Moses, Mount Sinai and 21st Century Soap Salesmen

The serious study of history includes seeing and interpreting it through different disciplines. Therefore, an archaeologist and an economist and then a sociologist would all see history through the lens of their own interests. One way to look at history is through systematic sets of laws that divide one period from another. Therefore, we can study and correctly conclude that the Code of Hammurabi (from around 1770 BC in Babylon), the Magna Carta (the foundation of English law from 1215), and the Nuremberg Laws of Race (1933) all signaled important milestones in human history.

Western culture owes much to Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai around 1240 BC. Three major world religions point back to that pivotal event. The cleaning industry experienced an event that will be viewed in the future just as pivotal as what happened on Mt. Sinai.

The International Sanitary Supply Association was originally chartered for manufacturers and distributors of chemicals and equipment used in the cleaning industry. The very first time I learned about the association, a distributor proudly told me it was the trade association of soap salesmen. Founded in 1923 by Albert Richter who wanted to trade information between distributors around the US, the ISSA became a global trade Association in 1966.

I mopped floors at five star hotels in Miami Beach starting in 1974 and launched my first janitorial company in 1977. No internet (Al Gore had not invented the world wide web yet), my library at the University I was attending was all I had as a resource and everything I could find out about my new business and my new career, I learned from my sanitary supply distributor who was an ISSA member.

How does a truly great commercial cleaning company operate? Hiring and training and supervising my staff, the best way to deal with service defects, what constitutes quality service and hundreds of issues I had to figure out all by myself with the help of my supply company. What I needed was an operating standard to compare what I was doing with what was considered the best practices of my industry. Nothing of the sort existed so it was my best guess based on what other industries did.


The single most important event in the janitorial industry was the publication of the Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) by the ISSA. Not the voice of God or even a modern day Moses but the best practices of our industry agreed on by some of the best-organized janitorial companies in the country. A collaborative effort by the best minds of our industry organized by the ISSA, several years in the making but then the most amazing move by the Association is that CIMS is public and available to the entire industry free through the ISSA. (http://www.issa.com/?m=download )

CIMS is a standard for us to go by, a framework from which we can assemble the management structures of our businesses and a way for clients and prospects to know they are dealing with the best in the industry. CIMS is how the best companies organize their businesses spelled out in detail. For the very first time the janitorial industry is able to point to a set of practices that constitute how a company should operate.

The CIMS program is not simple and certification is a major endeavor but the results are worth every single bit of effort. There are currently 116 companies that have achieved CIMS Certification with 92 opting for an additional Green Building designation, which provides for the US Green Building Council’s LEED program.

Every janitorial and cleaning service owner needs to have a copy of the CIMS document and build around this standard. Certification may be a long way off in the future or maybe not at all but the standards are sound and provide a yardstick for managerial excellence.

Janitorial Services is Searched 368,000 Times Per Month in the U.S But This Is Only One Third of The Story

Annette Penney of Inspire and Acquire

So Why Aren’t You Generating More Leads Online?

Keyword research on the terms being used to find janitorial and commercial cleaners, indicate that in the United States more than a million searches were conducted in the month of March, 2012 on: janitorial services, commercial cleaning, office cleaning, and floor cleaning. If you have a business in the janitorial sector, you must have wondered at some point why you are not generating more leads from your website.

The team at Inspire and Acquire conducted a brief study of a small group of websites in the janitorial industry, whose names were chosen randomly from the MasterMind group on LinkedIn (permission was obtained from the group owner). Analyses were performed to determine the Internet Marketing Effectiveness of these websites and the results were not surprising. In this article we share the top 3 critical areas of online marketing that were shown to be problematic for business owners in the janitorial industry. We also provide solutions for dealing with these issues.

I am talking as loud and as fast as I can, now where's my money!

Phase 7 This is easy!

THE EIGHT PHASES OF 

SOCIAL MEDIA FAILURE

Phase 1 - “It’s a waste of time.”

Phase 2 - “I don’t understand how it works.”

Phase 3 - “So this is supposed to make me money?”

