Janitorial Advertising – Top Tips for what really works!

Ask Drake

President and Co-founder of CleanGuidePro

With the truly, humbling success of CleanGuidePro, we’ve received a lot of questions (from companies all over the world) about a variety of topics in the janitorial industry. Allow me to share yet another one of them with you.

Hey Drake: We’re new to the janitorial business and looking for tips on how to advertise our services. Any suggestions?


CleanGuidePro blog post image


Answer: Very good question. First, let’s distinguish the difference between advertising and marketing. Advertising is the media (print ads, billboards, flyers, etc.) that you use to promote a product, service, or an event whereas Marketing is the message.

Since this question is about advertising methods (or media), here’s my take on what has worked best for me over the last 25 years.

  1. Yellow Pages: When I first got in business and started to think of ways to advertise my services, the first thing that came to mind was the yellow pages. I called my local yellow page salesperson and discussed what would be an appropriate page size ad to start with. The first question was, “how many trucks do you want to have on the road?” They said a small ad would produce small results, but a big, full page ($1500/month) ad would guarantee (although nothing in writing) BIG results! I settled on a business card size ad for $247 a month that produced little to no results. After that, I went with the free listing in the yellow pages for every business that has a business phone and actually got better response. Unless you’re a bail bondsman, I wouldn’t suggest this medium.
  2. Local Weekly Flyer: Much cheaper than the yellow pages and can run for 1 weekly issue or 3, but not great results. Everyone wants the cheapest price. I don’t recommend it.
  3. Word of Mouth, Customer References: Do what you say you will do, do great work and your customers will recommend you! This has been a big one for me and it’s free.
  4. Radio: I tried this a couple of times. Zero response! Maybe I didn’t give it enough time, but I wouldn’t recommend it for the janitorial industry.
  5. Golf Tournament Hole Sponsor: I’ve done this a number of times for customers that have annual company golf tournaments and ask me to sponsor a hole for anywhere between $150- $500. They put my company name on basically a yard sale sign, on the tee box that says “This hole sponsored by, My Company Name with a phone#”. I haven’t gotten any new business from this form of advertising, but my customers appreciate it and I usually get a sleeve of 3 new golf balls, so I’m sure I’ll keep doing it. Plus, me “likey” golf!
  6. Team Sponsor: Name on back of jerseys: I’ve only done this once at the request of a hospital manager. He asked me if I would sponsor his softball team by buying jerseys for the whole team. Since he was using over $20,000 a month in my services, I readily agreed. It only cost $1000 for the jerseys and in fairness I did get my own personal jersey. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do…
  7. Television: I’ve never done it and have never seen another local or regional cleaning company do it. I have seen a number of national restoration companies on late night television touting their flood drying capabilities. I wouldn’t recommend it unless you own a restoration company or a car lot.
  8. Vehicle Lettering: I’ve had my share of calls from potential customers that saw one of our company vehicles and got our phone number from it. This is less about advertising and more about projecting professionalism for your company and your fleet. I can’t really quantify new business from it, but do it anyway.
  9. Business Cards: Ah, the little white card and the power therein. Have them, give them and you will get business!
  10. Direct Mail Marketing: This is the Holy Grail of advertising in my experience! You can “cheaply” mail out post cards, flyers and brochures to your potential targeted market. With the right message and a call to action, you will get an almost predictable 2-4% response rate from potential customers calling you to place a bid on their facilities!


Keep in mind that janitorial advertising done correctly, using the right media, with the right call to action, will produce potential customers asking you to place bids on their facilities!



CleanGuidePro Successful Residential Cleaning bidderDrake

A lack of integrity. Tales from the dark side of the Janitorial Business…

Integrity has been defined as being honest, having strong moral principles or just having character. Yet, it all boils down to doing the right thing. There’s an old proverb that reads, “Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but they who make their ways crooked will be found out.” Bingo! The truth always comes out eventually. Call it karma, reaping what you sow or the Law of Reciprocity, but what is done in secret in the dark will be exposed by the light in due season. (By the way, the light is usually a company system or procedure violation that eventually sounds the alarm.)

