1.Marketing Planning

1.1 Marketing Plan- commercial cleaning marketing plan

A simple way to think about building a marketing plan is we are asking a sequence of questions and listing all the different information, tools we will need long term. Marketing Plans are meant to be living documents that change over time, we would suggest updating yours every month. This way we have one central place to keep all of our marketing information. Over time you will change your mind and add or delete different areas.

The point is trying to get all of this information rowing in the same direction, an organized pathway of point A to point B to point C. Often commercial cleaning services just kind of throw things against the wall hoping for the best. We are trying to get everything working together as a team. 

 

 

1.2 Sales Plan- simple 6 step commercial sales plan

How to create a commercial cleaning sales plan, this can apply to commercial cleaning, carpet cleaning and janitorial services. We are going to cover 6 steps to creating a dedicated sales plan we can follow every day, month and year. A sales plan is meant to be a living document that as we learn will be updated and improved over time.

 

 

1.3 Target Marketing Worksheet

This is one of the biggest questions commercial cleaning and janitorial services ask. What is the best target market for cleaning services? Unfortunately there is not one answer that applies to every company. Remember we have 100,000 commercial cleaning businesses in the united states, 90,000 towns in this country and dozens of different services cleaners provide. 

This tutorial is about how to narrow down your prospect list. Most markets have 10’s of thousands and even 100’s of thousands of local businesses but we can’t practically market to all of them. Our goal is to create a manageable number where we can market and advertise to the same businesses month after month, year after year.

 

 

2.0 Marketing

2.1 Top 20 list of commercial cleaning accounts

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.

 

 

2.2 Non-profit businesses

Benefits Of Marketing Commercial Cleaning To Nonprofit Organizations

Welcome to today’s section on marketing commercial cleaning services to nonprofit organizations. This can apply to janitorial services and specialty cleaning like commercial carpet cleaning, tile and VCT.

What are some examples of nonprofit organizations?

 

 

2.3 Government Contracts Locally

This is a great marketing strategy on how to get local commercial carpet, tile and disinfection 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 or buy a master list 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.

 

 

2.4 How To Create A Message/ Value Proposition

How to promote commercial cleaning services with implied value propositions. This can apply to janitorial services, commercial cleaning and specialty services like commercial carpet & tile.

There is 2 types of ways we can deliver value propositions, explicit and implicit.

Explicit is what most people think about with delivering messages. We come and SAY we are the best, greenest, been in business 20 years, etc.

Implicit The other we don’t always think about is implied messages, implied values. This is where we don’t come out and state something directly but imply it somehow through our actions, words, etc.

 

 

2.5 Top Commercial Marketing Tactics- email, phone, door to door ….

We surveyed 1063 business owners and managers nationwide asking a simple question.

How do you prefer local cleaning businesses contact you? We made sure to highlight the local part so they knew we meant local cleaning contractors and not national lead generation sites like yelp.

The point here is to listen to what small business owners and managers have to say and include that information in our marketing plan. Often we choose marketing campaigns on what WE like but its important to also think about how the prospect likes to be contacted.

 

 

2.6 Top Commercial Advertising Platforms

Some of these platforms you will be aware of but some others you might not be or never thought about.

The key to Account Based Marketing is reading our previous blog about creating a customer profile HERE. Then we can decide which of these platforms is best to reach that specific prospect.

For example: medical has a lot of women over 30, makes perfect sense to use Facebook for advertising.

Property Managers tend to be older, using Linkedin is a great way to promote your business. They are already on Linkedin themselves trying to sell office space.

 

 

2.7 Facebook Marketing- strategy

This tutorial is on how commercial cleaning services and janitorial services can sell cleaning accounts with facebook marketing. Avoid ad burnout, campaigns going stale by rotating advertising messages, value propositions. In this sample we show several sample facebook ads.

Main Company Message versus Specific Message

This can be confusing to cleaning services and we want to start with pointing this out. A Main company message is something that would apply to EVERY single account regardless of industry, size, service, etc.

