Janitorial Growth Solutions

The US Marketplace for Cleaning Government Buildings

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 16:50:00 +0000

The US market for cleaning government buildings begins with estimating the size of the market however no one knows exactly how many buildings the government owns or controls. The US Federal government has more than 500,000 buildings totaling approximately 3.1 billion square feet of space, housing 479 separate federal agencies.

Federal buildings are just the beginning, there are 50 state governments who each own thousands of buildings. State and federal buildings are supplemented with leased space so cleanable space is much more than what is simply owned. There are 3,144 county governments and 19,429 municipalities each with buildings that require cleaning. The total amount of property that needs to be cleaned is truly amazing and there are many contractors who won’t approach this sector at all

I cannot estimate how many people reading this may still have a phone book but there are pages of government agencies in every phone book, listed in its own separate section. A small phone book will still have 10 to 12 pages of government listings. So if you consider the sheer size of federal, state, county and municipal buildings together, the largest buyer of cleaning is the government at one level or another.

If you do business with government at any level, you are now B2G, in addition to B2B or in the residential side B2C. Marketing is different in all three sectors. Mass marketing is effective for the residential sector to consumers (B2C), direct marketing for the commercial sector to businesses (B2B) but the government sector (B2G) is a different animal completely.

An Introduction to Government Contracting for Cleaning and Maintenance Companies

The Government Procurement Process

Unlike the private sector, bidding opportunities for cleaning and maintenance most of the time are public. Federal, state, county and municipal contracts are solicited to the public advertised as Request for Proposals (RFP), Invitation to Bid (ITB) or Request for Quotations (RFQ) and Request for Sealed Bids so the public has knowledge of each opportunity.

The entire process is public so the companies bidding as well as the results are public. The idea is that since it is tax money from citizens to fund the work then the public has a right to know what is purchased and the prices.

Because of the scope and volume of government purchases, plowing through thousands of solicitations can be daunting but there are services that are available that do the hunting for you. Once you understand that the largest buyer of everything (including cleaning) is government, you begin to see the daunting task of looking for just the right cleaning opportunity.

Some opportunities will be too big and others too small. Some examples would be the US National Park Service’s Ranger Towers located in National Forests as too small or an entire US Military Base may be way too large. Beginning with the right size opportunity in the right location is critical. Because your past performance on government work is so important, you can’t afford taking a chance and winning a contract you can’t perform.

Proposal preparation can be highly detailed but once a contractor has gone through a few proposals, the proposals become easier because the basic pieces have already been drafted previously. Doing the first one can be a challenge so starting a small is a good idea.

Assembling a proposal library that grows with each opportunity is one of the advantages of targeting government contracts. Some smaller contracts usually with county or municipal governments are very simple and are not much more than a fill in the blank form.

Fixed Term Contracts

This is another common feature of government contracting, fixed term contracts. Contracts will run on an annual basis with an option for additional years, usually 3 to 5 years.

This feature of government contracting can be both good and bad in that even if you have provided outstanding service, after the annual options are exercised, you can lose it based on price when it is rebid. Your bid price is public and everyone knows what your price is.

The good news is that if you perform up to terms of the contract, counting on an uninterrupted 5 year job gives you some operational and financial stability. Government contracts are considered highly valuable because of the fixed term and assurance of payment.

As long as the terms of the contract are met, you have zero chance of losing them. The stability of these contracts are unequaled in the private sector.

Set Aside Opportunities

Approximately 23% of Federal contracts are set aside for small business. State, county and municipal procurement programs also have set aside targets for small and minority businesses. The Federal guidelines are mirrored in state and other government entities. There are numerous targeted procurement programs for a host of small or mandated disadvantaged groups.

Women, minorities, veterans and small businesses are the broad categories but then there are further breakdowns beyond these. As with all things government, something as simple as defining “small business” is not as clearly defined as you may think. The US Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Office of Advocacy declares that 99.7% of all US companies can be classified as “small”. However the 45 page guide to Government size thresholds by industry, currently lists Janitorial companies doing less than $16.5 million dollars in annual revenue as “small” but the threshold for Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning services is $5 million. Most of us in the industry would not consider these small businesses however the government does so here is an opportunity.

There are certifications for each category that have to be applied for, approved, documented and then presented. The certification process for each of these categories is not particularly difficult but can be confusing for the company owner new to government contracting beginning with the alphabet soup of government abbreviations.

Certifications can be combined if the company meets more than one criteria so it’s possible to be certified as a small business (8(a) designation) and minority owned (MBE) or veteran owned (VOSB) and located in a historically underutilized business zone (HUB Zone). Each certification will have its own specific set aside opportunities.

There is a learning curve with government contracting but understanding the differences from the private sector is a good place to start. Government contracting can be lucrative but with the instability of the private sector economy it can also be an oasis of stability for US cleaning companies.

Ed Selkow

The Power of Praise: How your team gets your company to the next level

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 12 Aug 2013 00:04:00 +0000

In the business world, the professional field of human resource management is mature with associations, university degree programs, systems, processes and established conventional wisdom. Professional coursework in human resources management could not be counted as the most riveting or electrifying subject one could attend. The professional results of these learned efforts certainly are what inspired the song lyrics: all in all, you’re just another brick in the wall.

Amazing organizations are comprised of amazing people; the problem is that amazing people don’t come labeled as such. You have to find them and in order to do so; you have to look for them. Looking back across almost four decades in the cleaning industry from working in 25 different companies, I know the cleaning business is really the people business.

But I didn’t always know that, I had to learn it.

I remember at first recruiting, interviewing and hiring was a bit of a mystery to me and as you can imagine it didn’t go very well at all. Employees were a necessary evil and one of the big headaches in the cleaning business. Starting from that point of view employees then became warm bodies, a part of the cleaning equation and not as reliable as my other tools, such as upright vacuum cleaners.

I recall having very pleasant daydreams of clean buildings without employees (which completely replaced childhood daydreams of being a pirate, but required the same amount of magic).

Slowly I learned the value of my own employees but it was not until I was working for a large cleaning company where cleaning staff were less expendable than upright vacuum cleaners that I began to develop a realistic working theory and then a strategy.

We hired large groups of workers all at once when a new contract was secured. I recall seeing one worker on his first day and I could have bet money he wouldn’t return for his second day of work. A ‘loser’, a complete zero in my mind and on the first night we were never very picky, we simply needed warm bodies.

