Travel
Try
to stay local with your cleaning business in the beginning. A three-state
(“tri-state”) area is a good idea for starting out. I say a three-state maximum
because you do not want to put too much of a strain on your new company. I
would also suggest that you stay out of town as little as possible in the
beginning, so you do not acquire too many travel costs such as gas, food, and
hotel/lodging. When employees stay out of town, you will be required to pay for
their lodging, some of their travel time, and a food and gas allowance. This
would be all right for a one-time cleaning project that is paying you $12,500,
for a 50,000 square foot building at twenty-four cents per square foot, for
example. You could take a small crew of people, equipment, and supplies in the
work van, complete the job in four or five days, and receive your payment for
this cleaning service soon after you get back to your home office. You would
also know that after seeing what a good, quick job you did, that company will
use your cleaning service again. Since big companies have jobs in many locations,
the next job could be in your home area. If you decide to drive to this job on
a daily basis, it can be stressful and costly, leaving you with very tired
employees, reducing safety on the job and on the road. It also will make
everyone’s day a lot longer.
If a
job site for a one-time clean -up will only take four or five days, such as a
new construction final cleaning, and is more than a two-hour drive away, it’s
safer, cheaper, and a lot easier just to stay in a hotel each night, or to
subcontract the job out to a cleaning company that’s already located in this
area. Remember, when you sub out a job, you still profit and still make the
client contact during the next bidding process.
Out-of-town
jobs can also be thought of as a way to find some new cleaning opportunities.
While you are on the road for an out-oftown job, talk to contractors on the job
site, and others in and around town, to see what other building cleaning
services are around. Find out what companies have a good reputation for
cleaning. Contact building cleaning supervisors and other companies and ask
them to mail or fax to your office some information regarding their cleaning
company and past business contracts. Find out how their method of bidding
differs from yours. Try to visit some other building cleaning companies’
offices and talk to the owners about setting up an agreement for subcontracting
your building cleaning work in the area. You will also want to contact their
cleaning suppliers so that you can order supplies without any delay when you
are working in this town again. Give these companies your information and
provide them with your reference list from jobs that you have bid on and
completed in and near their town. If you are working on a construction site and
your work day ends around 3:30 or 4:00 p.m., ask your work crew if they would
like to make a few extra dollars. If they say “yes,” everyone should go back to
the hotel, change out of their work clothes, and go out, door to door, passing
out your cards and flyers to drum up more new business in this area. Ask the
hotel manager if there is a local phone book you can take back to your office,
so you can start doing cold calls and faxing when you get home. If you have
done all this, you’ll have a system in place the next time you need to visit
this town to start a new job or subcontract out a job.
Once you find some out-of-town companies interested
in speaking with you about new cleaning jobs, set up an appointment for a job
site or office visit. They can also fax their bid information to you if you
don’t have time to visit the new job before the bid is due. Present them with
your bid and hope for the best. Remember to always keep plenty of bids going
out, most of them local.
It’s best to send out at least twenty-five bids each day (in other words, at
least three to five hundred a month). This will keep you and your staff
working, and it will also keep your name and business information out there,
whether you win every bid and contract or not. When you are ready to submit
bids for this town, complete your pre-made or office store purchased bid forms
with the necessary information and start faxing or mailing your bids out. Once
you start another out-of-town job in the same town, try to set up everything
you can with the good cleaning companies you met when you were there during the
last visit. It is important to try to keep and use the same contacts over and
over in the beginning so you can get to know them and there staff. Use them as
your new out-of -town subcontractors and contacts for getting information and
help. Let them know that you will do the same for them; that is, you can be
their subcontractor once they call you with the job site address and starting
date, when they get a job in your town or area. The out- of-town subcontractor
needs the income from out-of-town cleaning jobs just like you do, so work
together.
