Enforce The 30 Day Notice Part Of Your Agreement

Don't be afraid to gently remind your clients they made an agreement to give you 30 day notice (if that's how your agreement is written) when they decide to terminate services. I got a call today from a long time client saying they needed to cut costs and wanted to halt the cleaning immediately. I've had this client so long, they couldn't find a copy of the original agreement, so I had to fax it over. I told them I would prefer they honor the agreement, but if they really could not pay for one more month of service I would not hassle them over it. Of course, I asked all the pertinent questions, "can we improve service or would you like to scale back instead of terminate completely"? It was simply a cost cutting move, but when I reminded them of the agreement they agreed to abide by it. It turns out they had already changed the locks and made arrangement to do the work in-house but said they would cut the check for the balance for the last month anyway. That equals about 3 months in profit, simply for politely reminding them of the agreement.

Improve Cash Flow If Revenue Is Down

Revenue is down for many cleaning contractors right now.  That's just a fact.  If your revenue is down  from last year, it's likely your payroll costs are too.  Take a look at the payroll projections that your Worker's Comp. and Liability Insurance carriers are basing your premiums on.  If your payroll is down, you should be able to have them adjust your projected annual premium.  This could get your monthly premiums lowered for the rest of the policy period, or get you a refund.  Don't wait for them to audit you and then calculate your refund.  They might forget!  Most won't, but why let them earn interest on your money when you could do something exciting with it like invest in a new equipment preventive maintenance program.  Seriously, get your dough back!

Higher Unemployment Insurance Rates Create Inflation

Well, I just had my first quarter payroll tax return done for one of my companies in Oregon.  Here's a shocker, the tax happy state just doubled the minimum best case scenario rate for all business!  Based on the increase dealt to my company, a quick and dirty calculation tells me that will suck a minimum of 5k off the bottom line in 2010!  At least this one isn't retroactive.

Last fall they tricked the voters into passing a tax increase on all Oregon Corporate business that was retroactive!  That should not be legal. Even the annual filing fees have doubled!  Yet another form of taxation without representation.

Tomorrow, I am drafting rate increase letters to my janitorial clients and May 1st, I'm sorry to say, yet another increase will be posted on the website for marketing clients.  When will the voters and the government get it?!?!   If you want to help the economy, you better start helping small business. Small business has been tightening belts for the last two years, there aren't any more costs to cut! 

Can you say, PAYROLL TAX FREEZE?!?!?!
I'm out.

Still thinking

about where to start. I'm thinking about writing a series of "special reports" on various topics that would be important to janitorial business owners. Eventually, each special report will probably become a chapter or a chapter portion in a "how-to" book that I've been working on for some time now.

Wow, that was a huge step! Now it's written, posted and out to the world on this blog. That was a critical starting step. You know they say, build it and they will come, etc;. I'm always preaching to my clients, take action! Stop sitting around and thinking about it, get going!

Sometime in the next month, I plan to build and open thecleaningcoach.com website and link it and this blog to cleaningcoach.com That should get some traffic going. When that happens, and you new visitors read this, please feel free to submit any suggestions or ideas about topics that you would like me to write about. That's it for now. Bye

It's 2010? Where does the time go?

Wow! I forgot I even had this blog. It took me awhile just to find it and log in. Anyways, I'm back. I will try to do a better job of checking in. That won't take much, once every two years......

Where to start? I'll think about that and get back... Cya