He proved me wrong. Not only did he return on the second night for work but never missed a day and five years later he was appointed supervisor of one of those buildings. I was wrong about that man but what I could not see that first night was that he cared about what he was doing. Identifying people who care means you have to pay attention.

Most of my time had been spent on the employees who did not perform up to standard. They were the ones causing problems; they were the ones generating phone calls from clients who were not happy with our work. I began to pay closer attention and established a personal rule to find someone on my front line staff doing something right. The power of praise became a tool in my survival arsenal. As cleaning organizations grow, layers of supervisors and managers insulate company owners from front line staff. This disconnect becomes more pronounced, the larger the company. I rode on top of several growing cleaning organizations and experienced the pull to disconnect from my front line staff.

There are different pressures at different times in growing companies so what I was concerned about when my company employed 25 people was different than when there were 100 and again when there were 250 and again when there were 500. I understood the need to stay close to my staff which interestingly kept me closer to my clients.

Management by wandering around became more difficult when the entire United States became my territory. Meeting with front line staff and catching someone doing something right was my way of hunting down potential managers. Other people in similar positions were perplexed at my odd penchant for walking buildings, which I believed was my primary responsibility. It’s where all the action was so that’s where I needed to be. I like people who come up through the ranks like I did and the front line is where they are found.

Bringing front line people up through the ranks whenever possible creates a different type of organization. The people you hand select and promote and train become your team. There is a loyalty factor. I like seeing people stretch their own ability and your front line is filled with people who have not been given an opportunity to do much stretching.

Our entry level positions are filled with people untested when it comes to their own ability. When you are the person who takes a chance on an employee who may never have given a thought to what they can accomplish, a special bond is formed. Someone believes in them – maybe for the first time – and this is a powerful event. It may be the most important event in their entire professional life.

Never underestimate the power of a person who is just beginning to understand the talents and abilities they never knew they had. The power of one’s own pride for accomplishing things they NEVER dreamed they could, is unbelievable.

If you are the one who unleashes that power in your own organization, you have created a team that cannot be held back from taking your company to the next level. Try it yourself and see what happens when you go hunting for someone doing something right.

Reprinted with permission from INCLEAN Magazine July/August 2013

Cancelled Cleaning Contracts and Endings at Three in the Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 22:01:00 +0000

My only contract is gone!

Good to be back with you, it’s been a while. I want to talk to you about endings and how they feel at three o’clock in the morning. Things change, endings happen and you get to learn something.

At three in the morning wisdom gives way to exhaustion, fear and confusion. Every so often we get to see clearly what keeps us going. In adversity our foundations are laid bare but we may or may not like what we see.

Over the last year I helped a client take over a chain of health care centers. This account had been cleaned previously by two cleaning contractors. One contractor had half of these centers for seven years and the other contractor had his half for over twenty years. Both of these contractors had only one client and that one client cancelled the contract. These were very profitable accounts and this cancellation was the end of their businesses.

New equipment, new people, new keys (in the dark) and new alarms, all together provide for an “eventful evening”. Starting a chain of health care centers all on the same night has a few surprises even with good planning. Phone calls, checklists, spray bottles fly by at supersonic speed. Mini pep talks are dispensed. The same questions get the same answers, sometimes in English and sometimes not.

After the last building is done it takes a while to decompress and the date changed a few hours ago. This time I thought about those contractors who had lost their only account. This was the first night both of them were missing their one and only account. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I wonder if they are sleeping? I wonder if they were thinking what they could have done differently and not be out of business tonight. I wonder how much free time they had over the years while they sat comfortably with their one account.

I wonder if it occurred to them that by visiting the next closest health care center consistently, RIGHT next to the one they had, would have doubled the size of their businesses. Losing half of your business is bad but not as bad as losing the whole thing.

I have a firm ten percent rule about cleaning contracts and particularly those big ones. How much does your biggest client mean to you in dollars, to your company? Your biggest client is what percentage of your total revenue? No single contract should be more than ten percent of your total revenue. If you have one big cleaning contract then you better go find another and you better do it fast. If your biggest source of revenue is only 10% and they cancel, it’s a completely different matter. You can sleep just fine.

Having only one account leaves you vulnerable (and there was not ONE THING either of these two contractors could have done to save this account). Sit back and relax with just one client and late one night at about three in the morning it will feel like your whole world just ended.

Every single cleaning contract has a ticking clock attached. I can tell you with absolute authority that at three in the morning you can hear the movement of the minute hand on your clock in the dark with no problem at all.

Janitorial Company Basics: Everything You Wanted to Know About Bonds and Bonding But Were Afraid to Ask

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 10 Jun 2012 04:30:00 +0000

If you run a janitorial company, chances are you've heard your competition market themselves as being legally licensed and bonded. Of course, all janitorial companies have to be licensed according to whatever state laws apply to them, but surety bonds are optional insurance policies that protect your clients.

So, what are janitorial surety bonds, anyway?

A basic definition explains that a surety bond is a legally binding contract that ensures a certain task is performed. Most janitorial service business owners buy surety bonds because they operate small companies and want a cost-effective way to protect against employees who might choose to act unethically. Even if you trust your staff to the fullest extent, the reality is that you and your business become easy targets if a client's belongings go missing.

Janitorial surety bonds are also known by other names such as custodian bonds or business service bonds. Regardless of the name, this bond provides protection for clients who work with residential and commercial cleaning services.

What kind of businesses get bonded?

Unlike most surety bond types, janitorial surety bonds are completely voluntary. You may choose to purchase a custodian bond if you operate a janitorial company, maid service, carpet cleaning service, house cleaning service or other type of cleaning business. Remember, the purpose is to convince prospective clients that their belongings and property will be safe from theft if they choose to work with you.

Do janitorial companies receive protection from surety bonds?

Surety bonds should not be confused with traditional insurance policies. When purchasing a surety bond, you and your company do not receive any of the bond's financial protection. Instead, the bond will protect your customers from losses that could result from unethical employees who might choose to steal. As such, buying a custodian bond reassures clients that you're committed to running a legitimate enterprise.

Will my bond protect against damages?

