How to Get Quality Cleaning Leads, with Sean Parry

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Getting Into the Cleaning Industry

Stephanie: Great to have you.

Sean: Absolutely.

Stephanie: So tell us, how did you get into the cleaning industry? I’d love to hear about that.

Sean: Yeah, well, I’ve been in the industry for, I think it’s about 12 years now, incredibly. I actually started my own cleaning business when Amar was starting ZenMaid. So that sort of tells you how long ago that was.

Stephanie: How ancient.

Sean: Exactly. So at the time I was working a corporate nine to five, recently got married, kid on the way. And it was, for me, it was now or never. And as many of us in the industry have done, I was thinking of all the different startup ideas and business ideas, you know, how can we get out of the rat race and actually build something ourselves. And I just kept coming back to the cleaning industry, low cost to set up, recurring revenue, remote working, all the sorts of things that people talk about. And I was one of those guys that tried lots of different things. And funnily enough, setting up a cleaning business was the thing that generated money and allowed me to leave.

So that was a little while ago. So I had a cleaning business for a long time in an industry where you’re investing in startups and technology and high growth and all those sorts of things. So I managed to grow the company pretty quickly and had some good marketing knowledge, I guess. And as I’ve been doing in the ZenMaid group and other groups, chatting to other business owners and sharing ideas and things like that. And from probably when COVID hit, that was really when I sort of doubled down on offering marketing advice. Really, people had asked me about SEO and Google Ads and how do you get leads and how do you work those leads and all those sorts of things.

So when the world was in lockdown, there were pockets of the world that were still in business. Big parts of the States were operational and things like that. So really since then, I guess the last five, six years, my focus has been on providing marketing services for other cleaning companies, new cleaning companies, no other industries. And it’s primarily Google SEO and Google Ads that we do. We’ve got lots of clients where we do both. We’ve got lots where we do one. But even in this age of AI, I still think that the majority of people still will go to Google to find a maid service. And that’s what we try and help with our clients.

Why Google Is Your Best Lead Source

Stephanie: That’s pretty incredible. And I 100% agree that for us at Serene Clean, Google will always be our bread and butter for lead generation because those people are actively searching, right? They’re not just stumbling across us on Facebook where they’re window shopping. Maybe they reach out, but they’re not that serious. It’s much harder to sell them, I find, whereas somebody who’s actively seeking out, they’re serious about it. They’re looking to make a buying decision. So, yeah, Google, on this podcast, I just shake people and be like, get Google reviews. It’s so important.

Sean: It’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Because I know there’s a lot of people talking about meta ads and AI and all those sorts of things. And my advice tends to be, if you’re starting out or you’re early in your business, find the clients where you know that not only are they interested, but they’re ready to take action today. So max out LSA and SEO and ads and maps and all those things and then try the sort of higher up in the funnel sources like Facebook, where we know people tend to need a bit more follow up, a bit more nurture to actually get them to do it.

But I always say you want to max out Google because those people are ready to go today. And once you’ve maxed them out, then, yeah, look to the other sources. But I still think Google is the place to be. And even to be honest, ChatGPT, all the ChatGPT results are bringing on from what Google is providing it. So if you’re ranking well with SEO, you’re going to be getting visibility on ChatGPT as well. So I still think Google’s probably the foundation of what any maid should be building their business on.

Understanding the Marketing Funnel

Stephanie: I’m happy that you mentioned kind of top of funnel. And can you describe what do you mean by that? Pretty much, I take that as being aware of us. And when I say post on Facebook, it’s like, this is for long-term brand awareness, as opposed to right now, today, is that going to turn a lead? Maybe if they’ve seen you seven times, perhaps. But how would you tell somebody to allocate, say they’re just starting out, right? Allocating their resources or time to these different platforms. What suggestions would you have?

Sean: Yeah, so you’re absolutely right. When we talk about the funnel and the position in the funnel, you sort of think of general brand awareness. So maybe someone has just moved into the city and they’re just getting unpacked, getting sorted. They know they’re going to need a cleaning company at some stage because they’ve got two kids running around causing chaos. But they don’t necessarily want to hire someone today. So that brand building piece would work really well with those types of people. So sponsoring the local sports teams or charities or schools or things like that, that would be examples of brand building higher up in the funnel. Most people who see that aren’t going to immediately pick up the phone and call you and book service.

Whereas if, say, you are based in Chicago and someone’s on the phone and someone types in best maid service in Chicago, not only are they interested, but they’re very likely to be in the market today. People who search for best maid service Chicago, they’re not doing it because they want to get info. They’re doing it because they have an urgent thing that they need solving.

So I think the brand building piece is important, but I would say for newer businesses, don’t allocate too much time and effort there. I think the priority for any new business is we need to get clients, we need to get revenue coming in. You get that by getting in front of people who are ready to go now. Max that out. As I said, look at Facebook a bit later on. And then your brand building, sponsorships, all those types of things. That stuff’s important. But I would say you shouldn’t even be thinking about it until you’re probably 10, 20K a month in revenue.

Don’t get distracted. I see a lot of people, particularly early on, getting distracted with the new sort of shiny thing. You know, I’m going to try and do TikTok ads or try to do crazy automation. No, you need to get 10 clients and money coming in the door. And I’m the same. I was distracted by lots of things. You just need to – it’s a simple business, isn’t it, Stephanie? We just get clients, we get cleaners, we’re in the middle, we take a cut. Don’t get too distracted early on. That would be really important.