Phase 4 - “Well if this idiot can do this, I can too!”

Phase 5 - “This takes too long!”

Phase 6 - “I got an idea!”

Phase 7 - “This is easy.”

Phase 8 - “I haven’t seen one thin dime for all this work.”

Walmart’s first website cost $40 million and after its first year produced revenues less than one small store. So they closed it down, took the loss, wrote off the internet, and went back to counting on all their brick and mortar stores.

LinkedIn went live May 5, 2003 - at the end of the first month had 4,500 members and 81,000 members by the end of 2003. By the end of 2008, LinkedIn had 33 million members and among them were the CEOs of the Fortune 500. Now LinkedIn has over 150 million members and is growing by 2 members every second. LinkedIn has been described by online trade publication TechRepublic as having "…become the de facto tool for professional networking"

Your social media presence is established, your website is live, your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts are all active but not doing what you hoped? It is harder than it looks. Making noise is easy and we see and hear this noise on LinkedIn. The pointless posts, reposts from common sources, putting anything at all up, hoping anyone will see your name. So if it’s only noise on LinkedIn what happens with Facebook and Twitter? How does it all fit together?

Content is king and your content is what you have to say. If you don’t have anything of VALUE to say then all of the posting, chatting, tweeting and sharing will only harm you by damaging your online reputation. Not know WHERE to say it makes you look like an insane person yelling to no one in particular (grab a shopping cart and a big pair of fuzzy bedroom slippers to complete your online persona while you are at it). The first rule is to have something of value to say.  The second rule is know where to say it.

The purpose of social media marketing is to make connections that become relationships that lead to increased revenues and profits, period.

My question to you today is - how are your network of online connections generating revenues for you and your company? Social media marketing is an extra step in the selling process. If you are feeling baffled, you are not alone. One national marketing trade association has a social media blog with zero posts to LinkedIn, zero “likes” on Facebook and has never been tweeted. Take a good look at what I just said. A national trade association of marketing professionals has an online blog that NO ONE REPOSTS, “LIKES” OR TWEETS!

Here’s a few basic rules of the game to START to make you money;

1. Have something of VALUE to say. If it was on the front page of Yahoo, it’s not valuable. If it’s a news story HAVE AN OPINION and then solicit other opinions in a discussion. ENGAGE your readers.

2. Know WHERE to say it. If you don’t understand the difference between a discussion and a commercial promotion I am going to bet you don’t get invited to parties outside of your immediate family (and only because they are obligated to invite you). Do you meet people and take off into a commercial? Forget social media and try a sandwich board at busy intersections. How do you meet someone in person? Meeting people online is no different. Meeting people is connecting with them; there is a place and a time to do that and social media channels are great places to accomplish this.

3. You will need to study for yourself or get help. It is an investment in time but it can be learned and there are a few people (a VERY few) who understand how to do it properly with money coming from your efforts. This is an investment and not a lottery ticket so think in terms of a long-term commitment to it. By the way, Walmart stuck it out and makes money on their website now. It was an investment that paid off for them and social media will pay off for you over a period of time too.

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.
 

How to beat the BIG boys - What the Giants of the industry just don't get

I used to look forward to reading our trade journals. Services Magazine, Cleaning Management, Building Services Management and a couple long gone now. Those magazines weren’t just bathroom reading for me, I would hang on every word, read every article and carefully read every single ad. Editors had names like Terry “ Five Coats” Wilhelm (forgive me Terry if I got your last name wrong, haven’t seen your name in print for many years but I hope you made a good buck selling the magazine and are comfy in retirement).

Professional trade journal publishing companies took over and now the janitorial magazines are only one in an entire portfolio of trade journals, among other trade journals like for gummy worm manufacturers and “ethnic” hair care distributors. I am OK with this, its progress I suppose and the professionals have done a great job converting to digital formats. Terry “Five Coats” could never have dreamed of a digital magazine.

I used to love to read what other successful company owners were doing and what they thought was important. Fortunately, for me, the internet took off and today I talk to janitorial company owners all over the world directly and read what they say with no editors. I still do read our trade journals but now I read the digital versions.

