How should a janitorial business prepare a cleaning bid?

There are two parts to the answer. One deals with the outline you use to demonstrate professionalism; the other deals with the message you send to create interest. Both are important.

Let’s tackle the outline issue first. Any professional cleaning bid or janitorial proposal should cover a variety of important topics. These topics should be organized into a logical order so the building owner or property manager can quickly and easily get clear answers to their basic questions.

What questions?

Well, the primary ones include: Who are you? What do you offer? How are you qualified or experienced for this job? What does your cleaning plan for them consist of in the areas of service schedule, job specifications and task frequencies, etc. What systems, policies or procedures do you have in place to guarantee your work?

Other topics needing to be explained in detail in a cleaning bid include invoicing, supplies, equipment, and insurances, as well as, references, length of the agreement and provisions for cancellation.

And finally, a cleaning bid should have, whenever possible, insurance certificates, list of references and detailed supporting reports.

Your cleaning bid should follow standard formats building owners, property managers and purchasing agents look for when sizing up the professionalism of service contractors. For example, customized cover pages and cover letters provide unique opportunities to demonstrate your attention to details about the company you are bidding on.

The outline or structure of a cleaning bid should be clean, thorough, easy to understand and accurate. It should also be without grammatical or spelling errors to further reinforce their opinion of you as a professional with an attention to detail.

The second part of the answer to the question of how you should prepare a cleaning bid is this – the message. What message you send to your prospective janitorial customer in your bid is even more important than the layout of the proposal.

In some important ways, your cleaning bid becomes you, or at least represents you, during those times in the sales process when you cannot physically be with your prospect to explain the program, answer their questions or handle their objections.

From the cover letter to the last section of the proposal, you are sending a message whether you know it or not. That message is what creates or destroys their interest in you and your cleaning business. It is a big opportunity. It is a big responsibility. You want to be sure you’re sending the right message.

What is that right message?

It is the message of why your cleaning business, more than any other, is the best answer or solution to the customer’s cleaning questions and problems. If the outline is about the ‘look’, your message is about the ‘substance’.

Your message should consist of all the important ‘things’ that defines your company – makes you who you are. Hopefully, who you are, is different than your competition in important ways that will powerfully attract your prospects to want to do business with your cleaning company.

What goes into the message?

Well, lots of things, but mostly it should be the procedures, policies and most importantly systems that allow you to consistently deliver the kind of cleaning you say you can deliver.

Prospective customers want more than promises. If the message in your cleaning bid makes it clear you have the necessary systems in place to deliver on the commitments you make in critical areas such as cleaning quality and customer service, you will have gone a long way in proving your case.

Your message shouldn’t be limited to only one or a few sections of your cleaning bid, but should instead be reflected in your wording used and explanations given throughout the proposal. For example, commitments to quality and service apply to how you handle cleaning supplies and equipment as much as they do to how your people are trained and supervised. Your cleaning prospects need to see and read about it in every part of your cleaning bid.

So, how should you prepare a cleaning bid?

The answer lies in having a powerful value message that attracts prospects delivered in a professionally formatted cleaning bid that convinces them of your commitment to that message.

How did we get here?

Small hurdles that go along with a slowing economy became bigger as the recession worsened. Finding new jobs became harder for many as building owners and managers raced to find ways to cut costs. And other challenges became more pronounced in reaction to the economic pull back.

For example, the use of illegal workers by unscrupulous contractors and the low-balling antics of empty-promising janitorial franchises and national cleaning management companies made things even worse.

Today, in the face of these mounting problems, many a frustrated, hard working janitorial business owner can be heard asking the question:

“How can I find and land and keep profitable cleaning jobs when I have to compete with ridiculously low prices being offered to building owners and managers desperately looking to cut costs.”

It’s a fair question.

The good news is there is an answer. The bad news is it’s not as easy as ‘flipping a switch’.

The answer is found in fundamentally changing the ‘contract cleaning equation’. If you believe the commonly held belief that building owners and managers only care about low-price… then the crude strategy of simply cutting your price may be the logical answer. Not profitable, but at least logical.