Avoiding Shiny Object Syndrome

Stephanie: I love that you said that because that is so much of the messaging that I personally, I needed that drilled into my head 7,000 times is just that shiny object syndrome of just wanting to. I think it is a form of soothing anxiety as a business owner. We hop to new things because we’re like, maybe this will fix the problem, right? Instead of just being diligent and sticking to the simple things that really do work.

And I just made an episode talking about no, you shouldn’t be putting all this effort into TikTok. That’s not where your clients are. And I’ll, you know, potentially and just so labor intensive when time as a resource for new owners is so limited. Most likely we’re cleaning, right? That is the most likely scenario for our listeners is they themselves are cleaning and or they’re working another full time job and hiring it out or what have you. So just I think it’s so easy to not be able to focus in on what needs to be done.

And I actually when I opened Serene Clean, I did 10 free house cleanings in exchange for honest reviews. And so it’s like that got me clients. You know what I mean? It’s just that was the money I spent was my labor and tears. But it did work. It worked very effectively. So when you started your business, did you struggle at all with that? Or were you pretty lasered and focused and knew that I want to go this kind of paid advertising route with Google? What did that look like for you in your journey?

The Importance of Specialization

Sean: Yeah, really good question. So I made the mistake that everyone makes pretty much at the beginning. And that is trying to offer all the different cleaning service types that you can. And I remember starting off with residential cleaning because that was easy. You know, we know that we have cleaners. And then one of your clients would say, OK, I’ve got my business. We have an office block. Would you do some offices? And we were like, yeah, that’s great. And we’ve got big windows that need cleaning. Could you do that? And you try to say yes to everything, don’t you, early on because you want to get money coming in.

But there is a dilution effect when you’re spreading yourself too thin. And as we know, those of us that do residential as well as commercial, they are cleaning businesses, but they are two completely different beasts in so many ways. So getting one business within the industry is hard enough. Getting a house cleaning business up and scaling. If you are halving your focus by running an office business as well as a residential business, it just means that you’re not going to grow as quickly.

You are, by focusing your effort, you learn quicker. I think your marketing gets more laser targeted. Your recruitment gets more laser targeted. Your cleaners know they’re just cleaning houses. They’re not cleaning houses and then offices in the evening. Your marketing is better. You’re not advertising yourself as a generic cleaning company as everyone else is. You are the high-end residential cleaning business that serves professionals and young families. You know, very, very laser targeted. Your conversion rate’s better. Your marketing’s more effective. You know, all those types of things.

So there’s so many benefits of specialization. And that is one of the things I tell everyone. You know, the more you can specialize, the more you can differentiate against all the other cleaning businesses out there, the quicker you’ll grow. You can set your prices. You can be more profitable.

So going back to your question, Stephanie, about ads and things like that, if you know your service offering is very, very laser targeted, high-end residential or office cleaning, whatever it is, you can reflect that in your marketing. So it means Google Ads campaigns are going to be better. It means your local SEO efforts are going to be more targeted. You’re not doing janitorial, house cleaning, window cleaning. You are a house cleaning business with 500 reviews, and that’s all you talk about on the website.

So we all know that there are so many competitors wherever you are in the world or wherever you are in the country. So a big thing is you need to find your edge, don’t you, against the competition. And if you don’t get that edge, you can’t set your prices. You end up being a price taker. Your prices will be set by the market. There’s not enough margin to reinvest and grow the business and pay yourself well as the business owner. So I think the laser targeting specialization just helps with every piece of the business, marketing, recruitment, everything. So it’s a very simple message, but it took me an awful lot of time to learn it.

Stephanie: I wish I knew that.

Running a Business in the UK vs US

Stephanie: Yeah, sometimes we have to learn a lesson. And I’ve got to touch the hot pan again and again, it seems, until we realize that it’s hot again. I forgot to ask, where is your cleaning business located?

Sean: So I’m sat in the UK, in London, the UK. But I would say 90% of our clients are marketing clients from the States and Canada. So I sort of live in one country. So my days tend to start later and I work into the evening. But we’ve got clients in, obviously, UK, Australia, New Zealand. It’s pretty much the same strategy that works in the UK, works in the States, works in New Zealand. It’s all English speaking countries basically. But yeah, US is a bigger country. There’s more cleaning companies out there. So that’s just naturally where my clients tend to be. So yeah, if it wasn’t for having two little kids, I’d probably be living in the States at this stage, but they call the shots. Family man, that’s wonderful.

Stephanie: So I’m curious, do you have any colleagues in the UK? I, the reason I ask is I have a good friend who’s a consulting client of mine. Her name’s Viv and she is in the UK and the, I had no idea the level of, I guess, regulation and taxes that occur in the UK. And honestly, I don’t know how you can make a decent profit in the UK. Like, is it how do you even run a business there? It feels like, because once you hit a certain threshold, the taxes jump drastically, do they not? Like, how do you handle that?

Sean: Yeah, it’s a really great question. And that is also why all my clients are basically in the US and Canada. So at a very high level, Stephanie, as you know, the UK equivalent of sales tax doesn’t kick in at the beginning, it kicks in at around 90,000 pounds, which is $130,000, something like that. So what you find is that we have an extremely fragmented industry versus the US. So you’ll find that there are lots of companies that grow the business, grow the business. And then when they hit that threshold, they suddenly have to add 20% to their clients to make the same amount of money. But to go and tell your clients, okay, we’re going to charge you 20% extra now for the same service is quite hard. And you find that there’s a high cancellation rate when you go over that level.

