Anyone have knowledge of commercial cleaning?

[helen-back]

Been running a domestic cleaning company for almost 2 years now and finding it hard to make any profit.

Have put money into the business and do have 4 vehicles that are paid for along with a fair amount of general cleaning equipment.

What I would like to know is if it would be the right step to go towards commercial cleaning?

If so, where to start. I know nothing about commercial cleaning and would like some pointers if possible.

If anyone has started or runs a commercial cleaning company I would love to hear from them.

Thanks.

 

[AJP Xtreme cleaning]

Been running a domestic cleaning company for almost 2 years now and finding it hard to make any profit.

Have put money into the business and do have 4 vehicles that are paid for along with a fair amount of general cleaning equipment.

What I would like to know is if it would be the right step to go towards commercial cleaning?

If so, where to start. I know nothing about commercial cleaning and would like some pointers if possible.

If anyone has started or runs a commercial cleaning company I would love to hear from them.

Thanks.

I have started my own business recently , my business is gutter vacuuming and pressure washing , I have done the odd commercial work so far but getting regular is tough , I have emailed , written many many letters to organisations , example, housing trusts and councils , offering my services etc but no luck .

What I would say though is many companies won,t touch you if you are not VAT registered , I got registered purely because I knew I would get some work from a particular company and would be expected to be vat registered .

It's just a case of plugging away at commercial businesses until you land something , which may lead on to other contracts etc .

 

[Faevilangel]

commercial cleaning is lucrative as a lot will do it on contracts e.g. 12 months

the best way to get into these companies is to meet them and talk to them, get along to local networking events (4networking, BNI, chamber of commerce etc) and let people find out about you and what you do.

With 4 vans and (guessing here) an army of staff, you will be able to take on most jobs with ease so use that as a benefit.

Get out there, talk to the businesses and give them a bloody good reason to want to use you.

 

[AJP Xtreme cleaning]

commercial cleaning is lucrative as a lot will do it on contracts e.g. 12 months

the best way to get into these companies is to meet them and talk to them, get along to local networking events (4networking, BNI, chamber of commerce etc) and let people find out about you and what you do.

With 4 vans and (guessing here) an army of staff, you will be able to take on most jobs with ease so use that as a benefit.

Get out there, talk to the businesses and give them a bloody good reason to want to use you.

That's good advice , something I can use also .cheers

 

[Simply Business]

Hi Helen

Another thing to consider might be changing your insurance, amend the cover to include commercial premises as well as domestic then you can start shouting about your new services. Show your potential customers your new documents to gain their trust by showing them you're professional and fully covered to do the job.

Hope this helps

Kristina
Simply Business

 

[Gecko001]

There is an old saying "No manager ever got fired to choosing IBM".

To explain. In the 1970's when big firms were getting computerised IBM produced what was then generally believed to be the most advanced and reliable computers, but they, I believe, were much more expensive than the computer systems of the smaller unknown firms. If the manager choose IBM and the system did not work, the manager could not be blamed for choosing a bad firm. If on the other hand he choose a small unknown firm whose computer systems cost less and the system did not work, then he/she would probably be blamed.

In large businesses and public sector organisations the cleaning contractors will usually be hired by a building services manager and not the head of the firm/organisation. Does he/she want to get fired?

 

[Office Cleaning]

"commercial cleaning is lucrative as a lot will do it on contracts e.g. 12 months" ha ha ha! Thanks for that - v good! Do you do bar mitzvahs?

"There is an old saying "No manager ever got fired to choosing IBM"." this is incorrect (grammatically as well) - the saying was no-one got fired for buying IBM, it was to do with fund managers buying stocks from the nifty fifty.

The best advice I heard about starting a cleaning company was I think on here, years ago, from an old hand - it was "run for the hills" still holds true in my opinion.

We used to have a load of vans - if you want my advice, get rid of them because you are going to have to drastically reduce all your overheads as there is sod all money in commercial cleaning nowadays - the prices we quote now are way over 50% less than what I used to charge back 20/25 years ago. If you think there is no money in domestic why would you think it's all in commercial which is utter cutthroat? You will be going up against the big guns who use cleaning as a loss leader to get inside the building (to supply facilities management where they can actually make money) or the little piddling jobs where they want someone once p/w for an hour which no cleaner wants to touch.

See the advice above.

 

[M-CLEAN UK LTD]

I have an industrial cleaning business that specifically cleans externals to large buildings, & supermarkets.

I am surrounded by internal & external cleaning companies that are all busy, never got enough time and making money.

I could never make it work by going into premises, leaving details, never getting past the secretary, emailing and hoping for the best.

I have leafleted, dropped top quality business cards, portfolios but have never seen success from these.

Website, website, website - If you want to break into commercial cleaning.

The website has to rank first two pages, has to have good content, needs to be kept current, needs to show your capabilities, experience and I believe in the commercial market it is very much who you have worked for and who you do work for.

It is the window to your business, the shopfront, your way of getting across why the potential client should be purchasing from you. It is often neglected and the importance of it is undervalued.

Three enquiries this week, two converted, one pending.

I do my own SEO, couple of hours a week, just changing the main website from fixed to a Wordpress website (so I can keep it all up to date).

There is plenty of money in commercial cleaning but you have to find it.

The downside to commercial cleaning - last minute phone calls, high expectations, stressful, lots of travelling & being away from home, waiting for invoice payments, becoming established is very difficult & one million other reasons not to step on the merry go round.

I have bad days but I can honestly say it was the best decision I made coming away from the domestic market.
All the best

 

[Office Cleaning]

The above is some good advice and somewhat more positive than mine.

