4 Things to Know When Starting a Cleaning Services Company

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Whether your focus is on commercial or residential cleaning services, the entire cleaning industry is a wide market with impressive returns. With proper planning and preparation, a cleaning service company offers a rewarding experience even for those venturing for the first time. While it has its share of challenges, mastering practical tips for running a cleaning business can set you above the competition and minimize the challenges. Here are four things you should know when starting a cleaning service company to help you succeed.

Determine Your Specialization

Determining what type of service you want to offer early on helps you devise a deliberate plan to serve your target customers. Depending on the demand in your area, you can opt for residential or commercial cleaning services.

For commercial cleaning services, consider raising resources and infrastructural equipment that would enable you to serve clients in schools, hospitals, offices, and other business operation spaces. You’ll need janitors to serve in these places and specialized equipment like professional carpet cleaning tools to help with seamless service delivery. You’ll also have to invest in employee training to help build a disciplined cleaning team that focuses on its core duties.

If you’re considering residential cleaning services, you should prepare your team to handle family setups and respect personal boundaries while on duty. Your cleaners should also be detail-oriented to track how rooms are arranged.

Write a Business Plan

Like any other business, starting a cleaning service requires writing an elaborate business plan to guide you through the processes. A good business plan is a blueprint of what you want your cleaning business to look like. It should help you define your business goals and scope and ensure you find the right opportunities to grow your business. Some of the main elements to include in your business plan are:

• Executive summary
• Company description
• Market analysis
• Company structure
• Sales and marketing plan
• List of services
• Financial projections

Once you elaborate on each element, the resulting business plan will swiftly guide you into growing and developing your cleaning business.

Determine Your Rates

There are three major ways to determine your service charge rates. You could charge per square footage, hourly, or at a flat rate for every service. No matter what formula you pick, settling on a fair rate that sufficiently covers your costs and gives you some profit margin is important.

A square footage rate is prevalent for commercial cleaning companies, and it’s always because of the large spaces they have to clean. You can charge hourly rates for residential homes for a start and, later on, shift to flat-rate offerings depending on how long your cleaners take to finish cleaning a standard home. Another option is to charge hourly rates for commercial cleaning services to cater to the working time rather than the square footage covered.

Plan for Effective Advertising

Advertising your cleaning business is a sure way to get new clients and retain existing ones. You can employ various advertising and marketing strategies, such as building a website, using social media, and printing and issuing calendars and pamphlets. The advertisement costs might be higher in the first few months, but as your business holds ground, you may start gaining clients through referrals and word of mouth, which should help cut costs.

Starting a cleaning service business can be daunting, but with these tips, you’ll be sure to get started on the right foot. Once you understand what’s in demand in your area, you can create a business plan around your foreseen demand and work out a creative budget to get your business started.