It’s time to start selling janitorial services when an individual has built the foundations of their cleaning business by organising the entity, obtaining appropriate tools, and deciding on a marketing strategy. The core procedures and time limits for obtaining customer accounts are relatively identical, regardless of which sectors a firm chooses to serve or the cleaning programs they offer. However, there are some common factors that all office cleaning business owners should think about.
Cleaning companies are all concerned with how to obtain and maintain cleaning contracts. You could be a brand-new startup or an established company with a large market share, but the goal is the same: sign more long-term contracts.
We’ve been offering tips on how to establish and run cleaning businesses for years. Time and time again, one core idea appears to emerge. Repeat customers are the best kind of customers, so put your money into securing long-term contracts with them and keeping them pleased. It makes no difference whether you work for a commercial cleaning firm or have home clients.
Because it’s far more cost-effective to keep an existing customer than to attract a new one, your priority should be to figure out how to get long-term cleaning contracts. Here are three practical suggestions to help you land more business.
What facilities to clean
First and foremost, you must decide what type of facility you want to target, and it’s crucial to consider how facilities and industries differ while making this decision. Light industrial or manufacturing facilities, for example, are likely to demand a lower degree of service than a medical office or daycare center. The cleaning of the building must adapt to the organization’s changing needs. An organisation concerned with the wellbeing of babies will have quite different requirements than one tasked with the distribution of cardboard boxes.
Consider your abilities, strengths, and shortcomings as you consider the types of consumers you want to seek. Identifying your ideal clients begins with understanding what expertise best complements your skillset. Some businesses may not require or desire regular janitorial services, but they may require special event cleaning following an office party. Special event cleaning contracts, like recurrent commercial cleaning contracts, will have a wide range of requirements, and the entrepreneur must pick which of these prospects to pursue.
To offer and price your cleaning contracts, you’ll need to create a menu of the services your office cleaning firm wants to give. Variables like how often you plan to provide service per week or month will affect your time commitment and the cost your customers will pay for your services. One thing to think about is how much cleaning you want to do on a nightly, weekly, or monthly basis.
For example, you might include weekly high dusting in your cleaning contracts, or you could include high dusting every night. In the second scenario, your cleaning business will devote considerable time at the client’s facility performing high-dusting tasks, increasing your overall costs – which should be carried on to the customer.
How to get cleaning contracts
1. Traditional sales channels
It’s time to start selling contracts after you’ve identified your ideal consumer, selected which geographic areas to target, and outlined your service offers. Picking up the phone and dialing, sometimes known as cold calling, has long been the most productive and cost-effective method of obtaining commercial cleaning contracts. If you already have a network of local business owners or office managers, using that network to start selling is a terrific place to start.
You can ask satisfied customers to suggest you to other firms in their building, network, or industry once you’ve built up a customer base. Referrals from friends and family are a powerful statement of confidence in your company, and they enable selling contracts to potential clients much simpler. Cold calling, networking, and client referrals can assist you in getting your firm off the ground, but they can’t guarantee long-term, continuous success.
2. Marketing a cleaning business
If you want to build a huge consumer base, you’ll need to put in more marketing effort. Fliers and pamphlets are a tried-and-true, low-cost way to get the word out about your cleaning business. Another effective strategy to get customer contracts is contacting and creating connections with real estate agents and property managers.
Cleaning contracts can also be sold through classified ads in newspapers, which are far less expensive than major newspaper ads. A digital marketing plan is essential in the internet age to be a serious contender in the commercial cleaning sector. Businesses are increasingly using the internet to discover and employ experienced cleaners.
Winning customer contracts requires a well-established online presence, and the foundation of that presence is the creation of a website for your cleaning company. A good website will highlight your service offerings, present information about your company, and tell your brand’s narrative. Make sure your website has contact information – incoming web traffic is expected to have many contract opportunities.
3. Make booking and quoting easy
If you wish to close more high-quality sales, think about how easy or tough it is for customers to work with you. How fast does it take them to receive a precise quote or schedule a job on your calendar? Your website should make it crystal clear how potential clients should go about doing business with you. Contact information should be prominent, but it’s much better if you have cleaning business software that allows for online booking.
Online booking can save both your consumer and your sales staff time, but the advantages don’t end there. The job is added to your schedule, and a customer record is created when they book online. It is also possible to arrange future jobs or frequent visits. Your software tool saves your customer history, including any precise notes you make about their preferences or specific places over time.
Maintaining that sort of customer relationship database and allowing it to impact how you engage with that customer over time can greatly improve the customer experience while also saving your team time. It will be more difficult for a competitor to meddle if you discover more about them.
If you want to discover how to secure long-term cleaning contracts, research the best ways to market those contracts. This can be accomplished in a variety of methods, all of which will aid your long-term development.
You may train your sales or call center representatives on how to sell subscription packages. You can help close the sale by offering incentives like repeat customer discounts or bonus services, but you won’t sell them until you ask. Ascertain that your team is having these types of conversations with consumers, informing them of their possibilities for longer-term contracts.
Another thing you may do is evaluate your present performance and look for methods to improve. How quickly does it take for an inquiry to become a signed contract with a customer? How many interactions does your sales staff have with them before they make a decision? What closing questions may you ask to entice a customer to make a decision sooner? How many opportunities are you missing out on due to your follow-up timeframes or accessibility? Examining the measurements of your previous performance can help you boost your company’s earnings. It’s possible that you don’t need additional leads; instead, you merely need to increase your ability to land the correct contract.
Conclusion
How can you find cleaning contracts? It primarily entails three steps: identifying opportunities, developing a professional brand, and providing high-quality cleaning services.
Having a few cleaning contracts can greatly simplify your life. It’s a lot better than walking out into the field every week seeking work.
At the end of the day, a company’s performance has been defined by how much and how frequently it can sell. Building, growing, and maintaining a lucrative commercial cleaning business requires consistency above all things. As a result, any business owner who wants to profit should put procedures for sales, marketing, and collections in place.
The first steps in running a successful commercial cleaning firm are determining your service offerings and identifying your target consumer and market. You’ll need to establish a marketing strategy to get consumer cleaning contracts, as well as a system to price contracts, issue bids, and collect money from clients. Obtaining and keeping cleaning contracts is no easy endeavor, but a commercial cleaning business may give a hungry entrepreneur a steady and reliable income with the correct tools in place.