We suggest a better answer can be found in fundamentally changing the ‘contract cleaning equation’ from one focused on price to one focused on value.

When ‘business as usual’ isn’t working…maybe it’s time for ‘business unusual’. And what is ‘unusual’ in the janitorial business is a bold, well-reasoned and equally well-planned effort to break potential customers loose from their negative, entrenched ideas about contract cleaning.

And what ideas are those?

Well, that’s easy. You can hear it in the words and actions of some short sighted building owners and managers who make it clear what they believe about contract cleaning companies, namely, that ‘They’re all the same…so I might as well find the cheapest one’.

Well, if you let them get away with this mentality, or worse yet, buy into it yourself, there may little hope in keeping you from getting washed away with all the other ‘lowest price’ guys who aimlessly fight with each other over unprofitable jobs.

But, you don’t have to.

The good news is in 2010 and beyond, janitorial business can take steps to change how they are viewed in the marketplace – which can change their results.

Specifically, commercial cleaning contractors can:

1. Identify what their prospects want most of all

2. Find (create) creative ways (systems) to deliver it

3. Find (create) ways to measure and track it

4. Be willing to guarantee they’ll deliver it

5. Promote the message consistently and effectively

While the steps are simple the process is not.

1. Identify it. Finding out what prospective customers really want is not always easy or obvious. What sounds like a desire for ‘low price’ may actually be masking an even greater need for someone to offer ‘high value’.

For example, what they really may want is to know they won’t fall victim to the old ‘trash and dash’ routine of many unprofessional cleaner contractors they may have used in the past, who may have, for example, started off cleaning 5 hrs. a night, only to end up running through the job in just 2 hrs. just a few short weeks later.

2. Create it. To stick with our example; simply hoping your employees will put in the necessary budgeted hours simply because you scheduled them… may NOT be enough. You may need to create a daily system for watching or monitoring the actual hours spent cleaning per night.

3. Measure it. Knowing hours have dropped doesn’t fix anything unless you have a system to track the hours and make adjustments to ensure they get the value they deserve and paid for. For example, if you discovered the Monday’s actual cleaning hours were low, you could increase Wednesday’s or Friday’s hours that week.

4. Guarantee it. Saying it is one thing, guaranteeing it is another. Stepping up to offer a strong guarantee puts you firmly in the ranks of those professional cleaning contractors who are willing to stand behind their work.

5. Promote it. None of the above will matter… if no one knows about it. It’s been suggested that each of us has an ‘invisible horn around our neck’…and as the old saying goes ‘You need to pick up your horn and blow it yourself… because no one else may do it for you.’ Bottom line: You’ve got to get your message to the decision makers at the buildings you want to clean.

Are you a janitorial business wanting to succeed in 2010 and beyond?

Change how you are viewed in the marketplace by creating, delivering and promoting more value. The five steps above are a good place to start.

Well, not necessarily – not if you can’t figure out how to use it, don’t know or can’t find the data it requires to work and certainly not if it doesn’t get you the results you want. In that case, free may actually be costing you!

How can I say that? The very sound of the word ‘FREE’ is appealing, isn’t it?

To explain how, consider this old cliché: “You get what you pay for!”
These words express time-tested wisdom – specifically, the connection between the value of ‘something’ and what you paid for that ‘something’.

So, does this sage advice hold true for free janitorial bidding calculators? Well, if the limitations of many of these bidding tools are any indication, it does.

First, some rely on over-simplified, one-size fits all production rates or price per sq. ft. figures which produce, of course, equally oversimplified answers. And that’s where ‘free’ can cost cleaning business owners real money, especially if it leads to them setting prices that are either too low – not having sufficient profit built into it, or too high – keeping them from being competitive when bidding on commercial cleaning jobs.

Next, other free janitorial bidding calculators do not come pre-loaded with production rates at all, relying on the user to both know and manually enter their own task-specific cleaning times or overall production rates.

While janitorial contractors may benefit from conducting their own cleaning time studies, the reality is many, especially those new to the commercial cleaning business, have not done so and would feel ill-prepared to even offer answers to the question of what would constitute ‘good’ or reasonable rates.

