What my cleaning service provider taught me about conquering a saturated market

Photo credit: Pixabay.

I had coffee last month with my friend, Jane, who runs a video production company. Jane employs 14 people—engineers, designers, and production specialists —and hires a freelance crew for shoots. But she told me that one of her toughest management challenges had nothing to do with overseeing staff, finding clients, or producing stellar video content.

“For the longest time,” Jane said, “I couldn’t keep our office clean.”

Jane tried three well-established cleaning services but none built a track record of reliability, punctuality, and great service. Then, one morning as she arrived at work, she noticed a colorful flyer advertising cleaning services. “Oh right, another one,” Jane thought. But she was desperate, so she dialed the phone number.

A woman named Debbie answered. Debbie had just started her company, so she had no website, and, unlike more established vendors, no fleet of logo-clad automobiles.

“All I have is my hard work,” Debbie told Jane, “and my desire to build a business people will love.”

3 lessons every entrepreneur can learn from Debbie

Today, Jane’s office is spotless. Of course, I asked for Debbie’s number, and now her staff clean our offices.

As a client, I was beyond thrilled. As an entrepreneur, I was intrigued by her success. After all, when I founded Worldwide101, the market for virtual assistants already had several well-heeled players. So, our predicament was not unlike Debbie’s.

The more I’ve learned about her approach to business, the more I realized it was similar to what had worked not only for our company but for other upstart competitors I know who have successfully conquered crowded markets:

1. Make the most of your Day 1 advantage by uncovering new customer pain. 

Unlike other cleaning services, which seem to take offense when you give them feedback, Debbie checks in every few months to ask if there’s anything her team can do better. She does that consistently even if the feedback has been good and there is seemingly no need to check in.

That reminded me of Jeff Bezos’ recent annual letter to Amazon shareholders, where he wrote that he tries to instill the idea that it’s always Day 1. This means that everyone, to some degree, acts as if Amazon is a brand-new startup. As he says in the letter, established players become vulnerable when they slip into Day 2 mentality:

Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.