Try This Approach For Acquiring Your Next Commercial Cleaning Client

Acquiring the right leads for your commercial cleaning business is very important to the business's growth & development. However these leads are not always easy to acquire. They’re not always readily available or accessible like residential and they can take longer to negotiate price and close.

On the flip side, they can be lucrative for your business. They have the potential to offer larger contracts, consistent work, better ROI on your marketing, long term clients, referrals etc etc … but there are challenges of course. 

Another thing I like about commercial contracts like (Offices, Retail, Government buildings) is that even though standards have to be met with cleaning, when dealing with residential clients they can become difficult to deal with and that’s down to the fact that you’re working on their pride and joy! Their family home so to speak and people can be very meticulous & extremely fussy when dealing with their own home. Not always the same emotions ride in commercial. I’m not saying you don’t get that with some commercial jobs, but it’s more common in residential.

Now I’m not saying that this is a bad thing per se, but you know what it’s like. People can be difficult to deal with when servicing the cleaning of their home! With commercial cleaning, you’re most likely in their regularly during the week and a lot of the time you are topping up on what was done yesterday or the day before. No drastic clean up jobs for the most part.

So how do we find commercial cleaning clients for our business? Let’s address this below…

Pick a Commercial Niche

I always advise people to drill down and select a niche to serve in the commercial cleaning space. “Commercial” is not a niche, it’s a sector. Niches in the commercial space are things like - Office cleaning, Floor cleaning for grocery stores, Window cleaning for office blocks & buildings, Window cleaning retail store fronts, Cleaning retail stores etc.

What’s the best niche you can select where you can make an impressive impact on. Will targeting this niche be profitable for you? Think about this properly. You want to serve a niche that you know you can can offer amazing results and offer a ton of value at a profit that works for you! 

You might even want to drill down further and get more specific. If your niche is cleaning grocery stores, you might want to skip those larger chain stores that come with lots of red tape, huge contract values and liabilities etc. Perhaps you don’t want to deal with those larger contracts and would feel more comfortable dealing with individual owned grocery stores & smaller franchises that are owned by regular people, rather than those large branded corporate's that would take much longer to convert along with all the red tape involved.

When you’ve drilled down in your niche to the point where you are 100% satisfied with the criteria you have collected, it’s time to find these businesses & list them out on a spreadsheet. This includes Name of Business, Business Owner Name, Phone number of business/business owner direct line, business owner email address and the address of the premises.  

One major tip I would offer here to these ideal prospects of yours, is to dive a little deeper in getting to know more about the business owner (the decision maker). You can do this by reading up about them on the business's website, or their social media profiles. Perhaps they have been mentioned positively in the news. With a little investigation, you can find great information about their likes, dislikes, desires, interests etc etc. Finding this information is gold because it allows you to immediately build a connection and rapport with your ideal client. 

Collecting all this information about your ideal client list will allow you to be very creative and help you stand out amongst the crowds of other cleaning companies who are all doing the same boring outreach!

Reaching Out To Your Ideal Customer

Now that you have created your list of ideal prospects within a niche you can begin to start reaching out to them. This can be done in various ways, but one way I advise starting off is to be creative and different with your outreach approach.

So instead of doing what everyone else is doing ie cold calling/emailing or sending the same sales letter that talks about how great they are, I want you to be more creative with your outreach and send them a box of goodies that are related to the interests you figured out from them in your research earlier.

Let me give you an example - 

Mr Smith owns a local property management company and specializes in managing office spaces to rent and maintain. Mr.Smith is a business owner you have targeted as an ideal customer you wish to work with because you know you can provide an outstanding service and offer great value.

Through your research, you have figured that Mr.Smith enjoys a glass of fine wine with cheese at his home on the weekend whilst watching his favorite collection of Steven Spielberg movies. 

