't a lot of like headwork and trying to figure it out.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And um, the price, remember, the price can always be adjusted upon arrival.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: It states it in every form of contact.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's done through text message, it's done when the original bid is sent over, it's done in the PDF that is sent over.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's the welcome package.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to get that to be automated.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: So once you sign up, the automation kicks in.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It keeps spitting it out.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Once I get that figured out, I'll share that with you.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's just uh welcome to Press Get Tidy Clean.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's some images.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's like getting a um a trifold brochure, but it's in a digital format.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Our terms clearly explain that the price may be adjusted.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And when we arrive and assess the home's actual lifestyle, because that's what it is, everyone lives a little differently.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: The condition and the level of need, right?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Two homes can have the same square footage, the same number of bedrooms, the same number of bathrooms, while only requiring a completely different amounts of labor.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a super clean house where you're like looking for dirt, and then there's the other house, like my house has 30 birds, two kids, a husband, two dogs, whatever else is coming through.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: My house is like lived in, right?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: So you it's two different lifestyles.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: So, and and it doesn't show you the amount of buildup, clutter, belongings, pet hair, the conditions of the bathrooms or the kitchen, how long it's been since the home was professionally cleaned, whether the home has been regularly maintained by a professional, the level of detail required to produce the expected result because you're selling the product, right?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So Streamline doesn't eliminate professional judgment, it just kind of gets them in the door faster and it's less work, which has been nice.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's not a long conversation that I've had to have with someone who wanted to chit-chat it up with me for 27 minutes.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have 27 minutes to give to somebody.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so when we arrive, our assessment is done then, and then usually the cleaning tech will call the office and say, hey, just to let you know, I think it's gonna be this instead of this, based on the pictures that I've seen.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And the delay can cost time, so you just want to make it easy peasy for them so that they can get everything done in an orderly fashion.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then templates protect the company.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: So once you get this all streamlined inside your job, or Zenmate, or whatever you're using, you won't really typically have to adjust them unless your business model changes or you're adding on services or taking off services.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like I really needed to mine, it was like I think of it as a big stack of paper, like ream, because my file was so big, I've had it for over a decade, right?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I there was a lot of stuff that's still, and I'm sure every once in a while I'll still pop across an old file that hasn't been archived for some reason I missed it.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: And and then there's a process, right?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's forgetting to collect a deposit, leaving out an important term, quoting an outdated price, promising something that isn't included, giving different customers conflicting information, interrupt the owner for information that should already be documented, and that should be easy peasy, right?
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: Three minutes in and out.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And templates act as guardrails because the scope creep is so real in our industry that um we can still personalize the conversation, but we didn't have to rebuild the business process every time someone asked for a quote, which was super duper nice, and I love it.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So the quote takes less than three minutes and can replace a 20 to 30 minute phone consultation, which is super duper nice.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: It can also eliminate travel for unnecessary walkthroughs, handwritten notes that must be entered in later.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: How many times have you gotten into someone's home and they leave you a three-page handwritten note all in pencil and nice neat script?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, you know you've gotten one.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Extra follow-up questions, time spent searching for current pricing, waiting for the owner to approve every detail.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: So this makes it way easier, way more streamlined, and saving 20 minutes on three inquiries turns into an hour of labor for the company.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Multiply that by six, ten, or twenty inquiries, and we're saving ourselves and our crew hours every week, which is nice, right?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because it all comes down to profit.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And chaos is expensive.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Chaos costs money, the business money in ways that aren't always immediately obvious.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: Missed phone calls, slow responses, forgotten follow-ups, outdated prices, missing deposits.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: That sucks.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, inconsistent policies, repeating the same administrative work over and over and over again.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Customers receiving different answers.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So they call me and get this something, and then they call Maria and they get something else, right?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Employees waiting for the owner leads hiring someone else because that company responded first, and that happens.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Building the system hasn't always been easy, it cut requires constant maintenance, and this is this was purely administrative work.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just haven't had a chance to do it, or anyone else have hasn't had a chance to do it, so that's why we did it this week.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And um, let's be honest, streamlining Jabber wasn't fun.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of ugly.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: But now that it all everything's in place, I'm like, yes.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, each frustrating correction makes the next transaction easier, which is something that I love.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And the goal isn't to create instant perfection, it's to solve something once so that we don't have to keep solving it each and every time.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: The bid may have taken me less than three minutes to send, but it took me years of experience to understand what needed to be inside of it.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's from thousands, tens of thousands of bids.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now the information doesn't live exclusively inside my head.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's now in Jabber officially, all the way, updated and like streamlined and ready to go.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: The estimate is projected by terms explaining that the price may be adjusted after we arrive and evaluate the home's actual lifestyle, condition, and level of need.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: Woot woot! The three minute bid that took years to build.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that this was helpful to you, and I look forward to any questions should you have them.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: You guys take care.