No, surety bonds only protect against theft. If you or an employee damages a client's property or possessions, the bond will not cover these costs. If you're looking for damage protection, consider purchasing a special insurance policy.

How much does it cost to get bonded?

Janitorial bonds are some of the cheapest surety bond types to purchase. The exact price you'll pay depends on how many employees you manage and much coverage you want. Janitorial bonds are typically purchased by

small business owners, who usually pay about

$100/year for $5,000 worth of coverage for five or fewer employees
$110/year for $10,000 worth of coverage for five or fewer employees
$152/year for $25,000 worth of coverage for five or fewer employees

Of course, larger janitorial companies also purchase bonds, and higher bonding amounts are available as well. The best way to determine what you'll pay for a bond is to contact an online surety company quickly and easily.

Danielle Rodabaugh is the chief editor of "http://www.suretybonds.com/", an online surety bond agency that provides free surety bond quotes to business owners nationwide. For more information on the surety industry, you can find Danielle on "https://plus.google.com/u/0/113063981844601253780?rel=author">Google+

Bad News at Sunday Dinner

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 May 2012 16:29:00 +0000

I hate liars. I feel sorry for the victims of liars. I have been lied to and those were among the worst moments of my life, finding out I had been lied to. Love songs are lies; no one “accidentally” falls in love like stepping in hot bubble gum in a parking lot. Another lie is that we all “live happily ever after” and this is the great lie in the janitorial business.

Commercial cleaning is based on commercial real estate development and occupancy of commercial space, which is finite. Your “dreams of success” do not change the amount of existing commercial space requiring cleaning. Do not believe the lies.

I got this note this morning;

Ed,

I started a commercial cleaning business last year and I failed. I could not attract enough commercial accounts to even cover expenses, regardless of what I did.

Its Sunday dinner and the bad news is there are only so many pieces of chicken to go around. There are 1,200 new cleaning services started every month and every one already seated at the table is still hungry. There is not one single cleaning service owner that does not want more accounts, not one. It does not matter how many they have, they want more.

The bad news is someone is going to go hungry. It does not matter how much you wish, there are only two thighs, two legs and two breasts and someone is going to get the neck and a couple will get the wings.

The dream peddlers are liars and seek only to take what little money you have and tell you there is no end to that plate of chicken.

Someone has to tell you the truth and I just did.

The cleaning business is a war just like the whole world of business. There are winners and losers. The losers will not live happily ever after.

Now what?

Hunters, Farmers and a Steady Diet of New Cleaning Accounts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 09 May 2012 03:37:00 +0000

(this is obviously not Ed)

If I can save myself some time, then I figure I am ahead of the game. I have to explain hunting and farming almost every day so now I can just send this post and save some time.

The feast or famine growth strategy in a janitorial company maintains a constant state of panic, confusion, and disarray. In 2012, the only way feasting happens in the janitorial industry is with a “slash and burn” competitor’s pricing strategy. Problem is that it works but a revolving door is created with accounts lost almost as fast as they are signed. Some rapidly growing franchises take this approach, as do some National multi-location cleaning management companies. It is not a new strategy and it never worked to build a profitable, healthy operation.

Janitorial sales famines are customary with inexperienced business owners who have bought into the “just grab a broom and a mop and make a million” touted by business opportunity magazines and the now pervasive internet cleaning gurus who will teach you if you buy their book of secrets. Sales famines also happen to hunters who are subject to hunting seasons or when they get around to it.

What do hunters do? They move from place to place looking for targets to shoot at. The take a shot and hit or miss and then move on to hunt their next target. They may stalk their prey for a little while but as soon as they get tired, they quit and go home empty handed. They got all dressed up, went out, worked hard but sit down and eat what they caught previously. They continue to hunt because they have scored in the past. New ways of doing things is not a big issue with hunters; in fact, some cling to old ways for the sport of it so there are hunters with bows and arrows.

A hunter catches his prey after relatively FEW points of contact.

One time through, smoke stack, (door to door) prospecting all by itself is hunting. Blasting one time through networking meetings is hunting. Purchasing janitorial sales appointments all by themselves is hunting. Going from one prospect to the next, making a presentation and then moving on to the next one, is taking a shot and either hitting or missing.

One of my first questions to janitorial company owners is how many proposals have you done in the last year. What do you do with the contacts you made during the last year AFTER those presentations have been made? It is at this point I know if I have a hunter or a farmer.

What do farmers do? Farmers stake out a piece of ground as their own. They go over that piece of ground, remove rocks and tree stumps and plant seeds. They again cover the same area and water all of their seeds until seedlings appear. They eliminate weeds so the seedlings absorb water. They apply nutrients and fertilizer and continue to remove weeds. They water it regularly. They watch over that ground and are aware of what is happening with a laser beam focus, nothing gets by them. New ways of doing things is a big issue for farmers; they are constantly on the lookout for improvements to increase their yield.

A farmer harvests his yield after MANY points of contact.

A farming system of janitorial selling starts with a map. Removing rocks and trees and then stumps is the sorting out of the types of businesses you will not do business with and identifies the business types you are going after. Seeds are your unique selling proposition and your elevator pitch, backed with an operational structure. Nutrients and fertilizers are your tools, your phone, your personalized direct mail and email templates, your online strategy and presence and your community networking groups.

Water is delivered by way of irrigation systems, timed release of the key growth factor water and delivered regularly. Watching your plot of land is your daily scan of the local business news that may mean new business to you, not the comics, not your horoscope, not the sports pages, the business news about local companies, promotions to new positions and construction (or business failures).

Finally, keeping informed about what is available that may increase your yield of profitable contracts is key. History is a wonderful area of study but how things were done 20 or 10 or even 5 years ago is a study of what used to work. A trip down memory lane.

I will confess here to being city born and raised. I do not own a pair of bib overalls or a straw hat but I did figure out early on that hunters score every so often but farming is the correct approach to build a profitable cleaning company.

