I am sorry I have been pretty quiet recently. I have been working on some new projects including the webinar below. This is a free webinar I did for the Institute for Service Excellence on how to do target marketing for the residential cleaning industry. This is a long webinar at an hour long so don't sit down to watch it unless you have some time. I had a lot of fun. This is a topic I really enjoy due to my background at P&G.
Marketing Webinar
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
You can either be right or you can be successful
About 6 weeks ago I had another VERY bad day. It took a few weeks and a long vacation for me to get my head around it to write about it.
We do our own carpet cleaning here and we
have one carpet cleaner on staff. On
Friday morning our carpet cleaner called off.
We had two jobs we could not move, an apartment cleaning and cleaning
one small chair for a very good customer.
I am an IICRC certified carpet and upholstery cleaner so I decided I
would go do the two jobs myself. In
addition the woman we were cleaning the chair for is a very good customer. We clean her home weekly and her business 5
nights a week. In total she spends over
$2,000 a month with my company and I had never met her. I thought as much as I hate to be out carpet
cleaning, it will be great to meet my client and I plan to knock her socks off
and really do a great job on this chair, no expense spared and show my artistry. So I hop in the van head out.
The first job is rather uneventful. Carpet cleaning of an empty apartment and all goes well. I get to my last client right on time. It turns out she is not feeling well and tells her husband to show me around. The chair we are cleaning is a very small old black recliner in the walk out basement. The biggest problem is it is covered with white dog hair. My team had just cleaned there earlier in the day so I asked the husband if we could move the chair outside where I would have better light, we would not have to drag hoses through the house, and as I brushed off the hair it would not resettle on the floor or furniture. He agreed and said that sounded like a great idea. I explained we needed water to make the carpet van worked and I asked if we could hook up the faucet in the back of the house and he said sure. So I fill up my little bucket of what and I am cleaning the chair with a low moisture method using a sea sponge and foam.
So I am set up and I am cleaning the chair. It is a beautiful day, the chair is looking good, I have a smile on my face and life is good. I don’t clean very often anymore and I was enjoying doing a relatively easy job out in the 80 degree sun. Then all off a sudden my client comes screaming out of the house and I mean screaming “How Dare you!”. I am more than a little confused. So I ask what I can help her with and she just keeps screaming at the top of her lunges how dare you. Finally her husband walks out side and she switches to screaming “How dare you, you flooded my basement.” Now I am really confused. I am outside on the side of the house. I don’t even have a hose in her hose. I have a little bucket with about ½ gallon of water. I have not even turned on the van yet. I keep asking her to explain and finally after about 3 minutes of screaming the same two things she switches to “How dare you use my faucet? Who told you to do that?”. Her husband is now standing there and is saying “I told him to honey”. She keeps yelling it and he keeps saying “I did honey.” Now she switches to “That faucet leaks into my basement, I just spent $10,000 fixing it and you just flooded my basement. How dare you!” OK, now I finally understand what is going on. The outdoor faucet I hooked up to leaks into the basement. She just paid someone $10,000 to fix the plumbing, pump out the water, and fix damage to the finished basement.
So finally she switches to demanding “I want to speak to your manager give me the number of your company.” “Ma’am I am the owner. I am can help you with anything you need. We have a carpet van right here, lets go check out the water and get it taken care of.” She keeps demanding the number for the office and I keep saying I can give it to you but I am the owner and I am standing right here. Finally she storms off yelling “Fine I will go look it up myself, I am so getting you fired, your incompetent.” I look at her husband and say “I don’t think she is hearing us.” He agrees “no I don’t think she is.” I find out later from my office staff that she called and demanded that every person in the company come out there this very instant and take care of the problem. They also kept trying to tell her that I was the owner, I was there, and I was also an IICRC certified cleaner and restorer.
Her husband and I finally go into the basement. Sure enough there is probably 50 gallons of water on the carpet. I have my carpet claw with me so I extract the water, spray some anti-microbial products, and set up some fans to dry it. This is a clean water spill extracted within 15 minutes. It should be fine within 3 or 4 hours.
