The cost & value of impact cleaning cannot be overstated. When you as the cleaning company owner receive a call, text or email that someone wants your services, embrace that opportunity carefully. A famous Thomas Edison quote comes to mind. “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

You already know a new prospect is looking for SOMEONE to take over cleaning their facility. This IS an opportunity for you and your commercial cleaning business. Let’s put a fine point on that. Impact Cleans are an opportunity to:

• Make a Good Upfront Profit
• Increase Customer Loyalty
• Lose BIG on your available cash or credit
• Gain a terrific customer testimonial
• Pay your staff
• Create a foothold in a location near other prospective customers
• Push Back on Spring Mud Cleaning is Expected

Impact Cleans Will Cost You

If you invest the time to inspect a location. There’s no way to do that without it costing you time. Commercial cleaning varies tremendously from one location to the next. And no service makes that more obvious than impact cleans. They can be intense!

The details on an impact clean can make your company decent profits or put you out of business. Something as simple as “What are the walls made of” can determine your future. Impact cleaning dusty, finished drywall is simple enough. Cleaning old grease off unfinished cinder block walls is a different service altogether.

Impact Cleans Will Pay You

Understanding the demands of a facility and its nature are just the starting point. In order to correctly and profitably spec a cleaning service requires the knowledge and experience that years in the cleaning business can provide. If you’re faced with this opportunity, and you’re unsure about how to proceed, contact me. I coach cleaning company owners on a regular basis. If your company is performing these types of services, you should be paid for them.

You Get to Decide When to Collect on Impact Cleans

Impact cleaning can be expensive for the client. Now, you CAN choose to defer the upfront cost in order to gain a client. I’d consider that an investment in your client relations. It’s not wrong. I’ve made that choice many times. I’ve counselled some of my customers to make that choice as well. But I do so with caution. The prospect should be a valuable asset to your company’s future growth. If you’re not sure how to make that choice, contact me.

 

This Week’s Podcast transcript can be found below.

 

00:08 Ray

Joel?

 

Joel

Yes, Ray.

 

Ray

We’re talking deep cleans today, and I understand another name for that is actually an impact clean.

 

Joel

That’s correct.

 

Ray

Sounds violent.

 

00:16 Joel

Well, it can be. It can be violence because you got to clean up the mess.

 

00:20 Ray

Where does this start and why is it important to small cleaning company owners?

 

00:26 Joel

It’s not just important to small businesses. It could be any size business. Usually what happens is you get a call from a client or a prospect at this point. And that prospect wants you to bid on the cleaning. The cleaning company never gets a job because it’s clean. Nobody is looking to have a cleaning service come in unless the building is filthy.

 

00:46 Ray

So, when you’ve gotten this offer, you should actually expect a problem? (Yes.) There’s something hiding there.

 

00:51 Joel

When you’re walking in the door, unless the other company went out of business. Pretty much it’s going to be this building is going to be bad. And over the years, I’ve seeing various levels of dirty. As we joked in one episode about it looks like Frankenstein’s Castle with all the dust and all the cobwebs.

 

01:08 Ray

The Frankenstein Castle. All right. So what does the business owner expect? They’ve gotten this offer, “Hey, we need you to come in and bid the job, get the job done, just come in.” What are the warning signs and what really should they expect when they’re called on for that?

 

01:24 Joel

What I usually do with a prospect, I’ll take a general look. If it’s not too, too bad, I may just not even say anything and just, “Hey, we’ll fix it in the first week’s thing”, and not even tell the prospect that, Hey, this is what we’re going to do. But most of the time, a building is in really rough shape, so I will break it to the individual on a walkthrough and say, “Well, I can see why you’re looking at outsourcing this to somebody else because the building is in rough shape. Would you like me to include a impact clean or a deep clean to start?” And they usually ask me, “Well, what’s that?” And it’s to try to bring a baseline up quicker. Because if you are just going to do maintenance cleans, which is what they’re looking for from a clean service on a daily basis. These impact cleans go in and actually do a more thorough cleaning. It might include washing walls, windowsills, windows, getting all the finger imprints from years of handprint on doors, the dust that’s probably not been removed. Maybe even cleaning of the carpets, the refinishing of the floors, the scrubbing of the ceramic tile in the restrooms and the entryways. Things like that, the areas that are usually let go. Because a vacuum cleaner is not going to remove the embedded salt in the northeast that’s in a carpet.

 

02:35 Joel

You actually have to work at getting that out.

 

02:38 Ray

Okay, so it sounds like this is an opportunity for that clean company owner either to get some additional upfront payment above and beyond what a normal monthly service would be or weekly service, whatever that schedule is, and the opportunity to maybe get some additional customer loyalty. If you go, I’ll absorb it, I’ll roll it in. What way should they be thinking and why?

 

03:01 Joel

I would say try to get the money upfront, explain to them the situation. We had a company that had been in a building for 30 years. The last seven years, they had the same custodial service. That custodial service was maybe trash and dash, if that. Because they said most of the time they didn’t even realize that their trash baskets had been emptied. They had bought a building that had been a former machine shop. So you could still smell all the lubricants in the air. We realized that going into this place, just to even get the lubricants out of the air, one of the things we’re going to have to do is wash all of their walls. You can see all the oily, sticky dirt that holds all that lubricant smell that was causing the problem. We went in, and of course, if I’m washing walls and their concrete walls at that, it takes a little bit more time than a painted wall. You have to understand how to do your bidding and estimating correctly. But at the end of the day, we went in and we did this deep cleaning. We came in with a much bigger crew than normal.

 

04:01 Joel

It probably was almost three times what their monthly bill would be for normal cleaning service. Plus, we were able to shampoo all the carpets. And we were able to resurface and scrub all the floors. The owner of the business was stunned that his building could look that clean. Because the other service said that it could never get to a certain level, and we got it there.

 

04:20 Ray

On that topic, the business owner was surprised at the results.

 

04:25 Joel

Correct.

 

04:26 Ray

Very pleased at the results.

 

04:28 Joel

I tried to set a that were on the same page. And we exceeded what he thought he was going to get in return for the money.

 

04:35 Ray

When you presented him the impact clean cost…

 

04:39 Joel

It was sticker shock.

 

04:40 Ray

1. But how did he feel about it once the service was completed?

 

04:45 Joel

He says, “I would have been willing to pay more if I knew this is what the final result was.”

 

04:49 Ray

For our small business owner who might be concerned with actually getting the work or losing a prospect because they don’t want to lose them on price.

 

04:59 Joel

That goes back to a podcast we had on value. What is your value? And you have to be able to paint that picture to the client so they can see that value. As well as have, if they ask for references, have the right companies that can step in and say, “Yes, this is what our monthly fee is. But we would be glad to be able to pay them more because of the service that they’re giving us”. Because that’s what makes the difference between an everyday company that’s just there and a company that really cares about what the end result is going to be in building those long-term customer relationships.

 

05:31 Ray

If they’re concerned with how to structure this, both on paper in a document and as a conversation, because not everyone is the most confident or comfortable salesperson, contact you?

 

05:43 Joel

Oh, contact me. I’ll give them the confidence.

 

05:46 Ray

Thanks, Joel.

 

Joel

You’re welcome.