UPDATE JUNE 2016

Of all the posts I wrote over a four-year period, this post is foundational for every cleaning service owner who wants more accounts. Last year we released an entire program to set up your own sales program EXACTLY like the global giants and every commercial cleaning franchise has. We take you through the set up, the methodology, tell you EXACTLY what to say, how to make a first approach to a prospect but more importantly HOW TO FOLLOW UP. The key is setting up sales appointments with prospects who will change cleaning services. The program is Janitorial Marketing Pro and you can get yours by clicking this link Janitorial Marketing Pro Appointment Setting Program

Just a Casserole Ingredient

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 02:11:00 +0000

Never mind "thinking outside the box" for a moment (a term I REALLY hate), think what happens on a grocery shelf when faced with a selection of canned vegetables that will only wind up buried in a casserole or "Hot Dish" back in Minnesota.

Which one do you pick? Is it the package? Is it the brand name? Is it the price?

This is not the key ingredient that will make or break the meal but it IS necessary so you have to pick one.

A really well done, stand out, amazing package may get you to pick that one regardless of the price.

A trusted brand name may get you to pick that one (and that is because you have SEEN that same name repeatedly enough to make an impression, repetition which co$t the company $omething).

Nevertheless, if none of those factors is at play then you decide based on price.

Had a Certified Property Manager (one who had bought $10 million in cleaning) who I raised the issue of going with the low bidder, tell me that was an excuse for someone who was lazy or clueless.

Amazing packaging, establishing a brand name, or commodity (by the pound) pricing, YOU choose.

Moses, Mount Sinai and 21st Century Soap Salesmen

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:09:00 +0000

The serious study of history includes seeing and interpreting it through different disciplines. Therefore, an archaeologist and an economist and then a sociologist would all see history through the lens of their own interests. One way to look at history is through systematic sets of laws that divide one period from another. Therefore, we can study and correctly conclude that the Code of Hammurabi (from around 1770 BC in Babylon), the Magna Carta (the foundation of English law from 1215), and the Nuremberg Laws of Race (1933) all signaled important milestones in human history.

Western culture owes much to Moses receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai around 1240 BC. Three major world religions point back to that pivotal event. The cleaning industry experienced an event that will be viewed in the future just as pivotal as what happened on Mt. Sinai.

The International Sanitary Supply Association was originally chartered for manufacturers and distributors of chemicals and equipment used in the cleaning industry. The very first time I learned about the association, a distributor proudly told me it was the trade association of soap salesmen. Founded in 1923 by Albert Richter who wanted to trade information between distributors around the US, the ISSA became a global trade Association in 1966.

I mopped floors at five star hotels in Miami Beach starting in 1974 and launched my first janitorial company in 1977. No internet (Al Gore had not invented the world wide web yet), my library at the University I was attending was all I had as a resource and everything I could find out about my new business and my new career, I learned from my sanitary supply distributor who was an ISSA member.

How does a truly great commercial cleaning company operate? Hiring and training and supervising my staff, the best way to deal with service defects, what constitutes quality service and hundreds of issues I had to figure out all by myself with the help of my supply company. What I needed was an operating standard to compare what I was doing with what was considered the best practices of my industry. Nothing of the sort existed so it was my best guess based on what other industries did.

The single most important event in the janitorial industry was the publication of the Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) by the ISSA. Not the voice of God or even a modern day Moses but the best practices of our industry agreed on by some of the best-organized janitorial companies in the country. A collaborative effort by the best minds of our industry organized by the ISSA, several years in the making but then the most amazing move by the Association is that CIMS is public and available to the entire industry free through the ISSA. (http://www.issa.com/?m=download )

CIMS is a standard for us to go by, a framework from which we can assemble the management structures of our businesses and a way for clients and prospects to know they are dealing with the best in the industry. CIMS is how the best companies organize their businesses spelled out in detail. For the very first time the janitorial industry is able to point to a set of practices that constitute how a company should operate.

The CIMS program is not simple and certification is a major endeavor but the results are worth every single bit of effort. There are currently 116 companies that have achieved CIMS Certification with 92 opting for an additional Green Building designation, which provides for the US Green Building Council’s LEED program.

Every janitorial and cleaning service owner needs to have a copy of the CIMS document and build around this standard. Certification may be a long way off in the future or maybe not at all but the standards are sound and provide a yardstick for managerial excellence.

Janitorial Services is Searched 368,000 Times Per Month in the U.S But This Is Only One Third of The Story

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 19:25:00 +0000

Annette Penney of Inspire and Acquire

So Why Aren’t You Generating More Leads Online?

Keyword research on the terms being used to find janitorial and commercial cleaners, indicate that in the United States more than a million searches were conducted in the month of March, 2012 on: janitorial services, commercial cleaning, office cleaning, and floor cleaning. If you have a business in the janitorial sector, you must have wondered at some point why you are not generating more leads from your website.

The team at Inspire and Acquire conducted a brief study of a small group of websites in the janitorial industry, whose names were chosen randomly from the MasterMind group on LinkedIn (permission was obtained from the group owner). Analyses were performed to determine the Internet Marketing Effectiveness of these websites and the results were not surprising. In this article we share the top 3 critical areas of online marketing that were shown to be problematic for business owners in the janitorial industry. We also provide solutions for dealing with these issues.

Website Issues

In a website analysis, a dynamic grade on a scale of 100 is given that represents Internet Marketing Effectiveness at any given point in time. For the websites we analyzed, the average grade was 43.14 with a range of 30.9 to 53.3. Considering that the average score for a typical website is 50, these scores are mediocre for an industry with a high level of online competition.

Each one of the websites we examined were plagued with a variety of structural and technical issues that prevent the websites from being found by search engines. Some of these issues include a variety of missing or incorrect codes and files that alter the search engine’s ability to locate, crawl, and index your website’s content. The most common omissions were the Robots.txt and XML Sitemap files. These files allow the search engines to access and crawl your website more intelligently. These types of problems were shockingly numerous and were present on all of the janitorial websites we analyzed.

The most relevant issue indicated for the websites we analyzed was the low amount of traffic being generated to the sites. In order to generate and direct more traffic to your janitorial website, you need to ensure all components of SEO are adequately addressed and you have to develop a social media marketing strategy (see below).