 

 

2.8 How To Create Ads Using Danger

Why do we want to use Danger? Two reasons mainly, one to draw attention and two to tap into emotional feelings. Danger, fear, anger, hate, love are all powerful emotions that can bring out the best or worst in our advertising pieces.

Often cleaning services want to use cleaning type of pictures in their advertising, before and after pictures, images of equipment, pictures of cleaners, etc. This all makes perfect sense seeing this is what we do, especially in social media or digital advertising where we only have a couple seconds to get attention.

The downside is every single cleaning service uses the same handful of stock photos so it can be difficult to separate yourself from the competition when 5 cleaners are all using the same 10 photos.

2.9 HOT LEADS List – how to find leads locally yourself

Today we are talking about how commercial cleaning services (janitorial, office cleaning, carpet cleaning) can create a hot leads list. This video is all about guerilla marketing and prospecting for hot leads.

One of the things that happen when the economy is struggling is a lot of businesses simply do not have the money to spend on cleaning their building.

As a salesperson or marketer we want to identify who are the businesses that do have money to spend.

 

 

2.10 #1 Marketing Tool- PDF

Today I wanted to share the number 1 sales and marketing for selling commercial cleaning services. This can be used by janitorial services, commercial carpet cleaning, disinfecting and office cleaning services.

Its one thing to tell a lead or prospect you have high quality, you are the best, biggest, etc. But it is far more effective to show managers and building owners WHY you are high quality, why your standards are higher and more importantly, explain HOW you plan to do that.

I call this a PDF, some would say e-book, digital brochure, all these words get to the same place, we are sharing information and providing evidence for our case. Why they should hire us.

 

 

2.11 Marketing Budget Template

In this video we are going to focus on managing our time effectively selling commercial accounts. Often salespeople and cleaners focus on the return on investment of the money they spend on advertising and marketing but don’t always keep track of the hours put into certain activities.

Today we are focused on putting together a monthly marketing budget, specifically keeping track of our hours. This is something salespeople and owners of cleaning services don’t always think about. We know we have to keep track of the amount of $ money we spend every month on advertising and marketing but we don’t always think about the amount of hours it takes.

 

 

2.12 Master Marketing Template- organization

This is a simple but powerful blog on how to promote a cleaning service: Master Template. This can apply to commercial cleaning services, carpet cleaning and janitorial businesses.

Marketing can be very confusing at times, with this master template you can keep all of these questions on 1 page and simplify the whole process.

The purpose of this template is to keep all of our marketing information in a simple one page format. What we will do in this presentation is start on the first question “ what is my goal” and progress through the different questions until we find the answer.

 

 

2.13 Email Marketing – how to improve results

This is a quick video on How cleaning services can improve email marketing campaigns. This can apply to commercial cleaning services, janitorial and carpet cleaning services.

One of the variables in email marketing is our bounce rates and how they impact open rates. In plain speak, the number of people who actually see your email and open it.

 

 

2.14 Office Managers at Medical Buildings

Medical can be a broad category of targets including clinics, doctors offices, dentists, hospitals and many medical specialties.

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).

 

 

2.15 Association Marketing

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

 

 

2.16 Construction Clean Up- Referrals

Today 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.

 

 

2.17 Linkedin- how to use linkedin to get commercial accounts

This concept is influencing multiple decision makers for selling commercial cleaning services. This can apply to janitorial, carpet cleaning, tile or any specialty cleaning service focused on the commercial market.

Often when speaking with cleaners they can feel like some of these “ideas” are too abstract, what does all this stuff really mean? In this presentation we want to introduce a strategy and then show you physically how to use it.

 

 

2.18 Sample Flyers/Brochures- how to create brochures with 12 samples

How To Map Out A Commercial Cleaning Brochure or Flyer

This is a presentation on putting together a commercial cleaning brochure or flyer, this can apply to any cleaning service, janitorial or any commercial cleaning services.

In this brochure we are focusing on a prospect’s fears or pain points, tapping into the emotions they have when hiring commercial cleaners.

Below are 15 Examples of different messages:

• General
• Churches
• Medical buildings- doctors & dentists
• Commercial Tile Cleaning
• Health & Safety

 

 

2.19 Churches- marketing to churches

 How to market your cleaning business, targeting churches. This is a sample marketing plan 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. Commercial cleaning, janitorial, carpet cleaning and tile can all be used.