So you find that there’s a very, very big, a large percentage of businesses that cluster all underneath that. It’s called VAT, that VAT threshold level. In the States, it’s obviously a lot more graded. So whether you’re doing 10,000 a month or 50 or 100, it’s quite a smooth progression. So the UK is a different beast. You know, it’s not simple. The short answer to your question, Stephanie, is how do you build a bigger business in the UK? You need to go blast through that jump up in sales tax as quickly as possible. Because as soon as you go over your profit, if you end up absorbing some of that sales tax within your own business rather than passing it all on, it means you’re going to be taking a profit hit. So the quicker you can grow through that, the better.

But it’s not a simple thing at all. And that is one of the reasons you don’t get many larger, you know, when I think of my client base, I would say 10% are in the UK. And it’s because there are not as many bigger cleaning businesses in the UK as there are in the States because of this big jump up. So, yeah, a lot more fragmented in the UK.

Stephanie: Well, I was almost wondering, would it not be, I mean, it’d be bold, I suppose, to just have quite high prices from the beginning and be able to really nail it so that when you do hit that level, the price is the same to your client. You’ve just lowered your profit, but you can still withstand it. Would that be a strategy?

Sean: It is. But as we know, myself included, when you start a business to set and through experience, we know that our price needs to be at least double what we’re paying our cleaners. But when you’re at the beginning and you’ve got no revenue, it’s very easy to say, I’m just going to set my price a bit lower, get some clients and get some recurring revenue in. So most people, because a lot of us, me included, had not much experience setting up new businesses, the immediate inclination is to go low.

Whereas working with someone like you, Stephanie, who would say, OK, no, we need to be disciplined. We need to go high. It’s quite a hard message, isn’t it, when there’s not a lot of revenue coming in at the beginning. But theoretically, absolutely right. Go with a high price at the beginning and know in the back of your mind that once you hit that threshold you’re going to lose that margin. You know, the other option is grow as profitable business as you can until you hit to that level and you sit under that level and just try and max the profit, max your margin for that revenue. But yeah, it’s one of my feelings is that’s one of the big problems in the UK that you have this big step up. And the US is a lot more pro business.

Stephanie: Yeah, every time I talk to her, anybody in actually many of the countries, even Canada with their high taxes, it makes me really grateful to be owning a business in the US, honestly, because I’m like, we have it so not easy, but it could be much worse.

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

Sean: It’s a funny one. Yeah, just as I said, 90% of my clients are out where you guys are. It’s not only the sales tax and tax issues. It’s also a mindset as well. It’s, you know, why can’t I build a seven-figure cleaning business? Why can’t I build a $5 million cleaning business? I tend to find that more of the people based in the U.S. tend to have a, you know, let’s go for it. Or, you know, whether it’s me or someone else or hiring a consultant like you, Stephanie, I’m going to, you know, we’re at 5,000 a month. I’m going to hire someone because I want to get to 50 ASAP. And I think that mindset is certainly a difference.

Stephanie: No, I was listening to a podcast with Chris Williamson, you know, and he’s now in Texas. I’m sure you’re familiar with him. And he talked about the UK mindset versus the American that he much more appreciated or resonated with the American of more of a hustle, like I can do this. And I think we have an audacious belief in ourselves that it can be done and we can accomplish it. And because there’s been so many examples ahead of us, obviously, especially now with the Internet. So I think the people who are drawn to entrepreneurship probably would do well in America because we have that very we’re going to make this happen kind of mindset.

Sean: Yeah, it’s, you know, I wish I had my time again. I would probably try and get to the West Coast for a couple of years or something like that, because it is, you know, your environment is so important, isn’t it? And this is one of the reasons why the ZenMaid group is so great, because you’re sharing information with not only people who are maybe a similar revenue, but you see all these people making seven, you know, one, two, three million a year, who when you look back at maybe some Facebook posts that they were posting a year or two years ago, and they’re in the same position, you can see that it is very doable.

And so environment is so important. So if you’re in a country or a city or a location where you’re just surrounded by successful business owners, you know, you’ll just get there just much more easily. So, yeah, the UK versus US, it’s a big thing. It’s one of the big things the government’s talking about at the moment, you know, trying to become more entrepreneurial. But let’s see, let’s watch this space.

The Common Problems in Cleaning Businesses

Stephanie: Yes, exactly. And you’re so right of just surrounding ourselves and exposing ourselves to people who have walked the path before us. And like you said earlier in our conversation, it is a simple business. It’s not particularly complex. We’re all going to run into the same exact problems, maybe in unique and exciting flavors of terrible, but we do run into the same problems again and again, meaning staffing, quality, getting clients. These are the things that we need to fix.

And so when you kind of break it down like that, it feels less overwhelming to me of I know exactly every single week what our problems are going to be. And that makes it very easy to know what we need to focus on. It doesn’t make it any less frustrating when we’re beating our head against the wall of, you know, turnover or what have you. But you know, in your own business journey and with all of your marketing clients that you have, is there any, would you say, easy to avoid mistakes that you see pretty much everybody falling into again and again, and you kind of have to hold their hand and be like, no, not that way.

The Biggest Mistake: Not Tracking

Sean: So with my marketing hat on, Stephanie, I would say it’s not tracking stuff. And completely understandable. I made the same mistake. You start up your business. You just want to get some clients. How did the clients find you? You don’t really care as long as they’re paying you. Where did your cleaners find you? Exactly the same sort of thing.

