BEST Pressure Washing Business CRM Software [2023]
Choosing the right CRM for your Pressure Washing & Soft Washing business
Would you rather spend your time repeating manual tasks or spend money and automate those manual tasks?
If you're on the side of saving time, using a CRM for running your pressure washing business is essential in 2023.
Running a service-based business is challenging at times, from setting appointments, to keeping on top of your calendar and accounting.
Finding a system to manage all of this in an easy-to-understand way is critical to running your business successfully.
Right now if you're having problems keeping on track of your schedule. Maybe it can seem a little bit overwhelming with all this new information you're expected to learn and master.
I hope you will find this guide helpful, I will try and condense the main points to consider when choosing a software to help run your business day to day.
But before we start, let me say there is no pressure to understand everything from week one!
After running my own window cleaning and pressure washing business since late 2018, I've tried many different software's, Spent thousands of pounds on different solutions, automations and consultants that ultimately didn't really understand service-based businesses from a boots on the ground point of view.
So it's been an expensive lesson to learn trying different software solutions and using consultants. What I have found is until your actually running your business it very hard to ask the right questions when your just starting out...
Let's put that idea aside for a minute, fortunately most of us already competent with a pressure washer and know most of the ins and outs of the actual task of cleaning. There's loads of useful resources on youtube showing you how to clean, mix solutions and service your machines. This is how we actually do the job and can be considered as the 'operations' or 'production' part of the business.
Now before I go into this part of describing the business functions let me give an overview of the different 'departments' within your business.
Equipped with this information, I hope your will be able to get more clarity on your pressure washing business and select the best software for you, based on my real experience trying many different CRM's
Understanding the departments inside your pressure washing business
There are 4 main departments inside of every business regardless of the industry.
You may already be a business owner, entrepeneur and will over time find yourself inside every one of these departments along your business journey.
From my experience, you need to actually work in each department inside your business to really understand it before outsourcing it or making hiring decisions.
This will help you understand when hiring a contractor, web professional or freelancer. Dp they know what they are doing and will I receive a valuable service?
So lets talk about the different departments in your business.
Admin
In this department, you are answering the calls, messages, and emails. Once your job has been completed you will be sending invoices and reminders to your customer so you can collect payments for the work that YOU or your TEAM has just completed. We found for an easier admin trail, if you can get paid on the day of cleaning it makes for less admin when you get back to the "office". The great thing about a pressure washing business is typically the work is complete on the day of cleaning. So equipping yourself or your staff with a card reader is super handy to get paid faster and on the day. Even with credit card processing fee's it's often worth it for convenience and lesser of an admin trail. Automation is not going to save your life here, just changing your process will improve payment speeds and improve your cash flow significantly.
Marketing
How are you letting your existing and prospective customers know you are in the business of pressure washing? This comes in the form of social media posting, google SEO presence, FB ads and traditional direct marketing methods like flyers. But don't forget to love on your existing customers! If you do a great job for your clients don't be afraid to ask them for a referral. Asking questions like "Do you know anyone else that could benefit from our services?". These questions can really maximize the valve of each of your customers who already know and trust you. Marketing is like a funnel. At the top of the funnel are all of your new enquiries or requests from your new customers. At the bottom of the funnel are your converted customers AKA people that use your service.
Sales
Once your marketing is proven to be be effective, how are you able to sell your services? This is less about what you want and more about what the customer needs. Being an active listener help you undestand your prospects, so does being able to solve prospects' problems. Solving problems increases your chances to making a transition and builds trust. Being a problem solving person makes doing business with you frictionless and translates into a happy sale. We aren't all born with natural charisma and persuasive sales skills, but rest assured the skill of selling is a skill that can be learnt. If you run your own business, you are a salesperson. This means you are responsible for the sales process you run your customers through.
Production
The art of pressure washing. This is where YOU and your TEAM deliver predictable fantastic results to your customers. In the production department you will be maintaining the equipment, refining your cleaning process, maintaining stock, completing jobs, and taking all your before and after photos for invoicing and the marketing "department". Often after the production department has completed the cleaning, payment is collected... If not the responsibility lays on the admin department to send the invoices to the customer and to ensure a quality service has been delivered and payments have been made.
CYCLE
Each department is interconnected, it was very helpful for me to understand the different departments and how I should be processing a customer when completing certain tasks.... That sounds pretty robotic, I know. But the process is no mystery and you need to understand how all the pieces fit together so you don't get trapped in one department as you grow within your business.
The best CRM software to run your pressure washing business
Running our pressure washing and window cleaning business in the UK, we found Jobber to be the best CRM provider out there.
In the same way we have 4 different departments within a business. Jobber has 4 main FEATURES within side their software and app that to us, seem very similar to how we look at business.
