The SFS ‘3-Legged Stool’ Business Model

I’ve recently dissed on the very real problems of ONLY offering residential cleaning. Instead, in our SFS Training events I strongly suggest a ‘synergistic’…

‘3-Legged Stool’ Business Model where each ‘leg’ supports (and feeds) the other two legs.

Say what, Steve?

three legged stoolSimple- I want my students to introduce the principle of ‘synergism’ into their company structure as in: “the total effect is greater than the sum of the individual efforts.”

NOTE: You see synergism in practice every day when you first 1) apply traffic pre-spray, 2) agitate and then 3) rinse with an acid rinse. The total sum effect is MUCH greater than the three separate actions!

Let’s analyze the three synergistic ‘legs’ (business sectors) I recommend in SFS training:

1) Commercial contract cleaning. I can (and often do in SFS!) go on and on about the joys of regular commercial contracts. A) Regular, anticipated high profit cash flow, B) routine, predictable work and C) all easily done with highly paid, part time employees!

NOTE: You’ll synergistically  feed your next two legs with commercial accounts since they’ll have many employees who are homeowners that will need cleaning and of course will also be insureds who need your…

2) High profit restoration services. For my company these were small to medium sized (4,000 to 8,000 dollar) residential water damage losses. 3 to 4 days to completion and a 70% profit margin! What’s not to love! And of course I still really enjoyed…

3) High end residential. Even with upper middle class clients and $500.00+ jobs residential will always be your lowest profit margin sector! However, residential work ‘fed’ my two higher net profit legs above. And working during the day let my company be highly visible in our market. (I called it ‘showing the flag’!)

HOWEVER, for a 3-legged Stool Business Model to work you must recognize that even though your logo may say, ‘Toburen’s Cleaning & Restoration’

In reality you are running three different businesses under one name! Yep, I tell every SFS group that the ONLY thing 1) commercial, 2) restoration and 3) residential have in common is a cleaning wand! (And maybe not even that!) Think about it…

The Three Legs of your new business model are not remotely the same. Different clients with totally different buying motivations, different schedules and different seasons of the year. (This was a huge help in keeping our employees working full time!) I LOVED the ‘synergistic effect’ here and you will too… IF you recognize that each ‘leg’ is a totally different world!

The beauty (and the challenge) of this 3-Legged Stool Business Model is your techs may clean a regular monthly restaurant account at 6:30 AM, then start a high end prepaid residential ‘Stay Beautiful’ program client at 9:00 and finish their day at 4:00 PM after initial extraction and equipment placement in the flooded home of a traumatized insured!

So your front-line technicians (and office/sales staff) must be trained to successfully deal EMOTIONALLY with all of these business sectors! Let’s talk about the wildly different ‘Emotional Landscapes’ of each of these three synergistic business legs real soon!

Learn more about all of our industry’s sectors in our Strategies for Success: Growing Your Business Facebook Group. (You don’t have graduate from SFS Training to join our thousands of cleaning and restoration contractors- all focused on ‘Growing Your Business’!)

Steve

 

 

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