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.

Toledo, OH – March 15, 2010 – Clean Guru LLC is pleased to announce the introduction of a new editing feature giving cleaning businesses even greater control over the wording and look of their cleaning bids. This feature was added to the CleanBid® Program with the goal of making the online tool the most user-friendly online janitorial bidding software available to cleaning companies today.

The new editing feature allows any user to simply select any section of the proposal and rename it; allowing them to introduce completely new topics or clarify existing ones. This new name or heading will appear automatically on the printed, ready-to-deliver cleaning bid.

Tony Dietsch, co-founder of the CleanBid® Program explains, “We know our members like to create proposals that reflect the uniqueness of their own cleaning businesses, and that’s what adding features like ‘Section Customization’ allow them to do.”

This feature comes standard with every CleanBid® Module (Janitorial, Construction Cleaning, Tile Maintenance and Apt. Move In/Out) allowing user to quickly and easily create a customized, professional looking cleaning proposal and accompanying set of reports.

You can learn more about the CleanBid® Program at http://www.CleanBid.net

About Clean Guru™ LLC:

Dan Liebrecht and Tony Dietsch, are co-founders Clean Guru LLC and CleanBid® Program, and are Co-Authors of the upcoming book, Discover the Guru in You! The 7 Insider Secrets to Finding, Landing and Keeping Profitable Cleaning Jobs.

Clean Guru™ offers their members powerful tools and strategies to take care of everything needed to quickly add sales and increase profits – from finding and attracting profitable cleaning jobs, to bidding, landing and keeping those accounts. Clean Guru’s™ Marketing, Selling And Profit Tools will be the products and services that ‘level the playing field’!

Clean Guru™ takes away the “big guys” advantage, and gives YOU the edge to compete and WIN. The first of these powerful tools is the CleanBid® Cleaning Software Bidding Program. Janitorial Bidding Made Easy® is our motto because it’s the quick and easy way to bid any janitorial cleaning job online; giving an instant monthly price recommendation and ready-to-deliver commercial cleaning proposal to any janitorial business wanting to create a professional cleaning contract to give their prospective customers.

You can learn more about the CleanBid® Program at http://www.CleanBid.net

Want to hear my secret, non-scientific method, to spotting possibly great employees? Let me tell you a story…

One day, at the car washed, I stumbled on what might be the easiest, most under-the-radar, way to spot a great potential employee, ever. It turns out, while waiting my turn to go through the car wash, I noticed
something interesting…

As you might have guessed, before getting their wash, many people vacuum out their car using one of the quarter operated vacs lined up there in a row. But, only some of those ””vacuumers”” (is that a word?) actually takes
the time to hang the hose up properly when they””re done.

Many simply left it all tangled up and simply threw it back up to hang in a knot. Others, the real slackers, just let it drop to the ground. No pride. None.

But a handful were very different. And that”’’s when it hit me.

Who might possibly make a terrific employee?

Well, just maybe – the handful of people who take the time to gather the hose, untangle it, and hang it up properly for the next person…and here”’’s the important part…… even though no one is looking!

Isn’t that right? Aren””t we all are looking for someone who has the character to do the right thing, even when no one else is watching. No reward; just doing the right thing… because it”’’s the right thing to do.

That’s someone with pride, and that’s someone who’d might very well be a great employee. Those are the kind of people we need to start looking for.

How?

That’s up to you; personally I’m going to start by keeping my eyes open at the car wash!

Toledo, OH – February 25, 2010 – Clean Guru LLC is pleased to announce the introduction of a new ‘drag and drop’ feature to their CleanBid® Program with the goal of making the online bidding tool the most user-friendly online janitorial bidding software available to cleaning businesses today.

The new, state-of-the-art ‘drag and drop’ feature allows any user to simply ‘grab’ a building area, cleaning task or proposal section, and then ‘drop’ it into the desired location – instantly changing not only the building area lay-out, but appearance of the cleaning job specifications as well.

This feature comes standard with every CleanBid® Module (Janitorial, Construction Cleaning, Tile Maintenance and Apt. Move In/Out) allowing user to quickly and easily create a customized, professional looking cleaning proposal and accompanying set of reports.

You can watch a video showing how the new ‘drag & drop’ feature works and learn more about the CleanBid Program at http://www.CleanBid.net

About Clean Guru™ LLC:

Dan Liebrecht and Tony Dietsch, are co-founders Clean Guru LLC and CleanBid® Program, and are Co-Authors of the upcoming book, Discover the Guru in You! The 7 Insider Secrets to Finding, Landing and Keeping Profitable Cleaning Jobs

Clean Guru™ offers their members powerful tools and strategies to take care of everything needed to quickly add sales and increase profits – from finding and attracting profitable accounts, to bidding, landing and keeping those accounts. Clean Guru’s™ Marketing, Selling And Profit Tools will be the products and services that ‘level the playing field’!

Clean Guru™ takes away the “big guys” advantage, and gives YOU the edge to compete and WIN. The first of these powerful tools is the CleanBid® Program. It’s the quick and easy way to bid any janitorial cleaning job online; giving an instant monthly price recommendation and ready-to-deliver proposal to any cleaning business wanting to create a professional cleaning contract to give their prospective customers.

Learn more about the CleanBid Program at http://www.CleanBid.net

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.