How to Turn Your Clients Into Superfans

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Have you ever wished your clients would stick around for 1 year, 5 years, or even 10 years? What would it look like to have clients remain with you for 20 or even 40 years? In this episode, we talk about turning your clients into superfans.

A) Your goal should be to offer value so strong, it hurts your prospects or clients to turn you down. There are several things you can do:

1. Refer business to them before they do business with you. When we do our walkthroughs, I'm trying to figure out how I can make them money (e.g. who can I refer to them for their business revenue) or what resources I can provide for them before they even do business with us. 
2. Open up your entire network. Maybe you see a need that you can fulfill. On the cleaning level, if I see they're purchasing toilet paper, paper towels, etc. from box stores I'll tell them they can probably save 50% by purchasing from a local supplier. Or as it applies to their business, I'll ask open-ended questions in our walkthrough and I'll dive into a pain point if revealed. If I can solve that pain point through my network, I'll make a referral.
3. Offer a loss leader. We'll offer free services in exchange for a sign contract, like a free deep clean, specialty floor work, etc. Or if they have multiple locations, I'll offer to clean the first at a reduced price and then charge our rate for the remaining. Only do this if you can get a profit on the backend. 
4. Provide extra value that others don't provide. In this episode I talk about a school client with junk along their property. I paid 1-800-GOT-JUNK to come out and remove it for them, for free, in exchange for a signed contract. Pain point resolved and new client won.
5. Do a strategic alliance. Sit down with a client or prospect you like, know, and trust, and exchange leads, resources, help, etc. It'll strengthen that bond.

B) Show up to their location and/or call and do a joint walkthrough. It's our goal to do a walkthrough frequently within each location.

C) Treat your client's staff well. Send gift baskets. Or even do something as simple as dropping off bags of candy.

D) Send a quick 1 minute video to update your service, to tell them you appreciate them, etc. I referenced Goat Milk Stuff and their video campaign when you order with them. Super personal and each video is tailored to the order. They use Bonjoro, but you could use something as simple as your phone and your email.

E) Offer to test new equipment or a new service on them, for free. We'll use our clients as a test run on new offerings, solicit their input, and use their testimonial on future projects.

F) Always reach out to your clients before they reach out to you.

G) Get you clients involved in a community project.

Resouces mentioned in this episode:

Superfans by Pat Flynn
My Clean Pivot - I offer tailored, trained coaching in a one-on-one setting through Zoom whereby we'll cover together topics important to you and your business. Let's face it: it's difficult to go at this alone. So if you feel frustrated or you're stuck on a plateau, let My Clean Pivot help get you over that hurdle. For more info, check out www.mycleanpivot.com.

This is episode 7 of 8 planned. If you have any questions you'd like to ask and have answered over the podcast, go to www.speakpipe.com/beyondthemop. If we have enough questions, we'll do a bonus episode at the end.

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:01):
Have you ever wished your clients will stick around
for next year, five years oreven 10 years down the road?
What would it look like to haveclients be with you for the next
20 or even 40 years? In thisepisode, I'm gonna dive in deep
about turning your clients intosuperfans. But first, I'm Mark
Lineberry. With beyond the mopand with each episode, I offer a

(00:23):
pro tip a guide or resource,something that can really help
your business out. Well, let'sface it, your business has
grown, especially if you want tohave 40 year old clients. You're
trying to clone yourself, butyou're having a tough go at it.
cloning technology is just notwhere it needs to be in the year
2022. You're using some systemsand processes they're well

(00:45):
written down, maybe. But you getstepped that up. What do you do?
Well, make your life 10 timeseasier with loom. Go check out
www.us loom.com loom is a screenrecording program that enables
you to record video onproprietary platform that you
can then share with others.
How's this apply to yourcleaning business? Well, you

(01:07):
might have a multi step processlike preparing a proposal or
sending out certificates ofinsurance when requested. You
can record your screen step bystep with or without you and
camera view to show one of yourteam members exactly what to do
and how to do it. Well imaginethis. Imagine if a beer truck

(01:28):
ran over you tomorrow? Wouldyour team continue your business
without you? Could your teamknow what to do and how to do
it? And would they even knowwhat you did on the back end to
run the company? Well, loom canrecord those processes on your
screen and make hiringdelegation automation and your

(01:50):
company's processes that mucheasier. I use loom to record
explainer videos and I'll embedthose links within our
processes. Whoever works withthem particular role, they'll
have a dedicated Google documentthat they can have. All they
need to do is see the step bystep instructions and then click
on video links and see what todo by video on the screen. So

(02:13):
another example says I also useloom in my coaching through my
clean pivot. It's a great wayfor my clients to see what I do
to accomplish a particularprocess. Go check out loom today
use loom.com. Don't let yourbusiness die with that beer
truck incident and looms great.