You cannot be expected to fix technical errors on your site yourself. The solution is to hire a good online marketing agency to diagnose your website, and identify the problem areas. A website developer and SEO expert will work together to fix these technical issues permanently. This will ensure that your rankings improve on the SERPS (search engine results pages) and your website is easier for visitors to navigate.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The most serious atrocities located on the janitorial websites we examined were SEO in nature. Even the most basic SEO principles were misused, omitted, or impaired. If you want your website to be found by your potential clients, you need to utilize your keywords effectively. This means firstly, that your keywords are identified correctly through research methods and the use of high-quality SEO tools. Secondly, your keywords must be placed throughout your content (text) in a specific manner (yes there are rules for this). Were you aware that Google will penalize your website if you overuse keywords by ranking you lower in the SERPs? Keywords should never be a one-word search term but rather three-word “phrases” and there should be no more than 3 of these phrases per website page. Not one of the janitorial sites we examined used keywords consistently or correctly.

There were several SEO content violations evident including missing meta descriptions, and meta keywords, titles that were too long, and low-impact text/HTML ratios. Again, these types of SEO errors contribute to low rankings by the search engines. For each of the janitorial websites there were also challenges to their backlinks. A backlink is a link that points to your website from other websites. Think of it as a popularity rating for your site. Link-building is one of the key elements of a solid SEO strategy that is required to get your website ranked.

There are several ways to address the SEO challenges of your janitorial website. You can hire an SEO specialist to conduct the keyword research for your website, submit it to you, and then you can write additional and/or improved content. The other option is to have an SEO expert conduct the keyword research and create the content for your website. If you do choose to write the website content yourself, we highly recommend that you have your SEO specialist read it and recommend revisions before you publish it on your site.

B2B Social Media Marketing

There appears to be a gross underutilization of the social media lead generating tools in the janitorial industry. Not surprisingly, not one of the business websites we examined had links or icons on their websites for the main social media platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. Although all of the owners of these janitorial companies had LinkedIn profiles, this was not evident on their website. Only one of the companies had claimed their Twitter account and username, and none were active on Facebook.

Forty-one percent of B2B companies generate leads on Facebook, and companies who use Twitter generate twice the number of leads per month than companies who do not use it. Business.com reports that 55% of B2B survey respondents search for information on social media channels. The individuals you want to target (the decision-makers) are conducting the majority (70% according to Sirius Decisions) of their information-gathering before the sales person in your company even reaches them and ..... they are doing this online through social media platforms.

In an article I published on our website recently, I outline the benefits of B2B social media in more detail. A social media marketing strategy will improve lead generation, enhance search engine optimization (builds long-term links back to your website), and allows your buyers to find you.

Although we are unable to address ALL of the issues for improving your online marketing in one article, here are our key recommendations for improving your janitorial website and creating an online presence:

Write more SEO-enhanced content.

Promote your business and website through social media.

Be more consistent with your keywords.

Set a name for all of the images on your website.

Optimize your website for mobile browsing.

This guest post was written by Annette Penney, BA(Hons), MA of Inspire and Acquire. Annette is the lead strategist and analyst for her business which specializes in online marketing for the janitorial and BSC sector.

I am talking as loud and as fast as I can, now where's my money!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 00:01:00 +0000

Phase 7 This is easy!

THE EIGHT PHASES OF

SOCIAL MEDIA FAILURE

Phase 1 - “It’s a waste of time.”

Phase 2 - “I don’t understand how it works.”

Phase 3 - “So this is supposed to make me money?”

Phase 4 - “Well if this idiot can do this, I can too!”

Phase 5 - “This takes too long!”

Phase 6 - “I got an idea!”

Phase 7 - “This is easy.”

Phase 8 - “I haven’t seen one thin dime for all this work.”

Walmart’s first website cost $40 million and after its first year produced revenues less than one small store. ~~So they closed it down, took the loss, wrote off the internet, and went back to counting on all their brick and mortar stores.~~

LinkedIn went live May 5, 2003 - at the end of the first month had 4,500 members and 81,000 members by the end of 2003. By the end of 2008, LinkedIn had 33 million members and among them were the CEOs of the Fortune 500. Now LinkedIn has over 150 million members and is growing by 2 members every second. LinkedIn has been described by online trade publication TechRepublic as having "…become the de facto tool for professional networking"

Your social media presence is established, your website is live, your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts are all active but not doing what you hoped? It is harder than it looks. Making noise is easy and we see and hear this noise on LinkedIn. The pointless posts, reposts from common sources, putting anything at all up, hoping anyone will see your name. So if it’s only noise on LinkedIn what happens with Facebook and Twitter? How does it all fit together?

Content is king and your content is what you have to say. If you don’t have anything of VALUE to say then all of the posting, chatting, tweeting and sharing will only harm you by damaging your online reputation. Not know WHERE to say it makes you look like an insane person yelling to no one in particular (grab a shopping cart and a big pair of fuzzy bedroom slippers to complete your online persona while you are at it). The first rule is to have something of value to say. The second rule is know where to say it.

The purpose of social media marketing is to make connections that become relationships that lead to increased revenues and profits, period.

My question to you today is - how are your network of online connections generating revenues for you and your company? Social media marketing is an extra step in the selling process. If you are feeling baffled, you are not alone. One national marketing trade association has a social media blog with zero posts to LinkedIn, zero “likes” on Facebook and has never been tweeted. Take a good look at what I just said. A national trade association of marketing professionals has an online blog that NO ONE REPOSTS, “LIKES” OR TWEETS!

Here’s a few basic rules of the game to START to make you money;

1. Have something of VALUE to say. If it was on the front page of Yahoo, it’s not valuable. If it’s a news story HAVE AN OPINION and then solicit other opinions in a discussion. ENGAGE your readers.

2. Know WHERE to say it. If you don’t understand the difference between a discussion and a commercial promotion I am going to bet you don’t get invited to parties outside of your immediate family (and only because they are obligated to invite you). Do you meet people and take off into a commercial? Forget social media and try a sandwich board at busy intersections. How do you meet someone in person? Meeting people online is no different. Meeting people is connecting with them; there is a place and a time to do that and social media channels are great places to accomplish this.

3. You will need to study for yourself or get help. It is an investment in time but it can be learned and there are a few people (a VERY few) who understand how to do it properly with money coming from your efforts. This is an investment and not a lottery ticket so think in terms of a long-term commitment to it. By the way, Walmart stuck it out and makes money on their website now. It was an investment that paid off for them and social media will pay off for you over a period of time too.

New Janitorial Sales Tools and Old Rules of Engagement

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:07:00 +0000

When it comes to new tools, no one gets better tools then the military. I read about the new rifle that shoots around corners and then there is the new ray gun, right out of a science fiction story. There is no doubt about it, the military gets the best new tools.