So things did not go at all as planned. I had planned to impress this very important customer and instead it went very bad. However I am thankfully for a few things. First, I am glad we have a process and I followed it. There is a reason we always ask if we can use the client’s outdoor faucet and this pretty much the perfect example as to why. If I had not asked up front to use that faucet it would have been my fault when the basement flooded. Because I asked up front I had covered myself with the client. Second I did not lose my temper and just turn around and leave. Remember this woman spends well over $25,000 a year with my company. We can all agree she did not treat me very well but we also have to understand people are human. There was a lot going on in this woman’s life.
1. That chair I was cleaning was supposed to be a gift for her father. She was getting it cleaned for him. He died 4 days earlier. She decided to get the chair cleaned anyway and did not cancel the appointment. (Thank fully I knew this going in because my cleaning tech is alert to her client and she warned me of this.)
2. This woman had just spent $10,000 to fix this problem including the plumbing that obviously was not fixed very well. A lot of the frustration I was on the receiving end of was because of this.
3. I knew she was not feeling very well but only after it all calmed down did her husband explain she had a medical procedure that morning that had required she be put under. She was literally still in twilight after surgery and highly drugged at the time. She probably really did not hear what I was saying.
The next day this client did send me a note apologizing for what happened and explaining all her frustrations. I have nothing but a positive relationship with her since then. So I guess my point is we have to remember our clients are human. There is so much going on in a client’s life we may not realize. I think we can all agree it would have been perfectly reasonable for me to politely say “ma’am I am sorry your plumbing is leaking. That is not something I caused. I cannot stay here with you like this.” And leave. I may have also lost the client because she would have been stuck with a flooded basement on a Friday night. My fault or not that would have left a mad taste. This woman had lost her dad, was highly drugged, was in a great deal of pain, her basement was flooded, and she just paid someone $10,000 to make sure that never happened again. I was just in the very much the wrong place at very much the wrong time. Taking what ever she threw at me and helping her out of the situation that I had no duty to do so will probably make her a client for life. I can also not say again how happy I am that we have procedures and we followed them. That simple question of “I need to hook up the van to a water supply, may I use this faucet?” was probably the most important question I asked all year.
This also reminds me of one of my favorite saying with my employees. "We can be right or we can be successful." Sometimes the path to great service comes from helping the client out and not worrying about who is right and wrong.
The first job is rather uneventful. Carpet cleaning of an empty apartment and all goes well. I get to my last client right on time. It turns out she is not feeling well and tells her husband to show me around. The chair we are cleaning is a very small old black recliner in the walk out basement. The biggest problem is it is covered with white dog hair. My team had just cleaned there earlier in the day so I asked the husband if we could move the chair outside where I would have better light, we would not have to drag hoses through the house, and as I brushed off the hair it would not resettle on the floor or furniture. He agreed and said that sounded like a great idea. I explained we needed water to make the carpet van worked and I asked if we could hook up the faucet in the back of the house and he said sure. So I fill up my little bucket of what and I am cleaning the chair with a low moisture method using a sea sponge and foam.
So I am set up and I am cleaning the chair. It is a beautiful day, the chair is looking good, I have a smile on my face and life is good. I don’t clean very often anymore and I was enjoying doing a relatively easy job out in the 80 degree sun. Then all off a sudden my client comes screaming out of the house and I mean screaming “How Dare you!”. I am more than a little confused. So I ask what I can help her with and she just keeps screaming at the top of her lunges how dare you. Finally her husband walks out side and she switches to screaming “How dare you, you flooded my basement.” Now I am really confused. I am outside on the side of the house. I don’t even have a hose in her hose. I have a little bucket with about ½ gallon of water. I have not even turned on the van yet. I keep asking her to explain and finally after about 3 minutes of screaming the same two things she switches to “How dare you use my faucet? Who told you to do that?”. Her husband is now standing there and is saying “I told him to honey”. She keeps yelling it and he keeps saying “I did honey.” Now she switches to “That faucet leaks into my basement, I just spent $10,000 fixing it and you just flooded my basement. How dare you!” OK, now I finally understand what is going on. The outdoor faucet I hooked up to leaks into the basement. She just paid someone $10,000 to fix the plumbing, pump out the water, and fix damage to the finished basement.