Bad versus Good

Inevitably, after 25 years in the janitorial business, I’ve encountered a number of “crooked ways” of doing business (whether it was by a customer, supplier, competitor or employee). So with that said, I thought that Halloween might be an appropriate time to share a few assorted “Tales from the dark side of the Janitorial Business”…

  • A potential customer (for a national property management company) personally offered me over $20,000 a month in janitorial business if I would give him a monthly kickback. I declined his offer and later heard that he was fired.
  • A five year “trusted”, full time cleaner was discovered to have been manipulating our telephone clocking system (in multiple buildings) for several months, resulting in thousands of dollars in extra pay. As a result of this theft, this person didn’t qualify for unemployment and couldn’t receive a positive job reference. (Sadly, we later heard that they also lost their home.)
  • A supplier quoted prices for quality products but sent generic equivalents instead. That lack of integrity lost him $4,000 a month in business from me.
  • One of my (formerly good) employees recommended his/her adult child to work with them at the same job site. Turns out that these two family members took turns working alone while clocking each other in (something that was surfaced by an software upgrade). Both were terminated.
  • A customer, a go-getter at a national (pawn) chain who was on the fast track to becoming a Regional Manager, was found out to be making fake loans to fake customers and pocketing the ill gotten gain. After an accounting audit found him out, the fast-tracker was terminated, prosecuted and had to pay full restitution.
  • One of my employees (who was scheduled for an eight hour shift 5 days per week), was soon found to be going home after the fifth hour and and coming back to clock out just before the eighth hour. This person’s job was immediately terminated.
  • At one of the retail stores that we clean, a manager was bringing prostitutes into the back office after hours. He stayed on the clock and his overtime activity was eventually viewed on an in store camera. He was terminated and his wife left him.
  • Some of our competitors were found to be illegally classifying employees as subcontractors, thereby not paying the state or federal payroll taxes. They received huge fines and went out of business.
  • Back in my company’s early days, we did a bunch of subcontract floor work for another (much larger) cleaning company… However, all off their checks bounced and despite numerous promises, we never did get paid. They later went out of business.
  • A consulting manager at a hospital asked my janitorial company to perform some extensive work for an upcoming inspection. Later, when the invoice for the job was submitted, the manager denied requesting the work. At a face to face meeting with the hospital board, the truth came out and the manager was fired.

 

For perspective, I should note that I’ve had hundreds of customers and have employed close to 2,000 people over the years; The vast majority – 99.99% – have been good and decent folks, with integrity to spare. It’s the .01%, the bad apples, that have tried to spoil the bunch, but they were ultimately unsuccessful.

Having Integrity and doing the right thing is not only the right thing to do, but it also has no downside, my friends. So keep doing it right! You won’t be sorry, I guarantee it!

 

Halloween pumpkinDrake

Janitorial Employee Training – Top Tips!

Who needs janitorial employee training? Let me give you three groups that benefit greatly from it… Your company, your employees and your customers!

Janitorial Instructor

“Hey, come on..” you say. “Who needs training to sweep, mop floors and empty trash?  Besides, on the job training is good enough, right?”  Well yes, if you want your company to be “good enough”, with average employee turnover, average customer retention and average to below average company growth. But, if you want an exceptional company, with exceptional employee retention, exceptional customer retention and exceptional company growth you will definitely need to have a formal Employee Training Program.

Yes, training employees costs money, but that’s the wrong way to look at it. Training is actually an investment in your company that always provides a return on investment from day one.  After 25 years in the janitorial business, I’ve learned that for every dollar I’ve invested in training, I’ve seen a minimum of three to ten fold  return to my bottom line!

I can’t emphasize strongly enough that your customers need to see consistent cleaning results from your company every single day in order to keep cutting you a check each month. Training your employees, supervisors and managers from day one in the proper techniques, procedures, policies and systems will keep those checks coming in!

