The US Marketplace for Cleaning Government Buildings

The US market for cleaning government buildings begins with estimating the size of the market however no one knows exactly how many buildings the government owns or controls.  The US Federal government has more than 500,000 buildings totaling approximately 3.1 billion square feet of space, housing 479 separate federal agencies.

Federal buildings are just the beginning, there are 50 state governments who each own thousands of buildings. State and federal buildings are supplemented with leased space so cleanable space is much more than what is simply owned. There are 3,144 county governments and 19,429 municipalities each with buildings that require cleaning. The total amount of property that needs to be cleaned is truly amazing and there are many contractors who won’t approach this sector at all

I cannot estimate how many people reading this may still have a phone book but there are pages of government agencies in every phone book, listed in its own separate section. A small phone book will still have 10 to 12 pages of government listings. So if you consider the sheer size of federal, state, county and municipal buildings together, the largest buyer of cleaning is the government at one level or another.

If you do business with government at any level, you are now B2G, in addition to B2B or in the residential side B2C. Marketing is different in all three sectors. Mass marketing is effective for the residential sector to consumers (B2C), direct marketing for the commercial sector to businesses (B2B) but the government sector (B2G) is a different animal completely.

The Power of Praise: How your team gets your company to the next level

In the business world, the professional field of human resource management is mature with associations, university degree programs, systems, processes and established conventional wisdom. Professional coursework in human resources management could not be counted as the most riveting or electrifying subject one could attend. The professional results of these learned efforts certainly are what inspired the song lyrics: all in all, you’re just another brick in the wall. 

Amazing organizations are comprised of amazing people; the problem is that amazing people don’t come labeled as such. You have to find them and in order to do so; you have to look for them. Looking back across almost four decades in the cleaning industry from working in 25 different companies, I know the cleaning business is really the people business. 

But I didn’t always know that, I had to learn it. 

I remember at first recruiting, interviewing and hiring was a bit of a mystery to me and as you can imagine it didn’t go very well at all. Employees were a necessary evil and one of the big headaches in the cleaning business. Starting from that point of view employees then became warm bodies, a part of the cleaning equation and not as reliable as my other tools, such as upright vacuum cleaners. 

I recall having very pleasant daydreams of clean buildings without employees (which completely replaced childhood daydreams of being a pirate, but required the same amount of magic).

Slowly I learned the value of my own employees but it was not until I was working for a large cleaning company where cleaning staff were less expendable than upright vacuum cleaners that I began to develop a realistic working theory and then a strategy.

We hired large groups of workers all at once when a new contract was secured. I recall seeing one worker on his first day and I could have bet money he wouldn’t return for his second day of work. A ‘loser’, a complete zero in my mind and on the first night we were never very picky, we simply needed warm bodies.

He proved me wrong. Not only did he return on the second night for work but never missed a day and five years later he was appointed supervisor of one of those buildings. I was wrong about that man but what I could not see that first night was that he cared about what he was doing. Identifying people who care means you have to pay attention.

Cancelled Cleaning Contracts and Endings at Three in the Morning

My only contract is gone!

Good to be back with you, it’s been a while. I want to talk to you about endings and how they feel at three o’clock in the morning. Things change, endings happen and you get to learn something.

At three in the morning wisdom gives way to exhaustion, fear and confusion. Every so often we get to see clearly what keeps us going. In adversity our foundations are laid bare but we may or may not like what we see.

Over the last year I helped a client take over a chain of health care centers. This account had been cleaned previously by two cleaning contractors. One contractor had half of these centers for seven years and the other contractor had his half for over twenty years. Both of these contractors had only one client and that one client cancelled the contract. These were very profitable accounts and this cancellation was the end of their businesses.

New equipment, new people, new keys (in the dark) and new alarms, all together provide for an “eventful evening”. Starting a chain of health care centers all on the same night has a few surprises even with good planning. Phone calls, checklists, spray bottles fly by at supersonic speed. Mini pep talks are dispensed. The same questions get the same answers, sometimes in English and sometimes not.

After the last building is done it takes a while to decompress and the date changed a few hours ago. This time I thought about those contractors who had lost their only account. This was the first night both of them were missing their one and only account. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I wonder if they are sleeping? I wonder if they were thinking what they could have done differently and not be out of business tonight. I wonder how much free time they had over the years while they sat comfortably with their one account.

