This is a comprehensive list of janitorial leads and commercial cleaning accounts to target. This master list can be used by cleaning services, janitorial service, commercial cleaning specialty and carpet cleaning businesses.

The goal was to compile a list of different accounts and leads for cleaning businesses to target. Some categories are specific industries while others are titles and marketing campaigns.

The list is divided into 17 Accounts and Leads

1. Medical Buildings
2. Linkedin
3. Associations
4. Retail property managers
5. Construction companies
6. Schools
7. Networking furniture installers
8. Commercial Property Managers
9. Door to Door Sales
10. Call Centers
11. Commercial Tile Cleaning
12. Doctors, Dentists and Clinics
13. Restaurants
14. Government Agencies
15. Business Journals
16. Daycares
17. Schools

1.How To Sell Cleaning Services To Office Managers at Medical Buildings

This blog and video on how to sell commercial cleaning services to office managers in medical buildings. This can apply to commercial cleaning, carpet cleaning services and janitorial. Medical can be a broad category of targets including clinics, doctors offices, dentists, hospitals and many medical specialties.

1.1Account versus Lead

Whenever starting a new target the process we can follow is what is the Account (business) and then who is the Lead (contact person). In doctor offices and misc medical buildings the Office Manager is one of the main points of contact or lead.

After deciding this we can fill out a customer profile to learn who this person (lead) is and what is potentially important to this specific industry (account).

1.2 What is the customer profile of an office manager?

One of the personas that jumped out at me going through this profile is Women predominately and over 30 years old and often over 40.

1.3 Sample commercial cleaning facebook ads

How do I reach them?

The first thing that popped in my head with women over 30 is facebook advertising. This demographic matches up perfectly with facebook ads.

marketing cleaning service doctor office

1.4 Using Facebook Ads Manager

The first step with facebook ads manager is choosing your geographic area or in our case the areas we will service.

Next is age which with office managers will be in the 30-55 range, although I would test going lower into 25 age and higher into 60 also.

Gender will definitely be women

1.5 Detailed Targeting

the first question will be do you want to go broad or be specific, I personally prefer broad but have no problem with the specific strategy either, just personal preference. My feeling with broad is people hang out and spend time with other people like them so you can pick up some shares and likes from friends and family.

There is many ways to think of this, two ways I would approach is the job title and the subject in general.

Administrative services would be the job title angle- secretary, receptionist, manager, etc

Healthcare & Medical Services would be more of the general interest.

1.6 Conclusion

This all starts with creating a customer profile and deciding what is the target? First by Account (business) then by Lead (person, job title). Who am I targeting and then what should I say and how do I reach them.

2. Linkedin Advertising

2.1 How To Sell Facility Managers Commercial Cleaning

This video blog is on how to sell facility managers commercial cleaning services. This can apply to janitorial, office cleaning, carpet cleaning services.

In the office building and industrial market Facility Manager is one of the most popular titles we need to contact, especially once you get to larger businesses of 20 plus employees.

3. Association Marketing

3.1 How To Get Commercial Cleaning Clients Through Associations

This marketing strategy is how to sell commercial cleaning, janitorial and carpet cleaning clients through client associations. Not our cleaning associations but the businesses we target.

One way to think of selling through associations is it’s a boost, not an end all, be all one stop solution. If a cold campaign brings in 1 estimate out of every 50 contacts than a warm campaign should give a boost of 10-20 % at least.

Cold campaign- 1:50 estimates per contact

Association campaign- 1:30 estimates per contact

This can become much much higher, deeper in a campaign with networking, events and sponsorship.

3.2 What are some marketing campaigns you can run?

• Telemarketing, email, direct mail off membership list
• Branding decal/logos on all marketing material/website
• Networking
• Sponsorship of events, newsletter, etc.
• Door to Door Selling

3.3 Budgeting

Starting point with any strategy is going over our marketing plan and deciding how many hours month you are willing to dedicate to this and how much of your monthly budget. For example if our monthly budget is $1000 month and 10 hours

Assigning $50 month and 2 hours of our time to associations and acommercial cleaning brochure

What kind of Associations exist?

• Regional chamber of commerce
• Local city/town chamber of commerce
• Professional associations
• Realtors
• Dentists
• BOMA- building owners and managers association
• Manufacturers
• Property Investors
• Affinity groups (woman owned businesses for example)
• Restaurants

And thousands of other groups you probably never even thought of.

3.4 Which is the best one?

The one that fits into your target audience and you can always invest in several inexpensive ones instead of 1 large one. A regional chamber of commerce is great for marketing to large companies

Local chamber of commerce is great for a mix of smaller and larger businesses, mainly smaller and usually in a tight geographic area. This is great for Fencing and selling dozens and dozens of accounts in 1 particular town/city.

It all depends who you want to target for that specific campaign.

3.5 Where Do We Find Them?

Where we find everything else nowadays, the internet!

