Good management is a key ingredient to business growth. There are things to master such as: time management, proper business image, negotiation skills, managing people, customer service, and the list goes on. The more you learn about starting and running a janitorial business, the greater will be your success in avoiding costly mistakes.
Accounting is another important skill for contractors to learn. Regular monitoring of income and expenses will identify trends and profitability. You should develop (or purchase) a system to track productivity for each building, and monitor equipment and job costs and all financial trends.
Tracking monthly income and expenses is critical in order to locate over-expenditures. Part of the responsibility of starting a cleaning business is to initially keep expenses on the low side. Put off temptations to borrow large sums of money or take on unnecessary debts. Each month compile a profit and loss statement from your checkbook to assess the financial health of your business.
You have probably heard the saying, “Good help is hard to find”. In the office cleaning business, bad help can be a sure way to lose a customer. Finding competent personnel is difficult, but not impossible. There are several ways to recruit workers. You can ask employees for names of dependable, hard-working people who want extra work and like to clean. Consider giving bonuses to employees whose referrals are hired and stay on. Ask vendors, service people, and sales people if they know of anyone who is seeking work as a cleaning technician.
Pre-employment screening is crucial. If you hire a sex offender to clean a daycare center or a drug addict to clean a doctor’s office, you could end up in court charged with hiring negligence. A professional management system should include a thorough employment application process with a screening and rating system.
A quality control inspection form is a valuable tool to score the cleaning performance of each worker. One of the best ways to inspect a building is to use a cleaning tasks scorecard. By scoring each task on a scale of 1-10 and then totaling and dividing by the number of items rated, you will find the overall percent. An 80% score is normally tolerable, but if it drops below 70% expect customer complaints. This rating system can also be used to warrant a pay raise or even to terminate a worker.
After a series of complaints, with a slow response on your part, expect the customer to look for another service. Some new contractors become upset when a customer complains. As the owner, you must not take it personally. Instead, offer an apology for items that were missed. On the other hand, when you investigate a complaint you may discover that a building employee was working late and made a mess after your crew finished cleaning.
Rapid growth poses new challengers. Workers must be trained to perform all required duties. Just because you hire a friend or relative to clean a building does not mean you can give them the keys and turn them loose. It is important to visit each building on a regular basis and check up on things. In order to converse intelligently with a customer, you must know what is going on in their business place.
Volumes of books have been written on improving customer service. Customer satisfaction is what keeps long-term cleaning accounts. Always follow up promptly with new customers and on all project work. Make sure they are happy with the work. Follow-up can also lead to additional work and referrals. Keep in mind that if required tasks are slighted and soil builds up, complaints may occur.
An excellent practice is to track the cleaning time for every job. This will be invaluable information when making future bids. Of importance is to note some of the cleaning variables that made this job easy, average, or difficult. It helps to record the production time in thousands of square feet cleaned per hour, the hourly gross and net profit, and the price per square foot.
A great resource to help start an office cleaning service can be found here.
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