So finally she switches to demanding “I want to speak to your manager give me the number of your company.” “Ma’am I am the owner. I am can help you with anything you need. We have a carpet van right here, lets go check out the water and get it taken care of.” She keeps demanding the number for the office and I keep saying I can give it to you but I am the owner and I am standing right here. Finally she storms off yelling “Fine I will go look it up myself, I am so getting you fired, your incompetent.” I look at her husband and say “I don’t think she is hearing us.” He agrees “no I don’t think she is.” I find out later from my office staff that she called and demanded that every person in the company come out there this very instant and take care of the problem. They also kept trying to tell her that I was the owner, I was there, and I was also an IICRC certified cleaner and restorer.
Her husband and I finally go into the basement. Sure enough there is probably 50 gallons of water on the carpet. I have my carpet claw with me so I extract the water, spray some anti-microbial products, and set up some fans to dry it. This is a clean water spill extracted within 15 minutes. It should be fine within 3 or 4 hours.
So things did not go at all as planned. I had planned to impress this very important customer and instead it went very bad. However I am thankfully for a few things. First, I am glad we have a process and I followed it. There is a reason we always ask if we can use the client’s outdoor faucet and this pretty much the perfect example as to why. If I had not asked up front to use that faucet it would have been my fault when the basement flooded. Because I asked up front I had covered myself with the client. Second I did not lose my temper and just turn around and leave. Remember this woman spends well over $25,000 a year with my company. We can all agree she did not treat me very well but we also have to understand people are human. There was a lot going on in this woman’s life.
1. That chair I was cleaning was supposed to be a gift for her father. She was getting it cleaned for him. He died 4 days earlier. She decided to get the chair cleaned anyway and did not cancel the appointment. (Thank fully I knew this going in because my cleaning tech is alert to her client and she warned me of this.)
2. This woman had just spent $10,000 to fix this problem including the plumbing that obviously was not fixed very well. A lot of the frustration I was on the receiving end of was because of this.
3. I knew she was not feeling very well but only after it all calmed down did her husband explain she had a medical procedure that morning that had required she be put under. She was literally still in twilight after surgery and highly drugged at the time. She probably really did not hear what I was saying.
The next day this client did send me a note apologizing for what happened and explaining all her frustrations. I have nothing but a positive relationship with her since then. So I guess my point is we have to remember our clients are human. There is so much going on in a client’s life we may not realize. I think we can all agree it would have been perfectly reasonable for me to politely say “ma’am I am sorry your plumbing is leaking. That is not something I caused. I cannot stay here with you like this.” And leave. I may have also lost the client because she would have been stuck with a flooded basement on a Friday night. My fault or not that would have left a mad taste. This woman had lost her dad, was highly drugged, was in a great deal of pain, her basement was flooded, and she just paid someone $10,000 to make sure that never happened again. I was just in the very much the wrong place at very much the wrong time. Taking what ever she threw at me and helping her out of the situation that I had no duty to do so will probably make her a client for life. I can also not say again how happy I am that we have procedures and we followed them. That simple question of “I need to hook up the van to a water supply, may I use this faucet?” was probably the most important question I asked all year.
This also reminds me of one of my favorite saying with my employees. "We can be right or we can be successful." Sometimes the path to great service comes from helping the client out and not worrying about who is right and wrong.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Free Conference Call on Marketing
I am sorry it has been a few weeks since I posted. I took a couple weeks and had an actual vacation. I promise I will be writing at least once a week again.
I want to invite you all to a free teleconference on marketing I will be hosting for ARCSI on Tuesday April 15th. This teleconference will be on the importance of selecting a target market and how to define yours. I spent 12 years working for Procter & Gamble and they taught me the importance of clearly defined target markets. No brand can be all things to all people. To try to do so makes you meaningless. This is why P&G owns multiple brands in many categories. Each brand is for a unique set of consumers. Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Infusium 23, Herbal Essences, Aussie, Sebastian, and Fekkai. These are all hair care brands owned by one company. Why wouldn't P&G just do one Mega Brand? because then it means nothing. When I say Herbal Essences you know it is a young fun brand. When I say Head and Shoulders you know it is a Dandruff Shampoo. When I say Fekkai, if you heard of it, you know it is an exclusive super premium brand. If you have not heard of it, that is OK, your not supposed to have, that is why it is exclusive.