Again,
you do not want to pick the lowest bid from the out-of-town subcontractors
doing your work because, as you know, you get the service you pay for. On the
other hand, you should not choose the highest bidder, either. Try to stay in
the safe zone by picking the out-of-town subcontractor bid that is somewhere in
the middle. Remember, one of the worst things that can happen to your day, is to
receive a phone call around 2:00 pm or later, from an unhappy project manager
or owner, saying she or he wants you to stop by today for a serious meeting
because a property that’s located two hours or more away was not cleaned
properly, this rarely happens but it is possible. Because you tried to save
money by using a subcontractor with too little money in the budget to do a good
job, you would now have a small problem. The benefit of picking the right
subcontractor, especially on a daily out-of-town job, is that, if the contract
is worth $ 40,000 per month for a daily cleaning job, and the subcontractor can
do the work for $28,000 per month, you will still make $12,000 per month if
he/she is consistent and dependable. All you have to do is make a two-hour drive
to visit the site, pick up the check, do a quick inspection, or make a few
phone calls each week to stay on top of things. The money you make will be
worth the long drive each month (or even a short flight) to visit the job site
and maybe fix any small cleaning problems or attend a short meeting.
Always
try to use your most experience and professional people to fix any problems.
Eventually, they may become the troubleshooter’s team for all of your large,
out- of-town jobs. If you don’t want a small problem to become bigger, act
quickly, within forty-eight hours or less. It is always going to be your
responsibility to get the job done, because, again, the cleaning contract is in
your name. If you need help fast because, for example, floors need to be stripped
or rugs need to be shampooed as the result of an emergency, you can always find
a specialty subcontractor on the internet, in the Blue Book, or in the
out-of-town phone book you brought home from the hotel. As I said before, some
cleaning contractors specialize in only one or two parts of the cleaning
business, like carpet cleaning, window cleaning, or floor cleaning. This is
their expertise and they will not do anything else. They are often the best at
what they do. Other contractors, like me, prefer to be the best in all areas of
the cleaning industry.
Sometimes
bad weather or other conditions that arise during construction cause workers to
bring in dirt, mud, snow, or salt on their work boots. This dirt will damage
new the carpets on your one-time cleaning project, or new construction site,
and the general construction contractor may contact you about this situation.
If your contract or original bid did not cover removing mud tracked onto
carpets, or if you had already finished cleaning and gone back to your home
office before the damage was done, you must charge more money if you do this
the extra work. You need to ask the property manager if she or he will add the
additional money for time and labor to your contract as an extra fee. If you
receive $ 6,000 in extra money for doing this difficult job, you might want to
call a carpet subcontractor and pay about sixty percent ($3,600) of this extra
money to have them clean the dirty carpeting.
Again, always check back with the
general contractor’s office for approval before doing or subbing out any extra
work. Get this extra cleaning approved in writing before starting if you can,
and then call your professional rug cleaning subcontractor. If the extra money
is not in your contract or in writing, the general contractor or property
manager may not pay you for the extra carpet cleaning work. If you had arranged
for a subcontractor to do the work, you would still have to pay the sub for
cleaning the rugs, no matter what. You made an agreement with the carpet
cleaners to do the work, and they did the work for you and your company, not
for the general contractor. So you are the one who is required to pay them.
This means you must make sure to try and obtain a signed documentation from the
supervisor or foreman on the job site saying to go ahead, before you or a
subcontractor do any extra work, if time allows and it is not an emergency.
Have the foreman’s approval faxed to you for your records, and put it in the
same file with the original signed contract. When the rugs are finished, call
the job site to make sure the job is complete, that the foreman is happy with
the work, and that the foreman will sign off on the completed work, so you can
get paid and pay your sub.
Let’s talk about customer service now, because
customer service can make or break a business. If your company’s customer
service is not good, your client will consider bringing in another cleaning
business that’s easier to work with. If you are not considerate of your clients’
concerns and inquiries, they will be upset because they are relying on you and
paying you.
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