• Directory of Associations– this is a master list you can buy but probably too much for most of us.
• Yellow Pages Online- ironically this is a great way to find local associations, just go to your local online yellow page resource and type in associations.
• Local Newspaper or Business News Journal-  Most will have an events section listing networking events and association meeting times, public events like walkathon’s.

EACH Association Is Different

You will want to go on the benefits page and member info section. Some will not allow vendors and others have specific packages for businesses that just want to advertise but are not in the industry.

Specific Janitorial Lead Campaigns

• Member Lists- this is the main campaign we can run, most people think of networking when you mention chamber of commerce but the real value is getting a list of members with contact information, industry, title, size, etc. which is invaluable intel for a marketer.

Telemarketing/ Door to Door- the key here is to mention in the first sentence that you are a fellow member. This will help greatly with the person answering the phone/door and then to soften up the decision maker.

** NOTE if you are new make sure to be honest with the decision maker and let them know you just joined and wanted to reach out and introduce yourself.

Cold Calling- this is key for cold calling, you want to mention you are a member and just wanted to stop by and introduce yourself. Yes they know you want to give them an estimate but this is a subtle way and doesn’t come off so pushy. Who in business doesn’t like to meet new people?

Direct Mail- The key for direct mail would be to place the logo somewhere outside the envelope and making the letter sound like you are offering a member benefit.

Email- Similar to cold calling and mail, make sure you place the logo front and center, introduce yourself as a fellow member and offer them some information to be helpful or ask if you can stop by and introduce yourself.

*** Note with email DO NOT put members on automatic drip campaigns unless they opt in. This is considered spam. You can send a single email here and there but not put people on a drip campaign.

A. Branding- placing the member logo on marketing material, website, email, etc. This is mainly a message directed towards people who are already members. They will recognize it and be drawn to your company. Just like any group 10%-20% will be very loyal and give you the benefit of the doubt in bidding situations.

With the Chamber of Commerce this can give your company an air of credibility, very few contractors are members of professional groups.

B. Networking- Earlier in the platform we covered all the details of networking. The only thing I can add is with an association they may have a facebook/linkedin page also that you can join.

Remember when you join a social media group for networking be careful to not sell anything directly but answer any questions that come up and start a discussion once in a while. Its always best to sit back in the beginning and learn the social dynamics.

C.Sponsorships- These can vary greatly depending on the type of association but can include events, lunches, dessert, booths, etc. Also in digital form with newsletters, email blasts and promotions on their website.

Sponsorships are similar to branding, they enhance your current campaigns but do not always bring in direct sales. If you were dedicated to the local Dental Association and were calling on the list throughout the year it makes a lot of sense to get your name in front of the decision makers to make your calls more effective.

You would want to look if your direct sales campaigns became better but not necessarily if the sponsorship brought in direct sales. This is the best way to view the ROI is in the total.

Conclusion

Marketing through client associations is a great way to build long term relationships and focus on marketing strategies with very little competition.

4. Retail Property Managers

4.1 How To Get Cleaning Accounts Through Retail Property Managers

In this section we are going to focus on selling commercial cleaning, janitorial and commercial carpet cleaning services to Retail Property Managers. Property Management companies are just like cleaning services, most focus on a segment or specialty in the marketplace.

One of those segments is the Retail sector, most of us drive by these locations all day everyday wondering how to connect with these managers and if its even worth it.

Similar to getting leads and accounts from construction companies and office furniture installers from our previous blogs, this is a 2 for 1 deal in sales and marketing. In this case it’s a 3 for 1 marketing opportunity.

We can reach out to the property manager, salesperson and the tenant moving in.

4.2What Are The 3 Lead Opportunities?

Property Manager

With the property manager our value proposition is move outs, lease renewals and prepping for a future sale. Leasing property is a negotiation and often tenants will require the space to be spiffed up and refreshed before moving in or renewing a 5 year lease.

Salesperson/Leasing Agent

The midsize to larger management companies will have a leasing agent and this person can be a great resource for referrals.  This can work both ways with finding out who is moving in and who just moved out, where did they move to.

New Tenant

These type of services are mostly 1x jobs, our ultimate goal is connecting with the new tenant moving in to provide a long term cleaning program on a monthly, quarterly or daily basis.

4.3 The next question of course is how can we reach them?

Today I broke it down into 2 categories “old school” and “digital world”

• Old School
• Networking
• Direct Mail
• Door to Door sales
• Phone appointment setting
• Digital Marketing
• Linkedin
• Facebook
• Targeted Google display
• Cold Email introduction

They both work equally, ultimately with account based marketing we just go with what is best for that particular situation. What is best for that specific account and what is best for that specific lead.

5. How To Get Commercial Cleaning Accounts Referred by Construction Companies

This section we are going to focus on getting commercial tile/floor jobs through construction clean ups.

This is more focused on project work floor cleaning, tile cleaning, sealing etc and not cleaning the whole building but just the floors/carpet.

Great part about this strategy is we can get a high margin 1x job through the construction company and then reach out to the client moving in for a long term routine maintenance.