In the end, many of these calculators appear to be little more than excel spreadsheets and with the only bidding help seeming to be – having the title ‘Janitorial Bidding Calculator’ pre-written at the top.

In addition, many free janitorial bidding calculators or software programs can be hard to understand and even harder to use. Again, one has to question the real value of ‘free’ when the user is left feeling the program either doesn’t ‘work’ or, at the very least, they can’t figure out how to make it ‘work’. Even ‘free’ cannot rescue something that is, at the very least, not user-friendly or at its worst, not useable at all.

Put differently; what is the value of a free janitorial bidding calculator or software program that does not adequately help the user to quickly and easily determine prices and generate professional looking proposals?

Not much.

Many of these free janitorial bidding software or calculators have other weakness as well. They may offer little or no technical or customer support. In addition, they may not be able to help generate a professional-looking proposal or job specifications report – two important ingredients in the contract cleaning sales process.

Therefore, many of these calculators may simply be free and that’s all; worth what was paid for them.

Well, for the owner of a janitorial business, serious about building a fast-growing and profitable cleaning business, that simply won’t do. Instead, the owners of successful janitorial businesses, and those wanting to join their ranks, know they need tools that can give them the results they’re looking for.

Is cost is an issue? Sure; but only in the context of the value (i.e. results) the tool can deliver.

To explain, here’s another cliché to consider:

‘Don’t step over dollars… to pick up dimes’. The sage advice expressed in this cliché is… to be careful of blindly chasing one ‘thing’ while completely missing another ‘thing’ of greater value in the process.

In the case of janitorial bidding, the lesson seems to be this:

Don’t lose sight of the real value of paid programs, blindly chasing instead, after ‘free’ calculators that produce little more than confusion.

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!

If you’ve been in the cleaning business for even a short time – you may have caught yourself asking this, or at least can remember hearing another well-intentioned, but frustrated, janitorial business owners ask it…. as they desperately tried to figure out what to bid on a cleaning job.

Actually, you may have heard a slight variation of it which goes something like, “What’s the going rate for pricing cleaning in my city?” But, no matter which way you’ve heard it – the question is pretty clear.

People want to know the simple ‘one-number’ answer to how much they should charge per square foot for their cleaning services.

They want to hear an answer, like 9 cents/ sq. ft. You see, that way they could just take the size of the building, multiply it by the square foot rate, and they’d have their price.

No fuss, no muss.

So, if that’s what they want, why not just go ahead and give it to them. I mean, someone’s got to know the answer to what seems like a pretty basic question, right?

Ok, hang on, I’ll answer the question. But, first, we’ve got to look at a couple things – ‘real quick’, because everything’s got to be – ‘real quick’; right?

Sorry, if that sounded harsh…but I had to do it. You see, I need to make an important point. And it’s this:

Anybody can give you a quick answer. The neighborhood kid that mows lawns and delivers the paper can give you a quick answer.

Now, of course, he doesn’t know anything about janitorial work. He doesn’t know how long it should take to clean a building. He doesn’t know how to price jobs so that you end up being competitive, yet profitable.

Nope, he doesn’t know any of that ‘stuff’, but, if you’re in a hurry… he may be more than happy to give you a quick, ‘one-number’, answer.

Obviously, you don’t just need a quick answer. You need a good answer; one that make sense; one that is based on the building you’re bidding on.

Cleaning a large, heavily used, fitness club seven nights a week is different than cleaning a very small, lightly used, lawyer’s office twice week. It just is.

And if you use the same “going rate’ to figure out the price to charge for both of these jobs – you may not be happy with where it takes you.

So, what should you do?

Well, for cleaning jobs that you’re going to do on a regular basis, for example three times a week, what you need is an estimate of the cleaning time per day. From there, you can begin to set your price.

Fortunately, some of today’s janitorial bidding software programs, including ones that are now available online, offer easy and, yes, relatively quick, ways for you, not only to get a cleaning time per day figure, but get other ‘things’ you’re going to want, like professional-looking proposal formats to deliver to your prospective customer.