(02:36):
They got paid version, they havea free version. I've used both I
use paid but you can certainlyget by with the free version and
share it and I think you couldeven download a mp4 video format
or whatever. And email the videoaround if you needed to. Really
cool stuff. Really cool. So backto creating superfans. The

(02:57):
reason I came up with this asthinking I did proposal
recently. And the RFP for thatproposal, they asked me to list
some of our clients. And theyasked for an average of how long
we've been with our clients. Andso I naturally had to sit down
pull up spreadsheet and how manyyears we've been doing business

(03:19):
with particular clients and Icame up with an average, on
average, we've been with ourclients, over 10 years, on
average of our 40 clients, 40active clients 10 years on
average. And some of our clientshave been with us while our
longest serving clients beenwith us for 44 years. So that
inspired me to come up. Well,what was the secret sauce to

(03:43):
keep them around 44 years. And Iput together this list here I
have several items of what wedid to help that cultivate that
client relationship and to keepthem around that long. Well,
first off, what is a superfan? Ilike what Pat Flynn defines it
from Smart Passive Income andhis book superfans. They'll

(04:04):
follow you around, and yourbusiness and all that you do,
and they'll evangelize for you.
Definitely go check out thatbooks in the show notes. And the
concept of the cleaningindustry, it means this. First
and foremost, you're offeringvalue so much it hurts them to
turn you down. So if you wereincreasing the price, it would

(04:25):
hurt them to turn you down. Ifyou offered a proposal, and that
price was a little hefty, andthey didn't quite agree with it.
Well, it would hurt them to turnyou down. So there's different
ways he could build that valueinto them. Remember, I

(04:48):
talked about pricing the pricingepisode, the goal is to create a
perceived value. So there's alot of things you could do here.
Number one, you could referbusiness to them. So even though
we do a walk through, we talkabout cleaning, they show us
what's going on. I'm trying tofigure out my ways well, what
can I do to provide value forthem? How can I help their

(05:11):
business grow. And I alwaysoffer that in a walkthrough.
Another thing you could do isopen up your business network
right here are walking talkingRolodex of information. So if
you walk to a school, maybe youknow someone who's looking for
private school, make thatreferral, right, or maybe they

(05:31):
own a particular company, andyou know, someone who could be a
client for them, refer thatperson to help them grow. Now,
another thing you could do isoffer a loss leader, if there
are multiple locations. Forexample, maybe it's a, let's
say, it's a bank, and they havesix local branches or what have

(05:51):
you. Maybe it's a small townbank, well offer a lost leader
on the first one, and thencharge your premium on the
remainder. They'll be loyalbecause you start working with
them the first time around at alower price. And then you could
charge your regular price for asecond or offer like a free deep
cleaning or free disinfecting inturn in exchange for new

(06:16):
contract. We do that all thetime as well. You can also
provide extra value that otherpeople don't provide. years ago,
we we did bid on school, and weend up winning the contract.
Well, when we did the walkthrough it to school in the
behind it, it's where you'reasking where the dumpsters were
at. And it behind the school.
It's just filled with junk olddesks, old tables will chairs

(06:38):
they never throw it away. And sowe offered them the value of
hey, we'll pay for one 800 gotjunk, if you guys sign a
contract, and we'll remove allthis away for you. And they
signed the contract. So we gotthe new contract just because we
offered junk removal when ourcompetitors went do it. Nothing
you can do is do a strategicalliance in Episode Six I talked

(07:02):
about that where you get sitdown, and face to face over zoom
with someone you like know andtrust or in this case, a client
or potential client and offerthem value, offer them
resources, offer them referrals,offer them whatever it takes to
help their business grow, alwaysfigure out how can I help their
business grow with outside ofcleaning. Here's another thing,

(07:24):
you can show up to theirlocation, unannounced or even
schedule a walkthrough. I didthis recently with a church that
we clean in rockville. I gavehim a call Why didn't give him a
call. We just showed up. We'reon our way to another project to
do a walk through we're early.

(07:44):
We're happened driving by thatlocation. It's like hey, let's
just stop in and say hi. So westopped in. We said hi. And the
church secretary's face just litup. And we had issues in the
past in terms of quality. Wegone through some staffing
changes there. But when weshowed up, it's like best
friends together again, youknow, we were just short getting

(08:06):
each other hug or whatever. Butwe're just helping them out
trying to figure out what dothey need to? Or what do we need
to do to improve our service tothem? How can we make them a
better fan of our service? Andshe gave us some pointers we
hadn't considered before. If wedid, we thought we're doing and
it turns out we weren't doingthem. So we're able to make

(08:26):
corrections just because weshowed up on a whim. Another
thing you could do is treat yourclient staff very well. I love
doing this. I love sending outgift baskets on a whim to our
clients. I love showing up withsomething simple. I have one
church client we'd show up.
Their favorite thing to eat waspeanut m&ms. That's all it was.