2 jobs for the price of 1, who doesn’t love that!

5.1 Description:

Create a marketing campaign reaching out to construction companies to sell floor cleaning services and gain referrals to the client moving in.

___________________________________________________

 Objective:

Get on company bid list

Collect information about type of projects

Find out project manager’s name or list

___________________________________________________

Prospect:

All construction companies with 10 or more employees

Small to medium size projects

 ___________________________________________________

Geography:

Contact Person:

Project Managers                                   

Superintendents

Services offered:

Tile & grout steam cleaning

Grout sealing

Grout coloring

VCT floor waxing

___________________________________________________

Value Proposition:

flexible scheduling, quick job turn arounds, safety, expert knowledge of tile

Step by Step commercial cleaning marketing campaign

marketing commercial cleaning business

 Total Construction Businesses: 247

Where do we find them?

• Buy list
• Search google for construction projects
• Local business journals
• Newspaper
• Linkedin
• How do we reach them?
• Door to door is best
• Linkedin connections
• Email/Mail Follow up
• Phone
• commercial cleaning sales software

Frequency Schedule:

1. Door to Door quarterly 247 businesses X 4 divided by 52 weeks = 19 per week
2. Linkedin reach out to 5-10 a month
3. Email/Mail follow up 4x year when qualified
4. Phone call follow up 2x year when qualified

Cost Breakdown:

• Dollars-
• Time-
• ROI Goal-
• # Construction Jobs gained
• # Referral Clients gained

6. How To Get Commercial Cleaning Contracts With Schools

In this presentation we are going to cover How I used an account based marketing strategy to get commercial cleaning contracts with schools. Schools generally depend on your specific location, in new york the public schools are all cleaned by government union workers, so we focus mainly on charter and private schools.

6.1 Story Telling

First I am going to share a couple stories, the first one on charter schools and then show the physical tool to actually do it. This can apply to commercial cleaning services, janitorial, carpet cleaning, floor cleaning or any specialty cleaning service.

What we are trying to do here is jump ahead of the competition, think about macro events, trends in your local market like political, social, economy and start planting the seed before anyone else even thinks of it.

One of the biggest drivers of long term growth can be starting to build a relationship with a company, school when they are first starting out and as they grow we grow with them organically. This is amazing for return on investment because it doesn’t really cost anything budget wise.

6.2 PEST, this acronym stands for Political, Economic, Social, Technology

With this tool what we are trying to do is think about what the future holds, what is the local market going to be like in 1 year, 3 years, 5 years and then jump ahead of the game.

How? By reading the local newspaper business page, attending public chamber of commerce events, reading business journals like Business First. This way we get a read on what is going on in the local business community.

Example For Schools

• Political- maybe your public school is going to contract out certain cleaning services
• Economic- could be your school system has money problems and are open for ways to improve a service or do it cheaper with us.
• Social- can be connecting with decision makers in social media
• Technology- could be running digital google ads just to these specific decision makers (99.9% of cleaners don’t know how to do that)

6.3 Real Life Example Charter Schools

In this case the PEST tool was Political and the topic was charter schools and their future growth. In the early 2000’s our state opened up the laws to allow charter schools to compete with public schools for students.  I was following the story casually but not for political reasons but I figured charter schools were private and would need commercial cleaning services, janitorial or maybe even just carpet/VCT.

See after the school opens every cleaner in the world is going to start calling on them and it’s going to become hyper-competitive. Well, we don’t really want that, we want to jump ahead and start talking to them BEFORE our competitors are and start a relationship.

I would just read the newspaper and whenever I saw a story about a new school opening, which would usually be 6 months or year in advance, then track down their office. Sometimes they didn’t even have a building leased yet so I really had to do some detective work and track down an office.

In one instance a board member was a local accountant so I contacted her directly at her office to find out where the school was keeping their short term office.

After the school chose a building we would offer to help them move in, build desks, cost out paper supplies, etc., we would become a resource to the principal because most had no experience with the private sector and hiring cleaning contractors.

This strategy ended up being a big homerun and at one point we had contracts with 6 charter schools, these principals network same as we do and one would lead to the next one like domino’s.

6.4 Conclusion

The point is I read a political change happening locally and started thinking how we could apply this to our business and most importantly started doing this well before any competitors even saw this coming.

A great idea is to create a card and every week, month, quarter, think about any opportunities that might exist in your market and start planting the seed now well before your competitors ever think of it.

7. Networking Furniture Installers

7.1 How to work with referral sources to get janitorial leads

In this presentation we wanted to introduce you to a potential referral source to get commercial cleaning leads that you may not have thought about before. This can apply to commercial carpet cleaning, janitorial service or any specialty commercial service.

Office furniture installers and retailers can be a great little niche referral source for the office market especially.

7.2 Putting Together A Leads List of Referrals

To get started I just googled office furniture installers to see how many were in an area. You also can buy mailing lists to become more organized and create a dedicated campaign, but google is a good starting point.