Most new comers into the business want to know how to build big companies like the ones they feel are running over them. The basics of moving dirt seems so simple and big companies have developed systems that are very good in operations and job costing. However, they DO falter as evidenced by one of the biggest companies in our industry who once boasted 75% of the entire downtown market where they are headquartered but have today lost more than two thirds of their buildings in their own backyard.

Snail Mail (Direct Mail) - Time to dust off a tried and true weapon in your arsenal

This morning I blasted through my first batch of email in 20 minutes. To stay ahead of the curve, I get more email than most people do, about 400 messages a day. The first batch in the morning is the biggest anywhere from 50 to 65 pieces during the week. I can do this because of the magic of two buttons, delete, and archive. I delete 85% of everything that hits my email box after scanning for anything marvelous.

I have been advising my clients to go back to snail mail for marketing and sales in their janitorial business. Yesterday one of my clients reported to me a 5% return on his first snail mail campaign. For the younger crowd snail mail, is an old-fashioned letter sent in an envelope that comes occasionally in that pile of flyers, junk mail and bills.

I am an old direct mail sort of guy. I spent a solid 10 years learning everything I could about how to get people to buy things through the mail. I built my first cleaning business with direct mail all by itself. No cold calls, no phone calls and this was before anyone dreamed of computers or the web. I personally licked 5,000 envelopes after personally signing 5,000 letters in blue ink carefully folding each letter and placing in an envelope along with a brochure and my card.

Just like the law of gravity, there is an immutable law of direct mail that says, “The right letter, to the right person with the right offer at the right time ALWAYS works”. The truth is today a personal letter works better than ever because of the delete button everyone has with just a mouse click away.

To be very clear I am not talking about junk mail but a personal letter from you to your prospect with your signature at the end of the letter arriving in a business sized number 10 envelope with their name correctly spelled and typed on the envelope.

Could direct mail work in your business? Here’s a test for you to try before you jot off some trash can bound advertising with the usual blah, blah, blah, wasting precious first class postage (yes, first class, not the junk mail rates). For the next 6 weeks place EVERY piece of mail you receive into a box. At the end of the 6 weeks go through the box and pull out every single business letter you receive with your name spelled correctly, NOT in a window envelope (which tells you it was done by a machine) from someone that KNOWS you actually use what they are selling.

First count how many there are and then study them carefully to see if it was sent by someone who knows you need what they have to sell. You will be surprised how few you find. In the direct mail advertising world, what you have started is a swipe file. Be on the lookout for really great letters that makes you FEEL something and were written just to and FOR you.

So you know, with everything that I learned about making people buy things through the mail, I might spend 8 to 12 hours to write a good letter. Carefully honing every single word, using a personal voice and reading it through the reader’s eyes in order to make the reader DO something. Will your letter be tossed in the trash? Yes, most of them will but it is the ones that DO NOT that will make a difference in your sales.

The silver bullet you have been searching for, no but a very powerful tool to incorporate into your total marketing program. Once again, what do we do to grow a janitorial company? We do EVERYTHING and old-fashioned business letters is just one piece of ammo in a well-stocked arsenal.

Finding the truly remarkable at ISSA/Interclean 2011

When very large events take place, it is hard to see the overall impact and cull the essential lessons or observations. Communicating those observations is sometimes more difficult and I needed several days to process everything I saw, heard and experienced in Vegas at the ISSA/Interclean 2011 conference.

I am a man given to the remarkable, the most interesting, important or at minimal, the avant-garde. This is why when moving to the mid-west, hot dish seemed like what they feed prisoners to stay just this side of the Geneva Convention. I am not a meat and potatoes guy, I NEED spice. That is why I dumped my TV and can’t handle top 40 music or celebrity news. I am not just bored with the mundane but an avid hater of all that is average.

I attended the conference to find what I could see as the trends that now and into the future will shape our companies and careers in this industry. It was a hunt for the remarkable and I found it.