Starting a Professional Cleaning Service

By Burt Hendricks

One of the steadiest service businesses going is also one of the most invisible. If you work in an office or store you're probably used to coming in every morning and seeing clean carpets, empty ashtrays and freshly mopped woodwork. In fact, most stores and offices would be pretty dreary places to work if you didn't see them sparkling clean every day.

The equipment you need to start this business is minimal: a good vacuum cleaner, mops, brooms, cleaning cloths, sponges, buckets and a few different types of detergents and grease-cutting fluids. If this list sounds familiar, it should. These are the same cleaning tools found in almost every household, and there's no reason you can't use what you already probably own - at least for starters.

There are several ways to acquire customers: small ads in your local newspaper, a listing in the Yellow Pages (under "Janitor Service" and/or "House Cleaning"), printed circulars. But the most effective way to get customers is through personal solicitation. Always remember that you are offering a service, and that means servicing your clients as well as their places of business.

Start by calling people you know who either work at or own their own retail store, suite of offices, or restaurant; even call affluent homeowners. Make appointments to see these people late in the day or even during your lunch hour. And when you do get to see them, come prepared to discuss price specifically. Since this kind of business requires an investment of time more than anything else, it can be very tricky to price properly.

There's only one good way to find out how long it takes to clean an office thoroughly. Do it yourself. You might try working nights for awhile for another cleaning service, as an employee. Or just time yourself carefully while cleaning one or more rooms in your own house or apartment. Your pricing will be based on the hourly pay rate to a small crew of workers you will hire (or yourself if you participate in the actual cleaning) plus your cost for cleaning materials and depreciation on your cleaning tools, and your profit.

When soliciting customers, your objective is to sign them up to a six-month or year contract, payable monthly. You might offer a one-month trial, with an option to extend, to give customers a reasonably risk-free way to try your service.

One of the attractive features about starting this kind of business is that the work is done at night. You could do the whole thing yourself, without any employees, during the trial period, and still keep your day job. When you are ready to hire people you have a rich source of employees from college students who want part-time work after classes, as well as men and women who want to supplement their incomes but can only work at night.

The growth potential for this business is obvious. The points to remember are to use good personal selling techniques and to carefully price each job before committing yourself to a months-long contract. As your business grows you'll be in a position to bid on major cleaning contracts for large companies, each one alone being worth thousands in profit.

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