In this quick search for Atlanta you can see dozens of businesses listed for this category, I’m sure there is a lot more.

What Services to offer?

For this referral source I have found two main services they can have interest in

• Office Chairs
• Office Partitions, workstations with fabric

Mainly office partitions seem to carry the most interest. For some reason when business purchase new office furniture they focus on the desks, chairs and then always want to go cheap on the partitions

This is where we can come in and be the hero. The installer can offer to restore/clean the partitions instead of full replacement for the client and hire us to do the work, then just mark it up and make an easy profit.

From a bidding standpoint this is a great position for us to be in, instead of competing against other cleaning services they are comparing the cost of cleaning versus replacement.

7.3 Now the referral happens!

If you think about this, we are now in the clients building cleaning chairs and partitions. Its inevitable we will meet the manager, facility manager, office manager, etc throughout the project.

This gives us a great opportunity to sell carpet cleaning, tile cleaning, office cleaning daily janitorial service, etc. Often when businesses take on these big remodeling projects they are looking for a fresh start!

The original referral source, office furniture installers doesn’t provide these services so we are in no way taking business from them.

I know this is an overused cliché but this really is a win/win/win situation for everyone.

7.4 How To Network

This is a referral source, going door to door and introduce yourself is critical, they really need to meet you before deciding to refer you. You can also add a sell sheet specific to partition/chair cleaning.

Some digital marketing products would include landing page, email template and youtube video of a job.

In conclusion I have found this to be a great little marketing campaign with very low competition if any, the best ones!

8. Commercial Property Managers

This is a quick presentation on how to get commercial cleaning contracts. In this blog we are going to focus on property managers. Now this can apply to commercial cleaning, commercial carpet cleaning and janitorial contracts.

The first step is defining a prospect to target, we started with 3 options. Property Manager, Restaurant manager and Office manager for a medical building. Then decided to go with the commercial landlord, this video is specifically geared towards commercial properties, multi-tenant properties that cater to businesses.

What we are going to do in this exercise is create a customer profile. We will be asking questions about the personal demographic of this type of job, how will we reach them, what are their desires/goals and most importantly, what are their fears and pain points.

8.1 Creating A Personal Profile

In the second section we create a customer profile on a personal level, who is the demographic for this type of job in your specific area.

• Age 35-55
• Education Level- Bachelor degree or higher
• Gender- Male
• Associations-  BOMA or chamber of commerce
• Income level- $50k – $100k
• Social Media- Linkedin

The next question is why do we need to know this? The purpose is to help figure out what messages to use, what platforms to be on, what are their goals, pain points.

Using this as an example I wouldn’t spend too much time on snapchat or Instagram for this specific demographic. Linkedin would be a much better fit but for a different group, say restaurant managers I might change my mind.

8.2 How Will You Reach This Prospect?

Based on the information we have collected, now we can start to work on how to reach this specific prospect. In general, older equals more direct mail over social media or heavy technology.

Higher education level we would want to reflect that in our copy writing, grammar, punctuation.

If we decide to join a networking group we want to join one they are most active in, BOMA or Chamber of Commerce.

Income Level, when deciding how to dress income level is something to think about. If the demographic is $50k plus than business casual or business suit might be expected. With lower incomes a polo shirt and khakis would be fine.

*** Note incomes are a local issue and relative to your specific market, $50k in Manhattan is completely different from Toledo.

8.3 What Does This Prospect Want or Desire?

Here is where we make two lists, one for personal reasons and one for business reasons. On the personal reason side, some of the desires might be: Happy tenants, get a promotion, have a building to be proud of.

On the business side or what do they want from us: on time service, competitive prices, keep our word.

8.4 What Are Their Fears?

Finally, we get to what does this prospect fear, on the personal side and business side. On the personal side we have getting fired, looking bad in front of the boss, angry tenants.

On the business side we have cleaners who don’t answer phone calls, late to appointments, sloppy looking technicians, inconsistent work, unpredictable pricing (remember above we mentioned the budget and their bonus).

8.5 Targeting Commercial Property Managers- Which One?

We see the term used all the time but newer people to the commercial market dont realize there is several different kinds. They all have different needs, different value propositions.

• Apartment Complexes- price competitive
• Non-Profit- usually for disabled, juvenile, senior can be 1 building or independent homes/apartments
• Military- dont have any experience
• Class A office space- full service meaning the tenant pays one price and PM provides everything usually multi-story types with the highest quality materials like real wood, stone, etc.
• Class A office space- cleaning not included, usually 1 story types but not always
• Class B- same as A but use cheaper materials and provide less service
• Misc Landlords- just like carpet cleaners, tons and tons of landlords that own 1 or 2 properties
• Office Parks- lots of distributors, manufacturing, medical but can be anything.Usually they have a theme and tenant handles all cleaning but not always.Can contact tenant AND PM for move outs
• Retail strip malls- mainly for move outs from PM. Rare the PM includes cleaning for tenant
• Malls– very little experience, once in a while a store will call.
• Nursing Homes/senior living– usually in house cleaning but many contract out carpet.

