I am moving out of this space.
I love this space, obviously, I got these nice paintings on the wall,
but it's time to make a change.
When you move out of an apartment at least in the U.S., at least where we are,
here when you move out of an apartment; in order to get your deposit back,
the place needs to be pretty clean.
Meaning, we needed to get a deep cleaning.
And I thought that this would be a great opportunity to do a local business breakdown.
So in this video, I am going to run through the entire process:
how I found the cleaning company, who responded to the messages and when,
what the payment process looked like, what the actual cleaning looked like,
what the cost was.
All of this to highlight what these local businesses go through,
and also what the customer goes through when it comes to buying not just cleaning
services but any sort of local service like this.
Ideally, there will be some takeaways in here for how the customer thinks but also for how
the seller should react.
There's some really good lead geneneration info coming up.
Let's jump into it.
- Here is how we bought a deep cleaning.
Let's start with how we found the cleaners.
This is a simple thing but something that a lot of
companies don't think about.
As a customer I went to Google and I searched 'deep clean LA' and a few places
popped up.
There were some ads and everything, I didn't look at these ads.
I went right to 'Yelp'.
Yelp has this really good service now, that I didn't realize they had,
where you can request a quote from a bunch of
different cleaning companies.
So I went in to 'Amy's cleaning': and I requested a quote,
typed in my zip code here, move in move out, that's what I searched,
one time cleaning, two bedroom, one bathroom, weekdays during work hours,
and then I said what day I wanted, Friday.
I think the home is a thousand square feet, tile and grout cleaning, and they let you
choose all of this.
It is really great what Yelp has built here.
And then I said something like, "Need to do a deep cleaning for a move out.
Can you do Friday?"
And next, email address I put in- I will just put my 'Experiment 27' email here
right now; my name.
And what Yelp does is, allows you to select all
and send request to all the mates.
So I did that, I sent the request.
Let me take you into the inbox and we'll see who responded.
So, instantly, 11 cleaning companies got back the same day, within hours.
The first one was 'Juanita's home cleaning' who said,"I am filled out for Friday, sorry."
That's fine.
Then there were a bunch of responses from other cleaning companies:
'Clean sweep LA', where they have their pricing right here,
'Amy's Angels' where they also have their pricing right at the top.
'Amy's Angels' got back with the price estimate and almost all of these had pricing estimates.
I think for feedback I'm going to go through and talk about the ones I didn't respond to.
So Juanita, she opted out herself.
Amy's were the ones that I did end up hiring at 150.
'Clean Sweep', "do you know the exact square footage
for the tile and grout cleaning?"
Did not respond.
Paul was a little cheaper, I don't remember why I didn't go with him.
Juanita got back, "tomorrow I am open," after the initial message so it was a bunch
of nonsense.
And the takeaway here is, if you are a local business:
one respond to leads super quick, Amy's, the ones we hired, got back first.
The only one who got back quicker was Juanita who turned us down, so the one that we hired
was the first one to respond.
So be the first to respond and try and provide as much
information as possible in your message.
"Hello Alex, We send 2 fully supplied cleaners for three
hours.
Typically it's $25 per cleaner per hour therefore, the total comes out to $150."
However, the price can vary.
So they have everything here.
So I responded to Amy's cleaners, I said let's go for it and we hopped on a
quick call to collect payments.
Alex: Hey.
Amy's: Hey Alex.
Alex: How is it going?
Amy's: I am good.
Thank you for asking.
So I was actually just giving you a call that will give one way to pay with credit
card, I am assuming, since you requested for me to call you?
Alex: Yeah.
Amy's: That way,you know, we guarantee you are 100% satisfied.
They can actually set up an appointment with you.
Alex: Sounds good, and this is a deep cleaning, right?
They are going to do like the tubs and everything like that?
Amy's: Yeah, they are fine.
So, like I said, deep cleaning is a little more time consuming.