I wonder if it occurred to them that by visiting the next closest health care center consistently, RIGHT next to the one they had, would have doubled the size of their businesses. Losing half of your business is bad but not as bad as losing the whole thing.

I have a firm ten percent rule about cleaning contracts and particularly those big ones. How much does your biggest client mean to you in dollars, to your company? Your biggest client is what percentage of your total revenue? No single contract should be more than ten percent of your total revenue. If you have one big cleaning contract then you better go find another and you better do it fast. If your biggest source of revenue is only 10% and they cancel, it’s a completely different matter. You can sleep just fine.

Having only one account leaves you vulnerable (and there was not ONE THING either of these two contractors could have done to save this account). Sit back and relax with just one client and late one night at about three in the morning it will feel like your whole world just ended.

Every single cleaning contract has a ticking clock attached. I can tell you with absolute authority that at three in the morning you can hear the movement of the minute hand on your clock in the dark with no problem at all.

Janitorial Company Basics: Everything You Wanted to Know About Bonds and Bonding But Were Afraid to Ask

If you run a janitorial company, chances are you've heard your competition market themselves as being legally licensed and bonded. Of course, all janitorial companies have to be licensed according to whatever state laws apply to them, but surety bonds are optional insurance policies that protect your clients.

So, what are janitorial surety bonds, anyway?

A basic definition explains that a surety bond is a legally binding contract that ensures a certain task is performed. Most janitorial service business owners buy surety bonds because they operate small companies and want a cost-effective way to protect against employees who might choose to act unethically. Even if you trust your staff to the fullest extent, the reality is that you and your business become easy targets if a client's belongings go missing.

Janitorial surety bonds are also known by other names such as custodian bonds or business service bonds. Regardless of the name, this bond provides protection for clients who work with residential and commercial cleaning services.

What kind of businesses get bonded?

Unlike most surety bond types, janitorial surety bonds are completely voluntary. You may choose to purchase a custodian bond if you operate a janitorial company, maid service, carpet cleaning service, house cleaning service or other type of cleaning business. Remember, the purpose is to convince prospective clients that their belongings and property will be safe from theft if they choose to work with you.

Do janitorial companies receive protection from surety bonds?

Surety bonds should not be confused with traditional insurance policies. When purchasing a surety bond, you and your company do not receive any of the bond's financial protection. Instead, the bond will protect your customers from losses that could result from unethical employees who might choose to steal. As such, buying a custodian bond reassures clients that you're committed to running a legitimate enterprise.

Will my bond protect against damages?

No, surety bonds only protect against theft. If you or an employee damages a client's property or possessions, the bond will not cover these costs. If you're looking for damage protection, consider purchasing a special insurance policy.

How much does it cost to get bonded?

Janitorial bonds are some of the cheapest surety bond types to purchase. The exact price you'll pay depends on how many employees you manage and much coverage you want. Janitorial bonds are typically purchased by

small business owners, who usually pay about

    $100/year for $5,000 worth of coverage for five or fewer employees
    $110/year for $10,000 worth of coverage for five or fewer employees
    $152/year for $25,000 worth of coverage for five or fewer employees

Of course, larger janitorial companies also purchase bonds, and higher bonding amounts are available as well. The best way to determine what you'll pay for a bond is to contact an online surety company quickly and easily.

Danielle Rodabaugh is the chief editor of "http://www.suretybonds.com/", an online surety bond agency that provides free surety bond quotes to business owners nationwide. For more information on the surety industry, you can find Danielle on "https://plus.google.com/u/0/113063981844601253780?rel=author">Google+

Bad News at Sunday Dinner

I hate liars. I feel sorry for the victims of liars. I have been lied to and those were among the worst moments of my life, finding out I had been lied to. Love songs are lies; no one “accidentally” falls in love like stepping in hot bubble gum in a parking lot. Another lie is that we all “live happily ever after” and this is the great lie in the janitorial business.

Commercial cleaning is based on commercial real estate development and occupancy of commercial space, which is finite. Your “dreams of success” do not change the amount of existing commercial space requiring cleaning. Do not believe the lies.

I got this note this morning;

Ed,

I started a commercial cleaning business last year and I failed. I could not attract enough commercial accounts to even cover expenses, regardless of what I did.

Its Sunday dinner and the bad news is there are only so many pieces of chicken to go around. There are 1,200 new cleaning services started every month and every one already seated at the table is still hungry. There is not one single cleaning service owner that does not want more accounts, not one. It does not matter how many they have, they want more.