But you realize that once you and we, you know, people talk about systems and automation and all those sorts of things so much. But when you boil it down, it’s really just tracking your activities within the business. The sooner you can do that, the sooner the quicker the business will grow. You will know, say with marketing, okay, we’re doing Google Ads, we’re running an SEO campaign, we’re doing a bit of meta, Yelp.

You know, I see so many people who will get in touch with me and say, you know, we’re doing all these things but the business isn’t really growing. And you ask the question, okay, where are your leads coming from? Where are your recurring clients coming from? Oh, I don’t know. It feels I put a bit of money into Yelp. It feels like it was busier last week. I’d need to double check. And that guesswork is stopping your business growing. Because if you knew, for example, that the vast majority of your leads came from let’s say Google Maps and Meta, you could say I’m going to turn everything off. I’m just going to focus on these. And your budget becomes, you know, you can use and utilize that budget that much more effectively. You’re going to get more leads, get more clients. But if you’re not tracking everything at the beginning, then you’re running it on guesswork.

And I always sort of liken it to flying a plane. You know, you’re a pilot. You’ve got all these dials. You know, I talk about leading indicators a lot. So if you’re getting, say, new recurring leads or new recurring clients coming in, that is a fantastic leading indicator. You’re not going to see the immediate financial benefit from revenue until probably one or two months because the weekly revenue contribution doesn’t come until a bit later. But as a pilot flying a plane, you want to have all these dials to give you these leading indicators in your business.

And most new business owners, me included, we have no dials. We’re flying the plane blind. It’s guesswork. We only know there’s a problem when the plane is falling out of the sky. So when you, you know, the more experience you get in this business, you start to realize that you need these handful of KPIs, your key performance indicators in marketing, in recruitment. And the sooner you can get that nailed down, the quicker your business grows.

So a very long-winded answer to your question, Stephanie, a very common thing I see and I just try and drill this into all people. Obviously I do marketing so it’s all about KPIs for your marketing. But recruitment, you need to know, okay, how many applicants, what percentage of applicants turn into interviews, what percentage of interviews turn to job offers. How long does your average cleaner last? What is your lifetime value of a cleaner, which no one tracks really? What is the cleaner generating your business? You know, we talk about lifetime value for recurring clients, but we need to be using those same metrics in the other side, the cleaner side as well.

So that tracking stuff is something that most people miss early on, completely understandable. The more you do that as the business grows, the better. So I would just nail that message down. If you can just even track a handful of your how many leads you’re getting a week, how many recurring clients a month, then you can dip into things like what’s my monthly churn rate? What’s my lifetime value? You know, you can start simple. And then once you’re tracking that, get a bit more detailed. So yeah, that lack of tracking is a really common one, Stephanie, that I see.

The Power of Data

Stephanie: I so agree in that, you know, for me, I didn’t start tracking anything until one year into business. And it was literally explosive. Anybody who knows, you know, my story, it’s like, bam, boom. And because I finally knew it wasn’t going off of those feelings and those emotions, kind of how you alluded to about, I feel like we’re getting this, I feel like we’re doing this. It’s like the data isn’t lying. It’s telling us exactly what is happening and also what needs to happen. And you can’t problem solve until you have the facts, right, of what’s occurring.

So I love that you brought that up. And also that, you know, it is you don’t have to get into the complexities. I actually love lifetime value of a cleaner. I’ve never tracked that. That’s a great idea. It’s always more so time, like how long have they been with us? But how much per cleaner? I’m like, oh, great. Another thing. I’ll be in my spreadsheets later today. So that’s a good one.

So from a marketing perspective, obviously you mentioned tracking how many leads and where they’re coming from. And a lot of times I’ll have conversations with people who are like, I need more leads. I need more leads. We don’t have enough customers. And then I ask them how many leads they are getting. And it’s like a good amount, but they’re not closing. And so then it gets into a close rate. And this is actually a sales problem. So would you say that most often you are seeing people, they’re not getting enough leads or they suck at sales and closing, or is it a combination of both?

Lead Quality and Follow-Up

Sean: Yeah, so a really good question. So yeah, the follow-up, the close rate varies very widely. And I can see it with, particularly with the clients we work with, because you can see things like missed call rates, you can see response times. And I can see pretty much within the first month or two, whether this client is not only going to succeed with this marketing but is their business going to succeed full stop. Because if you are missing 20% of your inbound calls, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the best marketing team in the world, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got the best service, that leaky bucket is going to kill you further out.

So it’s I sort of thought it was a given at the beginning that you would answer all your calls. And if, you know, say someone puts a query request on your website, you get back to them as quickly as possible. You send them a text, voicemail, you know, and some people are amazing at that. And we see some of our clients are closing 50% plus of those leads. And then you get other people that miss 20% of the calls and it takes half an hour to get back to a new lead. And funnily enough, they’re only closing 10% of those leads.

So you definitely need both parts of the funnel working because, you know, again, we know one lead can be very different to another. You know, if you’ve got a lead where that person is a recurring lead in a high, wealthy neighborhood, that’s a great lead. What about someone who is trying to sell you cleaning products or cleaning equipment? You know, that is a call. Many people say that’s a lead. That’s a terrible lead. They’re not going to be a book client.

