Soap Warehouse Blog

Happy New Year!

Sorry I am a bit late but we have been busy planing great things for the new year for our business and you should be doing that as well.

I know how everyone is down and depressed about how last year went, the economy, a new administration and the uncertainty of what this new year will bring for us all.

So let us make plans on the positive side. How many of you know what a SWOT Analysis is?

Well a SWOT is a very simple but helpful tool for you and your business.
S - Strengths
W - Weaknesses
O - Opportunities
T - Threats

Now that you know what the letters stand for let me explain how to use this to analyze your business or any problem or question you come across during the year in running your business.

SWOT analysis provides insight at a point in time - like a snapshot, of whatever you want to analyze. It could be business as a whole, like whether you should add another rig to your business, or even if you should stay in the business line you are in, say house washing or maybe expand by adding window or deck washing, reduce it by doing gutters only or change all together like going into kitchen exhaust work.

This is how it is done: start by dividing a page into four quadrants with a vertical line and a horizontal line.

The top two analysis quadrants are Strengths and Weaknesses. The bottom two quadrants are Opportunities and Threats. Let us say the Question is "Should I add a new rig this year?"

So then with what ever your question is, start to list the things that belong in each section.

You could list in the Strengths that having another rig could increase the number or kind of jobs you do. So in the Opportunity box you could then figure exactly what that number could be and the income opportunity that would bring. Then in the Weaknesses area you may list the extra personal it may take to run it or the limited use you could get out of it during the year and in the Threats of course would be the cost of the rig, also its cost of operation including the cost of the personal to run it.

This way you can see what this could do for your business or if it would be even a good idea at all. And the question does not have to be a large one. It could be as easy as should I increase or change my cell phone plan minutes or carrier?

Too many times the small business person sees what somewhat else is doing thinks "Hey I can do that", or "That is a great idea" and goes off spending time and money without really taking into consideration all the facts. What may be great for some one else may spell disaster for your business.

Here at Soap Warehouse we have lots of big new plans for you and our business this year, but with each one there are steps we have to take to be sure we are getting the results we want and need from these changes.

I wish all of you a very good new year and I hope all your plans are fruitful.

This is a list I got from Entrepreneur magazine a while ago.

Top 11 things to get exposure for your business:

#11. Be reachable - Have a clear and concise business card. Have a press contact listed on your web site that can answer questions and be reached on the first call.

#10. Get on-line. As mentioned in a previous post this is a #1 need in today's market. Add articles even if just links, showing that your company is in the news as a leader.

#9. Perfect your elevator pitch. You should always be able to tell anyone in just a sentence or two what you and your company does, and have a business card with an offer ready as a follow up.

#8. Show your face. Have a press folio made up and photo's available to be used for any print article. Also good to use the same ones on line to let the contact know on site they have the correct company they are looking for or saw info on.

#7. Establish yourself as an expert. Speak at meetings (even if just the Rotary Club), become a media contact for your local newspaper. Write articles or answer questions posted by the general public on web sites.

#6. Do not send sloppy copy. Have a pre created standard press release about you and your company, even if it is just the same statements that you are using on line, that can be used by anyone in the media.

#5. Know your audience. Make sure where the press release is going is where you want your future customers coming from. Local newspaper, subdivision newsletter etc.

#4. Tell the whole story. Think as if you had to write a headline and two paragraphs about your company. What would it say. Be complete, brief and concise with your info.

#3. Plan ahead. Check with publications you read or would want to see your story in. Find out what their upcoming issues will be covering and see if you can write a story or give info that they may want to use and quote you on.

#2. Distribution channels: These are ones that the media go to when looking for information. PRWeb, Business Wire, PRNewswire, Market Wire. If you can get your business story on one or more of these it will work for you.

And #1. Respond Promptly. Most writers are on a time line and will move on to their next contact if you are not immediately available for comment or with a story.

Good luck.

Welcome to a new month and the last quarter of the year.

With the year winding down I wanted to touch on things to do before the end of this year to get ready for next year especially if this is a slow time for you.

A great idea is to do a Business Wellness Check.

First take a look at the increases you have had during the past year and make sure that your prices are still in line with the changes. If not now is the time to make the rate chart changes for next year. You may be able to make the sales pitch for next Spring to get a contract now is for the company to lock in today's pricing before next years inevitable price increases. Just be sure you can still make a modest profit at this new price. It never makes sense to work just for works sake it, you must be able to make a living at this.

In fact price adjustments are something that you may need to do twice a year or quarterly depending on how volatile the year is for your vendors. Even if the new pricing is to just to your new customers during the year.