 

 

2.20 Commercial Tile Cleaning

marketing a tile cleaning business to local commercial accounts. This specific theme or value proposition is focused on restrooms. Two things about commercial restrooms, one most modern buildings have tile and grout in their restrooms. Two the biggest complaints year after year for commercial accounts is the condition of the restrooms or restroom supplies.

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.

 

 

2.21 Top 10 Marketing Strategies- commercial carpet cleaning

This is a top ten list of commercial carpet cleaning marketing strategies. We are focused on commercial carpet & tile cleaning right now but you can use these strategies for any number of cleaning services including : janitorial, commercial cleaning, floor care. Over the last 20 years I have provided all of those services but right now we focus on commercial carpet cleaning.

The marketing strategy might change slightly by the specific service you target, for example carpet cleaning is far quicker of a decision normally compared to janitorial where the sales cycle might be several months or even years.

 

 

2.22 Postcards & Email- combining postcard marketing with email

How to link commercial carpet cleaning postcards with email marketing templates. In this situation we are using postcards and email as a follow up to an established phone marketing campaign.

We are going to cover three postcards:

1. Carpet Cleaning
2. Commercial Tile Cleaning
3. Commercial Cleaning & Janitorial

 

 

2.23 Referral Marketing- office furniture installers

How to work with referral sources to get commercial cleaning 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.

 

 

2.24 Marketing Calendar

This is a quick video on creating a carpet cleaning marketing calendar using google calendar. This is an easy way to plan out your sales and marketing for commercial cleaning, janitorial and tile grout cleaning for the month and keep track as you complete the tasks.

For people that don’t know all you need is a gmail account, up here in top right hand corner is app icon.

 

 

2.25 Property Managers- sample landing page for property managers

commercial carpet & tile cleaning companies can create landing pages for property managers and property management firms, commercial landlords.

Now you can create a landing page offsite on a separate host or you can create one directly on your website. A landing page is just a page, single web page.

Basically its a webpage you send leads to learn more information about your company, more info on a specific subject and/or schedule an estimate or appointment.

 

 

2.26 Email Template- commercial carpet cleaning

Commercial carpet and tile cleaning email marketing template and script. This email template can be used for dedicated commercial carpet cleaning services and also cleaning services, janitorial services that use specialty cleaning as an add on.

The good news with email marketing is the bad news. Email is super inexpensive which leads people to abuse it endlessly. All of us receive spam email, sometimes 100 of them a day for me. We want to avoid turning into that at all costs, this can ruin a relationship before it even begins.

This is where email really shines, when a prospect asks to send information, we submit an estimate or they become a customer.

 

 

2.27 Press Release- sample press release and why

Publicity is in a tricky place right now, newspapers are dying and google has given press releases the smack down for a lot of seo purposes. But we still have to get our name out there somehow… and cheaply.

Two Main Goals For Media Exposure

1. Business people/professionals still read the newspaper, you know people who have good jobs or own businesses.

2.Lay the foundation and convince the editor over the long term to write a story about your business, the mother load. Not only for the one day story but the lifetime link.

 

 

2.28 Daycares- how to get contracts with daycares

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

 

 

2.29 Property Managers- email templates

Property Managers through email template for carpet cleaning, commercial cleaning and janitorial services. Now there is a couple different types of email, this is a template for reaching out to a prospect or connecting with someone couple times a year.

Note Spam would be putting someone on a drip campaign, sending out newsletters and promotions unsolicited. I dont see a problem with connecting with someone through a cold email or setting up an appointment in the future.

 

 

2.30 Commercial Advertising- sample landing page template

Our goal here is to warm up the ad a little bit, one of the challenges in commercial marketing is becoming more personable, more genuine. We all receive eight million phone calls and emails a day from “google advisors”, they always sound so phony. Whenever we make cold calls we always try to view it as cold networking, we are not trying to sell anything but just introduce ourselves, make a connection.