Cleaning business owners are not the bad guys here. Sure, they shouldn’t have relied on either guesstimating or oversimplified, one-size-fits-all square foot rates…but they may have felt they had no choice.

For a long time, there were not many good answers. Many cleaning businesses may have found what was available to be too complicated, too expensive, too time consuming or all of the above.

But, that’s been changing.

Today, there are a number of off-line, and now, online, janitorial bidding and workloading software programs that give cleaning business owners what they’ve always needed:

Not a quick answer to one question – “What’s the going rate to bid cleaning contracts?” but, instead, good answers to a couple very good questions – “How long should this building take to clean? and “How much should I charge if I want to be competitive and profitable?

Developing a set of powerful Measurable Guarantees of Performance, specific service commitments which your company stand behind 100%, may be the single most important thing you can do to quickly move your cleaning business ahead of the competition… and out of the “lowest price trap”

What’s that? What is the “lowest price trap”?

Well, simply put, it’s the misguided and reckless strategy of chasing after your competitors by lowering your prices below what’s reasonable or profitable, in order to win the job or land the account!

It’s easy to fall into if you feel your only way to get and then keep work is by doing the same work for less.

But, it’s not

Your MGP’s or Measurable Guarantees of Performance are the reasons why you’re different than the rest of the low-balling pack.

You don’t offer the “same” service. You offer a better service… and you’re willing to guarantee it!

MGP’s create value for your customers. Prospects are willing to pay more for businesses who offer more … value!

Taking the time to create your own unique MGP’s will allow you to quickly move the conversation from PRICE to VALUE. And that’s where you want to be.

By the way, if your experience ends up being anything even close to ours, you have little to fear in offering these bold MGPs;

Your worst nightmares of customers lined up to “pounce” on you to take advantage of your generous guarantees by demanding refunds… are seldom realized.

And an occasional refund having to be paid to a customer, where you did, if fact, drop the ball, may be a good thing now and again – a ‘wake-up’ call to keep you on your toes, force you to re-evaluate your systems and avoid ever becoming complacent.

Plus, the cost of an occasional refund should be far outweighed by the incredible customer satisfaction, loyalty and referral business resulting from the strong guarantees you promote, and the systems you use to make them possible.

Frankly, over our many years in business, we probably didn’t have more than a handful of clients who either legitimately deserved a refund due to our mistake (which we gladly credited them for), or on their own actually called us to take us up on any of our powerful guarantees.

In reality, human nature generally shows that the great majority of customers are not waiting anxiously to “hold your feet to the fire” to demand a refund; on the contrary, most want things to work out between the two of you.

How can cleaning businesses find more jobs? Again, start by creating more value.

Things have changed.

You know it. We know it. And every janitorial business out there today can see and feel it.

What is it? It’s simply this… the old ways of growing a successful service business simply DON’T work any more.

For example, years ago, when we started our janitorial-cleaning business, nearly anyone could do pretty well for themselves and have a sizable customer list, just by knocking on doors, word of mouth and, of course, delivering a reliable service.

Really, it was really about that simple.

Growth and profitability were within relatively easy reach; hard work and a good reputation would get you more accounts and at prices… that made you money!

Not any more.

Today, when commercial cleaning businesses desperate to find new jobs, send out brochures or post cards with yesterday’s marketing messages such “We’re bonded, licensed and insured!”, they’re likely to hear only the deafening sound of silence in response.

That’s right, little no interest at all, and a blank stare from their prospective business clients, who simply demand more today.

Specifically, more value.

And when we’re talking about service type businesses, like cleaning, you can define value, to a great degree, in terms of being able to guarantee a measureable level of performance or service.

It may be how many hours it takes you to respond to a service request, how little variation you’ll allow your actual cleaning times to vary from your budgeted cleaning times, but no matter the part of the business you’re talking about, it generally has to do with what we call Measureable Guarantees of Performance.

Creating Measurable Guarantees of Performance

As buyers, we are all the same.

We are looking for someone who can show they have real answers to our real problems… and be willing to guarantee it!

We call these real answers – Measurable Guarantees of Performance or MGP’s for short.