Your home sounds like it is relatively small: two bedrooms, one bathroom.
I think they can do the deep cleaning within the three hours.
You know, I always like to tell our clients if necessary, and you feel like it's, you
know, you have to add more time, you can do so.
I know it'd be at the same rate as well but you need any additional time.
Just give me the credit card information,you know, right now.
We also have 'Xero', we are equipped with 'Xero' and 'Venmo'
and then we also have the option to swipe as well.
But if you prefer with a credit card you can just give me, I can grab that information
right now.
Alex: I can do 'Venmo', What's your 'Venmo' name?
Yeah, sounds great.
Thanks.
Amy's: Alright.
Sounds great.
All right, enjoy the rest of your day.
If you feel, like I said, do give me a ring if you have any questions or concerns.
Alex: Perfect.
Amy's: Perfect.
Alex: Talk to you later.
Amy's: All right.
Have a good one.
Bye bye now.
Alex: You too.
Bye.
- So we did payment via 'Venmo'.
I thought that was really interesting.
They did not require money upfront.
And they told me it would be about $150 but they weren't 100% certain on that price.
So the maids came, they cleaned the apartment.
The cleaning has commenced.
Look at this place, spotless, not a bit of a dust on the ground.
The cleaners just left so our entire living room has been dismantled.
We'll probably leave it like that until we move out in a couple weeks.
I am paying on 'Venmo'.
They said it was a minimum of three hours and they cleaned for about two and a half,
just for data's sake that's where we are.
The woman said, as she was leaving, "you have venmo, right?
And then I said yes, and walked away.
She didn't tell me the final price or anything like that so I will
report back when when we figure out how much this cost.
Poor Pablito looks, looks dead.
I am going to call an ambulance The place looked great and they left.
And I was at a loss because they never charged me for the cleaning.
And then a couple of days later, I got this message from them,
just a quick follow-up message.
And earlier that day our landlord checked the apartment and decided to give us our entire
deposit back.
So Amy's cleaning was a success.
So I paid them via 'Venmo', it was very easy.
And I wanted to show you one more thing, which is days later.
So we had this cleaning ordered on the 12th.
There were a decent amount of people that got back on the 12th.
On the 13th, we had back and forth to order the cleaning.
And then, on December 17th, days after this whole thing was done,
Matteo B said, "hey, I apologize for just now being able
to respond your message.
We had a great influx of messages in a short period of time.
If you are still looking for a cleaning service.."
So, no, I didn't hire Matteo, who responded four days late.
Let's end this with some solid takeaways.
So for a local business: One, respond to any leads immediately.
Two, Yelp, if you search 'deep clean in LA', and I assume most other local business keywords
Yelp ranks first or second.
So if you want to get more leads for your business rank on Yelp.
And if you notice here, one, two, three, four;
the top four on Yelp are ads.
So you can pay for placement here and you will get leads.
But if you want to go the SEO route and rank here
you can still get a decent amount of leads by ranking on the first page or two
because Yelp automatically lets customers contact
eleven or twelve of the companies automatically with the same message.
This actually goes back to our concept about directories.
If you use this as a bigger learning, search what your customers are going to search
and then try to be in all the places that the customer
is going to click.
So if they're clicking these ads, try to be right here.
I clicked 'Yelp' other people might have clicked 'Thumbtack'.
But these are all places to rank your business as you dig into it more.
- Thanks for watching the video.
If you want the questions we ask on 'sales call number one to qualify new clients',
you can have that for free.
That is at experiment27.com/discovery.
If you want to work one-on-one with me, that's over at experiment27.com/consult
And if you run a digital agency, maybe you sell SEO and you want more
clients, ideally enterprise clients, that would be over at experiment27.com
This is the type of thing that we do all day.
If you like this video, I would love if you would share it with a friend, maybe
somebody who runs a small business and would also get value from this.
Thanks for watching, I am Alex Berman.