The bad news is someone is going to go hungry. It does not matter how much you wish, there are only two thighs, two legs and two breasts and someone is going to get the neck and a couple will get the wings.

The dream peddlers are liars and seek only to take what little money you have and tell you there is no end to that plate of chicken.

Someone has to tell you the truth and I just did.

The cleaning business is a war just like the whole world of business. There are winners and losers. The losers will not live happily ever after.

Now what?

Hunters, Farmers and a Steady Diet of New Cleaning Accounts

(this is obviously not Ed)

If I can save myself some time, then I figure I am ahead of the game. I have to explain hunting and farming almost every day so now I can just send this post and save some time.

The feast or famine growth strategy in a janitorial company maintains a constant state of panic, confusion, and disarray. In 2012, the only way feasting happens in the janitorial industry is with a “slash and burn” competitor’s pricing strategy. Problem is that it works but a revolving door is created with accounts lost almost as fast as they are signed. Some rapidly growing franchises take this approach, as do some National multi-location cleaning management companies. It is not a new strategy and it never worked to build a profitable, healthy operation.

Janitorial sales famines are customary with inexperienced business owners who have bought into the “just grab a broom and a mop and make a million” touted by business opportunity magazines and the now pervasive internet cleaning gurus who will teach you if you buy their book of secrets. Sales famines also happen to hunters who are subject to hunting seasons or when they get around to it.

What do hunters do? They move from place to place looking for targets to shoot at. The take a shot and hit or miss and then move on to hunt their next target. They may stalk their prey for a little while but as soon as they get tired, they quit and go home empty handed. They got all dressed up, went out, worked hard but sit down and eat what they caught previously. They continue to hunt because they have scored in the past. New ways of doing things is not a big issue with hunters; in fact, some cling to old ways for the sport of it so there are hunters with bows and arrows.

A hunter catches his prey after relatively FEW points of contact.

One time through, smoke stack, (door to door) prospecting all by itself is hunting. Blasting one time through networking meetings is hunting. Purchasing janitorial sales appointments all by themselves is hunting. Going from one prospect to the next, making a presentation and then moving on to the next one, is taking a shot and either hitting or missing.

One of my first questions to janitorial company owners is how many proposals have you done in the last year. What do you do with the contacts you made during the last year AFTER those presentations have been made? It is at this point I know if I have a hunter or a farmer.

What do farmers do? Farmers stake out a piece of ground as their own. They go over that piece of ground, remove rocks and tree stumps and plant seeds. They again cover the same area and water all of their seeds until seedlings appear. They eliminate weeds so the seedlings absorb water. They apply nutrients and fertilizer and continue to remove weeds. They water it regularly. They watch over that ground and are aware of what is happening with a laser beam focus, nothing gets by them. New ways of doing things is a big issue for farmers; they are constantly on the lookout for improvements to increase their yield.

A farmer harvests his yield after MANY points of contact.

A farming system of janitorial selling starts with a map. Removing rocks and trees and then stumps is the sorting out of the types of businesses you will not do business with and identifies the business types you are going after. Seeds are your unique selling proposition and your elevator pitch, backed with an operational structure. Nutrients and fertilizers are your tools, your phone, your personalized direct mail and email templates, your online strategy and presence and your community networking groups.

Water is delivered by way of irrigation systems, timed release of the key growth factor water and delivered regularly. Watching your plot of land is your daily scan of the local business news that may mean new business to you, not the comics, not your horoscope, not the sports pages, the business news about local companies, promotions to new positions and construction (or business failures).

Finally, keeping informed about what is available that may increase your yield of profitable contracts is key. History is a wonderful area of study but how things were done 20 or 10 or even 5 years ago is a study of what used to work. A trip down memory lane.

I will confess here to being city born and raised. I do not own a pair of bib overalls or a straw hat but I did figure out early on that hunters score every so often but farming is the correct approach to build a profitable cleaning company.