Over the years, we’ve read a number of other marketers explain similar concepts called USP’s, which stands for Unique Selling Propositions or UCA’s, which stands for Unique Competitive Advantages.

But, we prefer our term, MGP, for a couple important reasons:

1. MGPs emphasize the importance of MEASUREMENT. Anyone can make broad claims. Measurable ones are more difficult to create, let alone guarantee. But that’s why they’re so much more powerful and effective.

2. MGPs emphasize the importance of GUARANTEE. This speaks for itself. You might say you’ll do something, but will you stand behind it?… with your checkbook if necessary!

3. MGPs emphasize the importance of PERFORMANCE. And in the service business that’s where, as they say, the “rubber hits the road” – namely, performance.

Here’s an example of an MGP from the cleaning industry dealing with the important topic of quality:

Our Quality Guarantee:

“You’ll Be 100% Delighted With The Quality Of Each Cleaning Visit…
or it’s FREE”*

*That’s right! To guarantee you get the quality of cleaning you deserve, your building will be inspected after each visit using our fast, yet effective, “QC Check” form, which will be graded, faxed to our office and placed on your desk. If you disagree with a daily “grade”, or feel you were not cleaned properly on any visit… it’s FREE!

Bold?…Yes!

Hard to create the systems required to support making this kind of strong statement and guarantee?

Absolutely! But think about this for a minute…

How different would your company be if you could offer a set of 3, 5, or more of these MGPs hitting on every single one of the most important “answers” to problems your prospects are desperately looking for?

That’s right – very different!

How can cleaning businesses find more jobs? Start by creating more value.

Well, frankly, they need to have an ‘answer’ to this question from their customers:

“Why should I continue to do business with you when I’ve got your competitors promising me fantastic cleaning at unbelievably low prices?”

Well, each independent cleaning business has to answer that question for their individual company. But, in the end, the answer has to make one thing clear:

How you are different from your competitors, and how that difference benefits customers by delivering them more value, better value. It needs to make sense and it needs to really matter.

For example, let’s say a building owner asks why they should stick with me, rather than switch to one of my aggressive pricing, over-promising competitors.

Rather than begging them to stay out of loyalty, pleading with them to stay because we’re ‘bonded licensed and insured’, or worse yet, out of fear, and in a knee-jerk reaction, weakly negotiating with them to stay, by saying we’ll lower our price to whatever price the ‘other guy’ is offering, – what if I said the following, instead:

“Mr. Customer, I understand what you’re asking, and I understand your reasons for asking it. It’s tough out there and if there’s some way you could save a bunch of money and still get good cleaning – I realize you have to consider it for the sake of the building you own or manage. It makes complete sense.

But, you know me, and I’m here to tell it to you straight. I’m proud that you’ve been our customer for quite a while now; you know that, and I would never do anything to jeopardize the trust you have in me.

Now, I know how long it takes to clean this building properly three nights a week. I can show you based on the cleaning you require and the frequency of that cleaning, plus our experience in handling the cleaning for some time now, how long it takes to perform that work properly.

And I want you to know that we can always work together to reduce some of those duties if you’d like to in order to lower your monthly cost.

But, whether you decide to change the duties or not, I want you to know about some of the powerful systems in place which allows us to make and live up to a number of important guarantees, about how we get and keep your building looking good. These are the ‘things’ that make us different and bring our customers value.

You can see the results in the appearance of your building and hear the results in the comments from your employees and tenants.

I’d like to review just one of those important guarantees today.

Now, we know from work loading this job that it takes approximately 6 hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday evening to clean your building properly. And our experience in cleaning your building over the last year confirms this time.

As you can imagine, that time can vary, let’s say, 10 or 15 minutes one way or the other, based on conditions; one night we may save a little time, other nights we may need to take a little longer, for example, if there’s been a ‘pizza party’ to clean up after, that kind of thing, but surely, not by an hour or two.

Now, I’m sure you’ve heard about cleaning companies that promise the ‘moon and the stars’ when it comes to cleaning and for a low price too. But when it got right down to it they did little more than empty the trash, put out some toilet paper and, if you’re lucky, run the vacuum a little – basically a ‘trash and dash’. It’s amateur stuff, but it happens all too often.