As I’ve developed and tweaked my Employee Training Program over the years, I’ve found that covering the following (high level) topics have produced consistently well trained employees:

  1. New Employee Handbook, Company Policy: (Part 1 of Orientation Class): This is a classroom training session where new employees are given their employee handbooks, uniforms, clock-in instructions, etc.. The handbooks are reviewed and they sign a form that they have received, understand and will comply by them.
  2. New Employee Safety Training Manual: (Part 2 of Orientation Class): This is a classroom training session where employees are trained in regards to safety and hazards on the job? Employees are given a safety test, results are verified and corrected until everyone understands the correct answer and a copy is placed in each employee’s file.
  3. New Employee Basic Cleaning 101 Training Manual: (Part 3 of Orientation Class): This is a classroom training session where all the basic cleaning tasks are explained and reviewed. Things such as, dusting, detail work, trashing, sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, restroom, direct supervisor and customer interaction.
  4. Restroom Cleaning Training Manual: (Part 4 of Orientation Class): This is a classroom training session, where step by step restroom cleaning procedures are demonstrated and emphasized. Restroom cleanliness is one of the top areas of your customers will judge your performance. Keep them clean!
  5. Supervisor Training Manual: This is a classroom training session, where multiple topics are covered. Your site supervisors need to be trained to be leaders, trainers, problem solvers and mentors. This training will cover everything from basic cleaning and stain removal to budgets, work loading, specialty work, supply ordering, employee evaluations, customer relations and much more.
  6. Floor Care Training: This is classroom and on the job training sessions, primarily for your “Floor Techs”, where floor care cleaning techniques (primarily waxed floors) and procedures are explained, reviewed, demonstrated and learned. Things such as floor stripping, scrubbing, auto scrubbing and buffing/burnishing.
  7. Carpet Care Training: This is classroom and on the job training sessions, primarily for your “Carpet Techs”, where carpet care cleaning techniques and procedures are explained, reviewed, demonstrated and learned. Things such as spot cleaning, fiber identification, portable units, truck-mount units and general carpet cleaning maintenance techniques are explained.
  8. Specialty Work Training: This is classroom and on the job training sessions, primarily for your “Floor Techs and Carpet Techs”, where specialty cleaning techniques and procedures are explained, reviewed, demonstrated and learned. Things such as tile and grout cleaning, pressure washing, upholstery cleaning and exterior window squeegee cleaning to name a few.

 

I’ll go into more detail on each of these training topics in future posts. But however you structure your employee training, you’ll never regret making this winning investment in your business!

 

CleanGuidePro Successful Residential Cleaning bidderDrake

Overcoming Anxiety in the Janitorial Business

How do you overcome anxiety in the janitorial business? A better question might be, how do you overcome anxiety in life in general? As the old saying goes, if you tell anyone you’ve met that you’ve heard about their problem, they will answer by saying, “Who told you?”.

Anxious Janitorial Businessman

It has been clinically proven that fears (real or imaginary problems) in the heart of a person cause anxiety or worry.

First, let’s focus on the “real” stressful things in business that you can control. In business terminology we’re talking about Risk Management. In any business, things can go wrong at any time any place. This fact alone can cause worry, but you can mitigate general anxiety just by practicing due diligence. Make sure you’re properly insured with liability insurance and workers comp. Stress safety with your employees via employee orientation, safety training and regular safety meetings. Maintain your vehicle and equipment on a set schedule. Pay your taxes promptly. Pay your employees fairly and treat them with honesty and integrity. Basically, if you do the right thing in business, your anxiety, stress and worry levels will all be decreased; Not totally eliminated, but dramatically reduced.

Okay, but what about the imaginary things you worry about? What if this happens? What if that happens? What if my best isn’t good enough? What if I fail? What if my health fails? What if _____ (fill in the blank)? I personally choose to replace my irrational, imaginary worries every day by renewing my mind with words of hope, life and peace! Isn’t it all about peace anyway, my friend? Peace is the antithesis of anxiety!

Let me share some of my favorite quotes to overcome anxiety with peace..

