Selling Cleaning Services in Your Community - The Complete Guide

If you are an entrepreneur in the cleaning industry or contemplating entering this thriving market, you have come to the right place. In this blog, we will unveil the secrets to successfully selling your cleaning services, enabling your business to shine as brightly as the homes and offices you will serve.

Jump to:

• Getting Started with Cleaning Service Sales
• How Selling Commercial Cleaning is Different from Selling Home Cleaning Services
• 10 Steps to Selling Local Cleaning Services
• Conclusion

Getting Started with Cleaning Service Sales

By setting up a strong foundation before diving into sales, you ensure that you are equipped to fulfill promises, maintain consistent quality, and establish enduring relationships with your customers.

Do Some Financial Planning

Your prices and profit projections are key to making sure that you are making money rather than losing it. As you pitch to new customers, you may want to offer special starter discounts or accommodate different kinds of cleaning packages. 

So before you hit the streets selling, make sure you’ve done your break-even calculations and have a clean plan in place. 

Get All Licenses & Insurance

Anything can happen when you’re entering the homes and offices of others. Additionally, proper business and industry licensing shows customers that you are professional and compliant with local laws.

Source: Mapchat.net & Turno

Assess Your Resources & Workforce

Acquiring more cleaning customers than you can reliably service could ruin your reputation and prevent growth. So make sure you have all the tools and people you need to reach your sales goals.

Create a Cleaning Contract, Estimate, & Invoicing Process

Depending who your customers are, you may need to consult a local attorney to build a simple cleaning contract that protects you and your customers. Additionally, most prospects are going to want to get an estimate or bid from you before hiring you.

Have a Way to Manage All Your Contacts

A customer management system (or CRM) is a tool you use to keep track of everyone you’ve talked to about your cleaning business. That includes active customers, past customers, people you want to become customers, and so on.

Source: GoSite’s Contact Hub

Ideally, you want a CRM tool that works on your phone so that you can manage your contacts easily from the palm of your hand and call or text them quickly.

Set Some Goals

Finally, motivate yourself to close new customers by setting goals for yourself. They should be both realistic and challenging.

For example, you can make it a goal to reach out to 100 people every week for your first month in business. Then you set more goals on top of that, such as 60 of those 100 people are at least somewhat interested and 30 of those people become customers.

How Selling Commercial Cleaning is Different from Selling Home Cleaning Services

It’s generally not a good ideal to start out serving BOTH residential and commercial cleaning clients. That’s because the costs, pricing, and demands can be very different. If you’re not sure where to start, use the table below to help you decide.

10 Steps to Selling Local Cleaning Services

1. Know Who You’re Selling To

No matter how great you think your cleaning business is (or how much better you are to the competition), all that really matters is what your customers feel.

So knowing your audience is critical. Take some time to listen to their needs and expectations. Be the kind of cleaning services salesperson that knows when, what, and how they want cleanings done.

From there, you can further know your customers by identifying some commonalities:

• Do you trend towards a certain age range?
• Are you more popular in a certain part of town?
• What is your best customers’ average income or budget?
• What is your customers’ preferred method of communication (text, call, email, social media messaging, etc.)?
• Do your customers trend toward a certain lifestyle or industry?

2. Create Some Recognizable Branding & Present a Polished Image

While you shouldn’t worry about spending thousands of dollars with a branding agency, having a recognizable name, logo, and message is worthwhile so that your audience can tell you apart from your competitors.

What To Do When Customers Call You

Welcoming new customers with greetings like, “Who is this?!” or “What’s up?” will turn off new customers. This isn’t just true for you but also for anyone else who’ll likely be answering the phone for your cleaning business.

The longer you operate, the more often you’ll have people calling you to come clean for them. That means that it’s critical that you have a professional voicemail message, as well as a standard way of answering the phone.

3. Develop Cleaning Service Pitches

If you’ve heard of an “elevator pitch,” then you’re off to a good start. Your pitch is the way you present your cleaning business in various situations.

For example, if you’re attending a networking event where you’ll be mingling with other service providers, you might develop a 30-second pitch that effectively explains what you do, who you do it for, and why you're different from your competitors.

Or maybe you go door-to-door. In this scenario, you might want a quick pitch to earn the homeowner’s attention, then a 2-minute pitch once they’ve agreed to hear you out.

For a simple guide on pitching your cleaning services, check out the table of examples below.

4. Network & Get Involved in Your Community

No amount of marketing and advertising is going to replace you getting out and talking to people. Selling your cleaning services is more than just getting new customers, it’s also about building relationships and developing a positive reputation with the right people.

Think of everyone you meet as a potential customer or referral partner. Express interest in what others do so that you can forge partnerships with like-minded, quality service providers in your area. Lastly, invest time and money into wholesome, local initiatives that you believe in.

These steps will undoubtedly help nurture trust in your person and brand as you sell your cleaning services locally.

5. Create Dynamite Offers for Your First Crop of Customers

When you’re new, most of your customers will be nervous to try you for the first time. That’s why it’s a great idea to create limited-time incentives that your audience can’t ignore. 

Remember, the most effective offers are those that not only attract new customers but also successfully convert them into long-term clients. Always make sure to track the performance of each offer to understand what works best for your target market.

Residential Cleaning Offers

• First Cleaning at 50% Off. An attractive steep discount for the first cleaning session to get customers to try your service.
• Buy One, Get One Free. If a customer pays for the first cleaning, they get a second cleaning of equal or lesser value free.
• Free Deep Cleaning Add-Ons. New customers receive a free deep-cleaning upgrade, like oven cleaning or inside-window washing.
• Free First Room Cleaning. Offer to clean one room for free as a trial. They'll likely want their entire home to be as clean as that first room.
• $50 Off Your First Three Visits. To encourage longer-term relationships, offer a cumulative discount spread over the first three cleanings.