Well, frankly, that’s not us. That’s not what we’re about. I know what you need and my job has always been to make sure you get it. Not once, but all the time.

Which brings me to the system and the guarantee:

We check the amount of cleaning time you get each visit and we make sure every week you get at least the total weekly budgeted number, no less, in actual cleaning hours, or that week of cleaning is FREE.

That’s how committed we are to doing right by you. We make sure you get what you need the first week – and every week.”

Now, how’s that for an answer to the question, “How are you different?” or “Why should I keep doing business with you?”

Independent cleaning business can once again become the strong presence in the marketplace they once were, but only if they begin to take strong proactive step to offer real answers to address the very real problems faced by today’s customers.

And you’d be right to wonder. You see the world of janitorial work, or if you prefer, commercial cleaning, doesn’t look the same anymore.

Independent cleaning businesses – the ones that decide to own and operate their own cleaning business without financially ‘handcuffing’ themselves to a franchise, used to ‘reign supreme’.

That’s right; independent cleaning businesses used to be the ‘backbone’ of this important industry. Building owners and property managers alike turned regularly to their local, trusted, independent cleaning companies when it came time to arrange for someone to maintain their building’s appearance.

Why?

Well, customers were happy because they could count on getting quality cleaning and reliable service from cleaning people they knew, liked and trusted.

Employees were happy because they were given enough time to deliver quality cleaning; the kind they could be proud of, not embarrassed of.

And, you guessed it, the independent cleaning owner was happy too, because he could steadily grow his business, and at prices that gave him a healthy profit.

That””s right; he could make a good living.

Well, not anymore, at least not for many cleaning businesses. That’s right; slowly, but all too surely, everything changed.

Independent cleaning businesses ‘lost their way’. And here’s part of the reason why:

They faced a ‘perfect storm’ of challenges. The struggling economy combined with the widespread use of illegal workers by unscrupulous contractors, put many independent cleaning businesses into a tail spin. But, unfortunately, there was even more trouble on the horizon.

Already off-balance, many would soon find empty-promising cleaning franchises and national cleaning management companies taking some, or all, of their best, oldest and what for a time were, their most loyal customers.

And, the reason?

Well, to be fair, some independent cleaning contractors were caught flat footed, not prepared to adjust their own cleaning businesses to the changing demands of business customers scrambling frantically to save money by cutting costs.

Being ready to respond to a changing economy is something all businesses have to be prepared to do – and cleaning companies are no exception.

In addition, many independent cleaning businesses were simply unable to come up with a good answer to this question thrust at them by building owners and managers, namely, “Why should I keep buying from you when this competitor is saying they can do the same job, but for a lot less than I’m paying now?”

If nothing else comes out this crisis in the cleaning business, one thing is certain – it points to the importance of pricing routine, regularly scheduled janitorial cleaning projects (i.e. 3 days per week) starting from the point of determining cleaning time required, rather than simply using an oversimplified price per square foot approach.

So, how should these independent cleaning business owners have responded?

First, they should have pressed hard on an important point – the direct connection between the time (hours) spent cleaning a building and the quality of cleaning in that building.

There’s no question that time alone isn’t a guarantee of high quality cleaning. The amount of training and level of supervision provided, makes a difference in both the appearance of a building, as well as, how efficiently that cleaning was delivered.

But that said; there is still a strong, direct connection between time and quality. Put differently; when it comes to reducing time, the ‘cleaning business’ is simply not the ‘mass producing widgets business’.

All things being equal – the amount of time (hours) spent cleaning still, to a great degree, determines the resulting quality of the cleaning (building appearance).

So, the independent cleaning contractors should have strongly encouraged building owners and managers to ask the following three questions when those ‘big guys’ that low-ball prices arrived to deliver their slick-looking proposals:

1. What budged hours is the price based on?

2. How exactly was the time determined?

3. How can you assure me I will consistently receive this important budgeted time?

We suggest that would have gotten their attention! Why?

It is our strongly-held belief that many of these low-balling characters give little or no consideration to the time required to deliver quality cleaning.