9. How To Market Your Cleaning Business, Targeting Churches

This section on How to market your cleaning business, targeting churches. This is a sample marketing campaign targeting churches, we used carpet cleaning as an example but this can be applied to any cleaning service that wants to add more commercial accounts with churches.

The idea here is to create a dedicated marketing plan for the whole year. One and done advertising never works in any medium, just think of how many TV commercials of Coke you have seen in your life. We are using telemarketing or cold calling as the example but door to door can work just as well. The follow up plan is a flyer and sales letter which can also be replaced with a postcard.

9.1 Campaign Description

• Description
• Objective
• Size
• Industry
• Geography
• Contact person
• Service
• Sales Packages
• Value Proposition

9.2 Explanation

We started with the cover page which is a flyer we create in a previous blog to show an example advertisement, you can see the full brochure and blog >>>  Building !deas .

• Description– all churches and religious organizations within a 15 mile radius of our shop
• Objective– We have 3 main objectives: Schedule an estimate, Find out decision maker and qualify interest level, Lastly put in category for follow up.
• Employee Size– with churches its tricky as most have many volunteers, we started with 5 employees, any less than that is a mom and pop operation with very little budget.
• Industry– churches and/or any religious organization
• Geography– this can be done in several different ways we went with a center of our shop location and 15 mile radius around.
• Contact person– contact person or decision maker, some common titles for churches is business manager, pastor and facility manager.
• Services– what services we want to highlight, in this case carpet cleaning either hot water extraction or encapsulation.
• Sales Package– what sales package to use, here is an example of 2x, 4x year and monthly. Monthly will mainly be for larger buildings cleaned in sections
• Value Proposition– What are we going to highlight that a prospect will find valuable. Testimonials from current church clients is a great angle for this target.
• Creatives– get all of our creatives lined up which include brochure, sales letter and email template.

10. Door To Door Sales

10.1 Fencing

Marketing a Cleaning Service, Using Fencing. Basically, fencing is creating a geographic fence around a set of leads or prospects and marketing specifically to that segment. This blog is focused on commercial buildings and would apply to commercial cleaning, janitorial service, carpet cleaning and any specialty cleaning service focused on businesses.

Cleaning Services using routes can especially benefit from this marketing strategy. Commercial carpet cleaning and janitorial targeting small 1 or 2 day a week accounts. Why would I do this? What are the benefits? You can see in the screenshot or video all the local businesses concentrated in a tight geographic area.

This does two things from an operations point, with all the accounts close by we will see a nice gas and van maintenance savings versus driving 5 to 10 miles between jobs. The second and just as important is supervision, with employees close by we can create better and more consistent supervision rotations to keep things running smoothly.

The marketing strategy is a diverse client base, now you could add another layer and create a fence around just restaurants if you wanted too but that defeats the point. With a mix of clients some jobs will be during the day and others evening maximizing profits throughout the day. Also like a teeter-tooter if one industry has a slow down we can pick up accounts in another industry and avoid a complete meltdown we can’t control.

10.2 Value Proposition

This is a great opportunity to use the local Chamber of Commerce or local association as your value proposition. By joining a chamber we get a leads list of members to add in the fence, if big enough we could JUST do that. By being a fellow member the lead generation process becomes a whole lot easier. One by attending the networking events to meet local business owners but also for cold calling. Whether going door to door or telemarketing the introduction is the hardest part, starting off with “I am a fellow chamber member and…” will relax people when you meet them for the first time.

10.3 Door To Door Sales Route

With the leads being so close together this is a great opportunity for door to door sales. This is where using the Chamber of Commerce as a value proposition can really pay off. Most businesses will put a sticker on the front window and you can start the introduction that you are a member and wanted to stop by to introduce yourself. A great cold lead in!

The next step with door to door is setting up a routine where we can visit businesses 3-4 x year. No marketing strategy can be successful with one and done, we have to connect with leads on a regular routine. Using the map in the video we can see if we visit 20 per day, we can then label the routes #1, route #2, etc. Once we have the routine down if the salesperson quits it will be easy for the new hire to just pick up where the last one left off.

10.4 Brochures and Sell Sheet

After introducing ourselves the next step is offering some kind of marketing material. Unlimited ways to approach this but seeing we are visiting diverse businesses with different needs a multi-service brochure would be great. In our sample brochure, we used specialty cleaning services including carpet cleaning, tile cleaning and restroom sanitation. A janitorial service could tweak this just a little.

10.5 Landing Pages

Now we need some air support for the ground game, a little brand awareness to make our salespeople and marketers job easier and bring in a couple easy leads. Some of our options are adwords, facebook and SEO of websites. With landing pages we can create a specific page just for this fence and include a picture of you or salesperson as an introduction. Don’t forget to use the value proposition with a Chamber logo front and center on the page. A certain percentage of visitors are going to be members and schedule an estimate just because of that.