I always knew to be successful in the janitorial business; I needed to have the best tools. What I found was that for me, the best tools were always information. When I first started out selling janitorial services, the tools were simple. A nice business card for when you met prospects, premium printing on the best paper for follow-up letters and a great proposal gave the janitorial sales representative the best tools he could hope for.

After I built and sold my first janitorial company, I was most fortunate to go to work for a great company. It was then that I learned the power of networking. I had built a good company of small and medium sized buildings, but now with my new company, my job was simple, all I had to do was sell very large contracts to very large buildings. They supplied me with an amazing tool to sell giant contracts, it was an American Express card, and I was instructed to go make friends.

I no longer had hundreds of competitors, there were only a few of us who sold contracts this size. Now my competitors also understood they had to make friends but they had been at it much longer than I had.

My strategy was to elevate myself above my competition and information would give me an advantage. So locating, identifying, and assimilating information became my most important advantage over my competitors.

WHAT MATTERED TO THE PEOPLE I SELL TO? What information could I get that I could use to send me to the head of the line in the minds of the people who purchased services from me? What information matters to the people you sell to?

Career information in THEIR field of property or facility management, job openings or knowing a property manager was unhappy with who they worked for and matching them up with a good company. Guess who gets the cleaning contract when a property or facility manager moves to a new company and they find a mediocre janitorial service after YOU provided a lead that turned into a job for them?

Reliable vendors in other fields who were ethical, quality control freaks like myself who my prospects did not know, ALL became key contacts for me. Again I possessed valuable information that my competitors could not be bothered gathering or were not smart enough to understand the value of, every great referral is a powerful sales tool.

Information on business opportunities that would make THEIR company money such as leasing opportunities when someone told me they were planning on moving. Running across a poorly managed building (usually a dirty or an empty one) is a chance for a well-run commercial real estate company to make money for themselves AND a building owner. By learning about my own business, the business of my clients became important for me to understand. I studied real estate and kept abreast of all commercial and industrial development news and once held a real estate license myself.

The ultimate networking success in my entire career had to have been introducing two contacts to one another in need of each other at a critical time for each and a large commercial real estate deal came out of my introduction. There were three “class A” office buildings built, totaling several hundred thousand square feet and guess who got to clean them?

When I realized The Broker List was an up and coming powerhouse of networking opportunities for the commercial real estate industry, I thought back to my own networking strategy in janitorial sales. What IF a janitorial sales person, during a friendly conversation with a commercial real estate manager or broker could simply say, “Are you on The Broker List, a free directory of commercial real estate professionals”?

I had no idea the interest my original post in a few LinkedIn groups would cause among janitorial company owners and sales folks about The Broker List. Several janitorial company owners interested in my post contacted me but unfortunately have not done their homework on their own companies. They are hoping this is the magic bullet to launch a startup company or take a poorly run company to fame and fortune without all the necessary blood, sweat, tears, experience, cash, and BRAINS.

The other janitorial writers and consultants tell you to network but here I have laid out my own networking strategy for you to come up with some ideas of your own. My strategy worked for me and can work for you.

My strategy was also backed up with some very hard work, a lot of study outside of my own field, an unwavering commitment to verifiable quality (not JUST a slogan but by walking/inspecting my own buildings in the middle of the night and early in the morning) and the knowledge that janitorial business is a hard hard one with no short cuts and no magic formulas.

How to beat the BIG boys - What the Giants of the industry just don't get

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:44:00 +0000

I used to look forward to reading our trade journals. Services Magazine, Cleaning Management, Building Services Management and a couple long gone now. Those magazines weren’t just bathroom reading for me, I would hang on every word, read every article and carefully read every single ad. Editors had names like Terry “ Five Coats” Wilhelm (forgive me Terry if I got your last name wrong, haven’t seen your name in print for many years but I hope you made a good buck selling the magazine and are comfy in retirement).

Professional trade journal publishing companies took over and now the janitorial magazines are only one in an entire portfolio of trade journals, among other trade journals like for gummy worm manufacturers and “ethnic” hair care distributors. I am OK with this, its progress I suppose and the professionals have done a great job converting to digital formats. Terry “Five Coats” could never have dreamed of a digital magazine.

I used to love to read what other successful company owners were doing and what they thought was important. Fortunately, for me, the internet took off and today I talk to janitorial company owners all over the world directly and read what they say with no editors. I still do read our trade journals but now I read the digital versions.

Most new comers into the business want to know how to build big companies like the ones they feel are running over them. The basics of moving dirt seems so simple and big companies have developed systems that are very good in operations and job costing. However, they DO falter as evidenced by one of the biggest companies in our industry who once boasted 75% of the entire downtown market where they are headquartered but have today lost more than two thirds of their buildings in their own backyard.

New comers should not copy everything big companies do because big companies have their own problems. The biggest problem is that they are too big to look around and see the changes that are occurring. Medium sized companies, who have achieved a degree of success, ignore key innovations that they should not. Small company owners have an advantage, they are hungry and they you NEVER hear the worst thing ever said it the business world "...we ALWAYS did it THIS way so why change now"?

The bankruptcy of Kodak is a lesson on big companies who failed to look around and see the changes that occurred around them. Kodak invented digital photography in 1975 but did not bring a digital camera to market until 1995. The digital world gave us America Online and their glory days are behind them now. Our nation’s push west in the 19th century was by pioneers who ALL had Sears & Roebucks catalogs and now this once great American company is in huge trouble.

We stand at a time in history where things are changing. In business, relationships ARE being developed digitally, communication is now instant and today when a businessperson says they have connections they don’t mean a pile of business cards back at the office sitting in a box.

According to the Global Web Index, based on 27 markets and 100,000 surveys “for the first time that B2B decision makers and senior decision makers are more engaged in all forms of social media than the average online user". In addition, online conversations with people from the company are seen as the most influential factor in B2B purchases. This is an amazing statement of the impact of Social Media.”

You need to read that last sentence one more time. You hard corps business folks that need to put a dollar figure on everything, would you please tell me what exactly IS the ROI on your office phone?