We believe it is, in fact, their hidden weakness or ‘Achilles heel’.

Instead, we suggest their pricing strategy often seems no more complicated than this: Low ball the price to get the job, and then later on figure out how much cleaning time they can afford, or are willing, to give to it.

Well, that’s a problem. And Independent cleaning businesses should have pointed it out then. They should point it out now.

Cleaning Guy #2
“We always try to come in a little LOWER than the next guy – you know, beat their price.  Everyone knows price is all that matters; and if that’s what it takes to land the job, so be it; we’ll figure out a way to make money once we get started.”

Sound familiar? Ever heard someone, or yourself, say something similar?  Let’s take a closer look:

On one hand, we’ve got cleaning guy #1 who simply wants what he wants.  He’s made up his mind that he’s worth so much per hour and that’s that.  No amount of explaining to the contrary, we’ll likely change his mind.

The heck with what the broader market wants.  Misguided ego and immovable stubbornness may be his downfall if he’s not careful. He demands what he WANTS and cares little for what the market may WANT.

And to be fair, this strategy may work at first, or even for a while, especially if the cleaning business is small and wants to stay that way.  By the way, there’s nothing wrong with having a handful of loyal customers willing to pay a premium for your cleaning services…simply because it’s you!

But, if you’re looking to grow much beyond a one-person operation, then this kind of narrow-minded thinking can quickly put a stop to any plans for real growth.

Before long, you’re likely to be confronted, or worse yet completely ignored by, a marketplace that dismisses your “My way… or the highway’ approach to pricing janitorial jobs as ‘out of touch’ and therefore unacceptable.

Now, on the other hand, we have cleaning guy #2, whose pricing strategy is based in FEAR and made worse by a total lack of any real ideas how to pick up new business short of dropping his price; what we use to refer to as basically “buying the business”.

What’s that?

Well, it’s having to cut  your price as often, and as far as necessary, in the desperate hope of attracting someone, anyone, to ‘bite’ on your smelly, low-priced ‘bait’.

You see, this fellow just can’t seem to come up with any reason to choose his services beyond the fact that he’ll do it for less than the next guy.

Not very inspiring, is it?

So, what advice can we give to these two cleaning guys to help turn things around for them?  Here’s our suggestions:

To Cleaning Guy #1:

Start thinking of it this way: Premium pricing? Yes! – Excessive pricing? No!

If you want to grow, you need to find the pricing “burn zone”.  And what that means is developing a pricing method that has you regularly quoting jobs at prices high enough to make you a healthy profit, but not so high as to remove you from consideration.  You want to be in the ‘game’.  Not the lowest, but in the game.

By the way, this “burn zone” strategy doesn’t mean you can’t charge more premium service.  You can and should create a cleaning company that can provide superior value to your customers.  But, it’s one thing to be premium priced and it’s quite another to be excessively priced!  Excessively priced leaves you vulnerable even if you do land the account.

To Cleaning Guy #2:

Plain and simple: Create a reason why people should buy from you besides low price… or get out of the business.

Really! For your sake, your customers’ sake and for the sake of the cleaning industry in general… “Get in…or get out!”

You do yourself, nor your customers any favor by offering cleaning services without a clear commitment to quality.  Simply offering and then delivering substandard cleaning at cheap prices does nothing but tarnish the value of all those who proudly have proudly chosen professional cleaning as their vocation.

Quality is the result of many things; and at the top of the list is having a clear connection between the work to be done and a monthly price and daily hours that can support the people and plan needed to successfully and regularly carry it out.

So, where does this leave us? How does a cleaning business create a reliable and repeatable way to find this desirable ‘burn zone” for pricing cleaning jobs?

Well, here are a few tips:

1. Know the type, frequency and difficulty of the cleaning required
2. Estimate how long the cleaning should take
3. Know your expenses and profit requirements
4. Calculate a price to properly support # 1- 3 above

Sure, but how?

Well, there are a number of janitorial bidding software programs available today to help make the process easier.  Check out which meets your needs best; then begin to use it consistently to find the “burn zone” for your specific cleaning company in your particular city.