So the lead quality is really important. And you find that if the lead quality is good, your close rate from lead to book client is also going to be good. But, yeah, you need that follow up piece. You know, the answering the calls part is an easy one for people to understand. But if you get a quote request through your website, you know, it’s a very divergent follow up. You know, I tell everyone it’s got to be within two or three minutes. I don’t care if you’re doing a million a year. If you leave it half an hour, that same person is on the phone to all your competitors until they get through to someone that offers something they like at a price they like. They’ll keep calling everyone.

So the longer you leave it, the less likely you are to book that lead to a client. So speed of response is important. But if you call someone and don’t get through, send them a text, send them a voicemail, send them an email. You know, that same person may be in the office and they can’t take a call or that same person may be on a bus and they can’t speak on the phone. You know, you need to use multi-channel.

And then you can’t just leave it at one follow up. It needs to be, I would say, I tell everyone two, three days, do it every day for two or three days. And with ChatGPT, there’s no excuse to not varying your follow up. It can’t just be, when can I speak to you and give you a quote? Next day, do you want a cleaning? You know, you need to follow up in a way that doesn’t repeat the same message, but tells that person you’re still here.

So maybe one day you send them a link to your Google business profile with 55 star reviews. And then the day after that, frequently asked questions on your website. The day after that, maybe it’s a coupon code that expires at midnight. So you’re following up in a way that doesn’t feel repetitive and not in a way that might upset those clients, but you are still saying, you put a quote request, we’re here and ready to speak to you when you are available.

And the people that really do well with their marketing and really grow their businesses to 50, 100K a month, those people have that dialed in. And the people struggling sub-10K, sub-20K are often those people that are missing those calls. They’re often following up once and giving up. But it’s very easy to say having been through it. But when you’re starting up in business, you almost have to learn it yourself. You need to figure that out. But once you realize that follow-up is really important, you call your 10 competitors in your city. Seven of them aren’t picking up, are they? So you pick up, you straight away put yourself at an advantage. So, yes, the follow-up is really important, but you need the lead quality with the follow-up to get the clients.

Varied Follow-Up Strategies

Stephanie: Yeah, I love the idea of a varied follow-up each day as opposed to just repeating yourself again and again. And looking at all the text message marketing that I get, you know, when I fill out something or I buy something online and they’re doing it very well. It sells me. Right. I’m clicking on it. And so looking at not just our industry, but just all industries in general, we are seeing excellent examples of marketing and sales in our lives every single day. But it’s like it doesn’t connect for us in our heads that, oh, we could just use that same concept. It clearly works everywhere. Sales is sales is sales. Right.

So I love that suggestion. I’m definitely going to be looking at my follow up process now. So talk to me more about getting these quality leads. Would you say you’re saying we need quality leads, but how do we go about that tactically speaking? And when somebody is somebody starting out and they’re listening, one, they’re already feeling sad because they’re not answering the phone. So listener, let me pat you on the head. It’s okay. Get a VA or something. Cause I was literally in cleanings, texting clients back in the bathroom. Like that was me. So I understand you can’t pick up the phone. It’s hard, right? It is hard.

We’re saying, yes, you need to do this. And it’s very much then the answer is going to be, yeah, that’s easy to say when you’re not in the field, right? So any other suggestions, practically speaking, before we touch on quality of leads, but on the follow-up process, how the heck do we do this? So we can actually stand out to the potential client because we’re answering and we’re being very communicative.

Practical Follow-Up for Field Workers

Sean: Yeah, so you’re absolutely right, Stephanie. The text message, the quick text message back is fantastic. That’s what I tell everyone who’s still in the field. Because you know that let’s say you get an inbound call. There’s a couple of things you can do. So you need to have a professional voicemail saying, sorry, I can’t take your call. But if you follow up that missed call with a message that says, just busy at the moment, sorry, I missed your call, can I give you a call in half an hour? Or you might say, how can I help? You know, that initial contact or that initial follow-up gives the potential client an indicator to say you can almost stop looking for another service provider. You know, this company has said, yeah, they’ve received the message, they’ve picked up, they you know, they haven’t picked up the phone but they’ve got back to me.

Whereas most companies out there, they don’t pick up the call, they don’t message back, they don’t email back. So if you’re in the field, you know, you can set your phone to vibrate, you can feel the phone going off, just send them a quick text message. Sorry, I can’t take the call, can I give you a call back when your cleaning finishes? Or you might say, you know, how can I help? Are you looking, what type of service are you looking for? Give me a site idea of the size of the property and I’ll give you a call back with a quote.

So it’s that initial touch point that is really important. The speed of that is really important. And you send that message back and it almost buys you the amount of time for the client to then come back to you. Because often that client might not get back to you straight away. Maybe it takes them 20 minutes because they’re tied up on a client call, a work call or something like that. But you’ve engaged that lead. It goes from a cold lead to an engaged lead. And as well as I do, Stephanie, once you are engaged in a conversation or a back and forth with the client, your close rate, your likelihood that you’ll close that client just goes through the roof.

So even if you’re in the field, a quick text message back can be really, really a great way to do it. You do that enough times, you pick up enough recurring clients, you’re going to be making enough revenue to bring in that VA to take those calls. It’s not an easy transition, but yeah, text is really good because we know the open rates, the response rates of text are much higher than email. So that’s the way to do it at the moment.

