Most companies that commercial cleaners service will need an impact cleaning service. They’ve most likely had a cleaning company before you. And setting the impact cleaning expectations is part of your job.

 

The Last Company Screwed Up

As commercial cleaning professionals, most of us have been both “the last company” and “the new cleaning company”. If you’re a newer cleaning company owner, you may have experienced that this industry is often driven by dissatisfaction. By that I mean you’ll hear from a client when trash cans were missed but rarely a “thank you” when they were all emptied. If you can accept that premise, you’ll be fine. Do your job. Learn from a good coach and you’ll eventually hear appreciation. Part of the success path in getting to your well-deserved appreciation is setting cleaning expectations.

 

Closing the Deal

Simply finding commercial cleaning prospects is a job. You and your fellow cleaning company owners will likely compete for those contracts. Your prospects will complain about the state of the building. If you’re smart, you’ll take in all of that info and notice what’s important to them. You would be wise to ask a few probing questions. If you’re not sure about those, reach out to me. It’s amazing what a few comments can produce for your customer. A little knowledge goes a long way to show your expertise and their need for you.

 

Setting Cleaning Expectations for Your New Client

If you’re pitching your services, you want the work. I don’t know what your commercial cleaning company is going through right now. You might desperately NEED the billings from that prospect. BE CAREFUL. Almost every cleaning customer wants a spotless building. And almost every cleaning customer doesn’t want to pay for it. Setting cleaning expectations is a balancing act. This is especially true on the first few services. A happy client will often express their satisfaction with an impact cleaning service. But they will often baulk at the additional cost. So, what should you do?

 

Setting Cleaning Expectations for Your Frontline Cleaners

Whether you negotiated a full impact cleaning service or are investing time into the account, make your cleaning staff aware. As the cleaning company owner, educating your team about your investment should help them understand your goals.

1. A happy customer. Happy customers tend to remain profitable. They also refer to you more often, which increases your company growth.
2. Happy cleaning customers have better interactions with frontline cleaners. This keeps your staff employed.

 

Making Your Company Profitable

Does managing workload, prospects, clients, staff, expectations, profits, expenses and human nature sound hard? You’re right. It is! Having a cleaning business mentor & coach work with you is one of the best investments you can make in yourself. I’ve helped numerous start up cleaning company owners as well as those operating mature cleaning companies. You can contact us here and we look forward to hearing from you!

 

This Week’s Podcast transcript can be found below.

[00:00:08.22] Ray

Joel, we’re back, and we are talking today about new account startups. What it takes, what’s involved.

[00:00:14.20] Joel

That is one of my favorite topics because every cleaning contractor loves when they have a new account because it takes a lot to get there.

[00:00:22.18] Ray

I understand the adventure of closing the deal.

[00:00:14.20] Joel

Oh, my favorite rush!

[00:00:26.20] Ray

Account startups (Yes) What’s involved? What does the new business owner, what does the cleaning company owner need to watch out for?

[00:00:34.01] Joel

Everything.

[00:00:34.22] Ray

Everything, okay. There’s no safe place here.

[00:00:36.14] Joel

There’s no safe place. No safe zone. With new accounts, typically a building service contractor, when they get a new account, they get it because the building is dirty. They have typically an unhappy prospect who is now a very encouraged and happy new customer expecting very high level of service on the first night.

[00:00:58.10] Ray

Their expectation is at the roof.

[00:01:01.01] Joel

At the roof, at the day of. You go, you pick up the keys, you get the alarm code, you find out where the dumpster is. All the little, Hey, don’t forget about this. All those little things that a new client will tell you because they’re so excited.

[00:01:15.29] Ray

Everybody’s happy. Clearly, the sun rises and sets on the new cleaning company.

[00:01:20.26] Joel

Even a lot of the individuals that are in the building that had nothing to do with the signing of the contract find out because the word spreads that there’s a new cleaning company. When they’re walking out of a building and they’re seeing you come in, they’re like, Oh, you guys are the new cleaning company. So even the expectation level, and they don’t even know what the scope of work is. (Oh, my. Okay.) There’s that high expectation on the front-end. So as the building service contractor, have you set an appropriate expectation for the next day. (Oh, okay.) If it’s so bad and they don’t want to do what I call an impact clean, which is to do a deep cleaning on the very first night of service, then it’s going to take a long time to catch up in order to make the building look like what the scope of work is. Because there’s a lot of time that’s involved. Typically on a first night, I tell anybody, if you’ve bid it for 10 hours a night, you’re probably going to spend at least 20 hours on that first night. It’s almost double the hours.