As you grow the account base its important that we start to share that information to leads. For example in the headline of the landing page “Last year 25 Chamber members signed up for our carpet cleaning service.

10.6 Client Testimonial

This is where a client testimonial would be very effective, every area has famous restaurants, landmarks and businesses that have been around for generations. Create a testimonial flyer for one of them. Being in a small geographic area this will hold a lot more power than say a business 15 miles away they may have never heard of. Think about it…  workers are using each others services on  a daily basis and probably even know the regulars by name. In conclusion, using fence based marketing for a cleaning service can have a lot of benefits. As with learning anything new over time we test and find even more effective ways to get our message across

11. Call Centers

Prospecting for commercial cleaning leads, targeting call centers. This can be for commercial cleaning, janitorial, commercial carpet cleaning and floor stripping & waxing.

Call centers can be great prospects for the cleaning industry, they generally have lots of employees and lots of staff equals a lot of dirt! The challenge is they are not really a category in itself, so can be difficult to track down with a leads list or mailing list broker.

Call centers can be part of a bank, collections agency, manufacturer or any number of other industries. If you look at the picture you can see this is a great prospect for the cleaning industry, they have carpet, lots of chairs, dirty restrooms, partitions, etc.

11.1 So the question becomes how do we find them?

If you think about it what do they need more than anything? Employees! This is what a customer service operation needs more than anything is staff and I figure why not go and canvass the job listing sites and see who is hiring .

Chances are if they are hiring, they are growing and have a need for cleaning and hopefully a decent budget.Where to prospect for commercial cleaning leads. In this blog I went to Cleveland Ohio to the local newspaper and job finder website.

Customer service reps or debt collection is the most common job classification but can also fall under administrative, inside sales and many other misc categories. We were in luck they had customer service and specifically a category for call center jobs.

Once you start doing this weekly or even monthly you will notice the employers hiring all the time which is a pretty big clue that it’s a big operation which equals a big commercial cleaning leads for us.

As you scan down the list of employers just read the body to get some context of the type of operation it is. After that simply google the company name and find out the address, phone to start a cold calling campaign.

Now I don’t have any context of these employers but I am sure locally you have seen their buildings before or heard the company name in the news before.

12. Commercial Tile Cleaning Accounts

No, I am not talking about daily,weekly, monthly type restroom cleaning like swisher/cintas.  Selling commercial tile and grout cleaning packages similar to carpet cleaning packages. 2x,4x,6 year or monthly.Restrooms are just the value proposition to get you there.

Ask any building manager if they have interest in a tile and grout cleaning estimate and the answer is we really do not have any and they are not dirty anyways. But if you ask that same manager if they have interest in “steam cleaning” and sealing their restroom tile, or sanitizing their restroom. THEN they want to learn more.

12.1 Email Template

#1 Complaint In Commercial Buildings

#1 complaint at every building in america is restroom cleanliness and restroom supplies, carpet appearance is far down the list and barely in top ten. Now take that number and take into account nobody is doing it and now you have a good match up you can win, the probabilities are now in your favor.

You can also  use it as a cross-selling opportunity to create packages including carpet cleaning and daily janitorial service.

13. Doctors, Dentists and Clinics

This theme is geared towards the medical field of doctors and dentists.

I like to use sales aids when selling commercial cleaning services, the more specific the better in my opinion. Now there is a couple different ways to approach a sales aid, we can go with different services, industry specific theme or customer testimonials. Plus whatever else your creative mind can come up with!

This specific brochure or sales flyer is geared towards the medical field that can cover doctors, dentists, clinics, hospitals and nursing homes, plus any number of niche services.

13.1 Common Problem and Pain Points

We first started with the picture of a common problem, the condition of a waiting room. For a doctor’s office this is the first impression a patient has and can plant the seed for the whole experience. In my opinion a great place to focus our initial marketing.

Afraid of looking at the condition of your waiting room? With a picture of the child covering his eyes adds a little humor, we hope.

On the right sidebar is a couple paragraphs where we are looking for some hot buttons or common challenges a medical office may face.

• Eliminate unsightly carpet stains, remove odors and sanitize your carpets & furniture.
• Then point out we are specialists
• We specialize in carpet, tile and furniture cleaning for medical facilities in the TOWN area.

Followed by the solution

We’d be happy to give you a quick inspection and demo on how we can freshen up your office this year.

The point is to segment leads, prospects and provide specific solutions to their specific problems. This specific brochure will not make you millions I guarantee but it’s the thought process that is important here.

Create a target of leads and provide specific, exclusive if possible solutions.

Another great idea here would be adding a testimonial from a similar customer.

14. Restaurants

This is a mini webinar on selling commercial carpet & tile cleaning to restaurants. This includes several marketing strategies and ideas for commercial carpet and tile cleaning. The first part is creating a checklist on what to include in your marketing plan, including any tools, prices, flyers, cold calling scripts, leads, maps and sales follow up you want to use.