Using Systems to Funnel Leads

Stephanie: Yeah. And I’m glad you mentioned the voicemail thing. For us in our company voicemail, we literally say, if you’re looking for a cleaning estimate, go to our website and fill out the booking form because we want to funnel everybody towards ZenMaid booking form. Same with text. I would say, hey, if you’re looking for, go fill this out. So I have the information that when we do talk on the phone, or we are emailing or whatever type of communication is occurring, it is warm, right? They’ve already engaged.

And this is, you know, I’m a big fan of not having just your instant pricing on the website. I don’t know if you have strong opinions about this, because I want to get their contact information because I don’t want to, I want to sell to them, right? Otherwise, they get scared off. Do you have any particular emotions about pricing on websites?

The Phone Call vs Online Booking Debate

Sean: Yeah, yeah, really good question. So when I set up my cleaning business at the beginning, I’d come from venture capital. And I thought, okay, cleaning industry, very fragmented, very old school. Let’s put an online booking form up there. I don’t need to speak to any clients, any cleaners. They just book it there and I take my margin.

Stephanie: Naive.

Sean: I know, but I’m along the lines of you, Steph. The best way to close clients is by getting them on the phone. And the reason for that is clients are still entrusting us to come into their home. Huge trust element. They’ve not used our company before. We can have 500 Google reviews. We can have word of mouth. But at the end of the day, it’s a huge trust. Clients need to get over that. Do they trust you in their home? It’s hard to do that by just looking at a website and Google reviews. It’s hard to do that by email back and forth. It’s easier to do that with a phone conversation. It’s easier to do that by asking that client, okay, you used a cleaning company before? Why are you looking to switch? I’ve got kids or I’ve got dogs and eco products and all those sorts of things.

In my experience, I tried the online booking route. I tried the phone only route. I tried a hybrid. I still tell nine times out of 10 clients, you want to get on the phone if you can. We’ve got some clients that are making two, three, four, five million a year, and they are not doing that because they are happy to give up that higher close rate because scale is a different thing. When they’re processing the number of calls that they’re doing, they need a team of five, six VAs. So it’s a different game they’re playing at the sort of two to five million level.

People starting out, I would say anything from zero to a million, just focus on the phone. Get the basic details, the contact details. The call to action is always, is it a good time to give you a call or give us a call on this number? So that is still where I think it’s still an old school industry, isn’t it, Stephanie, in many ways. People want to talk to, want to make sure that they are speaking to someone that they can trust. And I think that’s still the best way.

You know, when I look to the close rates, these are some numbers that are quite helpful. So you send cold ad traffic or cold traffic to a landing page with a contact form or quote request form, you’re going to be getting maybe 20% of those clicks to form fill. So 100% to your website with a form, you get 20 leads, which are calls or quote requests. And then out of those quote requests, maybe you convert, say, 20 to 40%, depending on how good your follow-up is if you’re picking up all the calls. So 20% of 20 calls would be four book clients, if my math is correct. So 100 people go to your site, you get four booked clients.

When we ran the numbers where someone is just seeing an online booking form with the price and the schedule themselves and booking a service themselves, we saw around 1% to 2% overall conversion rate. So 1% to 2% versus 4% on the low end, you can see you’re converting at least double the number of clients by using a lead capture approach.

So this is why I think it’s a no-brainer, sub a million dollars a year to still be using this lead capture. Request a quote, call to action, and then getting that information to then call those people up. Just because if you’re getting four clients versus one or two, as we know, if one out of those four or two out of those four are recurring clients, it’s a completely different return on investment comparison. So, yeah, the phone, still very old school in 2025, but still the best mechanism, I would say, to get booked clients.

Call Scripts and Recording

Stephanie: Yeah. And I can definitely attest to that is when, you know, at this point, Serene Clean, it’s always for us, it’s a staffing issue at our size. And we’re so booked out, we’re waitlist and everybody. So it’s like, we get we get a lot, we’re good on leads. It’s more just, and we can close them, but we don’t have anywhere to put them. And so that has always been our issue for the past couple years.

But back in the day, when I was real hungry, it was get them on the phone, follow a call script, trying to systematize those interactions, but in a very non-robotic way, right? And so that we can have things to look at even when people are on the phone, because when we do have some, say we do have a VA or we have a manager, or it’s even ourselves, a lot of people are not natural born salesmen, right? And so having things like call scripts can really ease the anxieties of trying to sell and also regulate what your staff are doing and then freaking record the call so you can listen to them, right? And seeing what they’re doing and why they’re not closing.

Sean: Yeah, no, exactly. That call recording piece is really good, isn’t it? And it becomes more important, doesn’t it, when you get VAs and office managers. I see it so often, you know, you’ll see the business owner has managed to get themselves out of the field. So now they’re in their office taking these calls, and they’re closing, say, 50% because they’re so good for the business, it’s their livelihood. And they know the next stage is I need to get a VA and get someone to help. And then suddenly their revenue is plateauing and you ask them, they’re not sure the reason.

And often it’s, it’s a case of, okay, you need to listen to your call recordings. You’ll find that the response rate isn’t what it is for you. They’re missing more calls than you. You fix those and replicate how you follow up. That’s when your revenue starts growing again. So yeah, the call recording is really important. If you’re using Open Phone, RingCentral, any of those, any of those internet phone softwares, they do lots of good things, but the call recording bit is really, really helpful as well as you grow the business a bit further.

Stephanie: Absolutely. And then just also for assurance and cover your ass kind of thing when it comes to clients being crazy. When you have a call recording, it’s so satisfying to be like, well, let’s pull the tape, shall we? And then they get quiet real quick when they’re being a Karen.