Commercial Cleaning Offers

• One Week Free with a Monthly Contract. Encourage longer-term commitments by offering the first week of cleaning for free when they sign up for a monthly service.
• Free Specialty Service. Offer a free specialty cleaning service, such as carpet cleaning or kitchen deep clean, when signing a contract.
• Free Sanitation Service. With a focus on health, offer a free sanitation service on the first visit.
• First Cleaning 25% Off + Free Consultation. Offering a discounted first cleaning alongside a free consultation can make the client feel valued and understood.
• 50% Off Your First Emergency Cleaning. For commercial spaces that require emergency cleaning, offer a significant discount for the first emergency call. This will make them consider your service for routine needs as well.

Both Residential and Commercial

• Refer and Get One Room Free. Encourage word-of-mouth advertising by offering existing customers a free room cleaning for each successful referral.
• First-Time Customer Bundle. Offer a package that includes basic cleaning, deep cleaning, and sanitation services at a bundled discount rate for new customers.
• Free Cleaning Supplies. Offer free eco-friendly cleaning supplies for the first service, emphasizing your commitment to sustainability.
• First Hour Free. Limit the free offer to the first hour of cleaning, allowing clients to test the quality of your service without a significant initial investment.
• Loyalty Discount. Offer a significant discount on the fifth cleaning to incentivize ongoing relationships.

6. Call, Knock On Doors, Hand Out Flyers, & More

No business succeeds without grinding out cold calls. Remember, you’ll want to engage these people in the ways they prefer. Sometimes, you’ll simply want to go down a list of numbers in a phone book. Other times, you’ll want to walk door-to-door with a fist full of flyers.

Whichever way you find to be most effective for your business, make sure to set aside time daily to make your cold calls and build a fat repository of people interested in your cleaning services.

7. Go Above & Beyond to Keep Your Cleaning Customers

Closing cleaning sales is half the battle. Once you get your customers, your fastest path to growth is doing all you can to keep that customer for as long as possible.

Stellar customer service is the best way to retain your cleaning customers. Also, hiring the right people who have amazing attention to detail will ensure that customers love your service quality.

8. Ask Your Customers for Reviews & Referrals

Referrals from friends and family go a long way for new sales. These recommendations make new customers trust you faster. And it also saves you time while you’re out cold calling and doing cleaning jobs.

Additionally, you need a process for getting customers to post Google reviews online for your business. These reviews not only give you social proof with your audience, but they will also help you boost your Google profile ranking.

9. Keep Your Online Presence Fresh With Great Before-and-After Job Photos

Having an active online presence will do wonders for your inbound lead generation (that is, people calling you instead of you cold calling them).

For your Google Business Profile and social media accounts, make it a happen to post before-and-after pictures of your cleaning work. These visual testimonials will make an impact and show-off the great work you do.

10. Track Your Results & Tweak Your Sales Process

Knowing some sales terms is helpful when seeing how your sales techniques are performing. You’ll likely be trying many different things to generate cleaning business, including paid advertising, cold calling, web-generated leads, and more.

Consider tagging or labeling your contacts in your CRM with the following terms:

• Leads: These are people you’ve talked to, regardless of how interested they are in your cleaning services. 
• Prospects: These are people who expressed interest in your services but have not yet purchased your services. If you have a larger operation and a couple salespeople on your team, you should consider splitting your prospects into MQLs and SQLs.
  • MQLs (marketing qualified leads): A marketing qualified lead is a prospect who fits your ideal customer type but is not ready to hire you right now.
  • SQLs (sales qualified leads): A sales qualified lead is a prospect who fits your ideal customer type and appears likely to hire you in the near future.
• Customers: These people are actively paying you for your cleaning services and are scheduled for recurring cleanings.
• Former Customers: These people hired you in the past but are not currently hiring you for a regular cleaning.

As you move each lead along in your buyer’s journey, focus on tactics that effectively move a lead to a prospect, prospect to a customer, and former customer to a customer. Depending on how “into the numbers” you like to get, it’s a great practice to track things like…

• Conversion rates: A conversion rate is the percentage of people contacted to people you close for a cleaning service. You can track conversion rates for all your sales or advertising campaigns and compare those conversion rates to see which mediums are most effective.
• Close rates: If you’re actively pitching new prospects, you can track the percentage of pitches to close (those you sign as a new customer). If you have a poor close rate, it might mean you need to tweak your sales pitch.
• Engagement: If you use social media, email, or text message marketing tactics, you can track engagements (email opens, link clicks, likes/shares/comments, replies, etc.). These metrics help you dial in your message and pitch to better resonate with your prospects.
• Average price per sale: Some services and packages you offer are more profitable than others. It’s a good idea to keep track of what your most common service or package is and which tactics generate higher-priced sales.
• Customer lifetime value (CLV): For your recurring customers, it’s good to track how long you can keep them. This helps you see the long-term value of each new customer you acquire, as well as what tactics help you lengthen the amount of time a customer keeps hiring you for cleanings.

Cleaning Businesses Need a Clear Sales Strategy to Succeed

As we conclude our comprehensive guide on 'Selling Cleaning Services in Your Community,' let's take a moment to consider the broader perspective. A successful cleaning business doesn't just provide a service; it offers peace of mind, increased free time, and an enhanced quality of life for its clients. 

When you position your offerings with these transformative benefits in mind, selling becomes more about fostering lasting relationships rather than mere transactions.

Before embarking on your sales journey, remember to implement the groundwork we discussed, such as understanding the distinctions between residential and commercial clients and creating enticing offers for new customers. With the right strategies in place, you are not just selling a clean space – you are selling a brighter, happier, and more fulfilling life to your clients.