In Jobber they look at processing a customer as follows:
REQUESTS
A new or existing customer will appear as a request within your Jobber app. A request to YOU! For example, a customer may be requesting for their driveway to be cleaned and by using the Jobber information capture form you can send via text or email to your customers. All of their vital information will be filled out by them when they make a "Request" by clicking on the jobber capture form. This data is added straight into the Jobber software, AKA your app. When you see a request in your Jobber app, you now can check out the request, view the home online, and give the customer a call to set up an 'Appointment'.
QUOTES
As an admin person, you will have to reach out to your customers to set an appointment for a quote if you run in person sales appointments. You as a person who gives quotes to customers, you are now a sales person. Often times as a sales person it is your responsibility to identify what the customer would like, then proceed with your sales process and fill out a quote within the app. In jobber, you can complete the quote on your phone and have all the different services you offer shown in an itemized way. This quote can be sent to the customer or presented to them there and then on the spot within a matter of minutes. If your customer is unsure about moving forward with their quote you can send the quote seamlessly via text and email. All of your outstanding quotes will appear in Jobber under the super easy-to-find Quote tap within the Jobber app. Quotes in the jobber app will be segmented into 3 categories: Declined, Awaiting Response, Accepted. This is AWESOME! It allows you to easily keep track on outstanding quotes and follow up easily.
JOBS
Successful quotes get converted into Jobs. When you have a customer that's happy to move forward with their received quote you can CONVERT this into a JOB with the click of a button. The other great thing with Jobber is you can request a deposit to be paid upon accepting the quote so that you can cover any materials like driveway sealers or chemicals that may be needed to complete the project. A Job can now be scheduled on your calendar within the jobber app and a conformation text or email sent to the customer for extra clarity upon booking on the schedule. This job is now on the calendar and ready for your cleaning technician to clean at an agreed time and date with the customer.
INVOICES
Jobs that have been completed will prompt you to create an invoice. Once the job has been marked as complete within the app, you will be prompted to create an invoice (YOU or your TEAM). You will then have the option to send the invoice or collect the payment there and then on the day. If you send the invoice, it gives the customer the ability to pay through the invoice using a 'PAY' button which is linked to your bank account. With some easy-to-set-up automation that links a payment gateway to the software, the Jobber platform recognizes when your customer has paid their invoice and all automatic payment reminders for outstanding payments are stopped. The customer's account is reconciled (zero'd) when they have paid. SUPER HANDY! and a massive time saver.
Are there other useful Apps for your pressure washing business?
A great tool we have developed on the App store is the Pressure Washing Calculator. This allows you to generate your own cleaning, re-sanding and sealing prices based on an area size.
We actually made this application for our own business so we could quickly generate prices for small and large areas, taking alot of the guess work out of sealing costs and coverages.
The work flow we developed was to generate prices for cleaning using the Pressure Washing Calculator, to generate estimates with the click of a few buttons then sending our quotes over using Jobber - this process takes roughly 4 minutes once you get the hang of it.
It worked a treat, so after thousands of pounds in development costs, we now offer this on the apple app store which comes with a free and paid option. A great tool combine with Jobber, which we believe is the absolute best option when it comes to a CRM for an exterior cleaning business.
Why Jobber is the best software for your pressure washing business
Jobber provide lots of great training and guides for their software within their subscription. From $49 (£40) per month their CRM system allows you the most essential systems and automated workflows to run your business. The jobber platform compared to other softwares we have used in the past it is designed far better. It is really made to be as easy to use as possible to use.
If you have tried other software services in the past, you might find them very hard to navigate but with jobber, things are a lot less cluttered.
But as with all software, Jobber is very powerful.
What comes with powerful software can be complex.
I personally found when you try Jobber for the first time, its best to just try to understand the 4 main functions first. These are: Request, Quote, Job, and Invoice. After you have mastered these workflows then you can learn about adding recurring jobs. Team time sheets and expense tracking etc.
There are more feature packed and lower-priced software's out there for your pressure washing or window cleaning business in the UK. But I do believe if you are committed to your business, Jobber is the way to go because it is seamlessly integrated with other powerful accounting, sales and marketing software providers like Mailchimp that work brilliantly together and are very use friendly.
So there are more powerful solutions out there for the money, but we think Jobber is the best for running a UK service based business, from pressure washing to window cleaning business. Jobber allows for automatic payments for repeat window cleaning work. To franchises that need to have a bird's eye view over their locations and help franchisee accounts remotely when they're in a pickle.
If you are committed to mastering your business we believe Jobber is the best platform to help you grow and we are confident in the jobber brand to continue to innovate and integrate with more platforms as the need to automate business becomes more and more essential going into 2023.
Get 2 Months of Jobber for FREE!
If you have found this information useful, consider signing upto jobber using the link below, it will come with 2 months free of Jobber https://share.getjobber.com/mQmYF4Z or use code DANIELDENNETT
How to use Jobber - Here's a quick video showing you the basics
