Marketing Commercial Cleaning Services by Office Size
Today’s marketing alert is why it’s important to take into account employee size when selling commercial cleaning services to professional offices. The big reason is who the decision maker is and what tactics are effective can completely change when targeting professional offices.
Every cleaning service will have a different definition of size, these are only mine, you may consider small, medium and large with different numbers.
Most businesses with less than 5 employees probably don’t need a regular office cleaning service, there are some exceptions though. Dentists and doctor offices for example can still need 2-5 day a week cleaning with few employees.
Some of this will depend on the volume you are looking for, weekly service is still practical for really small professional spaces. Weekly jobs are very profitable and some services specifically target them.
- Small Offices- 5- 20 employees
- Medium- 20-50 employees
- Large- 50 plus employees
Small Offices
If you think about this practically for a minute, most decision makers in the small category will be owners, general managers, office managers. Good news about this is they are pretty easy to find for cold email, cold calling campaigns.
For phone cold calling, I would still explain who you are and ask to speak with the person who handles this service.
Email can be used to qualify prospects, often people will respond and point you to the correct person.
Direct Mail can also be effective, generally still prefer to qualify first for direct mail because of the cost. This can be done by phone or email if they open or respond to the email. High probability then this is the decision maker.
Medium Offices
Once an office has more than 20 employees the titles of decision maker start to expand for cleaning services. Still might be office manager, general manager but now a purchasing title might be in charge. Some other one’s are facility manager, maintenance, buyer, administrative assistant, administrator, practice manager and many other misc. titles.
Qualifying becomes a little more important at this size. Because the decision maker can be so many different titles we really need to confirm who it is.
Direct mail to this group would not be recommended until confirmed.
Phone, telemarketing is a very inexpensive way to find out.
Email Can still be very effective, often they will direct you to the correct manager.
Large Offices
This is where specialists, especially in facilities department become common place. At 50 employees, most offices will need someone exclusive to manage the building and maybe the whole department.
Some common titles are facility manager, maintenance manager, operations, etc.
Here is where qualifying is critical and would recommend confirming (qualifying) first before spending any serious money. Decision maker can literally be 30 different titles.
Direct mail would not be recommended at all with a cold campaign. Follow up can be very effective.
Phone is highly effective for this group to discover the specific manager.
Email is still good for specific titles but not every one. Would not email owners, executives at this size, they just don’t deal with hiring a cleaning service usually. Facility titles and office managers, some operations.
Marketing is just an investment and like any investment there is no 100% guarantee. What we can do is follow processes, methods, concepts to greatly increase our probabilities of success. Put the odds in our favor.