The first step is creating a marketing plan, I want to map out how many restaurants to target, what my goals are, frequency and of course what is the return on investment.

14.1 Six Steps To Making This Campaign Work

• Campaign filled out
• Printed Materials
• Script
• Leads List
• Map
• Follow Up routines

14.2 Marketing Campaign

I like to call it a campaign because it’s just one campaign and not your whole plan. We can and should run multiple marketing strategies at once. Create an objective or description of what your goal is obviously our main objective is generating an estimate.

After that collect contact information including email and build a follow routine. For each follow up routine create a category, I like to keep it simple of open leads, qualified leads and unqualified.

The reason is if a restaurant has had same cleaner for 20 years w mark them as unqualified lead, now that doesn’t mean we never call them but it’s unlikely they will change anytime soon so maybe 1x year follow up.

Some of the ways to segment restaurant prospects: we want to set a geographic area; the number of employees doesn’t matter in this specific case.

One filter to consider is franchise or chain versus independent, some commercial carpet cleaners don’t care either way but some like to focus only on the independent market.

The contact person for cleaning in most restaurants will be general manager, assistant manager and maybe regional manager for franchises and chains.

sample commercial cleaning email template

14.3 What Services?

Carpet Cleaning Services or Tile- what kind of services would your cleaning company like to provide? Some options are carpet cleaning, tile and grout, restroom steam cleaning, upholstery, windows and even pressure washing outside areas.

Packages: think at first we need to interview prospects and see what they are currently doing. After that propose packages of say 2x-4x or 6x year, restaurants often have service even monthly.

The point is to not give a 1x price but at minimum give price of 2x year or every six months.

selling commercial carpet cleaning

selling commercial carpet cleaning

14.4 Sales Route

Sales Route- Frequency and reach, next step of marketing plan is figuring out your frequency/reach. For any campaign to work us need to visit same prospects several times throughout the year.

Businesses don’t always need or service right now this second but might in month, 3 months or even a year later. Lots of reasons why, managers change, owners change, carpet cleaners go out of business.

Figure out the budget for the year including all of your costs even if you do the actual work. Someday you might want to hire a marketer; this is a great part time position.

Nowadays plenty of people are looking for part time jobs especially a marketing position that doesn’t require physical labor.

sample janitorial brochure

14.5 Marketing Material

Marketing Materials- if you are dedicated to a specific industry or segment I think it’s a good idea to create marketing material specific for that campaign or strategy.

Obviously for a smaller one with say 40 targets it wouldn’t make sense but in this case every market has more than enough restaurants to make it worthwhile.

Some subjects to include might be a list of services for example carpet steam cleaning, tile and grout, upholstery cleaning, etc. A testimonial from current clients also is a great way to make a connection. Don’t forget this is also an opportunity to plant the seed to build a program for the whole year.

janitorial target marketing worksheet

14.6 Leads List

Put together a list of restaurant leads, We put them in excel because later on down the road you can easily upload them to sales & marketing software or a crm. Excel is a universal language that can be uploaded to any system or on mapping software.

Some of the information we can keep in our lead list is employee size, sales volume, franchise or no franchised, name, email and qualified/unqualified.

Qualified/Unqualified Leads- After meeting with a prospect decide if they are qualified for you, all this means is if this restaurant fits in with the services, times, days and budget you are comfortable with.

Qualified basically means you found contact name, email and interest level. Now if they are unqualified for some reason that is fine scratch them off the leads list.

14.7 Follow Up Routines

Sales follow up routines- In the internet world we call this IF/Then scenario. What this means is IF they are interested in an estimate THEN my actions will be what.

Some examples:

• If qualified THEN- Email quarterly, Mail postcard 2 xs, Call 2 xs
• If Estimate submitted THEN- Call day 3, day 7, day 14
• If not closed then back to qualified routine
• If Estimate Won THEN- Cross sell email 2x, customer survey 1x, newsletter 4x
• If Estimate Lost THEN- Quarterly newsletter, call 1x annual

15. Government Agencies

How to get cleaning accounts with local government agencies

This is a great marketing strategy on How to get carpet cleaning contracts with government agencies. This includes carpet cleaning, tile cleaning, floor cleaning, floor stripping and waxing or any specialty cleaning services.

The challenge with specialty cleaning services and government contracts is often they fall under the $$ money line of when the agency has to publish it or advertise for formal bids.

This means we have to use a guerilla marketing plan and go agency by agency and sign up as a bidder. Depending on your metro area this can be hundreds and even thousands of individual government websites including federal, state, city, county, school, etc.

16. Business Journals

16.1 How To Janitorial Leads Using Business Journals

This is a quick presentation on how to use local business journals to get commercial cleaning leads. This can apply to commercial cleaning services, janitorial or commercial carpet cleaning services. In this example we used google to complete a search for “business journals Philadelphia”. In this case the first resource that came up was bizjournals.com which is Business First. Business First is a “newspaper” similar to your local newspaper business page but its dedicated to business topics and mostly local issues.