It should be as crystal clear to your customers. Your brand should stand for something unique and the first step of that is finding your target market. This is the purpose of this call.
You do need to register because we do limit the number of people on the call but there is no cost. The link to register is below and I look forward to hearing you all there.
http://www.arcsi.org/events/event_details.asp?id=230884
I want to invite you all to a free teleconference on marketing I will be hosting for ARCSI on Tuesday April 15th. This teleconference will be on the importance of selecting a target market and how to define yours. I spent 12 years working for Procter & Gamble and they taught me the importance of clearly defined target markets. No brand can be all things to all people. To try to do so makes you meaningless. This is why P&G owns multiple brands in many categories. Each brand is for a unique set of consumers. Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Infusium 23, Herbal Essences, Aussie, Sebastian, and Fekkai. These are all hair care brands owned by one company. Why wouldn't P&G just do one Mega Brand? because then it means nothing. When I say Herbal Essences you know it is a young fun brand. When I say Head and Shoulders you know it is a Dandruff Shampoo. When I say Fekkai, if you heard of it, you know it is an exclusive super premium brand. If you have not heard of it, that is OK, your not supposed to have, that is why it is exclusive.
It should be as crystal clear to your customers. Your brand should stand for something unique and the first step of that is finding your target market. This is the purpose of this call.
You do need to register because we do limit the number of people on the call but there is no cost. The link to register is below and I look forward to hearing you all there.
http://www.arcsi.org/events/event_details.asp?id=230884
Saturday, April 14, 2012
Advice on how to select a vacuum for a professional cleaning service
I have been in Orlando at the ARCSI Executive Leadership Conference. One of the vendors there, CleanMax, had a great variety of vacuums and I thought it would be a good chance to shoot a short video explaining some features and things to consider when buying a vacuum for a professional cleaning service. It also ties nicely into my work as part of the Institute for Service Excellence. We have a whole chapter of our book and 90 minutes of the Home Cleaning Technician class dedicated to tools and equipment and this will give you a preview of some of the information we share in the class.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Why Derek is more conservative now - trying to hire for a cleaning service
OK fair warning. This
is going to be a bit of a rant. My
spelling and grammar gets worse when I rant so I apologize in advance. Also I am going to touch a little on politics
and hopefully I won’t upset too many of my readers but I am having one of those
days. There is a quote that is normally
attributed to Winston Churchill “If you're
not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if you're not a conservative at
forty you have no brain”. I have come
to like this quote because it feels a little like it sums up my life. I was very liberal when I was younger. I wanted to save the world and help everyone
and fix everything for everyone. Then I
bought a residential cleaning service.
Now I realize many of these attempts to help people just back fire and
create a system of perverse incentives.
We have been desperate for people for over 2 months. We are running advertisements on Craig’s list, Snag a Job, Monster.com, we ran ads in the paper, we offered incentives to current employees. We even ran a job fair at the local unemployment office which they promoted to all the unemployed people in Warren county. 6 people came. 5 were immigrants. We have to call 20 applicants to schedule 5 interviews. On average only 2 out of 5 people show up for their interview. Of those, one 1 of 3 will not show up for their first day of work. Now do not get me wrong. I love my staff. I have 40 rock stars that work for me. However the amount of BS we have to deal with to find the few people that really want a job and really want to improve themselves is incredible.
Now I know cleaning people’s homes is not a lot of fun but I like to think we offer a pretty good job. We are growing so I guarantee my people full time work. We are growing quickly so we have places to move up. In the last year I have promoted 3 cleaners to General Managers running a branch office of their own. We offer medical insurance, 5 days vacation, 9-5 work with no weekends, monthly bonuses, no micro-managing bosses, a no drama policy, and we try to have some fun. We had our Christmas party at an indoor water park this year and bought tickets for everyone and their families, and we are having a fancy all you can eat Candy and Cake Pop bar the Friday before Easter. We also don’t pay so bad. Most of my cleaners make $450 - $500 a week but I have several cleaners that make over $600 a week. Before tips. Lets be clear that is a $25,000 - $30,000 a year entry level job with no degree required. This week one cleaner make over $800.00. Ok I am ranting but I think you get my point, not that terrible of a place to work. I have many one 11 year employee and many employees with us over 2 years.
