WHO IS: The RCF's Sales Mentor

Gem City Cleaning Crew, Chris & Macy Wilson; RCF Dayton; The RCF's Sales Mentor; & The RCF's 2023 Member of The Year

My name is Chris, Sales Mentor of The RCF, Owner at Gem City Cleaning Crew in Dayton, OH. I want to start this series off by talking about where I came from, and where I am today; right now.

Business Background

Back in July of 2022, I left my 9-5 job to pursue a business my wife was already 5 years into.

She had a cleaning business that kept growing faster than she could keep up with and needed some help if she was going to continue.

She had 3 Full-Time employees, and a number of jobs per month and thought she might pop if another was brought on.

I remember her turning away work, and would sweat if she saw a Facebook message from someone looking for a quote.

She was cleaning alongside her employees, and taking time off when she could, however it wasn't very often.

Business Challenges & Decision Making

We had gotten to the point that we needed someone, but really had a difficult time. It's very complicated though.

You always worry:

• You need more jobs coming in

• If your staff is exhausted or burnt out

• But you also don't want to underwhelm your staff either (by taking away hours for someone else to come in)

• And you don't want to underwhelm your new staff member (by not giving them enough)

Ultimately, I made the decision that if we are handing out at least 20 hours of overtime a week, that would be my queue to start looking.

I have enough work to where I can train them with someone, but also it would give me enough time to build out a schedule for them when they started moving out on their own.

Embracing Technology

You cannot automate your business without technology.

You can't scale your business without it either. At least not easily.

The first thing we needed was to get rid of the pen & paper method.

Then we set up our Facebook Page, Google Business Profile, & our own branded domain+website (local SEO).

We got a dedicated business phone number to text & call prospects, found a CRM software to set up tasks reminders, book calls, set up automations to send out texts automatically to our clients.

Zapier

Zapier can be quite confusing at first, but once you understand its capabilities you'll never want to go back to the way you used to do things, and continue to find ways to automate even more.

We typically use Zapier to send data from one place to another.

For example, every time we put a client in the Estimate Needed stage in Nurturely+, that triggers an automation in Zapier to send all the clients info into Square so we don't have to manually enter name, phone, email, and address.

While this is one small portion of its capabilities, there's a lot more you can do, & while this is a small task to automate, you'll thank Zapier later when you do multiple estimates a day. 😊

Other Software

• We use QuickBooks for accounting

• Google for all their tools like Sheets, Gmail, Docs, Chat, etc

• OpenAI for AI automations & notes summarization

And we'll continue to dive deeper into this list in the coming weeks ..

Mindset Shift

This one is going to be tough for some, and it was hard for me to grasp as well.

This business is not exactly what you think it is.

... I know.

You started from nothing, you built your client base from hard work and dedication, your name got out there, and now you have a standard to uphold.

These things are all important, and you probably shouldn't ever forget that.

However, nobody cares.

Nobody will ever actually care about your company, your business, your brand, or your reputation as much as you do..

Your clients will fire you, your employees will call off, your employees will do things that take advantage of you, you'll go above and beyond to try and win a contract just to be picked over someone else, and the only person who gets stressed out and takes things to heart... Is you!

Here's something someone told me that really allowed me to step outside of our business and change the way I think:

"A cleaning business is a fulfillment center. You have clients who are in need of your service, and you fulfill that need by sending a client out there to handle the tasks they desire."

Operational Strategy & Perspective

What this means is, if you want to get out of cleaning, and focus on the back end of your business (working ON instead of IN your business), you must find yourself a pool of cleaners, build out your systems & operating procedures, find as many clients as you can, & be ok when someone calls off, or reschedules their appointment. It's all part of the game.

If someone calls off, you tell the client that we need to come out with a different person, skip the appointment, or reschedule.

They will be ok, and you — the Owner / Co-Owner — will not under any circumstances go out and clean.

If a client cancels, give your cleaner another job or tell them to take it off.

At this point, while they are our company's clients, I also look at them as our cleaners' clients.

They are responsible in many ways to keep that client happy.

If they don't, we give the job to someone else.

Your clients are not your friends.

Neither are your cleaners.

1 is here to save time & 1 is here to earn a wage.

There's a lot more to get into, but this is a good start. Check back here next week for part 2. 😊

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