Living documents will help your commercial cleaning company earn more work. These documents will also help train you and your cleaning team to record what you see and experience within the commercial spaces being cleaned. We know that often, front line cleaners feel they’re just there to “clean the space” and finish. Doing the job is often disrespected. And on occasion, professional cleaners disrespect themselves. All of that can negatively-impact both the attitude of the cleaner and delivery of the service. But another negative impact is often failing to record details. By documenting and detailing the fine points of your commercial cleaning service, you protect your business, your employees AND your customers.

This type of documentation also provides positive feedback from customers. It helps them understand that you are looking out for their best interest. While we don’t consider this a sales technique, it can have a positive impact.

When you’re looking for advice and coaching on how to enact these strategies and tactics for your commercial cleaning business, contact me here. For more information and podcasts for commercial cleaners, check our website or follow me on YouTube. You can also find me on LinkedIn.

In this episode we’ll answer:

• 01:01 Why should I add details to my cleaning quote?
• 02:14 If my job specifications change, am I limited to them?
• 03:03 How do I show a customer they’re forcing a potential problem?
• 03:35 How do I write job specs that provide flexibility for my cleaning service?
• 06:47 How do I find a cleaning company coach?

00:26 Ray

Joel, we’re back, and we’re talking about defining and recording job specs. (What?) Yeah, I know. People love paperwork. But as a dear friend of mine, (Hi Tim!), says, “Documentation beats conversation every day of the week”. What would you tell the cleaning company business owner about this who’s saying, “It just says, Clean the space.”

 

00:48 Joel

Isn’t that how every cleaning company starts out? Clean your space once a week. What’s my space? What does cleaning mean? My space? Isn’t that an old software application? (LOL) Oh, sorry.

 

01:00. Ray

How old are we?

 

01:01 Joel

We’re ancient. Cave paintings. Anyway, scope of work. Most small companies, when I first started out, I just was tickled pink. Somebody was willing to hire me. I’ll clean your space once a month. (Thank God, They just signed off.) What did I sign off on? Oh, we’re going to clean you. Guess what? (What does that mean?) Clean. Ask 100 people what beautiful is to them, and you’re going to get Seven, seven different answers. You’re going to get my wife, my husband, my child, my dog, my cat, sunset, a sunrise, a dewy morning. So clean is subjective like that. So, when you write contracts, I don’t care if You’re just starting out and it’s your first job. You need to have something that holds you accountable for what are you doing, as well as you’re holding the client accountable for what their expectations are.

 

01:57 Ray

So, there’s a level of expectations really spelled out in that job spec, and it protects both the client and the cleaning company.

 

02:04 Joel

Yes. As I tell a lot of my clients,

1: This is like a living document, or it’s a guideline or some directions.

 

02:11 Ray

Now, do you use those words when you’re talking to them? (Yes.) A living document?

 

02:14 Joel

A living document because things change. Companies grow, they shrink, COVID happens. Things change constantly. And if you’ve been in business for a while, and let’s say you’ve been in business three years, is your business Is the same as it was three years ago? (I can’t imagine.) No. Your business changes, and so do your clients’ needs. They change. So by having a living document and using the scope of work more as guidelines. A recent contract that got signed by my cleaning company… The original scope of work that they gave me to bid on said, “We want our hand towels changed out once a week”. I changed that scope to say, “Daily”. Oh, we don’t want to pay for daily. We don’t want to pay for daily. It only It needs to be replaced once a week.

 

03:01 Ray

Okay, so your team’s in there every five days a week?

 

03:03 Joel

Five days a week. (Okay.) And I told them, So, if my staff says they check that on Monday and you run out of towels on Thursday, whose fault is that? My people checked in on Monday. It was full on Monday.

 

03:14 Joel

So, what was his response?

