Understanding the Moving Parts of a Service Business
Whether you’ll be hiring other cleaners to work for you or cleaning your customers’ homes yourself, you’ll be running a service-based business. Before you start gathering your equipment, you first need to figure out how you’ll do business.
The more time you take to prepare and understand the moving parts of your cleaning service business, the better off you’ll be to take the right steps – and make your business a successful reality.
Who: Who will be doing the cleaning? And whose homes will they be cleaning? Although your first instinct may be to target everyone, get clear on who exactly your target clientele should be. Are there particular home types you want to specialize in?
What: What will you be doing? This might seem obvious – you’ll be cleaning homes – but that’s not always the case. You can get specific on what types of home cleaning services you want to offer (we’ll go into more detail on this later), but you can also establish your role in the company. Down the line, what do you want your role to be? Do you want to be cleaning homes or handling the business side of things?
When: There are a few ‘whens’ to answer: When do you plan on launching your business? What hours of operation do you want to have? etc.
Where: Will you be serving your neighborhood or extending beyond? This is important because it will play a huge part in your marketing strategy. Decide how far you are willing to travel or send employees for home cleaning services before you start telling people about your service.
Why: Answering the ‘why’ question is often the toughest, but it’s one of the most important. Why are you starting your cleaning service business? Go beyond ‘to make money’ here. What is your mission statement? Why did you choose a home cleaning business instead of another service-based business?