How do you deal with customers who want you to use their cleaning products
or their multi-level marketing cleaning products instead of your own?
That is a great question, and we're going to talk about that today.
Hi there.
I'm Angela Brown, and this is Ask a House Cleaner.
This is a show where you get to ask a house cleaning question,
and I get to help you find an answer.
Now, today's show is brought to us by MyCleaningConnection.com
where we have a whole host of resources, of different products and cleaning supplies
and cleaning chemicals, and we have a bunch of resources that will help you
if you're a do-it-yourselfer.
Or if you're a professional house cleaner,
so check out the resources at MyCleaningConnection.com
All right, on to today's show, which is from a house cleaner who has this question.
"How do I handle clients who insist that I use their homemade products
or an MLM cleaning product that just isn't as effective as my regular ones?
I have to spend a lot more time when I use those products, and time is money."
Angela Brown: All right, this is a house cleaner frequently-asked question.
It comes up all the time.
How do I deal with a customer who wants me to use their product instead?
All right, so here's the thing.
If you hired a professional landscaper to come over and mow your yard and when he got
to your house, you said, "Wait, before you mow my yard, I don't want you to be ... use
that big riding lawn mower that you guys stand behind and ride along because it's too noisy.
I want you to use my little push mower because it's quieter,
and I got a kid in the house sleeping.
Can you do that?" it's ludicrous, right?
They have a system of the way that they do things, and the reason they use their equipment
that they do is because it's proven and it's tried and they know exactly
how it's going to operate.
They don't use your little hand mower on a regular basis.
They don't know how it operates and, even though they do that for a living, it's a different
product, and so they're not going to be able to do the job in the same amount of time and
they're not going to be efficient.
Now, if you were paying your landscaper by the hour, you might think twice about him
using your little push mower versus the great big ride-behind-the-mower that he has, right?
The two or three people that come with him, and they have the earbuds on and they have
blowers and the edgers and all that stuff, they have equipment that they use because
they do this all day every day.
They have it down to a science.
They have it down to a system.
Before they get to your house, they know who is going to be edging the yard, who is going
to be doing the blowing, who is going to be doing the aerating and all those things.
They have that all figured out.
It's the same when a house cleaner comes to your house, so for you to show up and say,
"Well, listen, I found this amazing product that my friend recommended to me, and they're
selling this online, and they would like, you know, for me to purchase it every month
or something, so can you use this cleaning product?" for the most part, guess what, the
cleaning products that you're going to find in a multilevel marketing company,
they're fantastic products.
For the most part, they're really, really great.
Most multilevel marketing companies are members of the Direct Selling Association and they
have to go through so many trial-and-errors and tests and vetting and all this stuff in
order to be a part of the Direct Selling Association
and to have their products on a national or international scale.
So most of the products are really good products, quite frankly, but
if you have not been trained in them, then they're not going to work the same for you,
and it's going to cost a whole lot more money for those products because everybody that's
involved in the process along the way makes a little bit of money, so those products are
marked up really high.
Now, my suggestion for you is this.
If there's a customer that insists on you using a product for whatever reason, I would
try to find out from the customer why.
Why are you insisting that you hire me as the professional and I'm showing up as the
expert, and then you have new cleaning supplies that I have not been trained in?
Why is that?
If it's for them to have you sell their products to their other customers and then you become
a distributor and all these things, that's just a sales tactic.
Okay?
That has nothing to do with the cleaning itself.
What you might recommend is, "Hey, when I come, I will do things my way and then, when
I leave, you can maintain everything with the products that you think are so fantastic.
Is that fair?"
Most of them will say yes.
That's like if you had a lawn mowing company come once a month and, when they came, they
used their equipment and then, on the other three weeks, if you mowed your yard yourself
with your own little hand mower, right?
There are ways around that.
Now, there are some products on the market.
I don't want to say that they're inferior, but they don't work as advertised.
And so that's really key to know, and so, in our private Facebook group, and if you're not
a member and you're a professional house cleaner, meaning, you exchange money for house cleaning,
and you are a pro and you're expanding your business and you're learning and all these
things, come to our group and ask people, "Hey, has anybody had a chance using this
product?" because there are products that come up all the time.
"Hey, there's this great new product."
They're like, "No, they have a fancy advertisement, but the product is just crap," and people
will tell you that use it every day because, as house cleaners, we get to be inside people's
homes and we get to try a lot of stuff, and a lot of stuff is just fancy advertising.
Now, there are some stuff on the market, products that, when you try them, you're like, "Oh,
my goodness, this is amazing," and then those also make their way back to the group where
people are like, "Hey, have you checked this out?" and then they get really excited about
it and everybody goes out and they run out and they buy versions of it at their local
supermarket or online or wherever it is, and then they try it out, and they take before
and after pictures, and they post their stories and all these things.
If a customer is insistent on you using their product, first and foremost, find out why.
What is the real motivation behind this?
Is it because you think that the wood furniture that you have can only be treated with this
particular chemical?
If that's the case, maybe they know something about the wood furniture that you don't know,
and so I would hear them out.
I'd say, "Please share with me what it is," and if it's a valid offer, you could certainly
give it a try.
Now, if it's a product that you're unfamiliar with and they insist that you use it and you
want to give it a try, then my suggestion is that you sign some kind of a waiver or
have a disclaimer that, now, I'm using products, and I am not trained on your products, and
so if something malfunctions and it leaves spots or it leaves stains or it removes some
of the varnish or ... I mean, I've heard horror stories over the years.
If it does any of these things, then I'm not responsible and my insurance doesn't kick
in and buy you a new sofa, because there are people who will insist that you use a particular
cleaning chemical with the intention of suing you for, I don't know, money or whatever.
There are some people out there that do things like this, but if they sign a waiver that
says they are fully responsible, that takes that option off the table, so, yes, you can,
you can try new things, and as an ever growing, ever learning house cleaner, I've loved trying
new products especially if it's not at my expense.
The worst thing is, if I got to out and buy 30 new bottles of something, to try them all out.
If a customer has something and they're like, "Hey, try this out," that might be my new
favorite thing.
There was a lady that turned me on to SprayWay.
It's a glass cleaner.
It's just foam, and there are a lot of opportunities to use that when it makes more sense than
using a regular spray, and as soon as I saw it, I was like, "Where have I been?
This is amazing," right?
There are customers that have some really great things that they will introduce you
to and, as a house cleaner, you get to try them out, so just be smart about the opportunities
and make sure that you cover your bases so that you don't have a lawsuit waiting around
the next corner.
That's my two cents for today.
Alrighty, until we meet again, leave the world a cleaner place than when you found it.
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