I swear 95% of the people that “Apply” have no interest in being hired. For those of you that do not know the system, to keep your unemployment benefits you have to be actively looking for a job. They ask for proof of where you applied. Now imagine this, you are applying for a job with me. These are actual answers from the questions “Why did you leave you place of previous employment?”
1. Baby fell off balcony. (Worked as a housekeeper at a hotel. This has to be my all time favorite)
2. I asked for 1 week off. They said they no, they were too busy that week to spare me so I quit to show them.
3. My boyfriend kept stalking me and terrorizing everyone at my office. But we worked things out. We are ok now.
4. The work was too hard.
I had one woman no show for her interview. Then she called me the next week. “I am just calling to check on my application.” Derek “You did not show up for your interview.” Her “Yeah something came up, can I schedule another one.” Derek “No, please don’t call again.” I had another woman no show for her interview but she had the guts to call and ask if she could fax me her unemployment form to fill out confirming she had an interview scheduled. Heck no, the point is you are supposed to go to the interview, not waste my time by scheduling it and then not showing up.
So I find myself yelling at my radio a lot. I am an avid listener to NPR. I think they do great in depth news stories. But every time they run one of the pieces how terrible the economy is and no one is hiring I start yelling back. I really get worked up when I hear the pieces about how we need to stop immigrants from coming over because plenty of Americans would do those jobs. No they won’t. Now lets be clear, I have exactly one non American citizen on my payroll and she is from Canada so I am not saying this out of pure self interest. My people work in air conditioning all day and I have a terrible time finding people. I cannot imagine the poor employers trying to find people to work outside all day.
Now lets move to the other side of the unemployment system. What most people do not seem to understand until they own a business, including me, is unemployment insurance is not like social security with a set rate. It is basically directly billed back to your previous boss. So if I lay a bunch of people off they rate I have to pay for unemployment goes way up. So when someone files a claim, it comes right out of my pocket. The other thing most people do not seem to realize is it is not really unemployment insurance, it is lay off insurance, If you are fired for cause or you quit, you are not entitled to it. You also have to earn a certain amount and work for a certain time to qualify. There are people that game this system. They know the rules and the appeals inside and out. These people target smaller businesses because they know they are less likely to know the rules, have an HR department, have the time to do the paperwork and appeals, and may not realize it will even cost them when they get a claim. It is like vultures who circle unsuspecting small business owners.
When I first bought the business I had one woman who did not like the changes I was making, like uniforms and mandatory arrival times. She stood in my office screaming at the top of her lungs in front of 4 witnesses how stupid we all were and throwing things ending with “Fire me I dare you!” So we did. She filed unemployment and said we did not fire her for cause. I filled out the paperwork and said she quit. I lost as they said I fired her, she did not quit. Foolish me, I thought when you scream to fire me and throw things at us, your quitting colorfully. I appealed and said fine I fired her and I described what happened. I lost that appeal because I could not answer the question as to what policy she broke. I appealed again and had to some clause in my employee manual about “treating co-workers with respect” that she broke. Finally I won. I mean how stupid is this. She stood screaming in my office throwing things but the only reason I finally won is because I was lucky enough that the employee manual I used had a generic phrase about treating others with respect. Is there no common sense anymore.
About half the people I hire do great for the 8 weeks it takes to qualify for unemployment. Then they start calling off work, like every day. Or they do a terrible job. Basically what ever it takes to get fired quickly. When employees are fired I have them sign a form that acknowledges that they were fired, lists the reasons why, and when they will get their final check. They all file and they all check the box that says “No reason was given why I was fired.” We then have to fill out a 4 page form on why they were terminated, we need to include copies of every incident report, the termination letter, and send it all in within 14 days (lets hope the owner is not trying to take a vacation). If you fail to respond, they win. Once I respond, I then get another 4 page form to fill out that basically says “We got your claim that your employee was fired for cause. Please provide more details to this new department. “ We then have to submit the exact same book of information AGAIN because it goes to a different department and goodness knows they cannot forward it. Once we win that the employee can appeal up to 4 times. Once again if we fail to respond, they win.
