Cleaning Franchise Hires Operations Director

Mike Hanrahan, left, and Graeme Pirie

A Maid2Clean franchisee has been appointed operations director at the company.

Graeme Pirie can combine the two roles as his cleaning franchise is established enough to operate without his day-to-day presence dealing with clients and and cleaners, something
many franchisees aspire to achieve.

Mike Hanrahan appointed an operations director as the business had grown so large that a dedicated person was now essential if franchisees were to receive adequate support. And he surmised that no better contender could be found than an existing franchisee.

Expertise

“Our franchisees will already know that Graeme Pirie is Maid2Clean’s most successful franchisee to date, and that he has demonstrated exceptional managerial and technical expertise in growing his own business consistently by around 200 clients per year over the last four years,” says Mike.

Graeme will provide in-depth start-up training to new franchisees and ongoing training and support to existing Maid2Clean businesses.

Many Maid2Clean franchisees already know Graeme well and believe that, as an experienced franchisee he’ll know exactly how to support them.

Graeme joined Maid2Clean in January 2005 and four years on he has a business with over 800
clients and a turnover exceeding £250k. He believes the experience gained during that time will be helpful to other franchisees.

“I realise that everyone has different aspirations for their business – some will be happy with the growth and performance they already achieve while others may appreciate some additional support. Naturally we want to focus our support on those who want to grow their businesses further.

“There are some initial changes we’re putting in place mainly to simplify some of the activities we do and to enable us to focus on making money.”

From 1 June Maid2Clean will have streamlined the system through which franchisees submit their monthly returns and it will has the facility to email their results directly. A copy email will be sent to their own email address so they have a permanent record and can reconcile their accounts easily.

Maid2Clean will also restart the NML fund. Initially they envisage using this to pay for remote access software, so that they can assist you remotely without the franchisees having to create and pay for their own remote account.

They are also going to fund the website completely, so there’ll be no need for franchisees to pay for this directly.

Optimisation work on the main website will commence shortly and they will also be providing help and advice for any franchisee who wants to do carry out SEO (search engine optimisation), directly on their individual sites.

The best news is that Maid2Clean are going to drastically change the “NML Burden”. They know it’s not very welcome (although it is necessary), so rather than add to the monthly fees, for the foreseeable future they are setting it at a standard level of £15 per franchisee per month by mandate, well below the contractual obligation.

It will not be payable by new franchisees in their first 12 months of trading.

A separate account will be set up for this and Maid2Clean will inform them of the details shortly.

Graeme wants to be able to email all franchisees each month with a summary of the progress
made, but the main activity will, of course, be ongoing support where it’s needed.

Based in the Midlands, Graeme is within reasonable reach of most Maid2Clean franchisees.

The franchise model is robust and has proven it can be successfully replicated by almost anyone, anywhere. But the biggest strength is the wide range of skills across the business which Graeme aims to share across the entire network.

“I’d like all maid2Clean franchisees to ask themselves just one question: ‘Am I happy with the growth and performance of my business?’ If the answer is no, please get in touch.”