How Do I Find New Cleaning Customers?
Episode 12. Part 2 of 5
Ray
Joel we’re continuing the topic of finding new customers. We talked last time about working with your contacts. Who do you know then? Who do they know now? Once you’ve gotten in and you know they’ve made a good impression, they have one customer. Maybe they were in a strip mall. Maybe they’re in an office park. What happens next?
Joel
There’s several things they can do, but usually one of the next first steps is getting some business cards made up. And I’m talking getting done professionally. Don’t go to some place that’s going to put their logo on your card as well. Don’t make them on the computer and get the little perforations. Get them done by a reputable company. You can get a short run of like 250 cards. It’ll cost you a little bit of money, but at least now you have something to leave behind. Maybe a one-page brochure. Now there’s pros and cons to doing this, and it’s again kind of using some of those same techniques of guerilla marketing where you’re now going to go and do a five by five canvas. So, you have a company that you’re servicing now in a strip mall. You want to go to five people in each direction, the next five doors that are open for business and drop off your materials and say, “Hello, my name is from such and such a company and I currently clean… And you name the client that’s right next to them or within a couple doors of them. Didn’t know if you were looking for anybody. If you’re satisfied with your current service because you can ask them what type of service we provide.”
So now you not only have a client, you have someone that they can talk to about it and your canvasing so that you can eliminate the added cost of trying to transport equipment or having to leave equipment behind at multiple locations. You can have one set of equipment you can service multiple clients with to start building your business so that as you start getting that revenue coming in, you can reinvest into your company. And I do believe I’ve talked about this in the past, is that it was almost three years before I took the first payment out of my company. Because for three years, every dollar I took in, I reinvested into the company to be able to build it so that I had enough equipment, materials, supplies, as well as marketing materials and computers and things that are needed to run and operate your business.
Ray
You know, can I ask you a question about using your client to gain your neighbor clients, or maybe their neighbor clients? I think you brought up a great point of saying, you know, you can go talk to so-and-so. I’m currently cleaning their space. What are your thoughts around making sure you have their permission to do that?
Joel
Oh, you’ve definitely got to have that. And I guess I made a false assumption. Assuming that you’ve already asked for that. But yes, you always want their permission. Because some clients do not want to be known who’s cleaning them. Maybe they’re not 100% satisfied.
Ray
Or maybe they just don’t want to spend the time.
Joel
And they don’t want to be bothered. A lot of times if a company is excited about the work that you do for them and loves the level of customer service, they are going to say, “By all means use my name.”
Ray
One last item, and it’s one of the things that you and I talk about a lot as far as a differentiator. When we talk to a new or a relatively new business owner, why should they choose you?
Joel
Why should they choose.
Ray
Me as that new business owner? You know, why should they choose you? I already have a, you know, janitorial service.
Joel
You need to find a unique value of what makes you different than somebody else. When I first started out with Docs Facility Solutions in 2013, we had a couple differentiating factors. One of them was we decided we were going to clean for health over then the very popular use of, oh, we’re just going to clean for appearance, which was a race-to-zero. Yeah. How low was somebody going to pay for a service? And I stuck to my guns, and I knew that not everybody was going to be my client. I knew that most people were going to turn me away because they wanted the lowest possible price, and I never was going to be that. The other thing that we built it upon was that we paid more than our competitors. So that also ended up creating stability within our workforce. And in this industry where you have 300% to 400% turnover, the biggest things that clients talk about all the time is the ebbs and flows of the janitorial business about, hey, we’re really happy and we like somebody, and then they leave and then the service drops and then we like it, and then we don’t, and then we don’t.
And we oh, and then they find somebody who’s good and clients don’t want that.
Ray
So perhaps one of the differentiators is then consistency.
Joel
Consistency. Being seamless. The janitorial department, it’s almost like a well-coached and well wrapped football game. The less yellow hankies that you see on the field typically mean that it’s a good game, because when the refs don’t make it about them, it’s usually a good game. The janitorial or the custodial world…Same thing. If you are consistent and the client does not realize what time you’re coming going, oh, my basket’s full. It’s empty when they don’t realize that their systems are working right and everything’s seamless, that’s usually when they’re happy with their custodial department.