This all takes an INCREDIBLE amount of my time and the government’s time with all of these appeals. This wastes my money and the money of every single tax payer. Remember I have a signed form from this employee acknowledging why they were let go. Why is there no penalty for filing a false claim? You cannot just file a fake police report because it wastes valuable resources. But these people can play unemployment lottery and file a claim they have no right to in the hope their previous employer makes a mistake. And now that we have extended unemployment benefits out for over a year the prize is even bigger to encourage people to do play the lottery even more.
Ok now I know some people are reading this and thinking “Derek, there is no way anyone can survive just off unemployment. Your just being harsh. It is what 40% of their previous pay? They cannot live off that.” Well you are partially right, they do need more income but there are ways to play that game as well. About one out of 3 people I screen over the phone ask me to pay them under the table because they are getting disability or unemployment benefits they do not want to lose. Seriously. 1 out of 3. If you don’t believe me, come spend a day in my office. If that does not work, remember we just trained them to be pretty good cleaners and they did a decent job as long as they cared to. They may or may not have bothered to returned all the equipment and supplies we bought. Now all they have to do is hang up some flyers and get some clients and not record any of the income. So now they get 40% of their pay from their last job AND they get all the other low income government benefits, AND they have a cleaning job that they are being paid 100% under the table. Welcome to how to play the system 101. And I get more conservative by the day. This is also why you need to treat the good employees like gold.
We have been desperate for people for over 2 months. We are running advertisements on Craig’s list, Snag a Job, Monster.com, we ran ads in the paper, we offered incentives to current employees. We even ran a job fair at the local unemployment office which they promoted to all the unemployed people in Warren county. 6 people came. 5 were immigrants. We have to call 20 applicants to schedule 5 interviews. On average only 2 out of 5 people show up for their interview. Of those, one 1 of 3 will not show up for their first day of work. Now do not get me wrong. I love my staff. I have 40 rock stars that work for me. However the amount of BS we have to deal with to find the few people that really want a job and really want to improve themselves is incredible.
Now I know cleaning people’s homes is not a lot of fun but I like to think we offer a pretty good job. We are growing so I guarantee my people full time work. We are growing quickly so we have places to move up. In the last year I have promoted 3 cleaners to General Managers running a branch office of their own. We offer medical insurance, 5 days vacation, 9-5 work with no weekends, monthly bonuses, no micro-managing bosses, a no drama policy, and we try to have some fun. We had our Christmas party at an indoor water park this year and bought tickets for everyone and their families, and we are having a fancy all you can eat Candy and Cake Pop bar the Friday before Easter. We also don’t pay so bad. Most of my cleaners make $450 - $500 a week but I have several cleaners that make over $600 a week. Before tips. Lets be clear that is a $25,000 - $30,000 a year entry level job with no degree required. This week one cleaner make over $800.00. Ok I am ranting but I think you get my point, not that terrible of a place to work. I have many one 11 year employee and many employees with us over 2 years.
I swear 95% of the people that “Apply” have no interest in being hired. For those of you that do not know the system, to keep your unemployment benefits you have to be actively looking for a job. They ask for proof of where you applied. Now imagine this, you are applying for a job with me. These are actual answers from the questions “Why did you leave you place of previous employment?”
1. Baby fell off balcony. (Worked as a housekeeper at a hotel. This has to be my all time favorite)
2. I asked for 1 week off. They said they no, they were too busy that week to spare me so I quit to show them.
3. My boyfriend kept stalking me and terrorizing everyone at my office. But we worked things out. We are ok now.
4. The work was too hard.
I had one woman no show for her interview. Then she called me the next week. “I am just calling to check on my application.” Derek “You did not show up for your interview.” Her “Yeah something came up, can I schedule another one.” Derek “No, please don’t call again.” I had another woman no show for her interview but she had the guts to call and ask if she could fax me her unemployment form to fill out confirming she had an interview scheduled. Heck no, the point is you are supposed to go to the interview, not waste my time by scheduling it and then not showing up.