Sean: The tape isn’t always right. That’s one of the biggest learns I’ve found early on in this business. So, yes. Yeah, the call recording. Yeah, that’s a nice thing to pull out of the back pocket.

Getting Started with Google Marketing

Stephanie: So back on the topic of quality leads and somebody just starting out. Okay, they want to start paying, but it is incredible. If you were to Google paid ads or anything like that, I mean, I would probably just shut off the internet at this point, if I were starting out. So if we were to break down the basic kind of framework of how somebody should go about paid advertising, let’s say with Google, right? And you have local services, you have, I mean, heck, a lot of people when they’re starting out, they don’t even know what a Google My Business profile is. And this is not to be derogatory. It’s just simply where they’re starting. So what would you say is the basic, let’s start with this to get leads, what does that look like?

Sean: Yeah, yeah, a really good question. So yeah, Google confuses things doesn’t it because it used to be called Google My Business, now it’s Google Business Profile. You’ve got Google Local Service, Google Guaranteed, Google Ads. It’s confusing for me. So really, for someone relatively early in their business, my advice has sort of changed over the last, I would say, two or three years, because we’ve had Google LSA come in relatively recently, and that’s Google’s paper lead system. Google Ads is the cost per click. That’s this advertising platform that’s been around for 20, 30 years, basically, since the start.

And as we know, mobile is becoming more and more important. And you find that wherever you are in the country, type in maid service near me, you’ll see the map section in the middle, and there’s three companies with their ratings and things like that. So my advice for people getting started is it’s a mix of long-term getting ranked in the map section is going to be your priority. You want to be one of those three companies. 60% of all the people who search for cleaning companies in Chicago will click on one of those three maps listings. So SEO, which would be part of the strategy to get you ranked there, is going to get you the best quality leads, those leads that will close at a highest rate. Because you’ll see the ratings in there. There’s more trust within the map section.

So you want to get started with that as quickly as possible. So how do you get ranked in the map section? You need your Google business profile, Stephanie, as we know. You’ll need to go through a few hoops to get verified. And we could probably go down a rabbit hole of how you get verified. But typically at the moment, you need to take a video of the premises and things like that. But once you get your Google business profile verified, you need to try to get your profile maxed out. Get some photos in there. Try and avoid stock photos. Photos are either you cleaning, your cleaning stuff. Before and after photos work great. Max out the descriptions. You know, if Google sees a maxed out description, you’re actually putting yourself ahead of probably 70% of your competition who don’t have anything. So get that maxed out straight away.

And then you want to try and start getting reviews coming in. And it’s hard at the beginning. Getting genuine reviews. You know, we see all our competitors who buy reviews. Avoid that because Google will come down on you hard. You’ll get blackmarked. You’ll get suspended. You’ll never recover. So doing things like you said at the beginning, Stephanie, cleaning for your friends and family, getting them to review you, asking friends of friends, giving coupon codes to your friends to tell their friends. Just get those reviews coming in.

So to get into Google Local Service Ads, you need a minimum of five reviews on your Google business profile. So step one, get your Google business profile. Step two, max it out. Step three, get those first five reviews. And then once you’re there, then you can apply for the Google Local Service Ads platform. And this is a no-brainer, really. Google gets you to do a background check on you. But why Google LSA is a good place to start is that you could start with $50 a week as your budget. Google Ads is a different beast. There is a minimum level. I tell all our clients, don’t even think about ads until maybe you’re spending $1,000 a month. Whereas LSA, you can start with $50 a month if you want.

So get approved with your LSA. Post on your Google business profile. You want to start thinking about how do I get ranked in the maps? And we could talk for a long time about SEO and getting ranked, but you need to make sure that your website is starting. You’re starting to build the content on your website. You know, many people starting out, as I did, very simple one pager, doing what you do, your cleaning company, how hard can it be? But you need to start building out your website and that’s things like talking more about all the services that you offer. You know, your house cleaning business but you do move out cleaning, move in, move out clean, you do post construction, you do weekly service. So there needs to be individual pages on your website talking about this.

You need to break out your area. So if we’re in Chicago, there’s lots of neighborhoods, there’s lots of towns, cities. We need to have individual pages talking about all those things. So you need to start pretty early on trying to build out your site and that will feed into your Google business profile rankings. Because if Google can see someone in this particular neighborhood in Chicago has pulled out their phone and they’ve typed in move out cleaning plus that neighborhood, they will look at all these cleaning companies in Chicago and if they see a dedicated page talking about this service and location on your website, funnily enough, they’re going to boost your rankings.

So what you have on your website will feed into your rankings on your Google business profile. So this is something that even getting started, if you know and are aware of this as a new business, even if you’re doing 10K a month, you’re putting yourself ahead of the competition. So build out service pages, build out location pages and post every week on your Google business profile. Add new photos. Get your LSA up and running.

You know, those are the big things at the beginning that you want to be getting up to speed. So with the clients that we work with, it’s getting your LSA up and running, getting visible, it’s getting your LSA, getting the phone calling. Once you’re getting a bit of momentum, if you need more leads, more volume, then yeah, let’s set up a Google Ads. I call it the Google domination strategy. I’ve talked about this, I’m sure, the last couple of years in the Maid Summit. So many of the listeners will be aware of what we do. But the idea is that Google is still the place to go. So if you can be seen on LSA, Google Ads, Maps, and Organic, that’s four spots on page one. You’ve got four times the chance of that person clicking on your company and giving you a call, becoming a book client.