  • “Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.” -Benjamin Franklin
  • “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave person is not the one who does not feel afraid, but the one who conquers that fear.” -Nelson Mandela
  • “Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more”.- Mother Teresa
  • “There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.” -Mahatma Gandhi
  • “How very little can be done under the spirit of fear.”–Florence Nightingale
  • “Do not be anxious or worry about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” –Paul the Apostle
  • “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” -Jesus
  • “The message is clear: If you don’t like your situation in life, don’t fret or worry – do something about it. Worry less, act more!” –Zig Ziglar
  • “Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Fear Itself”: FDR’s First Inaugural Address-Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”― Eleanor Roosevelt

So I encourage you to overcome any business anxiety with (a) practical business risk management tactics and (b) through words of peace. That’s what’s worked for me…

 

CleanGuidePro Successful Residential Cleaning bidderDrake

Janitorial Uniforms – Buying vs Renting

Ask Drake

President and Co-founder of CleanGuidePro

Dear Drake: I’ve had my janitorial business for three years now and have 18 employees. I provide company tee shirts with our name and logo on them. The problem is that it seems like I’m constantly buying tee shirts. When an employee quits, I rarely get the tee shirt back and if I do, it’s so faded and worn that it’s only good for a cleaning rag, not something I’d give to another employee.

What’s your opinion on buying janitorial uniforms versus renting from a uniform company?

Employee uniforms

Answer: Very good question! I’ve been there and have felt your pain, especially in the wallet. First off, let’s come to the consensus that uniforms of some kind are a must! They enhance your image and project professionalism. Over the years I’ve bought and rented (leased) uniforms at some point with varying degrees of success. I’m defining success in this area as being cost effective, easy to administer and keeping my staff looking sharp.

The pro with buying is that you only buy as needed. The con with buying is that shirts aren’t returned, cheap tee shirts fade and wear out quickly and you have very minimal reuse.

The pro with renting is that they give you procedures and a system to follow. You get forms for ordering – employee assignment sheets that your employees sign – stating how many shirts they received and the cost to the employee (taken from their last pay check) if not returned upon termination of their employment. The con with renting is that you’re locked into a contract (up to 3 years, with payments EVERY month) which can be much more expensive over the course of the contract than buying as needed.

Let me share what has served me well over the years. I use a buying system that utilizes the pros of buying and the pros of renting. A simple system (below) that is cost effective, easy to administer and keeps my staff looking professional!

  1. Establish your own Employee Uniform Policy and form. It will state the number, size and type of uniform shirt/shirts they receive. Also, your cost of each shirt and stating that they will turn in their uniform shirts a minimum of three days before their last check is cut or the cost will be deducted from there last check. No exceptions. They sign their acceptance of this policy. They keep a copy and you keep a copy in their employee file. Notice, I didn’t mention pants or shoes. I only provide a uniform polo shirt. Employees are required to purchase their pants and shoes at their own cost. We specify jeans or khakis depending on the location and closed toe shoes.
  2. Buy from a local, established embroidery store that sells tee shirts, polos, button down shirts, caps, custom logos, etc. You support the local economy and usually can purchase as few as two at a time. Don’t buy the plain 100% cotton tee shirts, they fade and wear out quickly. Buy nice, sturdy 100% polyester/synthetic blend polo shirts with company logo. They usually cost about $30 a piece, but these shirts are stain resistant and hold their form and color through hundreds of machine washes (employees are required to wash their own uniform shirts). No one wants to have $90 taken out of their last check over 3 shirts. You’ll get these shirts back 90% of the time. 85% are in good shape and can be reused again and again.
  3. Create a monthly, uniform ordering form. Have a goal of keeping extra shirts of each size in your warehouse stock. Simply order what you need once a month, once a quarter or as needed.

Remember, in business, have a cost effective system and keep it simple!

 

CleanGuidePro Successful Residential Cleaning bidderDrake

Hiring family and friends in your janitorial business

Ask Drake

President and Co-founder of CleanGuidePro

With the truly, humbling success of CleanGuidePro, we’ve received great questions by companies all over the world about varying topics in the janitorial industry. Allow me to share yet another one of them with you.

Hey Drake: My Janitorial business has grown and I’ve started hiring employees. I’ve got eight part time employees now. Three are family members (my son and one of my sister’s daughter), one is a friend from high school and five are employees unrelated to me. My biggest employee issues by far have been from my family and my friend. I’ll get a call or text saying, “Sorry, can’t make it tonight, I need Friday off, etc.”. Also, when they’re late or do poor quality work and I confront them about it, they don’t seem to care and actually get upset with me. We just landed a new cleaning account and I’ll need to hire three more employees soon. I’ve got more family members that say they’re available to work for me, but I’m reluctant to hire them. What do you think? Should I hire family and friends or not?