So I find myself yelling at my radio a lot. I am an avid listener to NPR. I think they do great in depth news stories. But every time they run one of the pieces how terrible the economy is and no one is hiring I start yelling back. I really get worked up when I hear the pieces about how we need to stop immigrants from coming over because plenty of Americans would do those jobs. No they won’t. Now lets be clear, I have exactly one non American citizen on my payroll and she is from Canada so I am not saying this out of pure self interest. My people work in air conditioning all day and I have a terrible time finding people. I cannot imagine the poor employers trying to find people to work outside all day.
Now lets move to the other side of the unemployment system. What most people do not seem to understand until they own a business, including me, is unemployment insurance is not like social security with a set rate. It is basically directly billed back to your previous boss. So if I lay a bunch of people off they rate I have to pay for unemployment goes way up. So when someone files a claim, it comes right out of my pocket. The other thing most people do not seem to realize is it is not really unemployment insurance, it is lay off insurance, If you are fired for cause or you quit, you are not entitled to it. You also have to earn a certain amount and work for a certain time to qualify. There are people that game this system. They know the rules and the appeals inside and out. These people target smaller businesses because they know they are less likely to know the rules, have an HR department, have the time to do the paperwork and appeals, and may not realize it will even cost them when they get a claim. It is like vultures who circle unsuspecting small business owners.
When I first bought the business I had one woman who did not like the changes I was making, like uniforms and mandatory arrival times. She stood in my office screaming at the top of her lungs in front of 4 witnesses how stupid we all were and throwing things ending with “Fire me I dare you!” So we did. She filed unemployment and said we did not fire her for cause. I filled out the paperwork and said she quit. I lost as they said I fired her, she did not quit. Foolish me, I thought when you scream to fire me and throw things at us, your quitting colorfully. I appealed and said fine I fired her and I described what happened. I lost that appeal because I could not answer the question as to what policy she broke. I appealed again and had to some clause in my employee manual about “treating co-workers with respect” that she broke. Finally I won. I mean how stupid is this. She stood screaming in my office throwing things but the only reason I finally won is because I was lucky enough that the employee manual I used had a generic phrase about treating others with respect. Is there no common sense anymore.
About half the people I hire do great for the 8 weeks it takes to qualify for unemployment. Then they start calling off work, like every day. Or they do a terrible job. Basically what ever it takes to get fired quickly. When employees are fired I have them sign a form that acknowledges that they were fired, lists the reasons why, and when they will get their final check. They all file and they all check the box that says “No reason was given why I was fired.” We then have to fill out a 4 page form on why they were terminated, we need to include copies of every incident report, the termination letter, and send it all in within 14 days (lets hope the owner is not trying to take a vacation). If you fail to respond, they win. Once I respond, I then get another 4 page form to fill out that basically says “We got your claim that your employee was fired for cause. Please provide more details to this new department. “ We then have to submit the exact same book of information AGAIN because it goes to a different department and goodness knows they cannot forward it. Once we win that the employee can appeal up to 4 times. Once again if we fail to respond, they win.
This all takes an INCREDIBLE amount of my time and the government’s time with all of these appeals. This wastes my money and the money of every single tax payer. Remember I have a signed form from this employee acknowledging why they were let go. Why is there no penalty for filing a false claim? You cannot just file a fake police report because it wastes valuable resources. But these people can play unemployment lottery and file a claim they have no right to in the hope their previous employer makes a mistake. And now that we have extended unemployment benefits out for over a year the prize is even bigger to encourage people to do play the lottery even more.
Ok now I know some people are reading this and thinking “Derek, there is no way anyone can survive just off unemployment. Your just being harsh. It is what 40% of their previous pay? They cannot live off that.” Well you are partially right, they do need more income but there are ways to play that game as well. About one out of 3 people I screen over the phone ask me to pay them under the table because they are getting disability or unemployment benefits they do not want to lose. Seriously. 1 out of 3. If you don’t believe me, come spend a day in my office. If that does not work, remember we just trained them to be pretty good cleaners and they did a decent job as long as they cared to. They may or may not have bothered to returned all the equipment and supplies we bought. Now all they have to do is hang up some flyers and get some clients and not record any of the income. So now they get 40% of their pay from their last job AND they get all the other low income government benefits, AND they have a cleaning job that they are being paid 100% under the table. Welcome to how to play the system 101. And I get more conservative by the day. This is also why you need to treat the good employees like gold.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Spring Cleaning Rush - just 4 weeks to soon
OMG! Spring is here way too
early. Don’t get me wrong, I love the
warmer weather and I love to be outside and I normally LOVE the increase in
phone calls but it was not supposed to be Spring yet. I still have 4 people in training and 2 more
scheduled to start in the next two weeks (they gave notice to their current
employers, something I will never discourage.
