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.

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?

Especially in the Janitorial Industry, Only Wet Babies Like Change

The saying goes, "the only sure thing is death and taxes." Those that come up with profound proverbs are never questioned or doubted. Except by a few folks like me who do a lot of doubting. They missed an important one, which is, the only thing that will remain constant is the fact that things WILL change.

No one LIKES change except a wet baby. So with change comes tears. For many of us, the older we get, the more we cry about things changing. We get comfortable with our familiar routines, our abundance, and our knowledge of how things work. Then someone comes along and changes things.

Our beloved building services industry is full of old crybabies. They were (and many still are) fat and happy but then one day someone said they had to buy a fax machine and that was only the beginning. The floodgates broke open and then came a tsunami. Cell phones, email, websites, and the absolute WORST, computers on EVERY one’s desk?

Five Sure-Fire Cleaning Company Killers

1. Not marketing

Sitting in front of a keyboard on the web all day long is not marketing, it is sitting. Subcontracting from other janitorial companies or buying accounts from franchise companies makes you a janitor not a cleaning company owner.

Marketing your services with no money is hard. Whoever said you could open and start a cleaning company with no money, any more than you can open a restaurant or a gas station with no money, lied to you. You can market your services with no money to a point, but getting rich is highly doubtful and you have to work ten times harder.

If No Man is an Island, What is a Janitorial Service Owner All Alone in a Utility Closet?

Are you missing developing an important network that can help you grow your janitorial company?

I was at a pre-bid meeting for a giant account; and, as always, everyone was sitting or standing with eyes down, stone-cold silent, pretending to be busy with high level, secret corporate stuff on their legal pads (they were mostly doodling). No one said a word except to whisper in the ear of someone they had arrived with, wearing a matching golf shirt, from the same company.

Absolutely no eye contact, only stolen glances by the men in the room at the one drop-dead beautiful, runway-model female sales rep one company thought was the key to sales (they were wrong).