Family employees

Answer: This is a great question and one that is near and dear to my heart. The simple answer is “YES” if you do it right and definitely “NO” if you do it wrong!

In the early days, I had my little kids help me (on Friday evenings and Saturdays) clean buildings and pull trash. They got paid with a trip to 7-11 for Slurpees, Ring Pops and Lemonheads and were ecstatic to get it!

As my janitorial business growth continued, I hired well over a thousand employees, including all four of my kids (as well as their boyfriends and girlfriends), my wife, my mom (as honorary CEO), two of my sisters, nieces, nephews, cousins, my mother-in-law, brother-in-law, friends of mine and friends of my family. I’ve also had to (reluctantly, tearfully and prayerfully) fire some of these people that I loved (AND STILL DO). All in all, family and friends have probably been about 4% (40) of my hires.

Hiring family and friends has been an incredible blessing to me by strengthening most relationships, yet it’s been a curse by destroying a few others. I have a close relative that still rarely talks with me due to our unsuccessful working relationship. This remains my biggest personal failure in business…

The bottom line answer to your question is this. Family and friends can be a great asset to your janitorial business, but establish guidelines and procedures for these people just like employees that are not related to you. When you do this, you will find that it strengthens both your business and your family!

 

CleanGuidePro Successful Residential Cleaning bidderDrake

Janitorial Employee-Supervisor Conflict

Ask Drake

President and Co-founder of CleanGuidePro

With the truly, humbling success of CleanGuidePro, we’ve received great questions by companies all over the world about varying topics in the janitorial industry. Allow me share one of them with you.

Hey Drake: As our janitorial business has grown, we’ve promoted two of our better cleaners to Supervisor positions. Soon afterwards, I had Supervisors telling me to fire certain employees and hire better people. I’ve also had employees calling me and saying that their Supervisor is bad, lazy and plays favorites among other things. What’s the best way to solve conflict between your supervisors and employees?

Supervisor-Employee conflict

Answer: First, let me congratulate you on your growing business! Your question is one that every successful business owner faces at some point in their growth.

Let me make it simple and clear. Your job as the owner is not to be a referee between supervisors and employees, making judgment calls based on some “gut feeling” as to who is right and who is wrong in each and every situation. Rather, your job to establish employee guidelines and criteria in employee handbooks, noting specific job descriptions for each position (from entry level cleaners to supervisory personnel) with clearly spelled out duties and responsibilities. Basically, everyone show know what their duties are and what the consequences are for failing to follow procedure.

Here’s how it works… Every employee should read your company handbook and sign off that they understand the consequences off “no call, no show”, “being late”, “poor quality work”, etc. Each cleaner should be trained and receive a checklist, detailing exactly what duties to perform on their shift. Likewise, each Supervisor should receive training and a checklist detailing exactly what duties they perform on their shift and (in particular) during the “end of night checklist”. This way when conflict arises (and it will!) you can look at which company procedures were violated and make a correct, unbiased decision!

Business 101 “rightly” teaches us that written systems and procedures, with clearly defined job descriptions with a touch of “common sense and love”, eliminates most of our business problems!

 

CleanGuidePro Successful Residential Cleaning bidderDrake

Janitorial Employee Time Keeping

Ask Drake

President and Co-founder of CleanGuidePro

With the truly, humbling success of CleanGuidePro, we’ve received great questions by companies all over the world about varying topics in the janitorial industry. Allow me share one of them with you.

Dear Drake: We’ve been in the janitorial business a little over a year now and are ready to start hiring a few employees to help with our workload. Managing employee’s time is new to us. Any suggestions on how to track their weekly hours for payroll? Should we put in time clocks, have a “self write-in sheet” for them to write their own times down, or just pay them for a set amount of hours? .

Answer: Great question! First, let me get you thinking the right way. You don’t manage employees time, but rather you “manage” the “system” that manages your employees hourly timekeeping.

