Don’t Trash Other Cleaning Companies!

We’ve all been tempted.

You’re walking down hallways, and in and out of offices and restrooms, being shown a building to bid on and suddenly there it is, staring you in the face – the perfect opportunity!

What is it?

Well, it could be a white painted door heading to the plant covered in greasy handprints, or it might be the tops of office partitions covered with an ‘inch’ of dust.

Maybe it’s the urinals or stools in the bathroom stained with ugly mop and splash marks up the side.

Whatever it is, you’re tempted to jump in and pounce on this chance to ‘cut up’ their current service.

But don’t.

I know you could…and I know you may want to, but don’t!

See, if you do, you’re really missing the bigger opportunity

That’s right, any cleaning company – maybe every company, they’ve brought through ranted about how bad the place looked.

And those same janitorial cleaning companies also probably jumped at the chance to say “Yes, I can see WHY you’re looking to change cleaning companies!”.

But, that’s right, I’m suggesting you NOT ‘jump on the bandwagon’.

Instead, I submit there’s a better way to highlight your company, and it doesn’t involve making ‘mince meat’ out of the other guy.

For example, let’s say while doing a walkthrough you see a number of very obvious examples of poor cleaning, and your prospect goes so far as to say, “Well, you can see why I’m going to get rid of this them!” – consider handling it differently, maybe something like this:

“Well, you know, Steve, we’ve found that other than the ‘bad eggs’ you’re always going to run into, most people can do a pretty darn good job of cleaning if they’re given enough training and direction on a regular basis.

“Many times, however, problems like the ones we’re seeing here come from not getting the kind of up-front training and on-site supervision needed to keep the cleaner interested and on-track.”

“We certainly don’t have any magic words to make cleaning easy – it’s hard work, plain and simple, but what we do have is a handful of systems we insist on all the time.

“And, that handful of systems forces us to handle things like training, inspections, quality control and supervision in a certain way – all the time, not once and a while.”

“Let me give you just one example -in a building like this, we would have a site supervisor who would be responsible certain things get done every visit”.

“They would meet with everyone for a few minutes at the start of each shift to spell out what extra details need to be done in which areas of the building.”

“Plus, they would also be the one to complete a short, but required, daily walkthrough of the building where they will fill out a nightly inspection form.”

“It only takes about 15 minutes, but it’s one way we make sure important things get done each night.”

And, by the way, that form is then initialed and faxed to our office each evening. We’ve had just great results with that system!”

Now let me ask you this….

Which approach would have the prospect wanting to hire you because they now see you as a professional, with real answers to their real problems?

Would it be the approach where you ‘slam’ the current service for being incompetent and lazy, or

Would it be the second approach, where rather than attacking, you clearly describe how you have systems to make sure they get what they want?

….yep, I agree!

You Can Do This – You Really Can,
Dan