For the most part, our industry is lagging WAY behind in adopting many important changes. I found a trade journal where janitorial companies who put up web sites were featured as big news. It was complete with instructions on how to look at those sites on your “personal” computer (so the reader wouldn’t get confused and try to view the featured web sites on their refrigerator sized, supercomputer they kept in a utility closet behind dirty wet mops left to dry out overnight).

American Building Maintenance http://www.facebook.com/pages/American-Building-Maintenance/159170210781478 does NOT get it. I know of one $150,000 million national cleaning company who was afraid of putting computers in their offices because employees would only be playing games on them (emails were sent to the home office and then relayed by telephone to operations and their sales force across the United States). Another regional company that started in 1919 would not put a fax machine in their office because they never needed one before (leaving their sales force to run down to a local print shop to send and receive faxes). Last year, I interviewed with a company with operations in 16 states and the owner wasn't sure professionally printed business cards were necessary.

Are you sure you want to be just like the big companies?

In December 2011, LinkedIn had 92,131 property managers, 27,062 facility managers, 523,254 office managers and a 22,427 facility services professionals (that’s you and me and I am no longer selling cleaning services for myself, I now grow janitorial companies for others who pay me)! Please look again at those numbers, tell me whom you sell to and then explain to me once again PLEASE why social media is NOT important.

We are going to explore this further together so stay tuned!

Snail Mail (Direct Mail) - Time to dust off a tried and true weapon in your arsenal

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:11:00 +0000

This morning I blasted through my first batch of email in 20 minutes. To stay ahead of the curve, I get more email than most people do, about 400 messages a day. The first batch in the morning is the biggest anywhere from 50 to 65 pieces during the week. I can do this because of the magic of two buttons, delete, and archive. I delete 85% of everything that hits my email box after scanning for anything marvelous.

I have been advising my clients to go back to snail mail for marketing and sales in their janitorial business. Yesterday one of my clients reported to me a 5% return on his first snail mail campaign. For the younger crowd snail mail, is an old-fashioned letter sent in an envelope that comes occasionally in that pile of flyers, junk mail and bills.

I am an old direct mail sort of guy. I spent a solid 10 years learning everything I could about how to get people to buy things through the mail. I built my first cleaning business with direct mail all by itself. No cold calls, no phone calls and this was before anyone dreamed of computers or the web. I personally licked 5,000 envelopes after personally signing 5,000 letters in blue ink carefully folding each letter and placing in an envelope along with a brochure and my card.

Just like the law of gravity, there is an immutable law of direct mail that says, “The right letter, to the right person with the right offer at the right time ALWAYS works”. The truth is today a personal letter works better than ever because of the delete button everyone has with just a mouse click away.

To be very clear I am not talking about junk mail but a personal letter from you to your prospect with your signature at the end of the letter arriving in a business sized number 10 envelope with their name correctly spelled and typed on the envelope.

Could direct mail work in your business? Here’s a test for you to try before you jot off some trash can bound advertising with the usual blah, blah, blah, wasting precious first class postage (yes, first class, not the junk mail rates). For the next 6 weeks place EVERY piece of mail you receive into a box. At the end of the 6 weeks go through the box and pull out every single business letter you receive with your name spelled correctly, NOT in a window envelope (which tells you it was done by a machine) from someone that KNOWS you actually use what they are selling.

First count how many there are and then study them carefully to see if it was sent by someone who knows you need what they have to sell. You will be surprised how few you find. In the direct mail advertising world, what you have started is a swipe file. Be on the lookout for really great letters that makes you FEEL something and were written just to and FOR you.

So you know, with everything that I learned about making people buy things through the mail, I might spend 8 to 12 hours to write a good letter. Carefully honing every single word, using a personal voice and reading it through the reader’s eyes in order to make the reader DO something. Will your letter be tossed in the trash? Yes, most of them will but it is the ones that DO NOT that will make a difference in your sales.

The silver bullet you have been searching for, no but a very powerful tool to incorporate into your total marketing program. Once again, what do we do to grow a janitorial company? We do EVERYTHING and old-fashioned business letters is just one piece of ammo in a well-stocked arsenal.

Finding the truly remarkable at ISSA/Interclean 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:58:00 +0000

When very large events take place, it is hard to see the overall impact and cull the essential lessons or observations. Communicating those observations is sometimes more difficult and I needed several days to process everything I saw, heard and experienced in Vegas at the ISSA/Interclean 2011 conference.

I am a man given to the remarkable, the most interesting, important or at minimal, the avant-garde. This is why when moving to the mid-west, hot dish seemed like what they feed prisoners to stay just this side of the Geneva Convention. I am not a meat and potatoes guy, I NEED spice. That is why I dumped my TV and can’t handle top 40 music or celebrity news. I am not just bored with the mundane but an avid hater of all that is average.

I attended the conference to find what I could see as the trends that now and into the future will shape our companies and careers in this industry. It was a hunt for the remarkable and I found it.

The remarkable I found was in two areas; the maturing of our trade as a profession and as you would guess, technology. The destructive message from the business opportunity magazines is discredited within the first ten minutes of walking in the door of the convention.

The hucksters selling franchise fantasies and the purveyors of the “grab a mop and make a million” nonsense, would have their victims choking on the mistaken idea that any idiot can make a fortune without knowing anything after seeing what awaits them in the marketplace.

This is why so many small or new operators are desperate to know how do we get accounts? I got my mop, vacuum cleaner and business cards, so where is my million dollars? The purchasers of your services have a choice of professionals to choose from so your side ways baseball cap and stained golf shirt just won’t cut it.

Make no mistake about it, we are a profession now, and that was very evident at the convention. There is room for beginners but you better roll up your sleeves and start learning about your profession if you are serious about making money in cleaning. There is no $139. or even $1,500. short cuts to becoming a professional in our industry. More about the particulars in following blog posts (so make sure and subscribe and not miss even one exciting episode)!

One other group would have been on notice if they were conscious at all while walking through the convention floor and that is those at the other end of the industry, the large players who think there is not a whole lot to what we do. The maintenance mafia and the “sub everything out to anyone with a mop” goons who will never make an investment in a corn broom.

These mouth-breathers who throw ridiculous prices at chains, who make promises that they have no intention of delivering on and where quality is merely a slogan, should enjoy their margins built solely on their lies because their days are numbered. They will never invest in the technology or the training to match the professionals who recognize the warning sign and do the hard work.