You need to see where your major cost increases were and make the needed adjustments now. If it was in supplies are there ways you can save? Can you make better purchase decisions that will help you next year? For example is there anyway to maximize your purchases? Can you buy 3 or 4 kits of product instead of 1 or 2 at a time and save some on the rising fuel costs? Are there more affordable options for your supplies? Have you been using your products at their optimum? For example are you sure you are using the right concentration for the job or are you using more than you need there fore have been wasting money? Are you able to buy in bulk for consumables at discount or bulk shopping locations like Sam's, BJ's or similar companies.

Next evaluate your equipment needs. If you have had to make repairs repeatedly on a piece of equipment during the last season, now maybe the time to consider replacing it. Many times Winter is the time of year when equipment vendors have sales or give discounts on end of year models getting ready for next years models just like the car manufactures. It is hard to stick to a busy schedule when equipment failures put you behind and possibly lose you jobs and money. Would a newer piece of equipment make you more efficient thus saving you time and labor costs?

One thing to not forget to put on your business wellness check list is to make sure your business stays in compliance with your local, state and the federal waste water regulations.

Here is a link that I think will be helpful to many of you: http://www.washwater.org/. This will allow you to find links and the information you need at one site.

In these days or increased awareness with droughts, water restrictions and tighter regulation you need to be in the know instead of on the receiving end of a warning or worse a heavy fine.

These are just a few items to put on a check list. Make yours as long or short as you need but be sure it covers all of the areas that effect your bottom line. Even down to the cell phone use and insurance policies. Every cost to you and your business makes a difference in the end.

Have a good month and next time will be about increasing your business exposure in the community.

It has been a month since I last posted but I wanted to bring this up since it is nearing the end of the rush time for most of you and so many organizations are going to be having their yearly conventions in the upcoming months.

It is good business to be a member of organizations connected to your line of work. It could be PWNA, IKECA, or even smaller local groups.

Even though there can be costs incurred when being a member you can normally write off part or all of the expense as a business deduction and the benefits greatly out way the costs.

The first and biggest benefit is Net Working. You get to know others that are in your business. They understand who you are and where you want or need to be to take your business forward. You can get new fresh ideas or just discover old tried and true methods that have worked for others.

Second benefit, is the conventions and or meetings themselves. They give you time to get away from the daily grind, experience and meet new people and participate in discussion groups or classes that are held there. Even if you are the one that has been in business forever and knows it all, you get the benefit of being in a community of peers that can bring a stability and balance into your life. The adage “All work and no play” is for every one. You need the chance to get out and see what else is out there.

Third is keeping up to date with new information. You always need to keep your eyes ahead looking to where you want to go. It may be fine for a while to do things the way you always have done it or use the same chemicals you always have in the past. But new things are always coming up with products and application methods. We here at Soap Warehouse have people that are constantly looking to make new combinations or formulation changes geared to what the future wants, needs and restrictions will be.

In the very near future many product ingredients are going to be restricted, banned or priced out of reach and we have to grow with these changes. Many areas are facing water shortages, water restrictions and clean water guidelines that have to be followed or fines or worse will happen to you and your business.

I also believe subscribing to magazines, reading articles, subscribing to web sites, contributing to chat boards or forums and blogs are also a good way to do this. Feel free to visit our link section which is filled with suggestions.

If you are member of PWNA or are going to the convention in late Oct. Please be sure to check out the Special Offer located in the customer only section on our web site to receive a special value offer.

Have a good month and participate in something to help you and your business before the end of the year.

Hello, and welcome to the end of summer.

For many of you time is running out for you to make the main money of your season. But that does not have to be the case. I know this has been a very rough year so far. Every one's business is down whether due to drought, high fuel costs, higher costs of everything else or just regular business that is just not there this year due to your customers not being able to afford your services.

Unfortunately some of our customers have had to take on second jobs or new more stable primary jobs and put their pressure washing business on the back burner or on hold to make ends met.

Here are some ideas to help you think outside the box to keep your PW business going in these lean times.

One problem when the economy slows down is that your customers slow down payment to you as well, especially true if you are doing monthly contract work instead of pay as you wash jobs.

