Entrepreneur

In a low variety to entry industry with high competition, you must differentiate from your competitors. What ways can you create added value?

In marketing there are three categories that you need to align with the competitors and choose one to excel more than them:

1. Product - this is about what you use to clean and whether there are advantage to this over what your competitors use
2. Operational - this is about how you do it. It's whether you can do it faster, you can cut the cost higher, or you have a better after sales service
3. Relationship - this is about you and your customer, how close you are to them. The closer you are, the less likely they will choose others despite of difference in price and service

You have to scale essentially

I would try to work with the police to work on cleaning case sites. Constant work coming in, very well paid. You'd need to be able to stomach it though.

My opinion only. I don't run a cleaning business.

How have you been marketing yourself? Do you have a website? Social media? Handing out panflets? Start a cleaning blog to gather emails for email marketing?

I'm a Social media manager - happy to discuss the best ways to hit your target clients!

Get commercial contracts

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Stand out. Differentiate yourself. Eco friendly cleaning for example. Stand out in terms of quality of service. Try promotional mail / offers and discounts. When free, do cold calling, emails and telecalling to get leads and business.

Offer Deliveries… (pick up/ drop off)

Thanks. I’ll find out where to market to upper middle class homes and focus on that. You are the third person suggesting it

Portable Washing machine with propane heater, giant mattress steamer for killing bed bugs

Offer a free lap dance with every cleaning

EDDM

Read business podcasts and read books on how to grow your business. A lot of these guys are shysters, they are selling you a load of bullshit but you will find the ones that are good to follow after a short while. That's what I have done and I brought in 1M in my first year of business and now I'm on target to do at minimum 2.5M this year, and we are growing like crazy so I would like to see the business bring in 10M this business year. A lot of it is from reading. I spend an hour every single day of the week reading, and I listen to business podcasts while I'm travelling in the car.

Cleaning business here, with 35 employees
It is indeed an extremely competitive industry, and as you describe, major players deliberately offer very low prices to outpace the competition.
Development advices:
1 - Target small businesses, in proportion to your size. Small enterprises (law firms, real estate agencies...) with compact spaces tye are less price-sensitive and value proximity in relationships. Being a local, human presence is often preferred, especially if you lack teams for daily cleaning of a 2000m² store, for instance.
2 - Focus on specific professional categories (legal or medical, for example). They communicate a lot and can easily refer you if satisfied.
3 - Clearly define what "quality service" means. Everyone claims it, but few explain it. Is your strength service continuity (replacing absent staff)? Crucial in this sector. Confidentiality/security? Important for legal professions...
Explain what quality service means and what measures you've taken to ensure it.
4 - Refine your proposals (meeting agenda, specifications, proposal documents, etc.). If you want to be more than just a price, demonstrate additional value beyond cost.

Good luck. I remain available if you need assistance.

Contact every single real estate agent in your area. You’ll save time by going to brokerage offices. Call them. Ask the broker if you can have 5 mins to speak at their weekly meeting (if they have one). Agent information is very easy to find online.

Agents will need cleaners a lot of times for their listings.

I am not in this business, but I think especially for cleaning companies, trust is the key, whether you offer domestic cleaning services or professional office/real estate cleaning services. Try to be more personal in branding, let the prospects see your team, showcase some of the work you have been doing and be persistent. You have to be long enough on the market to succeed. Offer something your competitors don’t, look for examples in other markets. What your not direct competitors do, something you can start doing to attract more customers.

1. Hire more sdr's (cold calling)

2. I bet that most of those cleaning companies aren't active on TikTok/LinkedIn - so you could use chat gpt got to generate content ideas + scripts and then post content on these platforms to build a brand

Check out local falcon (SEO tool) to see how well you rank for your cleaning keywords around your business location. You might not be ranking well, which could hindering the number of leads you get monthly

Who is your ideal client? How are you currently marketing? How many slots are vacant on your weekly calendar?

If you compete on price you will lose. It's true in almost every industry.

I would focus only on upper middle class people. They will pay well for good service, which means show up when you are scheduled, clean everything, don't break anything, leave them alone.

And while they have money, many are still looking to save where they can. So offer them one free cleaning for each client they refer, but make it a caveat it has to be someone in their neighborhood. That way it will be a pricier job and be someone in a similar payrange.

Competing on price is the worst thing you can do, so never do it.

Can I ask why you’re not profitable? You’re losing money on every job? Or overspending on marketing?

Stop dealing with residential and go commercial.

Have a cleaning company here. This year my business made $400k. My main clients are property management companies and I mostly schedule move in/out cleans, office and apartment amenities and I have a few commercial spaces like small offices. Property managers and especially maintenance staff all talk to each other in their perspective areas so word to mouth is huge in this business and if you are consistent and readily available at a calls notice you will continue to grow. Now what everyone else is saying about standing out and being different is also correct for example my company stands out because we include baseboards and appliances in our base cleans and they aren’t extra charges which vendors really appreciate. Little difference like that can really make you stand out. I don’t advertise at all online almost all my business is word to mouth but what I have done in the past to generate commercial income was get the emails of construction companies and email new client offers and service lists and I usually get hits to submit bids. Construction companies are definitely a way into the commercial game. Hope this helps a little

There are 7 levers you can pull to make your business more profitable and increase your cash flow.

Here they are.

1. Increase your price. Less customers higher rates is way better then low rates lots of customers. This was the single greatest lever i pulled. Got rid of the deadwood customers and it goes straight to the bottom line.
2. Increase your sales volume ie more jobs
3. Decrease you cost of goods. By cheaper cleaning products.
4. Decrease your overheads. I.e negotiate cheaper rent or if you're paying a loan for van negotiate cheaper rates.
5. Decrease the time it takes to collect money.
6. Decrease the amount of inventory you have on hand. Ie less cleaning product untill you need it
7. Increase the average time to pay supliers. Ie if you could negotiate 30 to 60 day terms where you buy your cleaning products.

If you can move each of these up or down 1% you would not recognise your business in 1 year..