Lessons from a Cleaning Franchise Owner With More Than 750 Locations Episode 173 Stephen Coade AMC Commercial Cleaning In today’s podcast/ blog, Mike chats with Stephen Coade, owner of AMC Commercial Cleaning franchise. AMC has more than 750 cleaning franchises all over Australia and New Zealand. Stephen left school at 14 with a mop, a bucket and a whole lot of hope. He soon transitioned from owning a cleaning company to franchising. Stephen believes if you start a business with a small business mindset it’s always going to be a small business. He started with a vision and a commitment that he wasn’t going to do the work himself. From day 1 he managed the business and paid employees to clean. Stephen felt that to transition to a cleaning franchise he would need some larger regional accounts. With a little hard work, Stephen earned the business of an IKEA store in Melbourne just by jumping on the phone and asking if he could give a quote for cleaning. From there he picked up golf courses and retail chains. It took him only three years to hit the million dollar mark. Stephen chose the cleaning franchise model because it allows him to grow without having lag time between doing the work and getting paid. AMC does all of the advertising and client attraction and his cleaning franchisees handle the operations side of the business. BONUS LOVIN: CLICK HERE for a free video with owner of Two Maids and a Mop Cleaning Franchise on How to Supercharge Growth in YOUR Cleaning Company Stephens company has a team of sales people that secure the contracts and customer service reps that serve AMC’s franchisees. Stephen measures the success and happiness of his franchisees by the sheer number of them. AMC franchisees handle contracts from $40,000 to $1.5 million in annual value. They don’t advertise their franchise, it’s all word of mouth so one happy franchisee recommends it to a friend and so on. Once Stephen explains his cleaning franchise business model, he shares with Mike some of the secrets he uses to grow his cleaning company. He explains the value of high customer retention. It’s fun and exciting to sign a new customer, but it is much more profitable to make sure you keep the customers you have. KEY POINT: A major hidden cost in the cleaning business is lost contacts It costs the same to acquire a customer whether they stay a customer for 6 months or 20 years. AMC spends a lot of time, effort and money in making sure their customer service people understand how important it is that their clients are happy. Remember when you get a positive return on your marketing dollars, you have nearly infinite funds available. The longer your customers stay your customers, the more money you make per customer. When you make more money on every customer, you can spend more money on acquiring that customer. That is a key to fast customer acquisition KEY POINT: Whoever can spend the MOST to acquire a customer generally wins Mike and Stephen talk about the importance of knowing your numbers. Stephen’s company has over $75 million in annual revenue so it is crucial for him to know his numbers. The key to growing a cleaning franchise or company is to know your numbers when you are small. This is all part of the mindset of starting with the end in mind. Stephen grew his company with the mindset that he needed to build the infrastructure to grow. MORE BONUS LOVIN: Check out this FREE Podcast on Creating Systems For Growth Stephen talks about the infrastructure he maintains for his cleaning franchise. Both franchisees and customers can log into an online portal and see manage their accounts. Cleaning franchise owners can see their contracts, payment info, even adjust invoices for additional services. Customers can audit a site, see status on their account and rate their satisfaction with AMC. Of course all of this infrastructure takes investment. Stephen shares that investing back into himself and his cleaning franchise has been a key to his growth. Systems and automation not only create the ability to grow quickly, when implemented properly, they save money. Stephen breaks it down like this: Step 1- Realize you need a system Step 2- Choose the lowest investment, highest return area of your business Step 3- Create a system for that piece of your business