One way around this to keep a good cash flow is to look at your contract jobs and see how much profit you have built into each one and then decide if giving a customer a prepay discount would benefit you and your cash flow. Say you are making $350 profit on a fleet wash job that you usually give NET 30 to but lately that has been becoming NET45 or worse. Wouldn't it be worth say $50 for you to have the money in your hands sooner and for sure than worrying when you are going to get it, especially if you will have to spend extra time and money to get it later? So go to your customer and offer them a prepayment discount on their next job. Of course if they are already so behind in paying you on past work taking this money now may slow down the payment of the older money, but not always. This can also work with a split payment discounts. Say give them a certain amount or % off if they pay half up front and the rest stay NET 30, or give them a discount on the entire job for early payment such at 3% Net 10, or NET 15.

Also with so many small PW going out of business call on them to see if they would like to sell their contact list for a small fee or get a kick back from you for introductions to clients they are no longer going to service that turn into business for you. For instance if they have a customer that they were washing each month; they could introduce you to the customer, saving the customer the time and trouble to find a new and probably different PW then yourself, with the promise of when this customer uses you, you pay the old PW a one time set fee for the introduction. This one time cost will easily pay for itself in a few jobs with your new customer. I have seen this work with PW's that are having to retire or go out of business for other reasons in the past.

This is why it is always a good idea to be friendly with the other good PW's in your own area. Don't treat them as an enemy that are out to get you and your business but as someone that can help you and back you up when needed. Just be sure they are as ethical and do good work like you do for your mutual benefit.

Join websites with other local and national PW's. You can network sometimes to the point that if you need help on a job to get a bid they can even work with you like a subcontractor to get the job done. Or if one of you are too busy to do work for a customer that the other one can do the job, giving the other PW a referral fee. Some PW's have been in business for so long and know the others in their area so well that they can swap customers or give referrals to each other without hesitation of monetary reward because they know they will be paid back later with a new job from someone else. EX: Some PW's may specialize in commercial flat work and will hand off house washing to a friend knowing when the house washer gets has major flat work they will call on them or use them for that customers job.

As I mentioned in a previous session, even if you normally do private home jobs, go by local businesses that need washing or you have seen someone else clean in the past and leave your card. You never know if their old washer is one that just gave up the business and they will be needing someone new. Odds are they will at least call you for a quote if not the job and the more cards you have out there the greater your odds become. Also I will again mention that the bad housing market is a boon for a PW to create curb appeal. Visit Realtors and give them a stack of your cards as well. Even offer to wash their house for free for the referrals and thier testimonial.

I hope you all have a better last half or quarter of 2008.

Continuing from yesterday, June 6th:

Second use as few products as you can for as many different jobs as you can thus reducing the number of different products you have to buy, allowing you to buy in bulk, making it easier to store and manage. I have some customers that will use, say Mighty Max for almost all of there exterior cleaning jobs. They will buy one 55 gal kit in the beginning of the year to use at different strengths with different additives during the year thus saving money since they got one kit and saved on shipping the water weight of pails. So if you are buying over one year even 10 pails of Mighty Max, two at a time every other month, that would be $350 plus the shipping costs five times, where as one kit is only $205 and shipping one kit is less than even one set of two pails. Saving you hundreds!

Tell us your best all in one product? Is it Brown Derby? Mighty Max? Smoke House? We would like to hear from you and let everyone know what you add to these to give you the best results for the jobs you are doing. Maybe if enough of you like a certain product with a certain additive we can have it made that way and possibly save you even more.

Most of your expenses fall into one of three areas; supplies, fuel and labor.
Labor is the only near constant you have. You either work for yourself or you have a crew that work X number of hours a week for a certain amount. The next expense is fuel and we all know that is rising out of this world making everything else go up. So that leaves your supplies as the best place to be able to cut costs. So how can your chemical supplier help besides lowering their prices? We can make suggestions.

First, as we spoke of earlier at the start of these posts: Buy as much product as you can at the best freight rate you can get. Paying $50 for a single pail of 5 gallons of product and spending $50 to get it there costs you $20 a gallon. But if you bought 4 pails ($200) for the same $50 in shipping, your cost per gallon drops to $12.50. 

If you had bought all four of those pails separately even over just a few months time and freight rates had stayed the same, you would have spent $400 on the same amount of product you could have spent just $275 on, for a savings of $125. We here at Soap Warehouse are always ready to calculate rates for you with different carriers or amount of product that can be shipped. We are happy to help you get the best $ per gallon rate you can get.

To help you with this we have posted in our archives the weight chart for our products on our website that you can go to at any time; Product Weight Chart. Of course freight prices will always be changing but you will be able to see what pails and drums vs. kits weigh.

Let us know what your suggestions are as to how to save on product costs.

