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.

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.

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

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.

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.

With the Price of Success Secrets Seriously Dropping

The price of the secrets of success is dropping. Once upon a time, the secrets of success were only available through accomplished role models of good character and success or in the books, they wrote. The internet came and the secrets of success began to leak out all over the web but they were secrets of a lesser quality. The biggest secrets should be more expensive or maybe the level of success determines the price but make no mistake about it, the price has gone right down the toilet.

In order to make a full disclosure, I too am a purveyor of secrets for a price but I figure what you save on Band-Aids make mine a good deal. My highest value secrets have left wounds and scars so buying my secrets are a bargain.

The secret selling business has grown right along with the janitorial business. More people today are selling secrets and it’s no secret there are more people selling janitorial services than ever before.

Little People

I have a confession to make.

There is a movie I have watched 50 times and I cry each time I see it. It is called You Can’t Take It With You. In the movie a quirky old man teaches a powerful, wealthy industrialist what is important in life. This film was produced in the 1930’s so I don’t really mind giving it away but what comes out is the value of a man’s life can be measured through the relationships he has accumulated by the end.

I learned what is important early in my career and it is the people I meet. Some I sell to, some I buy from and some I manage and pay. Business owners value people who can and do buy from them. Smart business owners know their biggest asset never show up on balance sheets and are the people in their companies.

How our Prehistoric Predecessors Learned to Bid and Estimate Janitorial Services

In prehistoric times, when janitors roamed the wilds, hunting and gathering clients and buildings, there was a method they used to bid and estimate new jobs.

These were very different days, long before cell phones, computers, high speed burnishers and internet connections. At night these savages did primitive dances with mops after commandeering office overhead radio systems. An unrelenting, primal beat of the Doors, Sly and The Family Stone and the Jefferson Airplane blared as they helped themselves to candy not meant for them, from receptionist’s desk top, glass containers which they enjoyed without remorse.

These were brutal and lawless days, eons before CIMS, the Cleaning Industry Management Standard, which codified how janitors were expected to behave and organize their tribes. The janitorial business was only rock and roll back then.

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.

Checklist for Success in the Janitorial Business

You are being lied to! Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Home Business Success Magazine, and a bunch of business opportunity magazines have told you that you can be rich and famous in your own cleaning business. If you are reading this then you have read one or more of these articles.

There is the story of some smiling Mr. and Mrs. Average holding a broom, posing with one foot on a mop bucket who are now millionaires with a successful janitorial business. The story is true but then the article goes on to say that, you can do the same thing.

Here is the truth, you CAN, but you may not.

Oh No! I Got No Dough but I Need to Grow

THE E-MAIL:

“Good Morning Ed,
We still can’t get enough clients, we need more jobs, more customers. What can we do? What else can we/should we do? Right now we don’t have any money. I bought a lot of new equipment and a vehicle. Do you know anything I can do to get more jobs?”

I know this young couple have a new baby in the house, so I invited them to call me. I have been through one start up with a brand new screaming mouth to feed, so I remember that feeling of panic.

THE CALL:

One little detail left out of the e-mail is that they have only been hitting it full time for about three months. Who has enough clients in the first three months? I know I never did.

So we did a 10-minute marketing plan over the phone based on a ZERO marketing budget. With sincerest apologies to every single Harvard MBA, I am going to share with you what I told them. To my friends from around the globe, I think this will work everywhere, so grab a pencil and a note pad.