It goes without saying that the quickest way to increase the revenue generated by your window cleaning round is to gain new customers – but it’s not the only way. Whether you’ve already reached the maximum number of customers you can service or simply don’t want any more customers to manage, it is possible to boost your income from your existing round without gaining new customers. We take a look at 5 ways you can do this:
Offer extra services
There’s a whole host of extra services you can offer your customers outside window cleaning, with examples including cleaning conservatory roofs, fascias and soffits, solar panels, signage and cladding to name but a few. If you use the water fed pole system (and here’s why you should be), you’re probably already well aware of the additional services you’re able to provide to your clients – but don’t expect your customers to upsell themselves!
Look for opportunities to proactively offer these services to each of your existing clients – for example, if you clean the windows on a conservatory with a filthy roof, price up the job and offer to clean it there and then. If you want to be really persuasive, you could even clean a small section of the roof for free, showing your customer first hand what kind of improvement you can make.
Invest in new equipment
Consider investing in additional equipment to boost the range of services you can offer to your window cleaning round. Examples could include pressure washers, gutter vacuums and carpet cleaners. Although involving an initial outlay, you have access to a large number of relevant, potential clients meaning you should recoup your investment quickly. As these kind of  jobs are generally more time-consuming and less frequent than window cleaning, you can also charge more.
Market your services
Of course, generating extra money from these services relies on your customers knowing about them, which can be tricky with customers that you may not meet in person. Look for opportunities to market additional services to your customers. Good examples include featuring them on your website, vehicle signwriting, invoices and quotes. You can be even more proactive and send your customers email or text communications promoting your services. CleanerPlanner allows you to do this easily with customisable invoices, quotes and work slips as well as bulk email and text messaging features.
Get extra work scheduled
Where you take on new jobs, try and get your customer to commit to having the work done on a semi-regular basis, agreeing a timescale and scheduling the job in again. You could try and work to 8 weekly, quarterly or 6 monthly schedules depending on the type of job. Doing this gets your customer into the mindset that it’s an ongoing task, not a one-off job, and gives you the chance to earn and plan for ongoing income from them. Where that’s not possible, one-off jobs can still have a considerable impact on your annual income.
Consider a price increase
It’s very common for window cleaners to have had customers on the same prices for extended periods of time. However your costs, from water to fuel, are generally always increasing. It’s therefore fair, where customers have been charged the same price for a reasonable period of time, to raise your prices to cover this inflation. Whilst never popular, the concept of service providers increasing their prices is not alien to most consumers and, providing you communicate your price increase properly, you shouldn’t experience much drop-off.  CleanerPlanner even allows you to apply bulk price increases to your window cleaning round, meaning even the admin involved in changing your prices is minimal. A price increase is a good way of boosting your round revenues, and ensuring your profit-margin stays where you want it. Read our article on how to raise your prices.
Optimise your round
With an often large number of customers, spread out to varying degrees, it’s easy to fall into the trap of using an inefficient route to carry out your round. Perhaps it’s the way you’ve always done it, the only route you know or maybe the order in which you picked up the work – but it may not be the most efficient. Services like Route4Me can help to automate the process of optimising your round order, making sure you complete your work in the quickest and most efficient order possible. Whilst this doesn’t actively generate more revenue, it does reduce your costs and make potential time-savings, boosting the profitability of your window cleaning round. CleanerPlanner will be integrating route optimisation into the platform in 2016, making this process even easier.