Having employees write their own time down or paying them for a set amount of time is a system allright, but it’s a system of the employees managing you! Learn from my early mistakes. I’ve stopped by to check buildings with write-in sheets at 8pm, with all employees gone and the times written down are 6pm in and 10pm out. I’ve also paid employees for 3 hrs a night, received customer complaints that things were getting missed, then find out the employee was only there for 1 hour each night!

Time-clocks are an OK system, but have drawbacks. Units are expensive, travel time to get time cards and manually entering in payroll data are all time consuming. Cliche yes, but “time is money” off your bottom line.

Here’s the hands down, best system to keep track of your employee hours for payroll. Telephone Clock-in Systems! This is online computer software that allows employees to clock in/out from their jobsite using caller id. It’s in real time and sends email or text alerts to you if someone is late, no shows, etc. You can see reports, print or email timesheets, export payroll and much more with the click of a button. It saves you time and money and it’s affordable to even the smallest of companies. That’s managing a system that works!

These systems are not put in place to control or manipulate “bad” people/employees at all. Employees should be cherished, appreciated, taken care of, paid well and yes, even loved! Systems are put in place to create a work environment that reduces chaos, creates structure and a sense of order. Systems foster harmony and peace in the workplace and i’snt that what it’s all about anyway my friend!

CleanGuidePro Successful Residential Cleaning bidderDrake

Janitorial Competition and Fair Market Pricing

Ask Drake

Grand Master Janitor, 30+ years

With the truly, humbling success of CleanlyRun(formerly CleanGuidePro), we’ve received a lot of questions (from companies all over the world) about a variety of topics in the janitorial industry. Today I’d like to share one about Fair Market pricing.

***

Hey Drake: I own a start-up janitorial business in a large U.S. city and I have to compete with large companies to win bids. How does CleanlyRun Janitorial Bidware address this issue as well the concept of “fair market pricing”?

Answer: First of all, there is no real “set market” or “fair price” chart – i.e. Dallas vs. Chicago – to go by. That’s the wrong way to think about it…

You need to think in terms of what’s the fair market costs associated with your area. For example, what are the minimum hourly wages, chemicals, state and local payroll tax rates that you have to pay. (By the way, our Bidware does all this for you in Step 4 of the bid creation process, the Workloading and Pricing screen.)

All companies (especially the large national and regional ones) have to FIRST calculate/count their monthly costs to clean a building. Only then do you add a fair profit price (which is also suggested by the software). Remember, the bigger companies will always have higher costs than the smaller companies because they have higher overhead, more mid level supervisors, and higher liability insurance which means slimmer profit margins.

Don’t be intimidated by the bigger companies, but rather focus on constantly improving your own company! Keep in mind that the “big companies” were all a startups once.

 

CleanlyRun Successful Residential Cleaning bidderDrake

Increase Your Janitorial Customer Retention Dramatically

Do you want to know how to increase your janitorial customer retention dramatically? Silly question, right? Of course you do! But what exactly is “customer retention” and how do you achieve it?  In practice, customer retention is less about you keeping your existing cleaning accounts and more about having your customers not get rid of you.

CleanGuidePro Janitorial Bidware - A proudly cleaned floorTo acquire new customers, you spend a lot of time, effort and money to market and sell your services. Once you get a new customer, that’s just the beginning; Now you have to keep them!

Don’t think for a moment that just doing the basics and going through the motions will retain customers. A Janitorial Service Agreement is a business relationship that absolutely requires you to be attentive, nurturing, caring, loving – (yes, I said it, love your customer!) – and to occasionally bite your tongue. And just like any other relationship, it has to be nurtured and developed this month and next month and the month after that…

You actually need to move from “Customer Retention” to “Customer Loyalty” to thrive in this business. There’s a lot to be said on this subject (and I promise to to do so in future articles), but for now, let me start with my core “Customer Retention/Loyalty Tips” that have served me so well for over 25 years in this great janitorial industry.