 

03:15 Joel

He goes, “Well, why wouldn’t they to check it every day?” There’s your daily. It has to be “checked”. If it needs to be filled, and it may average once a week, so whether it’s Monday or Thursday or Wednesday… Whatever day of the week, that dispenser needs to have more product filled, and that product gets filled.

 

03:35 Ray

Okay, so that becomes part of the job spec. And adding new paper towels into dispenser (is) fairly quick.

 

03:41 Joel

Right. But you’re just checking them. That’s even quicker. And then when you see that it needs to be filled, you’re really only still filling it once a week. But when you limit yourself to saying once a week, you’re going to get in this hole as they say, he said, she said, well, we checked it on Monday. It’s Thursday or Friday now.

 

03:58 Ray

Okay, so you’ve got a good customer. You said “check daily”. They’ve agreed. That’s a relatively low-level task. But you have other services that are far more involved.

 

04:09 Joel

Definitely. So again, another client had an in-house operation. They had a person. And it worked. Part of their shift was during the day when everybody was there, and part of their shift was after everybody was gone. So they were always around to take care of daily problems. So, when we put the initial scope of work together, they said, well, areas have to be auto-scrubbed once a week. That’s no problem. We specified these are the days of the week that each of the different areas got done. A couple of weeks into the contract, somebody from their production area said, hey, it doesn’t look like these floors got done. And it was a Friday. And it was like, oh, those areas are auto scrubbed on Mondays. Yeah, well, I can’t wait. I told the client those areas get done on Tuesday, and its now Friday. So that’s about right. If you have all this extra traffic, about every three days, we need to be re-auto-scrubbing the floor. Sure. So, we can change that scope of work. But It’s like a 10,000 square foot area. So, there’s going to be a slight upcharge to do it a second time.

 

05:05 Joel

And we can do them on Tuesdays and Friday so we can appease the production area so that it looks fresh, and it doesn’t have a problem on it. Because obviously once a week isn’t enough. While the client was like, we’re at the upper end of it (our budget). Okay. And it’s all right. Well, what are we doing that seems like overkill? What can we subtract out that equals about this much time?

 

05:28 Ray

You’re working within their budget to get an additional service or an alternate service and trade something out when you need to do that.

 

05:34 Joel

Correct. So, everything’s a give-and-take. That’s why these documents should be seen as a living scope of work. But also, because it is a scope of work and it is spelled out, it says what days of the week something’s to be done or how often you’re going to do in office. That helps everybody keep each other’s feet to the fire, so to say. So, they can come to me and say, hey, these areas get done on Tuesday. They weren’t done. I have no excuse. If it said Tuesday and they’re calling me Wednesday morning and the Tuesday areas, find out why. And we talked in another podcast about the whole LEAFF concept. You need to follow LEAFF (L – Listen; E – Empathize; A – Apologize; F – Fix; F – Follow up) at that point. But what if it’s an area that needs to be done more often? You don’t want them to get upset and get frustrated because now an area has too much trash or too much traffic. Maybe they’re hiring more people, and it becomes more densely populated. So, it’s constantly living. On the other hand, they might be shrinking. And a lot of that happened during COVID. Companies that were out working realized that some of the tasks could be done virtual.

 

06:29 Joel

So, I had some of my largest companies that I was cleaning five days a week and in 50,000 square feet of space, come back to 3,000 square feet of space and only need cleaning twice a week because it was only the essential, the owner and a few other key people that we needed to be in office more than once a week.

 

06:47 Ray

In bringing this episode in for a landing, one of the things that I do want to talk to the owner who’s listening, part of getting this to work is couching your response well. Folks, Joel is a master at this. I’ve actually watched him do this. He’s way better at this than I am. First of all, not being a jerk, but being firm, delivering it in a business matter of fact manner, and holding the line. Also, knowing when to break your own rules. That does take some finesse it does take some understanding, and it takes a really good coach. Thank you, Joel.

 

Joel

You’re welcome. Thank you.

Joel can be reached here for consultations. Learn how to grow YOUR commercial cleaning business.