The first thing we can do is scroll through looking for stories about local businesses that affect a commercial cleaning service specifically. Businesses that are growing, Companies that are adding jobs, New construction projects. The theory is either they are adding physical building space, square footage or adding employees. More employees equals more dirt!

16.2 Using the Leads List

The main reason to use Business First is their famous Book of Lists, if you are not familiar they have been producing lists of businesses locally by different categories for many, many years. This is awesome for a commercial marketer because they are verifying the information compared to using a list company that only provides vague information.

Unfortunately they only do this for the top 60 metro areas, if you live in a smaller market its unlikely they have any specific lists for your area.

In this Example of Philadelphia, they have 75 different categories, including information on 2100 different local companies with some contact information. One thing I want to point out is often they will list executives which for commercial cleaning wouldn’t be the initial contact person. But at least you have the company information and can cold call to find out.

Examples of Potential Commercial Cleaning Leads

• Hotels
• Casinos
• Golf Courses
• Largest employers
• Family Owned Businesses
• Fastest Growing

 These are all great targets for the cleaning service industry, although the specific leads will change based on if you are janitorial, carpet cleaning, tile cleaning, etc.

16.3 Follow Up Sales Software

After purchasing this Book of Lists you can then download the information right into your Sales Software, ours hopefully! https://methodcleanbiz.com.

Looks like they usually charge around $200 for the digital format which is well worth it.

Now you have key accounts you can target right at your fingertips, personally I prefer to start with cold calling so we can find out who the decision maker is. After discovering who is in charge of building cleaning we can start to run a full campaign of mail, phone, email and social media.

This is a great little tool of local, accurate information. Unfortunately they only are active in the top 60 metro areas but I would still do a search on google and see if there is a local or regional company that has something similar.

17. Daycares & Child Care Centers

17.1 How To Get Cleaning Contracts With Daycares

This is a quick tutorial on how to get cleaning contracts with daycare’s and child care centers. Janitorial service, commercial carpet cleaning, especially vct floor waxing, floor care and disinfecting are all great services to offer.

Daycare’s can be great for commercial cleaning services, there are generally a lot of them in most metro areas and they are always getting dirty. Most areas have strict enforcement from state or city regulators.

We are going to focus on 2 Main questions today:

1.What services do we want to offer

2. How do we reach them

17.2 What Services To Offer?

VCT floor care including stripping and waxing, high speed polishing, daily sweeping and mopping. VCT is very popular for child care centers, in most type of places, once you get to higher end suburban locations you will start to see more hard tile like ceramic.

Hard Tile you would be more thinking about steam cleaning with a portable or truckmount unit.

Carpet Cleaning is another big specialty service, most day cares have either wall to wall carpeting in some rooms or a lot of area rugs. Often they will have VCT flooring and then an area rug for kids to play on.

Daily Janitorial this is a high demand service that can include restroom cleaning, trash, vacuuming, dusting and daily wiping of high touch surfaces among a list of other misc cleaning tasks depending on the client.

Disinfecting this service has always been popular in child care centers. There is dozens of different styles and equipment to choose from.

how to get cleaning accounts child care center

17.3 How Do We Market to Them?

As I show in the video, right off the bat with child care centers the challenge is security. They often have magnetic doors and a call box. This makes door to door sales very difficult, the whole process can be very awkward pushing that call box button and trying to communicate with a stranger through a microphone.

More often than not they will just tell you to go away unless you know someone or have an appointment.

With Account Based Marketing what we are trying to do is match up the right marketing tactics with the right prospect. What works for restaurants might not work for daycares and schools.

17.4 Four Marketing Tactics Specifically For Daycares

Phone Appointments– this is where we call ahead and set an appointment to come out and introduce ourselves. The key to the phone appointment is we are not selling anything, we are only trying to schedule an estimate or stop by and introduce ourselves. We have several phone scripts you can customize here ………

Direct Mail– mail can be very effective, the reason is most child care are small businesses where either the owner or the director reads the mail. The challenge with mail is always getting it to the decision maker, in this case we can find out who that is pretty easily. Most will be listed on their website or you can buy a list from us!!!

Facebook Marketing– something you might not think about with this target is facebook, FB would be a good PR and marketing strategy with paid ads, even a small one. Facebook fits this demographic perfectly of women over 30. Most child care centers will already be active on facebook themselves because they are trying to sell their business. Similar to direct mail if you message the business page most likely the owner or director will be the one monitoring the page.

Youtube/Search Marketing– this can be another great inexpensive pr/marketing strategy. I think you will find most daycare owners come from the field but are new to being a business owner. They probably never have had to deal with keeping a building clean before and have no idea how to keep the floors shiny. Even 5 videos and 5 blogs covering different cleaning type of topics specifically that day cares run in to can bring in a couple jobs over a year. More importantly after you do make initial contact you can share with them the tips and separate your cleaning service from the pack.