Contract Cleaners – Travel To Expand

The vast majority of Contract Cleaning Companies are small ‘one-man band’ outfits that provide basic cleaning to a limited number of clients within a relatively restricted area. This is fine unless you want to make real money and continue growing and expanding. If you restrict yourself to a small locality and operate alone then you have a limited number of potential customers. If you want to be out the front of the competition and challenging the big players in the cleaning b...

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The vast majority of Contract Cleaning Companies are small ‘one-man band’ outfits that provide basic cleaning to a limited number of clients within a relatively restricted area. This is fine unless you want to make real money and continue growing and expanding. If you restrict yourself to a small locality and operate alone then you have a limited number of potential customers. If you want to be out the front of the competition and challenging the big players in the cleaning business then you must be prepared to widen your horizons.

Much of your competition will be these small cleaning companies who because they have limited overheads will be able to undercut you. However by careful marketing you can put yourself ahead of these and get yourself recognised before them. How to market yourself successfully has been covered in previous articles. Having beaten off the competition by your carefully planned marketing strategy you will still restrict your growth potential if you do not widen your area of coverage.

A planned well managed expansion is difficult to achieve within the cleaning business. Once you start to advertise your services outside of your immediate area you have no idea what the response will be and the golden rule is to never turn down work because that potential customer will never ever return to you if you do turn them away. Consequently you must accept most of the work that comes in and worry about how you might manage it once you have got it.

In the initial period of expansion out of your area there will obviously be a great deal of travelling and extra work and you will imagine that there are just not enough hours in the day to cope with all the work you have taken on. If you are determined to achieve then you will and once you have a few contracts established in another locality you can always employ others to look after them. It is only that initial hurdle that you must overcome. Having done it in one or two places you can then continue to expand as far as your vision will take you. This is the one big problem with franchising because as a franchisee you cannot expand outside of your designated area so you will always be restricted. Think big, act big and you will make big things happen. Think small, be restrictive and small things will happen and you will never escape from this ‘smallness’.

Five Simple Rules For Commercial Cleaners To Follow

You are a young contract cleaning company or just starting out and want to expand? So many cleaning firms are run as a ‘one man band’ and do not want to employ cleaners so they are incapable of expansion. If you are reading this then you are not among that number and want to enlarge and expand your cleaning business. There are a few simple rules you must follow if you want to be successful in this and retain your contracts.

1. Visit each site at least once per week. In ord...

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You are a young contract cleaning company or just starting out and want to expand? So many cleaning firms are run as a ‘one man band’ and do not want to employ cleaners so they are incapable of expansion. If you are reading this then you are not among that number and want to enlarge and expand your cleaning business. There are a few simple rules you must follow if you want to be successful in this and retain your contracts.

1. Visit each site at least once per week. In order to ensure that the cleaning is taking place as you want it to. Vary the times and days of your visits.

2. Maintain good communications with the client and respond rapidly to any requests or complaints.

3. Maintain good relations with your staff. Your most valuable resource are your staff so treat them well and not just in monetary terms.

4. Maintain all equipment used on a site in excellent working order. If a piece of equipment is not working efficiently then the cleaners no matter how hard they work are not going to be able to carry out the cleaning effectively and they will soon become disgruntled.

5. Ensure that there are always adequate supplies of cleaning materials available for the cleaning staff on each site. If they have not got the materials then they cannot carry out the job effectively.

These five points would seem to be common sense and indeed they are. However the larger you become and the more contracts you take on the more difficult it becomes to carry them out consistently. You are out there working away trying to attract in more business, attending to new customers, setting up new contracts and sometimes involved in crisis management. Under these normal pressures of work these basic principles can be pushed to the bottom of the ‘to do’ list. A clean may be going along with no problems and under these circumstances it is quite easy to assume that all is well and does not require your attention. Then out of the blue it can come up to bite you! Consequently always give time to perform these five ‘rules’ regardless of the other pressures on your time.

Experience has shown that the larger the company becomes the more these five points become neglected. Very large companies often lose contracts simply because they neglected these five cardinal rules and you can step into their place and pick up these contracts. However you must always be on your guard that you do not fall into the same trap as you become bigger.

Builders Cleans – A Lucrative Market For Commercial Cleaners

With office cleaning becoming an increasingly competitive market for contract cleaning companies they must diversify or move into a niche market if they wish to continue to grow. One niche market that is not so competitive is that of ‘builders clean’. The number of companies that offer a good, high quality service to the construction industry is relatively small. So for small to medium sized firms it is well worth considering entering this market.

In order to succeed the c...

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With office cleaning becoming an increasingly competitive market for contract cleaning companies they must diversify or move into a niche market if they wish to continue to grow. One niche market that is not so competitive is that of ‘builders clean’. The number of companies that offer a good, high quality service to the construction industry is relatively small. So for small to medium sized firms it is well worth considering entering this market.

In order to succeed the company must be prepared to come out of the safe environment of office cleaning which provides a regular and consistent income but at relatively low profit margins and take a leap into the world of uncertainty. You can build up a group of builders that you clean for but the work can still be spasmodic and irregular. You could go for the large house building companies where a project might extend over two years and carry out three or sometimes four cleans on each dwelling. For these you do have to be prepared to reduce your profits for the security of constant work because they actually pay less than other types of construction but still require the same high standard of cleaning.

To gain credibility in the industry you have to be prepared to work with the builder and meet their requirements. Their requirements are under time constraints and the cleaners are generally the last contractors to be brought into a project. Very few projects run smoothly to the planned programme therefore quite often as a cleaning contractor you must be prepared to alter your schedules and react quickly to changes in the plan. Sometimes with only 24 hours notice. This can cause problems in staffing a particular clean. So you and the workforce must be prepared to be very flexible.

It is also not uncommon to turn up on a site to carry out a clean to find a whole variety of sub contractors still at work and nothing ready to clean. Although frustrating it is all part and parcel of getting into the world of builders cleans.

In order to succeed you must firstly maintain a high standard in your cleaning if you wish to be called back to do other cleans by the contracting company and secondly you must be prepared to be incredibly flexible and meet demands that come in at short notice. Once you have proved your worth to a building company they will call you in to complete all their cleans. Each clean is quite profitable so it is well worth the time and trouble put in to developing the right contacts and putting together a good team of cleaners who are prepared to be very flexible in when and where they work. If you do not have a pool of cleaners that you can call on easily and quickly then you will end up finding it difficult to cover builders cleans when they come in thick and fast!