 

 

2.31 Landing Page- sample janitorial landing page

commercial cleaning landing page or janitorial service page. As part of our sales platform, we include landing pages and even host them for free. We have open templates and a dozen specific templates for commercial cleaning and commercial carpet cleaning with the content filled in for you.

What is the purpose of a landing page? 

 

 

2.32 Email Newsletters- sample email newsletters

Discussion on the different e-newsletter templates and styles a Commercial cleaning, carpet cleaning, tile/grout or janitorial business can use.

This is a quick video on e-newsletters and the different templates and styles. Each one comes with different pros and cons, the challenge is finding the right balance of being delivered but also being easy to read.

 

 

2.33 Restaurants- sample marketing campaign for restaurants

Below is a sample marketing campaign for commercial carpet & tile cleaning contractors that wanted to sell more restaurants. What I did is put all the leads on a map to build a door to door sales route. Came out to be around 500 prospects to reach door to door 4x year. The whole point of marketing is to create a routine where you are reaching the same people 3-4 times a year directly and then some follow up couple times a year through direct mail/email.

You can start with a description of all restaurants in geographic area in this case Pittsburgh. The objective is brief 15 minute estimate, collect information and qualify prospect. Put each in a category of open we don’t know, qualified have contact info and some interest or unqualified not a good fit for us.

 

 

2.34 100 Advertising Headlines

Below is the ultimate list of 100 advertising headlines for commercial cleaning services to use. We service janitorial services, carpet cleaning, floor care, commercial cleaning specialty services and you may need to change the topic or wording slightly for your specific niche.

These headlines can be use for email subject lines, brochures, adwords, social media ads, cold calling scripts and any way you communicate with clients or potential accounts.

The key is finding descriptive words to use like ultimate, comprehensive, introducing, announcing, etc.

 

 

2.35 Youtube Marketing

This is a tutorial on how commercial cleaning and janitorial services can use youtube video’s in marketing and sales. Often I see cleaners ask this question in social media, “does youtube marketing work?”. The answer of course is absolutely yes.

The big question is what is your objective? In this video we split objectives into 2 categories, sales and marketing, then go over the different tactics that can be used.

 

 

 

3.0 Sales

3.2 Proposal Janitorial- sample 12 page janitorial proposal

Welcome to our sample 12 page janitorial proposal and commercial cleaning estimate. This comprehensive template covers the top 12 topics to include in a cleaning proposal. Every prospect is motivate by different topics and often more than one decision maker is involved in the bidding process.

We might meet an office manager during the walk thru, estimate but the President, cFO or owner of the business is also involved in the process but we never meet them. This is why we want to cover all the main topics a manager, executive or business owner are interested in. We will never meet every decision maker but still want an opportunity to influence their decision.

 

 

3.3 Proposal Commercial Carpet & Tile- sample 3 page specialty proposal

This is an example of one you can make in word yourself, this specific example is more for carpet & tile cleaning or special projects. Up at the top place your logo, estimate number date and a quick introduction.

 List the contact name and company information and your information of course. Under the intro is a simple table you can create in word, feel free to customize this for your own needs.

For smaller contracts we usually just make a simple one page proposal and have a sign and date section at the bottom to serve as your service agreement. This of course will only work for smaller accounts.

 

 

3.4 Software- how to use online apps and cleaning software

Today’s topic is some of the ways to use commercial cleaning and janitorial software.

One of the main reasons to use a CRM or sales and marketing software is to segment your customers, prospects and leads into specific groups or tags. One reason is so you can easily find them later and two when you do find a specific group now you can create specific messages, information and promotions tailored to them.

Examples of tagging your database:

 

 

3.5 Voicemail– combine voicemail and direct mail

One of the challenges going forward with remote workers will be getting in touch with prospects over the phone.

Also when cleaners are first starting out with phone marketing and sales, they often lack confidence. This is a great way to make 5-10 phone calls every morning early and leave voicemails. After doing that for a couple months talking to managers will be much easier.

There is two ways to combine direct mail with voicemail, a sales letter or flyer first then leave a voicemail or you can make the voicemail phone call first then send the direct mail piece as the follow up.