So those are particularly the early things that you want to be thinking about, I would say, Stephanie. And then going back to some of the stuff at the beginning that you talked about, brand building and Facebook ads and sponsoring local charities and things like that, by all means do that. But I would say don’t do that at the beginning. Get to 10, 20K a month. If you’re doing this properly just focused on Google marketing, to be honest you could get to a million just doing Google marketing. That’s my feel. So often, but it’s that focus, isn’t it? If you’ve got all these marketing strategies all over the place, you’ve only got so much bandwidth as the business owner.

But certainly, I would say early on, get your Google business profile optimized, get posting, build out your website, try a bit of LSA. And if you’ve got that budget, add in ads as well. And then you’ve got these three things that you can do. You want to try and get to 10 to 20K as quickly as possible because that’s when you start to generate a bit of profit in the business where you can try other things. Maybe you can get a VA to help you, making obviously enough for you as the business owner to cover your costs as well, your living costs.

Building SEO That Lasts

Stephanie: That’s a wonderful roadmap. And I just you’re making me have my war flashbacks to writing those SEO pages for every single little town that we service. And I recorded a video for every single one of them and then put that on YouTube. So it’d show up in the search results. Oh, it was so much tedious work. But now looking back, years later, all those things are still working for us and our Google business profile, whatever the hell it’s called now. It builds upon itself. Right. So it’s not like it just goes away. It continues to build and build and build into the strong horse. So it’s like, yeah, six years in, we still post on all, it’s we’re still doing these things. It just feels so automatic, like I’m breathing air. I don’t even really realize that we’re doing it. But I guess we still are. It’s this machine, right?

Advanced SEO and Backlinks

Sean: It feeds on itself. It’s getting ranked is the hard bit, isn’t it? The other thing that I would say is that getting ranked top three in Chicago is very different from top three in the middle of nowhere. And particularly with the bigger cities. I had a call earlier today with a client with the bigger, more competitive areas, you need that stuff. There’s a whole other part of SEO, which is talking about backlink building and getting links from other sites, getting an interview with a local newspaper or getting interviewed by a mom’s blog or sponsoring the local softball team, things like that.

In the more competitive areas, you can do that, but often that isn’t enough. You need to get these backlinks. And these backlinks are like votes of confidence. Google looks at all these cleaning companies. If they can see the local newspaper in your area has done an interview and you were running a successful cleaning business in the post-COVID era and they link back to your site, Google sees this as a huge vote of confidence and Google loves quality, don’t they?

So this is just something to be aware of for the viewers today, you know, thinking, okay, we’ve got the basics, but once we’ve got that, then we sort of move SEO towards a backlink game, which is, you could spend hundreds of hours going in rabbit holes about what that means. But yeah, for the more competitive areas, you need a backlink strategy. And that’s a whole different beast.

Stephanie: Well, I think what you’re telling me, Sean, is we need a second episode where we would go into more of the, I would say complex or especially for the large cities, because you’re so right. My business, rural Wisconsin, it was a desert wasteland for me to just grab it, right? So when I’m talking to owners who are in big cities, and they have so much more competition, I had it way easier. It may seem like there’s not a lot of business, but there’s so much money to be had in rural areas, and nobody else is taking it, right? So would love to do a follow up on in cities, how do we handle this. So I know we’re coming up on time. Where can our listeners find you, Sean? Because I know a lot of them are probably like, oh, I want to work with this guy.

Finding Sean

Sean: Yeah, well, so my marketing agency is called Project 83. I’ve done quite a few talks over the years, so you probably can find that. So yeah, we run SEO and Google Ads campaigns. We only work with cleaning companies. So we don’t do anything else. So we’re super specialized in what we do and I like that. I know the industry. I know what works, what’s changing, all those sorts of things. So our website is Project 83, just the number 83.com. So have a look there. Loads of information. You can get in touch with me through the website if you want.

I also have a YouTube channel. I’m sure, Stephanie, I can give you the link to that. But we talk about broader stuff outside of SEO and Google Ads, more marketing things. You know, how do we get clients for free or how do we price services? How do we follow up? So more generic help and advice on there. So I post a weekly video on there as well. And actually, the majority of my clients come through YouTube, people listening to what we do. So that’s going to be really helpful for people as they grow the business as well. So, yeah, Project83.com and then the YouTube, probably the best place to get in touch.

Stephanie: Awesome. We’ll definitely be linking those resources for you guys down below. Definitely go on to ZenMaid’s channel as well. You’re here already. But go find Sean’s most recent Maid Summit talk. It was amazing. If you are enjoying this content and want to get more into the SEO side of things, go give him a follow. And Sean, this has been so delightful. I really appreciate your time.

Sean: Yeah, great. It was going very quickly.

Stephanie: I know, I know. I’m a chatterbox. We’ll definitely link you below, Sean. And thank you again. And everybody, give them a like, give them some love down in the comments, and we’ll see you on the next episode of Filthy Rich Cleaners. Bye, guys.

If you enjoyed this episode of the Filthy Rich Cleaners podcast, please be sure to leave us a five-star review so we can reach more cleaners like you. Until next time, keep your work clean and your business filthy rich.

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode

• Project 83
• Sean Parry’s YouTube Channel
• ZenMaid
• ChatGPT
• Quo (formerly OpenPhone)
• RingCentral
• Google Business Profile
• Google Local Service Ads (LSA)
• Google Ads

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