How to Start a Cleaning Business the RIGHT Way

If starting a cleaning business tells the whole world you have a DREAM – starting a cleaning business the ‘right way’ tells the business world you have a PLAN. A plan means you intend not only to be in business, but that you intend to be successful.

You may have already taken steps to get bonded and insured. You may have already designed your logo and printed up your business cards. You may have even decided which type of ‘green’ products you’re going to use when you clean.

You may feel you’re all set, ready to go. But feeling ‘ready to go’, and being ‘ready to be succeed’… are two very different things.

Being ‘ready to succeed’ in the cleaning business has LESS to do with logos, business cards, insurance and cleaning chemicals and MORE to do with having an effective plan for finding, landing and keeping profitable cleaning jobs.

I know, you may be thinking, “Easier said than done.” Sure, but, all really important things are.

So, what can you do? What do you need to look at? What do you need to plan for?

While there’s no guarantee of success in any business venture, you can greatly improve your chances of being successful in your cleaning business, by looking at, and making plans for, some of the most important parts of owning and operating a cleaning business.

Finding, Landing & Keeping Profitable Cleaning Jobs

In a nutshell, your success will depend to a great degree on… your ability to find, land and keep profitable cleaning jobs. So, let’s take a look at each one of these critical parts.

Let’s start with – Finding
While it’s tempting to think all prospects are the same – they’re not.

Some accounts are hard to get clean and hard to keep clean. Some customers are hard to get happy and even harder to keep happy. Some accounts are hard to get profitable and even harder to keep making money. You get the idea.

On the other hand, some accounts are easy to staff and keep staffed. Some are easy to clean and keep looking that way. Some customers tend to be more reasonable, more cooperative and more loyal than others. And some jobs are profitable right from the beginning and tend to stay that way. Now those sound great, don’t they?

That’s right, you probably guessed already – one challenge is figuring out which is which; namely FINDING out who the good ones are likely to be as well as who you might want to steer clear of.

That’s really the ‘trick’ -finding out not only who they are, but where they are, and how to get to them. Call it prospecting; call it target marketing. Whatever you call it – at the end of the day, it means having a good reason for who you decide to clean – and a plan for how to get a ‘list’ of them that ‘fit the bill’.

Ok, next – Landing
After knowing who you want to clean and how to reach them comes the challenging, yet exciting, work of getting them to want to hire you.

That’s right, once you’ve found your prospect, LANDING them requires a marketing plan that attracts them – and a selling strategy that moves them to take action – to make a decision – to hire you.

And finally- Keeping
If you want to start a successful cleaning business, you’ll want to develop a plan for KEEPING the jobs you land.

Businesses who go ‘all out’ in the beginning to find and land jobs, only to turn around and quickly lose many of them by not delivering quality cleaning and pro-active customer service, may find themselves simply chasing ‘their own tail”- endlessly having to find new customers to replace the ones that keep getting away; all for lack of a concrete plan of how to KEEP them.

Logos, business cards, insurance, chemicals and equipment are all well and good; but, if you want to start a successful cleaning business the right way, consider this:

Right from the start, the more time you put into developing detailed PLANS for finding, landing and keeping profitable cleaning jobs – the better!