 

 

3.6 Facility Managers

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.

3.7 Retail Property Managers

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.

 

 

3.8 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.

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.

 

 

3.9 Cold Calling- what I learned making 20k phone calls

Phone cold calling or telemarketing for commercial cleaning services. This can include janitorial services, commercial carpet cleaning and any specialty cleaning service.

We used to make about 20k thousand cold calls a year using the phone, so I have tons of data points. Here is a couple bullet points I learned.

The effectiveness of using the phone was was directly related to the size of the company. I can clearly see among leads, estimates, closes as the companies become smaller and smaller so did the effectiveness.

 

 

3.10 Cold Calling Script- sample phone script

9 powerful words you can use in the introduction phase of a commercial cleaning cold calling script, this can apply to commercial cleaning, janitorial or commercial carpet cleaning.. Using power or emotional words extremely important with telephone selling because we are missing body language, facial expressions, anything visual so we need to make up for it with the use of descriptive words.

What will become important here is choosing words that are descriptive of who you are, what your commercial cleaning company is about and can prove later on down the road in a conversation. There is no sense in saying you are the largest in the county if you really are not and they can easily find out.

 

 

3.11 Property Managers- Commercial Buildings

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.

 

 

3.12 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.

 

 

3.13 Call Centers

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.

 

 

3.14 Sales Pitch

Commercial Cleaning Sales Pitch, when asking a closing question… Silence is golden. We have all been there, we make a qualified lead, visit the building taking measurements, asked all the right questions. Finally, it’s time to ask for the business and schedule an appointment, close the deal!

The words will obviously change based on selling project work, commercial carpet cleaning or commercial cleaning daily service. For carpet cleaning we would prefer to offer 2-3 program options, the only way special projects business model really work is if we can sell a program with service frequency already scheduled, for example 2x year, quarterly or monthly. A closing question might be “ which program works best for you” or “we have opening’s on Tuesday nov 1^st and Thursday nov 3^rd, which do you prefer?”

 

 

3.15 Sales Letters- sample commercial sales letter

Sales letters for prospecting commercial cleaning accounts. Sales letters can be used for commercial cleaning, commercial carpet cleaning, janitorial, tile cleaning or any other specialty cleaning service focused on generating commercial leads. I love sales letters for follow up, this is just my personal opinion and experience. The main challenge is making sure we have the decision maker’s name and correct spelling. In the cleaning business this position can cover many different titles from office manager, facility manager, purchasing department and 5 others. You can make the argument that in specific industries, we know from experience who usually handles the vendors.

 

 

3.16 Door To Door Sales

This specific exercise is focused on a door to door sales route. We can apply this to any marketing plan, the point is we are never going to remember a tv commercial or radio advertisement after seeing it one time.

Its impossible to remember any form of marketing from experiencing it just one time. Our goal is to create a routine where we can contact X number of leads 3-4 times a year and with follow up direct mail or email 6-8 times a year in total contacts or touches.

You can find tons of research on this subject and it usually comes in between 6-11 times is the optimal number of contacts. What we are trying to figure out is what is the best return on investment for our marketing dollars.

 

 

3.17 Customer Survey- how to create a survey and use the testimonial

This is focused on commercial carpet cleaning but can be applied to window washing, pressure washing, janitorial and commercial cleaning. Most residential cleaners want to focus on reviews and send customers to review sites like google, yelp, facebook, etc. Most commercial cleaners don’t want their customer list in public for competitors to go after so a customer service survey is much better.

The simplest way is with email marketing to send a link connecting with a landing page the survey is on. In the body of the email write a short couple sentences or a paragraph thanking the customer for their service and asking for feedback. Under the body include a call to action with a big button that links to the landing page with the survey.

 

 

3.18 Bid and Estimate Walk Through

This is a quick tutorial on how to structure a commercial cleaning bid, estimate during a walk thru.

When we contact a prospect or lead selling our services, the first step is they usually invite us to a walk thru and tour the building to ask questions.

Here we will look at the skills required to communicate with customers, elicit information to satisfy their needs and ensure that you are able to build and maintain long-lasting relationships.