I belong to several network groups where fellow maid services help each other to become better house cleaning companies by sharing information and advice and one member asked about how to view competitors. How you view competition is important to a business success. I thought I’d share my response to his question and how I view my “competition”. Originally posted here.
There is simply too much house cleaning business to go around to feel you have competitors. This would be a great opportunity to work together exchanging cleaning leads or helping each other out.
We have sister maid services that we often exchange cleaning leads with if we are booked or the lead is outside our service area. Also, there are times when we have a customer scheduled but can’t make it (maybe we have several ladies out sick).
To make sure we don’t cancel on the customer, we have another service help out or vice versa. Just last week we helped another maid service take care of one of their customers because they had already canceled on them once and did not want to do it again.
Taking Care of Your Customer Includes Helping Out Competitors
Ultimately you need to make sure your take care of your customer. If that means it’s not from your service then that’s ok. Your priorities should be:
1) take care of your employees.
2) take care of your customers.
And a distant third,
3) take care of yourself.
You’ll find if you take care of the first two, the 3rd will be just fine.
I’ve also sent employee applications to other services. When we look for employees we are inundated with hundreds of applications. I’m happy to send a few that didn’t make our cut but might make the cut somewhere else. Not to mention you need to be on good terms with other services so they can freely tell you if an ex-employee is a yay or a nay and why.
Dallas Maids would not be where it was if I hadn’t worked with my “competitors”… though I see them more as partners.