cleaning franchise

crazyangel_2

Currently I am working in an office which is very stressful and it's making me ill. I have considered a cleaning franchise; does anyone have any experience good or bad about them please.

patman99

Why bother with a franchise?. You will be paying them for the use of their name for as long as you are a franchisee.

A franchise will always incurr a start-up fee as well.

You could always set your own Limited Co. up (businesses will always choose a proper Ltd co. over a sole trader when it comes to b2b stuff).
Print and deliver a load of flyers to potential customers.

You can always get free publicity by sending out a press release.
If you sign up to 'Streetlife' you occassionally get people wanting cleaners, so you can pick up customers that way as well.

makeyourdaddyproud

crazyangel wrote: »

Currently I am working in an office which is very stressful and it's making me ill. I have considered a cleaning franchise; does anyone have any experience good or bad about them please.

Why are you under the illusion that running your own business is somehow less stressful? How is the workplace making you ill - is the people or the work?

You haven't been detailed enough for anyone to offer an insight into your woes and to suggest some ideas.

Unless you have some good sales and presentation skills including proving to prospective clients you're in someway better than the oodles of veteran cleaning companies out there, you are doomed to fail.

Believing that a franchise, rather that starting with our own company, proves to me how ill-thought out your pitch is. Have you written a business plan? How will you pay for the franchise? Can you insure against the sickness you seem prone to?

[Deleted User]

Before going forward with this idea, either as a franchisee or just as a self employed business, please look into it properly.

As far as I can see, cleaning is a very difficult area to make a decent living at. Personally, I'd start off with an agency, take advantage of any training they offer, get to know the business and then think about doing it on your own. Perhaps you could do a part time job in something else, and work as a cleaner with an agency so all your eggs aren't in one basket.

HappyMJ

crazyangel wrote: »

Currently I am working in an office which is very stressful and it's making me ill. I have considered a cleaning franchise; does anyone have any experience good or bad about them please.

Franchises are very expensive.

You don't actually do any cleaning. Your job is to find customers and then find and employ cleaners to work for your clients under your brand name. You raise an invoice to the customer and you run a payroll to pay your staff members.

You will be running a business hiring cleaners to carry out an unskilled job for you. You will barely clear enough profit to exceed NMW after expenses. Most of your turnover will be paid out as fees and expenses and you are left with the crumbs.

How many cleaners would you need to manage for you to clear NMW for your management skills? 10? 20? Or more? It's a lot of work for little reward.

One company says you should be turning over £10,000 per month. You would need at least 10 part time cleaners on your payroll to turn over that much. You need a mixture of full time and part time staff as well as flexible staff. The best way to manage the work the clients require to be done is to have different members of staff cleaning each week at the client site so it's easier to schedule holidays and sickness. Each client might have 3 or 4 regular cleaners but they won't know who will turn up each day or week. Your employee's have to ask you for time off so you have to change the schedule around so the client is unaware your employee is on holiday. They would always have the impression that your employees work 365 days a year.