  1. COMMUNICATE: Right up front, when you do a walk through before preparing a proposal, make sure that you communicate with your contact about exactly what they expect. Do they have a checklist or do they want you to create one? Then, when you get awarded the account, make sure that you have a signed Service Agreement, spelling out the details and terms of your service. Customers understand the necessity of this document. Be on the same page on day one!
  2. SIMPLY DO WHAT YOU SAY YOU’RE GOING TO DO: Keep your promises! If your proposal stated that all waxed floors will be polished once per week, then do it. If it noted that return vents and blinds are dusted monthly, then do it. I know one national franchise that promises (on their proposals) to take all the trash cans outside and wash them every month. Of course, it rarely gets done. That task wasn’t required, but since it was promised, it became expected and was subsequently viewed as a failure to perform. If I had a quarter for every new customer that told me, “the last cleaning company didn’t do what they promised”, well.. I’d have a lot of quarters.
  3. KEEP THEIR BUILDING CLEAN: The #1 way to keep your customer happy and loyal is to keep their building clean! The #1 way to keep their building clean is to do regularly scheduled checklist inspections for quality control! It’s good and actually necessary for your customer to like you, but that alone will not keep you there. You need to consistently keep their facility clean and even exceed their original expectations. Go the extra mile, it will be well worth it. Strive to be a top service provider!
  4. THEY NEED TO LIKE YOU: Hear me out on this one. I’m not talking about a joke telling, fishing buddy (although, being “professionally” personable and friendly goes a long way towards customer loyalty). Instead, when they like the way you and your company take care of their facility, they will also like you! Yes, cliché, but take care of your customers and they will take care of you.
  5. BE PROFITABLE: You want to “retain” profitable customers. If you’re losing money on an account or just breaking even, then you will stop caring about the things that will make your customer keep you. They’ll probably drop you and you won’t care. Do all you can to keep your costs down and quality up. But if, for example, you start cleaning a private school with 200 students and 6 months later they’ve increased to 300 (which will increase your labor hours up to 2 hours a day), then it’s time to sit down and talk about a fair price increase. Even the Good Book says, “the worker is deserving of their pay”. That’s good enough for me.
  6. TRAIN YOUR EMPLOYEES: To provide consistent quality cleaning on an ongoing basis, your crew needs to know what to do. You need to have some type of training on cleaning techniques, chemical use, customer relations, safety, protocol, procedures, production rates, etc. A trained and competent employee creates a loyal customer!
  7. USE CHECKLISTS TO MANAGE “THE SYSTEM”: A checklist of exactly what is done each day is not just a good idea, but an absolute must to succeed. e.g. Individual employee checklists, area checklists, specialty work checklists, end of night supervisor checklists, monthly inspection checklists, etc. That’s managing a system that works!
  8. EMPLOYEE UNIFORMS/BADGES/NAME TAGS: At each customer location, project an image of trust, structure and professionalism. After hour customer accounts should still have company t-shirts with your name and logo. And higher profile accounts need to project a more professional image. Specifically, polo shirts with logos and khakis, with employee lanyard or company identifying name badges need to be worn. The more your customer sees your employees, the sharper they need to look!
  9. WHATEVER IT TAKES!: Commit to being that person that finds solutions. Every problem and situation has a perfect solution. Some tougher than others. Are you willing to fulfill a customer’s last minute, 4pm request to wax or polish floors tonight because their corporate boss is visiting tomorrow? Will you miss a little sleep or work late to provide a solution? Expect the unexpected! When another cleaning company comes “a courting”, they will say “No thanks, we’re very happy with our current cleaning service”. That’s customer loyalty!
  10. HAVE A SPIRIT OF EXCELLENCE!: If you have a mindset of “it’s good enough, they’ll never notice, everyone cuts corners”, I know 4 coats of wax would look awesome, but 3 is enough for tonight”, then you don’t get it. When I used to ask my Floor Techs how a job came out and they would say “good”, I would ask them “do you know who the enemy of excellence is”? It’s “good enough”. They quickly got the point! They then started sending me cell phone pics of every job, and yes it was excellent work! Average Spirit equals Average Business and that equals average customer retention. Excellent Spirit equals Excellent Business and that equals EXCELLENT CUSTOMER RETENTION!

Always remember to nurture your customer relationships. Make them feel cared about and appreciated. Your customer retention will increase dramatically and your customer loyalty will soar!

 

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