UPDATE JUNE 2016

Of all the posts I wrote over a four-year period, this post is foundational for every cleaning service owner who wants more accounts. Last year we released an entire program to set up your own sales program EXACTLY like the global giants and every commercial cleaning franchise has. We take you through the set up, the methodology, tell you EXACTLY what to say, how to make a first approach to a prospect but more importantly HOW TO FOLLOW UP. The key is setting up sales appointments with prospects who will change cleaning services. The program is Janitorial Marketing Pro and you can get yours by clicking this link Janitorial Marketing Pro Appointment Setting Program

Just a Casserole Ingredient

Never mind "thinking outside the box" for a moment (a term I REALLY hate), think what happens on a grocery shelf when faced with a selection of canned vegetables that will only wind up buried in a casserole or "Hot Dish" back in Minnesota.

Which one do you pick? Is it the package? Is it the brand name? Is it the price?

This is not the key ingredient that will make or break the meal but it IS necessary so you have to pick one.

A really well done, stand out, amazing package may get you to pick that one regardless of the price.

A trusted brand name may get you to pick that one (and that is because you have SEEN that same name repeatedly enough to make an impression, repetition which co$t the company $omething).

Nevertheless, if none of those factors is at play then you decide based on price.

Had a Certified Property Manager (one who had bought $10 million in cleaning) who I raised the issue of going with the low bidder, tell me that was an excuse for someone who was lazy or clueless.

Amazing packaging, establishing a brand name, or commodity (by the pound) pricing, YOU choose.

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.

Five Undeniable Truths about Janitorial Blogging

A blog (a blend of the term web log) is the primary way for you to engage your prospects, your clients, and your community in this Web 2.0 age. There are 156 million blogs and if you are in the cleaning industry, you had better get yours and you had better make it good.

I look at janitorial web sites almost continuously. Few in our industry have figured out how to maintain a presence on the web and janitorial web sites are not much more than electronic brochures. How much time do you spend reading any brochure after your purchase? How can you use the web to interact with all those you seek to influence (both before and after the sale)?

Yes, we all know you vacuum and dust and polish along with the other 127,000 cleaning services in the U.S. that want that very same dollar that you do. Frankly, everyone with money to spend for cleaning is tired of hearing it. The question is, what makes you special and why should you get that cleaning dollar? I want to be very clear about this and make sure you understand that you are NOT special in today’s marketplace. (Your mom still thinks you are special but other than her, it is a very short list).

The answer is as it always has been, to build a relationship. The foundation of a relationship is engagement. For a whole generation of buyers and clients today engagement is something that happens on the web. A blog is one key piece of your internet presence that you cannot afford to ignore.

Who gets the last word?

I went to the funeral of an old friend. We have not been very, close over the last few years but he was a friend who taught me much that I have taken with me for several decades. We were fierce competitors for many years and then one day after he left a top position in a global company, he bought my company.

My friend cleaned buildings like many of my other friends but this one cleaned what equaled entire cities. You could measure what he cleaned not in square feet or even in how many buildings but in square blocks of downtown business corridors. People stood at my friend’s funeral because there were no seats left.

So much current conventional wisdom was shattered at the funeral; I had trouble deciding which nuggets of nonsense to disassemble for you. I decided to disassemble just a few here now.

I Did NOT Steal Those Books In Chicago, But if I Did I Would Steal These

Dateline: August 31, 2011 in the Chicagoland section of The Chicago Tribune, headline reads; Janitor charged with stealing thousands of books from Lisle library, By Brian Slodysko, Tribune reporter.

“Security procedures at the Lisle Library will be evaluated after a Glen Ellyn man who worked as a late-night janitor was charged with carting off thousands of stolen library books”.

For the record, I have not been to Chicago since August of 2010; I have never lived in Glen Ellyn and have never worked that night shift at that library. To those reading this headline and just naturally assuming it was I are wrong. I never stole a book from any library and feel that this sort of crime is one of the lowest.

To keep the record straight, once I reported a library book lost and paid the library for it but I knew where it was all the time. After checking with Strand’s in New York City, the final authority on hard to find books, paying the library for this book was the only way I could have it.

Now that I have cleared up this late breaking news, cleared my own good name and made a confession of my one misdeed against any library, we can all now move on past all this ugliness.

It's not JUST the Devil in the Details

The details matter. They matter on a grander scale then we can imagine. Sometimes those details matter to those who we do not expect them to matter too.

I just read a story of Steve Job’s concern over a small detail. I will let you read that story here yourself:  Steve Jobs and the Google Logo Ambulance. The story immediately brought to mind a man who worked for me as a day porter in the headquarters of a large company. His name also was Steve.

This week I followed a conversation about the frustration of finding and keeping good help. I was in the business long enough to fix that problem for good and never had to advertise as all my competitors did.