[00:02:14.06] Ray

How does your customer, not the cleaning customer, but your customer feel about getting that news if they haven’t considered that?

[00:02:21.13] Joel

It’s sticker shock! Because you tell them the first night’s cleaning, and you’re talking about that before the contract’s signed. But you’re trying to explain to them the importance what that first night and set a realistic expectation is, this is where you want the building to be. This is what it’s going to take to get there. And then they’ll say, I don’t want it. And then you just start with the base contract and you’re trying to catch up. And the expectation, they’re all excited the night before and they come in. Well, the trash got dumped. And, yeah, it looks like they vacuumed the carpets, but they didn’t get to all areas. It deflates really quick. Sure. So, if you can get that impact clean and take care of a building, that’s great. And it doesn’t always happen. So, when you have a client that doesn’t want that, you have to delicately balance how many extra hours you’re going to put into that front-end work. Plus, you have the cost of all the equipment. Because if you’re a growing company, you don’t necessarily have vacuums and mop buckets, all the durable, expensive pieces of equipment that are just sitting around.

[00:03:19.07] Joel

You might have lost an account, and you have something that you can reuse, and that’ll help you offset the front end. (Sure.) But who wants to come in with a beat-up vacuum cleaner? You usually want to start off with a good-looking vacuum cleaner at a bare minimum. (Okay.) So buying a good industrial one, that might be a backpack and could run into the thousands of dollars. If you’re using writing equipment, auto scrubbers, if that’s what the account is, again, there’s a lot of money up front. Because there’s cash on delivery. You have to balance the cost of equipment with the cost of labor, which is your highest cost, and you’re trying to maintain the customer’s expectations after the first night’s cleaning.

[00:03:57.04] Ray

Let me ask the most obvious question to me. You’re addressing this with your customer. The person who owns the cleaning company. Is that conversation ever, “Your first visit should be this much?” It sounds like a balloon payment because we’re going to do way more on the first visit or two. Or should setting their customer’s expectations be, “This is going to take a lot of time to correct. For the first month, we’re going to put in some extra time every week to chip it away and then say, We’re here now”, or should they just eat it? What do you recommend when you’re talking to your customer, the cleaning company owner?

[00:04:33.11] Joel

Of course, I want to get more money for that first night impact clean. But so many people are so budget conscious that they’re like, “Look, if it takes you a month, that’s okay”. Which is funny. Because it really isn’t “okay”. So, you need to add additional hours even if they’re not looking to pay for it. And you’re going to have to eat those hours because long term client satisfaction results in referrals. It’s going to result in good open communication. Because if you have a laundry list of complaints after the first night with that client, all that excitement the day before has just been squashed. And they see you no different than anybody else. And they say, Why are we paying more for this company? And it’s after the first clean, and they’re not much better. So, you got to focus on the details, which is an upcoming podcast. You need to make sure that the bags are tied off. The knots are tucked. That the baskets go back in the same place that the client placed them. Don’t move them on the client because that’s going to cause dissatisfaction even if they look better. You got to wipe the cans. Because most of the time there’s been spills in the past and there’s odors coming out of the insides.

[00:05:39.01] Joel

There’s that type of work. And there’s fingerprints on the fronts of their desks. There’s coffee spills, there’s rings on the desktop from soda, from coffee, whatever.

[00:05:48.13] Ray

All the things that were ignored and that got the previous company fired.

[00:05:51.14] Joel

Not to mention all the cobwebs that aren’t being taken care of and the three inches of dust on the partitions. Because it hasn’t been dusted since 1948.

[00:05:58.26] Ray

You just made me laugh before we started. You called it the “Frankenstein” is gone. I had no idea what that meant.

[00:06:04.03] Joel

Yeah, the Frankenstein’s Castle. That’s what we all call it, or a lot of us, at least in upstate New York, we call it the Frankenstein Castle look.

[00:06:11.16] Ray

Folks, I’m going to encourage you. If you are looking at starting up new accounts, when you’re looking at starting up new accounts that you contact Joel, he has so much experience in doing this. Helping you to communicate both with your customer and your team to set expectations on what it’s going to take to bring In account, maintain an account, and keep it profitable for the long term. Joel, thank you.

[00:06:36.02] Joel

You’re welcome.