A few observations: being busy does not mean you are making money, a busy fool and all that.

It may depend on your area, ours London is saturated and maybe why the prices are continually being driven downwards. A niche market like the above maybe a good idea plus in a less crowded marketplace.

I agree with the leafleting, we used to do this and it used to work but everyone uses the net nowadays.

Agree with the website, all our sales for more than the last 10 years have come through the site, but everyone else is doing this so you are not going to be the only one out there - differentiating yourself from others is difficult, but as the above says it's all your going to have so it is worth spending a lot of time on this. I use both nowadays, a straight older html site (a bit faster to load) and a wordpress site (you can use cdn to speed things up a bit). If you are starting out and dont know anything about coding/seo I would suggest the wordpress site route and use plugins (bit more bloated but easier at first).

With respect, getting a niche site to rank high is not too difficult (hat's off to the above poster though) - it's different thing altogether to try to rank highly on google for say the following keywords - cleaning companies or office cleaning. Anyhow if you are looking to rank on google - its all changed from back in the day, different viewers see different rankings depending on search history - still worth the effort. Bing and yahoo are easier - see here http://www.bing.com/search?q=cleaning companies&go=&qs=n&form=QBLH&filt=all&pq=cleaning companies&sc=8-18&sp=-1&sk=&cvid=78d74f84a72d4809b6a818969fea7889 - being ranked 3/4 on 1st page counts for a not a great deal - unfortunately google is where its at, and as I say thats all changed.

66% conversion rates are extremely high and I would not expect anything like that - we are lucking if we get near 10% - btw the above poster's link needs fixing on his profile page.

If I were to offer some more upbeat advice (nothing so freely given and all of that) - I would suggest trying to get a few decent sized contracts that you can make a living from. With you doing all the work running a few nice sized jobs.

The pluses - no employment hassle (this is a big deal), you know the work will be done correctly, low overheads so more chance of winning work.

Negatives - no holiday, all you, having your eggs all in one basket.

You could probably make an ok living from this but your not going to be living like a rock star but then you probably already knew that. Getting to the next level seems much more difficult nowadays and with some perspective I'm not sure it's worth it - t/over is vanity etc, but possibly you could get the pareto effect to work for you in reverse if you keep it nimble & tight.

Good luck

 

[M-CLEAN UK LTD]

Office

Do you have a specific work area that you stick to?

 

[M-CLEAN UK LTD]

Helen

My main work is the refurb programmes, for the supermarkets, cleaning new build stores (builders cleans), extensions to existing, refurbs and some works on the local stores.

Larger projects that with photos & type have got us seen by Google. From that I get calls from all over the country to look at potential works, a lot of them that have been told they cannot be cleaned or don't offer the best way of cleaning or don't clean well enough.

If you want to target the commercial market I would say go for it, keep your options open and maintain your current works.

If my aspirations had been tempered I would not have worked where I have worked and done the things I have done.

It is not easy, can be frustrating, there will be calls to help out with no notice and you will bang your head against the wall & wonder why you ever got involved but when it happens, you complete works, the money is paid and you get called again, on the next project then it is worth it.

If you want the work there is plenty out there, how you get it has to be by getting your name out there. People have a website built and wonder why they are getting no work, look at the website and alter it.

My main website is dated, far too type heavy and needs slimming down. It has a blog on it so people can see we are current but I am having it all revamped. It still works and does get traffic through it. I know where the traffic is coming from because I have Google analytics running in the background.

There is a lot of money in the commercial sector and many rewards, I would hope that you follow your aspirations. If I can assist, in any small way message me and if I can I will help out.

All the best

 

[webcrest]

B&S Bristol a based commercial cleaning company and i observed they are making real profit. Domestic cleaning does not have good earning but if you add commercial and office work in your domain, it could be a profitable business. Key point in this business is to engage the commercial client for one time and then you can fulfill all his needs like office cleaning, upholstery and gritty removing etc.

 

[Toby Willows]

B&S Bristol a based commercial cleaning company and i observed they are making real profit. Domestic cleaning does not have good earning but if you add commercial and office work in your domain, it could be a profitable business. Key point in this business is to engage the commercial client for one time and then you can fulfill all his needs like office cleaning, upholstery and gritty removing etc.

And this guys and girls is what a auto-posting bot looks like. Added to forums to make them look busy during lull periods. Usually they drag their responses from Yahoo. Have a look at this "members" other posts to see the generic replies.

In this case it would have gone for Bristol because of the Sift links on the site and found a cleaning business there to quote.

It's actually quite clever. Unless you are a advertiser on this forum expecting real people to read your ad's!

 

[Justin arnot]

In commercial cleaning different companies are using different method & technique

 

[Dmitri Fantastic]

You're trying to swim with sharks, mate. The cleaning niche is crazy competitive and if you haven't done things the right way 2 years ago, you'll have hard time competing now at all. Don't get me wrong, but I've been doing SEO for Fantastic Cleaners for quite some time and I can tell you for sure, that reaching top rankings for whatsoever type of cleaning is neither easy, neither simple. The way our company works is contracting people like you and thus ease the burden of onsite/offsite seo, customer care, marketing and etc. I hate to kill your motivation, but small fish barely do it will all the sharks around..

 

[Mitch3473]

Why have you got 4 vans. It will take a good few years before you have enough work for a multivan operation so get rid of 3 and start again, slowly.

 

[wevet]

A friend of mine has a substantial cleaning and associated services business and the biggest problem is not so much finding the customers but getting the money in. So I would approach this with caution unless you have a lot of cash in hand you will end u in the hands of invoice factors - YUK!