New Janitorial Sales Tools and Old Rules of Engagement

When it comes to new tools, no one gets better tools then the military. I read about the new rifle that shoots around corners and then there is the new ray gun, right out of a science fiction story. There is no doubt about it, the military gets the best new tools.

I always knew to be successful in the janitorial business; I needed to have the best tools. What I found was that for me, the best tools were always information. When I first started out selling janitorial services, the tools were simple. A nice business card for when you met prospects, premium printing on the best paper for follow-up letters and a great proposal gave the janitorial sales representative the best tools he could hope for.

After I built and sold my first janitorial company, I was most fortunate to go to work for a great company. It was then that I learned the power of networking. I had built a good company of small and medium sized buildings, but now with my new company, my job was simple, all I had to do was sell very large contracts to very large buildings. They supplied me with an amazing tool to sell giant contracts, it was an American Express card, and I was instructed to go make friends.
 


I no longer had hundreds of competitors, there were only a few of us who sold contracts this size. Now my competitors also understood they had to make friends but they had been at it much longer than I had.

My strategy was to elevate myself above my competition and information would give me an advantage. So locating, identifying, and assimilating information became my most important advantage over my competitors.

WHAT MATTERED TO THE PEOPLE I SELL TO? What information could I get that I could use to send me to the head of the line in the minds of the people who purchased services from me? What information matters to the people you sell to?

Career information in THEIR field of property or facility management, job openings or knowing a property manager was unhappy with who they worked for and matching them up with a good company. Guess who gets the cleaning contract when a property or facility manager moves to a new company and they find a mediocre janitorial service after YOU provided a lead that turned into a job for them?

Reliable vendors in other fields who were ethical, quality control freaks like myself who my prospects did not know, ALL became key contacts for me. Again I possessed valuable information that my competitors could not be bothered gathering or were not smart enough to understand the value of, every great referral is a powerful sales tool.

Information on business opportunities that would make THEIR company money such as leasing opportunities when someone told me they were planning on moving. Running across a poorly managed building (usually a dirty or an empty one) is a chance for a well-run commercial real estate company to make money for themselves AND a building owner. By learning about my own business, the business of my clients became important for me to understand. I studied real estate and kept abreast of all commercial and industrial development news and once held a real estate license myself.

The ultimate networking success in my entire career had to have been introducing two contacts to one another in need of each other at a critical time for each and a large commercial real estate deal came out of my introduction. There were three “class A” office buildings built, totaling several hundred thousand square feet and guess who got to clean them?

When I realized The Broker List was an up and coming powerhouse of networking opportunities for the commercial real estate industry, I thought back to my own networking strategy in janitorial sales. What IF a janitorial sales person, during a friendly conversation with a commercial real estate manager or broker could simply say, “Are you on The Broker List, a free directory of commercial real estate professionals”?

I had no idea the interest my original post in a few LinkedIn groups would cause among janitorial company owners and sales folks about The Broker List. Several janitorial company owners interested in my post contacted me but unfortunately have not done their homework on their own companies. They are hoping this is the magic bullet to launch a startup company or take a poorly run company to fame and fortune without all the necessary blood, sweat, tears, experience, cash, and BRAINS.

The other janitorial writers and consultants tell you to network but here I have laid out my own networking strategy for you to come up with some ideas of your own. My strategy worked for me and can work for you.

My strategy was also backed up with some very hard work, a lot of study outside of my own field, an unwavering commitment to verifiable quality (not JUST a slogan but by walking/inspecting my own buildings in the middle of the night and early in the morning) and the knowledge that janitorial business is a hard hard one with no short cuts and no magic formulas.