(08:46):
I didn't have to bring in fancywine or this or that. I just
showed up with a few bags ofpeanut m&ms individual serving
size they keep it their desk orkeep it sealed or put into or
whatever. And is really cool.
Their face lit up. They lovedit. And that client paid
regularly month after monthafter month, early every single

(09:10):
time because we treated thechurch Secretary right we
treated their accountant right.
We made sure everything's good.
Another thing you could do thisis really cool.
This is a shout out to a buddyof mine that I used to
mastermind with he owns a coowns a company called goat milk
stuff. So they make everythingout of goat milk. So like

(09:31):
lotions, shampoo, so everything.
It's really cool the companythat they're at, they have way
way what they do in their salesprocess. When you go to place an
order with them. They'll do aquick one minute video saying
hey, thank you welcome aboardand done by all the team members
or their family members thatthat's working in their

(09:52):
business. It's so cool how theydraw everyone in another example
I'm in a mastermind called ironsharpens iron and the
facilitator that mastermindAaron Walker, he'll send out
cards like birthday cards andanniversary cards on cue each
and every time to each and everyone of us. And I can't imagine
all the work they're doing. Theyalso hire VAs to do like

(10:14):
birthday messages for peopleright on Facebook. Really cool.
Here's another thing you coulddo to create super fans offer to
test new equipment or newservices on them for free. You
know, for example, maybe youwant to experiment with a new
for machine, right offer to usethem as a guinea pig on their

(10:35):
property for free. As long asyou don't ruin anything. You got
to make sure you don't do that,then you'll create a anti
superfan, but you wanted to goin, just serve them offer a free
service. We did this fordisinfecting all the time.
They'll say, Hey, we got a newpiece of equipment here. Can we
try this new equipment willdisinfect for free won't cost
you a penny. And they'll sayyes, every single time. So it

(10:57):
gives you a chance to getfeedback from them about the
quality of your service, andgives you a chance to experiment
yourself but also when superfriendly super fans at the same
time Argos Superfriends againand should go without saying. If
there's a complaint, if there'san issue, reach out to them
right away, reach out to thembefore they reach out to you.

(11:21):
Right because it shows you caremore than they care about their
own service or their ownbuilding or what have you. So be
that triggered and turn theminto superfans by treating them
right immediately. And then alsoget your clients involved into a
community project like a cleanupor fundraising. I mentioned

(11:41):
this, I believe an episode ortwo ago where I talked about in
the marketing one, where wetalked about universal we hosted
a fundraising day where webrought in $12,000 from all of
our clients and prospectiveclients $12,000 And we donated
all the charity. In fact, we'redoing that again. this coming

(12:02):
May. Yeah, maybe next month, noJune. We're doing it in June. So
we're doing this big fundraisingthing within the community.
We're doing a repeat, we'relooking to raise about $14,000
to charity, that is our goal.
And finally, above all ineverything. Consistency is key.

(12:26):
Because you could do one ofthese things and create a
superfan. But if you don'tfollow up with them, if you're
not following up withcomplaints, if you're providing
a crappy service, well, all thatwork is for naught, they're
gonna focus on the bad over togood. So consistency is key,
making sure you treat them rightand help them grow. If you're

(12:46):
looking for more informationabout this topic, by the way,
I'll be speaking in Chicagoweekend or a week of May 25 and
26th. And cleaning and cocktailslive event hosted by Ricky
regulat own team. And my talk isthree strategies in turning your
clients into superfans. Ifyou're up in Chicago area

(13:09):
happened be around there,definitely go check out that
conference I went last fall.
It's really cool. It's reallyfun. He puts on a well planned
event. So that's all I have foryou. This episode was brought to
you by my clean pivot. I docoaching coaching within the
cleaning business. So whateverissue you have challenges, you
need full cup you need resourcescome to the table. I do one on

(13:31):
one coaching fact your firstsession is absolutely free, no
obligation to buy or anythinglike that. I just want to get to
know you and your business. Formore information, you can go to
my clean pivot.com. Well, if youliked this episode, if you liked
the content, I would appreciateif you rated review and even

(13:52):
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Thank you again for listening.
And as a reminder before Iforget, don't forget, if you
have any questions and you'dlike to ask a question and have

(14:15):
this recorded and presented as apodcast episode, I'll answer it
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It'll record it'll send itstraight to me and then I'll

(14:38):
present it in a future episode.
And again, this was episodeseven of eight plan. Maybe I'll
do one more beyond as a bonusand thank you for listening. I
appreciate you guys.