So what you do now… is you send him a box neatly gift wrapped and inside this box is a bottle of fine wine, some gourmet cheese, a couple of Steven Spielberg movies on DVD and some popcorn seeds! Also inside is a letter from you introducing yourself, why you sent this box of goodies, what your cleaning company provides as a service (you specialize in cleaning office space), some testimonials from previous clients, your pricing and a call to action to come visit him so you can have the opportunity to talk to him about his business.

Mail this to his business address for his attention and give it a couple of days before you follow up with him via a phone call. I can almost bet my house that when he receives your call and speaks with you, he’s going to be thrilled with the gifts you mailed to him and is far more likely to give you his attention to talk business with you. His mind will be blown away by your generosity, but also your creative way of garnering his attention. This method of marketing yourself is truly thinking “Outside the box”

Givers Get!

I always go by this philosophy of “Givers Get!”. When you do sometime out of the ordinary like this, you are far more likely to standout from the crowd and build instant likability and rapport with people. Just remember, you are going to market yourself like this only to your ideal customer. These people you have thought long and hard about working with as you see them as a perfect fit for what you offer. This marketing strategy is not something you offer to just anyone… but those you truly see as a great fit for what you offer as a cleaning business. 

Scheduling a Meeting

When you have made that follow up call after sending your personalized gift and you manage to strike a meeting with your ideal customer, you now want to be in listen mode. Its 20% asking questions about them and their business and 80% listening to them talk and address issues that are concerning them. Don’t be like your competitors! They arrange a meeting and do all the talking about how great they are as a service and explain why they are the best in the business. Do the opposite… listen to your prospects concerns. 

What’s keeping them up at night? What frustrations are they experiencing? What are their pain points. Tell them you are here to talk about these issues with regards to cleaning. Figure out the problems and express solutions to them. 

Example - 

“Hey Mr.Smith… so let’s talk about your business. Tell me about your property management business and the office units you manage. By the way, we as a cleaning company specialize in cleaning office space. I’m your guy/gal if you’re in need of this type of service.”

“But I’m not here to talk about me… I am here to talk about you and any issues you are experiencing in the business.” Again it’s all about 80% listening and 20% talking. When you do talk, it’s always addressing them, their goals, dreams, desires for their business, what motivates them and inspires them. 

Why This Approach Works

The reason why this entire approach brings success to not only acquire meetings with your ideal customer, but it also develops a more productive meeting with your prospect because it’s allowing them to talk about themselves and that’s what they like doing. 

They don’t want to talk with you to hear how great you are, they want to talk about themselves and the problems they are experiencing. You’ve offered the right hook in the sense of the personal gift approach (gifts that are of interest to them) and your meeting is allowing them to talk about themselves… which is their favorite subject. 

You’re immediately eliminating your competition with this approach and you are fast building trust, likability and respect with your ideal prospect. This is an incredibly valuable position you are crafting for yourself. The fact that you are showing an interest in them and their pain points, desires, business goals etc, you can begin to weave your offer throughout the conversation. This is how you win friends and influence your prospect.

Earning a commercial cleaning contract can be challenging. You’re up against existing cleaning companies that are contracted out to your ideal customers. It can take longer to acquire these types of jobs.. BUT by following this method of client acquisition, you can really make a difference in your prospects mind. Helping you stand out among the competition and give you a better chance of closing deals for the customers YOU want to do business with.

Create a System

I’m all about developing systems in business so that you have a process in place that you can scale with. After picking the niche you want to serve, you need to systematize your gift bait selection, follow up calls and scheduling your meetings. This method I have outlined above is going to take time to implement, but it’s a fantastic way to get in front of your potential customers. There is certainly manual work involved, but it’s going to make you stand out from the crowd and that’s your goal!

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the above approach. Is this something you have done before? What have you done to win cleaning contracts in the past? Have you a system in place to acquire your ideal customer? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Looking to acquire commercial cleaning contracts for your business? Do you need a proven automated system for acquiring your ideal prospect? If this is something that interests you, please get in touch via my linkedIn profile.