Hi there, I'm Angela Brown and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question
and I get to help you find an answer.
Today's question comes from a client who wrote into our show and she says
"Ang, in your trainings you've talked a lot about upselling your services
to make extra money during slow months.
I'm curious to know what your opinion is on upselling your services
with landscaping and gardening."
Okay, I like this question because as a kid you're going to grow up in an environment
that has a specific set of skills that's intrinsic to your family.
Now in my family my Dad was a gardener, he was a farmer.
He always had a greenhouse, he has a green thumb
and as long as I've known my Dad he's
been creating hybrids of plants and berries and different things that all involve gardening
in weeding and, growing plants.
And so, I picked up on a lot of that just by hanging out with my Dad and spending time
with my Dad growing up.
And so, I have a very specific set of skills in the gardening landscape arena that has
nothing to do with house cleaning.
It's just something that I kind of grew up with and I picked up on.
And so, as I've grown my business I've worked in my own neighborhood.
People will drive past my house and they'll stop and say "Ang, who does your landscaping?
Who does all of these plants that you have in your yard?"
And I'm kind of like;
"Me. I do it myself."
And it's fun for me.
It's kind of a hobby, it's not a business.
But I've been asked many times; "Can I hire you to come make my yard look the same way?"
Now, I don't have a landscaping truck.
I don't have a riding lawn mower tractor or trailer that I can ride my lawnmower up on.
I'm not equipped to do that.
And so, I don't I don't focus on that.
That's not part of my business.
But I certainly can throw a rake in the back of my car or a
snow shovel in the back of my car.
And I could go help out with some services.
So if you're thinking about upselling your services and your thinking about a particular
outdoor type of activity you certainly can market a very specific outdoor type of activity.
And I'll be honest, over the years I have tried lots of different projects.
There was a time where I did lots of special projects for clients.
And one of those was I did weeding.
And I did trimming of hedges because I've got a hedge trimmer.
I always have carried an electric blower with me so that I can blow off patios and sunrooms
and stuff like that.
So there are some outside tasks that I do.
And I include that as part of a package that I sell to my customers.
It's not routine cleaning.
It is an upsell.
There is a girl that I know that is out in Oregon and every year
they get five months of snow.
And the snow is really high.
And so, as it starts snowing and it dumps 24 and 42 inches of snow, none of the customers
can get out of their houses.
And so, she has a whole team of people and they go out and they shovel people's driveways
and walkways instead of house cleaning.
"We're going to skip your house cleaning this week.
During this week due to the blizzard all of you guys stay inside.
We're not coming into your houses because you're all snowed in."
And the truth is she doesn't want to be there cleaning when the whole family is home from
school and the whole family is inside making a mess.
So, because she doesn't want to do that, they switch gears and they upsell their services.
And they all grab snow shovels and they go and they shovel peoples snow for the same
price that she charges for house cleaning.
And she is not cheap.
She's a very expensive house cleaner.
And now it's very expensive to get the snow shoveled, but you know what?
People need that service done.
Now, during the fall when the leaves fall, She'll say
"Listen, all of you guys have leaves.
When you open your doors to go outside all of those leaves and the dust from the leaves
blows inside your house.
So, we're not going to do house cleaning this week you all get bumped 2 weeks down the road.
This week we're doing yard pickup."
And she shows up literally with rakes and a bag of garbage bags.
And she and her team go around and there will be 10 people and they'll hit somebody's yard.
And they'll rake up all the leaves, and they leave you know, 26 bags of leaves out there on
the curb for the garbage pickup to come pick up.
And the people are more than happy to pay her expensive fee because that's a service
they don't have, number one.
They're not going to hire a landscaping service to do that because it's a one-time job.
Somebody's going to come in once or twice and rake up your leaves.
Boom we're done.
They are not going to pay their regular landscaping service to do that, but they'll pay their
housecleaner.
So she's just going to show up with rakes and garbage bags.
That's not an expensive addition to your business.
So if you want to up sell your services, and here's a secret…
If you want to up sell your services, start selling that service for the fall pickup.
Start selling that in May and June.
Because right now the customers don't need it.
But instead of them cancelling later going what we don't need house cleaning this week.
You've already got this on the schedule.
"Great.
You don't need house cleaning this week, we're coming by to do the yard.
We're coming by to pick up the snow, and they sell these services far in advance.
And so, there are people right now that are three, four, five years in the running and
they're like "Put us on your snow shovel list."
And so if they ever have a cancellation in this particular business, they default immediately
to "What do we have that we can offer our customers right now?"
She might make a Facebook page or, Facebook post, where she says
"Hey we've had two cancellations this week.
I have two openings for yard pickup, or snow shoveling."
Whatever time of the year it is.
And literally within seconds there will be five or six people to jump on go "Pick me.
Pick me, I need my sidewalks shoveled or I need the leaves in my yard picked up.
And so in addition to that, during the spring you could also do weeding.
Weeding it doesn't cost anything to weed.
You don't you don't need any new supplies.
You literally grab a bucket and you go out there and you pull the weeds.
There's a little tool that I have and I'll put a link to it, where are you just poke
it in the ground and you twist it around and it pulls out the weed for you, and then you
pop it in a little bucket and that pulls the weed for you.
And so you don't even have to bend over to pick up the weeds but it's a really great
way if you're going to help people make their yards and their homes, and the areas that
they live in nice and clean.
That's another upsell service.
And if you charge $25, $35, $45, $55 I don't know what the going rate is in your market
but if you're charging $55 bucks an hour to pull weeds that's pretty good money.
That's pretty good money but that's something most people don't want to do.
And so, if you're going to upsell your services, find something that you're good at number
one, that has a really low overhead.
Pulling weeds is really low overhead.
Raking leaves is really low overhead.
You have to invest in a rake and you're going to buy some garbage bags.
The shoveling snow, you've got to invest in a snow shovel.
And a good one is going to cost you twenty-five, thirty-five bucks.
But once you own it, you own it for the rest of your career.
So this is a one-time investment and then you go out and
shovel the walks every single winter,
because if you live in a place like Oregon
or Montana or Utah there's snow every year,
that's a given every single year.
So if you have a slow months and people are not purchasing your services, they've slowed
down and "We don't need house cleaning this week."
Great.
Sell them something else, because there's probably something else that they're willing
to pay for.
Alrighty, so that's my tip for today.
If this was helpful, leave a message in the notes below and let me know if you're going
to upsell and what one or two takeaways you gained from our time together today
because I'm curious.
And that helps me provide better information for you on our continued shows.
And until we meet again,
leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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