One item that is your best spent money for the dollar is your business cards. They are the least expensive way to get your name out and get jobs. Make it a goal to hand out at least 10-20 cards a day to people you meet, or leave them where ever you go. True many will just get tossed out in the nearest garbage can but you never know when someone will need your service and dig out that card "That guy gave them". Or when they will hand your card over to someone else that mentions they need to find someone to wash their house. You can expect less than 10% of any type of advertising including business cards to generate a call. Then it is up to you to land the business.

It is a known fact that people need 3-5 contacts from someone before they may buy. Also it takes someone to hear or read something at least 3 times before it sinks in. And the number one way to get business is by referrals. So how do you get those referrals? Leave your customers at least 10 cards with their name on the back and ask them if they liked your service to hand them out to their friends. Also make an offer to them, ex: you will give a discount off the next job for them or even send them a gift card worth $25. And that if their friend calls and uses their name that you will also give the new customer the same offer. Make it what ever you want but keep it the same so you will remember what your offer is all the time. You will find that if you change offers, one person will talk to another and may not be happy to hear the offer was not the same for them, a sure fire way to loose business. That is why referrals work, people talk! And remember one satisfied customer will normally tell two friends while an unsatisfied customer will tell at least 10 people they may not even know. So increase your number of good referrals and work extra hard never to have bad ones.

Since exposure is the key to generate new business. Post your cards everywhere you can. On subdivision notice boards, dry cleaners, the corner pub, just about anywhere in areas you like or want to work. Do not put them in locations where the type of customer you want probably does not go, like a Laundromat. If a client does not have $300 to buy a washer to wash his clothes why would he hire you to wash his house? But drive out of your way and post on the club house bulletin board in a upscale subdivision where you want to work, where you know the disposable income level is high and esthetics are important to the potential customer.

Good Luck and keep passing out those cards.

I meant to ask this open ended question yesterday for anyone to answer as to what is the best way you personally have found to get new business? And where have you found it?

Was it by a traditional method? Or have you stumbled on a great but unique angle?

Please feel free to tell everyone here what you have found. Remember Soap Warehouse sells all across the US and this will not be like giving away your best kept secret. Most of our customers will never come in contact with each other or even work in the same area. Although some of you do live in the same part of the country and have even referred other local pressure washers to us for which we are very grateful. We only hope to make everyone’s business better with this blog and not try to take business from each other. That is one reason we have a link to other open sharing sites with forums like The Grime Scene and Power Wash Network.

What job or type of work is your most profitable and why?

This will probably have a lot of answers, maybe as many as there are companies. I have heard from some clients that state they will only do fleet washing because that is the only place the money is and then the next week I will hear the same thing from a Hood Cleaner.

We also ask for anyone that has a web site to please forward it to us for us to link to you from our web site as one of the bonuses for being a Soap Warehouse customer.

Hope to hear from someone soon.

Good Morning and Welcome to a new month, June!

I can not believe half of the year is almost gone. How many of you have been making the goals you set for this year? How many of you even set goals? Goals are a very important part of business. If you are spending all of your time working and no time building your business, you will soon be out of business. You can not just sit back and expect the customers you currently have to always be there to meet your obligations. It is said that if you do not spend at least 20% of your effort; meaning time and money, to increase your business you will not be able to sustain it for long. Most new, independent or self owned businesses are out of business in the first 2-3 years. All businesses loose at least 10-15% of their customers each year for what ever reason. And in these tough economic times let’s face it, that percentage is probably higher. Keeping your clients equipment or property clean is not going to be a top priority for them when they have other bills to pay. So if your client base is shrinking or at least dragging right now what can you do to fill in the gaps? How do you find new customers? You need to look in places you may have not before.

For example, since the housing market is slow in most areas right now, many times the difference between which house sells is its curb appeal. Contact realtors in your area and give them special pricing to give to their sellers for you to do exterior cleaning. Sometimes just a freshly cleaned roof or front walk and driveway will make a new buyer like the house and think that the property looks great and that it will not need maintenance any time soon. Also contact new home builders about after construction clean up in a development. With so many homes sites out there they need to make their subdivision look the best to new home buyers. Also look for maintenance contract work that won’t dry up with the weather. For example I recently had a funeral home owner contact me looking for a referral for a company to do his three locations. He told me "No one has ever come by to see me about starting a monthly contract to clean my buildings, hearse and limos." He reasoned that most people including pressure washers do not like to call on funeral homes. But this is a business where image is key and they always have customers. There is never a slow month for a funeral home.

Have a good day and keep looking for new opportunities.