How they treat their current boss is a sign of how they will treat me so
I like people that say they have to give two weeks notice.) I thought I had a minimum of 2 more weeks and
more likely 4 weeks before it hit 80 degrees in Cincinnati. Our phone is ringing non stop with new
customers, occasional customers wanting a Spring Cleaning, and our regular
customers wanting to upgrade to a Spring cleaning. We are booked solid for the next two weeks
which is not at all common for us. We
normally can get a customer in on 2 days notice. It is killing me to be turning this much
business away.
We are trying to come up with ideas to deal with it. First we are offering extra hours to anyone that wants to work Saturday. I normally hate to have teams working Saturday because I do not have back ups in place if things go bad. It also forces me to work Saturday myself which I do about 80% of the time anyway but I have to say I don’t like the feeling of having to go in versus choosing to. Second, we are moving a couple offering extra hours to a couple of my commercial cleaners that have been cross trained to do residential work and we are sending them with the regular residential customers to do Spring Cleans and other jobs where there will be a partner to work with.
What we are trying to avoid is moving people out of training faster than we should. In the past I would have dealt with this rush by pushing people out of training faster. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that under trained employees will do a bad job and ruin our reputation. As much as it hurts, I have found it is better to tell a customer we are booked than to send a team that does a poor job. So now back to the battle and figuring out how to deal with the sudden surge in demand.
We are trying to come up with ideas to deal with it. First we are offering extra hours to anyone that wants to work Saturday. I normally hate to have teams working Saturday because I do not have back ups in place if things go bad. It also forces me to work Saturday myself which I do about 80% of the time anyway but I have to say I don’t like the feeling of having to go in versus choosing to. Second, we are moving a couple offering extra hours to a couple of my commercial cleaners that have been cross trained to do residential work and we are sending them with the regular residential customers to do Spring Cleans and other jobs where there will be a partner to work with.
What we are trying to avoid is moving people out of training faster than we should. In the past I would have dealt with this rush by pushing people out of training faster. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that under trained employees will do a bad job and ruin our reputation. As much as it hurts, I have found it is better to tell a customer we are booked than to send a team that does a poor job. So now back to the battle and figuring out how to deal with the sudden surge in demand.
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Don't Knock the Competition
I worked in sales for corporate America for 12 years and
they always taught us not to say bad things about competition because it just
makes us look bad. I guess I understood that you want to spend your valuable time with a potential customer talking about you, not the other guys. To be honest, I never
really understood this until this week.
I had a call from a consumer looking for weekly service and at the end
she asked me to for two non franchised companies that were similar in size to
us so I gave her two names. She called
me back laughing and said we blew away the competition. When I asked why she told me to call my
competitor and ask them what made them the best. So I did.
Derek – So what makes you better than your competition?
Other Business Owner – Drugs
Derek – Excuse me?
Other Business Owner - Drugs
Derek – Um, Could you elaborate?
Other Business Owner – Drugs
Derek – Excuse me?
Other Business Owner - Drugs
Derek – Um, Could you elaborate?
Other Business Owner – I test my people all the time, so I know they don’t use
drugs. Other people don't do this so they have employees that use drugs.
I basically tossed this woman a slow softball over the
plate and asked her to tell me how great her company was and the only things
she could come up with was to imply all the other companies hire drug
users. I was really blown away. All I could think was this lady must have had
some serious problems with drug using employees if she thinks that is what
makes her better. She not only made
herself look bad but the entire industry.
Basically she said all cleaning services employ drug users including
mine but I test them every few months so I fire my people once they start
using. What a terrible way to build
trust with our consumer.
Needless to say, I got the sale and she did not. So don’t say bad things about the competition because it reflects back on you.
Needless to say, I got the sale and she did not. So don’t say bad things about the competition because it reflects back on you.
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