My Steve was no genius and was in fact developmentally disabled. Steve took his job very seriously. Though he was finished with work at 4pm, one night I get a call from Steve at 11pm.

Steve was bothered about a spot on a faucet that he was not able to remove in a men’s room on the second floor. He could NOT rest and called me to tell me he was working on it but it really was bothering him.

Why the Web Matters and Why it Matters Even MORE Today

 A $50,000 per month janitorial contract with a 22% gross profit that came off a web site hit got my attention. With all the competition for accounts like this one, I was shocked. I built one of the largest janitorial companies in the US without knocking on a single door but I was still shocked. 

I was the guy that licked 5,000 envelopes when computers were the size of trucks. I learned how direct marketing worked, was successful at it, and then spent the next 25 years listening to people telling me that it didn’t work. (It just did not work for them because they were doing it wrong). 

The first chance I got to run out and buy a computer I bit the bullet and spent more than the car I was driving at the time. Then there was a way to talk to other people with computers over phone lines. Once again, I was there, we could type with a keyboard, and it would show up on the screen of the person on the other end of the phone line. No pictures, no sound just very plain type that looked like what telegrams used to look like. This was before Al Gore invented the World Wide Web. 

Last weekend I spent some time getting hooked up to something called Tumblr. One of the big stars there is Jenna Marbles. She is also one of the stars of Web 2.0. Everyone my age will look at Jenna Marbles whining about the girls she hates, why her cat is better than a boyfriend, advice on how to avoid people that she doesn’t want to talk to and how to trick people into thinking you look good (which is strange coming from a very attractive young lady in her early 20s) and dismiss her completely. Here’s the deal though, Jenna invites you to then comment or tell her what you, the viewer thinks and people do. 

Do you have a computer? Have you ever sent or received an email? Have you walked into any Fortune 500 company to sell janitorial services? Face it, in 2011 if you do not use a computer then you might as well get rid of your telephone. Oh and while you are at it, get rid of that new fangled floor machine too and then you can go back to the “good old days” when floors were polished by attaching rags to your feet. So the bottom line is your computer is here to stay if you are in the janitorial business. The internet isn’t a fad either, it’s here to stay. 

Jenna Marbles matters and so does Web 2.0 and here is why. Al Gore’s wonderful invention of the Web was not worth very much to the average person. Do you know who were the first bunch of Joe Averages who it did matter too? The fans of the Grateful Dead were the first to use Gore’s invention for their own purposes. Stoned out Deadheads found out that there was something called Mosaic (the very first web browser) and they used Mosaic to organize each other. Deadheads traveled around in brightly painted VW vans, following their favorite band. Jenna Marbles’ twenty something very public angst is today’s permutation of those stoned out Deadhead’s partying.

To those of you who say I am stretching a point, try selling any of your services to any Fortune 500 company or any government agency without first going to their web site and filling out a vendor registration form. You can stand in the lobby for as long as you like handing business cards to a receptionist and if you are not a registered vendor you are wasting your time. 

You started out with a web site thinking all it is supposed to do, is to act like a brochure. You PUSHING out your message in the form of a electronic brochure and hoping someone that can sign a cleaning contract will see it and spend the time to read it. Web 2.0 is here and your web site is only one small piece of any serious company’s presence on the Web. If you want to grow and thrive in this new electronic landscape, I really hate to tell you this but you are going to have to learn what Jenna Marbles knows.

Now you will not be able to say you have not been warned because I just warned all of you. 

How a Harvard Professor Convinced Me to Become a Full Time Janitor

I started a list of all the people that either had started their careers or had worked as janitors in the past and it is a very impressive list. World leaders, politicians and familiar entertainers all once worked in our industry. I wanted to be one of them, someone just doing cleaning work temporarily until I launched into a career of money, glory, and success.

My first cleaning job was in college where I started by sweeping and mopping the street in front of several of Miami’s most prestigious hotels. I had to work my way up to be assigned to the inside, mop the lobbies, and vacuum those fabulous waterfront nightclubs.

I had a dreadful time in college because it was there that I fell in love with learning and confused that with college attendance. I changed majors after a couple of years but in the meantime picked up a wife, a mortgage, and car payments. I got it straightened out by understanding college was to make a living and learning was a solitary activity one undertakes for a lifetime and had nothing at all to do with so called institutions of higher learning.