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Scheduling and frequency
Much of your success in being organised and reliable depends on the arrangements and commitments that you make with your customers.
Scenario 1:
Let’s say you have a domestic window cleaning round with the majority of customers being 4 weekly in frequency. One or two customers feel that 4 weekly is a little too often and ask that you call every 6 weeks instead. If you agree to this you will find that your round becomes disjointed and to keep your commitment you will need to make a special trip just for the sake of a couple of houses.
Solution:
Explain that you come to this street every four weeks so the choice would have to be 4 weekly or 8 weekly. It is likely that if they have asked for every 6 weeks then they would choose 8 weekly. Perhaps the customer is asking you to come less often because they feel the price is too high.
Scenario 2:
You are getting more work all of the time and are now finding it difficult to get around your work on time. You go through a period of being continuously late and are setting a pattern of going every 6 weeks instead of every 4 as planned. If you continue like this for long your customers will be trained into a 6 week schedule and it will be difficult to go back to a 4 week schedule in the future without some customers feeling that you are back too soon.
Solution:
If you have too much work to get around on time then you need to either refine your work and prioritise or consider taking somebody on. The latter solution may require taking even more work on and depending on how much more work you need, it could be a good time to buy a round rather than to time consumingly canvass it.
Example of how you may wish to organise your window cleaning round:
For the purpose of illustrating a point, let’s say you’ve recently started window cleaning and that your total window cleaning round is worth £1200 per month. You intend to work 5 days a week (20 days per 4 weeks). We’ll use easy figures and say your average daily takings are £100. That means that you could complete your work in about 12 days.
Now let’s say that your round is based in 3 areas or towns and most of your work is based on a 4 week schedule. We’ll call the areas Oldtown, Uptown and Newtown. Oldtown is well established and is worth £600 per month. Uptown is worth £400 per month and Newtown is a new round where you are picking up new work and is worth £200 per month.
By assigning a specific day of the week to each area, your customers will have a better idea of when you are likely to come, it will help you make appointments and we’ll aslo see how it can help you prioritise and refine your work.
We’ll say that you work 5 days. Oldtown is worth £600 per month so it will take 6 days. Uptown will take 4 days and Newtown 2 days.
So we could divide the Oldtown round in such a way that it is done each Monday, meaning you would get about £400 of it done and the other £200 you could assign to two Tuesdays. Uptown is worth £400 and so by working it every Wednesday you can cover the round. That leaves Newtown which is only £200 and can be completed in 2 Thursdays.
So your schedule would look something like this: (Notice how the intention is to fill up each day to its maximum realistic potential. Concentrate on doing your best jobs first in the day so that if you don’t finish everything, it is the poorer work which is delayed. Instead of going back the next day to finish off, do your best work assigned for that day or canvass new better work. The scraps of work which don’t get done during the week could be ‘mopped up’ on Friday if you don’t have a larger job or one off appointment booked in. Gutter cleans and the like could also be assigned to this day. In case of really bad weather, use it for canvassing or administration and just pick up your normal schedule on the assigned day you return to work. If your customers are not happy you to work in the rain and they know which day you usually come, then they will understand that you have not come because of the weather and will expect to see you return the same day the following week. (If this happens twice in a row, you may wish to do the work on the Friday.) By using this system, rather than picking up where you left off, you will find that your round remains intact and does not become disjointed. Instead of having to finish off part of one area before moving to another, you can start the day doing your best work in a specific area on the assigned day - the day those customers expect to see you.
Week 1
Monday: Oldtown (£100)
Tuesday: Oldtown (£100)
Wednesday: Uptown (£100)
Thursday: Newtown (£100)
Friday: Other (Reserved for larger one off jobs, ‘mopping up’ work or administration work etc.)
Week 1
Monday: Oldtown (£100)
Tuesday: Oldtown (£100)
Wednesday: Uptown (£100)
Thursday: Newtown (£100)
Friday: Other (Reserved for larger one off jobs, ‘mopping up’ work or administration work etc.)
Week 1
Monday: Oldtown (£100)
Tuesday: Canvass and work new jobs in Oldtown.
Wednesday: Uptown (£100)
Thursday: Canvass and work new jobs in Newtown.
Friday: Other (Reserved for larger one off jobs, ‘mopping up’ work or administration work etc.)
Week 4
Monday: Oldtown (£100)
Tuesday: Canvass and work new jobs in Oldtown.
Wednesday: Uptown (£100)
Thursday: Canvass and work new jobs in Newtown.
Friday: Other (Reserved for larger one off jobs, ‘mopping up’ work or administration work etc.)
Try to organise your round so that 8 weekly work is equally balanced. In other words if in Oldtown you have 6 jobs that are 8 weekly, split them equally as regards time (perhaps 3 the first time and 3 the next time) rather than doing all 6 at the same time.
By taking note of how much work you do each day in each area you can set realistic targets of what you want to achieve on each day of the schedule. Once you have enough work to fill your schedule you can start to refine the work, dropping poorer jobs as you replace them with better jobs. In time you will find that you will exceed your initial targets for each day and maximise to its full potential the time you have set aside as work hours.
( See Are you in the Zone? )
If you would like to improve your reliability and organisation then we highly recommend the Microsoft Excel based round management system, Round Tracker v4 which incorporates the some of the above suggestions in its design.
Designed by a window cleaner, for window cleaners this program does exactly what it says on the tin and keeps you on track with your round
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