To my dear pessimistic friends, I saw facility managers at the convention and these folks will become tougher to fool in the very near future. Job number two is to communicate what differentiates us from the impostors (job one is safety, as it should be). Our expertise and professionalism has to be a foundational message to the marketplace we serve.

Technology was the other remarkable thing I saw and not just redesigned mop wringers (although there were several I really liked). I am not sure why we as an industry are so slow to see and adopt these advancements but I have an idea that it is the residual effects of our own poor perception of our mission. Moving dirt and making a profit will get better and better as we lose our own negative ideas. In most cases, we are our own worst enemies.

On one hand, there was technology that requires sizable capital investment and on the other, there were solutions that seemed like mere pennies. It is slower than it should be for these solution providers though they would not admit it. Superior technology does not always win be it hard or soft and there is the “this is the way we always did it” which stifles innovation and kills companies in a slow writhing death.

In the next few postings I will go into more detail about what was remarkable but to be sure, having International Sanitary Supply Association, Building Service Contractors Association International, the International Executive Housekeepers Association, and the Association of Residential Cleaning Services International all meet at one time, at one place made for an amazing event.

Five Undeniable Truths about Janitorial Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 23:04:00 +0000

A blog (a blend of the term web log) is the primary way for you to engage your prospects, your clients, and your community in this Web 2.0 age. There are 156 million blogs and if you are in the cleaning industry, you had better get yours and you had better make it good.

I look at janitorial web sites almost continuously. Few in our industry have figured out how to maintain a presence on the web and janitorial web sites are not much more than electronic brochures. How much time do you spend reading any brochure after your purchase? How can you use the web to interact with all those you seek to influence (both before and after the sale)?

Yes, we all know you vacuum and dust and polish along with the other 127,000 cleaning services in the U.S. that want that very same dollar that you do. Frankly, everyone with money to spend for cleaning is tired of hearing it. The question is, what makes you special and why should you get that cleaning dollar? I want to be very clear about this and make sure you understand that you are NOT special in today’s marketplace. (Your mom still thinks you are special but other than her, it is a very short list).

The answer is as it always has been, to build a relationship. The foundation of a relationship is engagement. For a whole generation of buyers and clients today engagement is something that happens on the web. A blog is one key piece of your internet presence that you cannot afford to ignore.

Truth # 1

Content is EVERYTHING. This violates one of my other core beliefs, which is that showing up is 80% of success. You cannot just throw up a blog and fill it with words, recipes or other empty cerebral calories (junk food for the brain). Your blog must inform, inspire, teach, entertain, or have some value for the person reading it. If you target property or facility managers, you must give them something of value worth their time to read. (I write to janitorial company leaders and provide something they want to read).

Truth # 2

Your blog increases your professional standing. How refreshed your prospects and clients will be when they see something of value that they can use. Up to this point all, you have been doing in providing good service is keeping building occupants quiet about poor cleaning. If you are doing a good job, no one you serve is complaining. Absence of tenant or occupant complaints is the hallmark of good service. That is just not enough in this competitive environment.

One downtown property manager told me he gets five calls a day from janitorial services. Staying out of sight and hoping out of mind will help you is a strategy for disaster.

Truth # 3

Your blog increases your electronic standing, your web presence. (Want proof? Google my name Ed Selkow and you will find several solid pages among the ads for numerous treatments for the dreaded male malady named in my honor). You have to rise above the noise all your competitors are making on the web and paying big money for. Blogging is a key step to link building and you can slash your search engine optimization dollars significantly. (I have not spent one thin dime to have a good four pages of Google).

Truth # 4

Your blog can personalize your company, put your name, and face above that snappy wet floor sign so people can see YOU. People do business with other people, not trucks or buildings or floor machines or rubber gloves and buckets (and ANY pictures of toilets should IMMEDIATELY earn you an express trip to Federal bankruptcy court in a merciful Chapter 7 proceeding). Part of this personalization process is for feedback by your readers. Produce good content and then provide a comment section.

Truth # 5

Your company blog is a commitment to make and then keep. I saw one figure that 28% of corporate blogs die by the end of the first year. This is not a trick and it is not a fad, it is something important for you to adopt for your company for the long haul. Can you imagine disconnecting your telephone before the end of your first year in business because not enough buyers called you? This is communication today, like it or not, it is a reality.

Years ago, I saw that there were only two paths I could take as a business owner. I could stand outside the game and complain how others were playing or get inside the game and play to win.

If you are perplexed on where to start or need help with the blog you already have, contact me. Let’s get you in the game to win.

Ed Selkow

Who gets the last word?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 01:17:00 +0000

I went to the funeral of an old friend. We have not been very, close over the last few years but he was a friend who taught me much that I have taken with me for several decades. We were fierce competitors for many years and then one day after he left a top position in a global company, he bought my company.

My friend cleaned buildings like many of my other friends but this one cleaned what equaled entire cities. You could measure what he cleaned not in square feet or even in how many buildings but in square blocks of downtown business corridors. People stood at my friend’s funeral because there were no seats left.

So much current conventional wisdom was shattered at the funeral; I had trouble deciding which nuggets of nonsense to disassemble for you. I decided to disassemble just a few here now.

“No one buys quality anymore, they only buy price”.

I sat next to property manager I have known for several decades who most of you reading this would never get in to see. He signs the cleaning contracts for those downtown skyscrapers that make up city skylines. He was there because he did business with my friend for many years. He does not buy according to price; he has no choice but to buy quality. He was smart enough not to over pay but the buildings he is in charge of require quality cleaning. My friend delivered quality cleaning right up to the day he died. Those that worked for my friend are still delivering quality as I write these words.

“There is no more loyalty among buyers of cleaning”.

Maybe that is true for potato chips and underwear but the property managers that came to my friend’s funeral prove otherwise. Buyers that show up at your funeral on a weekday are loyal. I know a few of those buyers had been with my friend through several moves he made from company to company until my friend owned his own company, which he bought from me. Buyers are loyal but they are loyal to people not companies.

“Just get the contract, nothing else matters. So what’s YOUR best “trick” to getting good contracts”?

There is no trick to getting good contracts. Tell people the truth long enough until you are known as someone that can be trusted, do good work at a fair price, and build a reputation. It is not a trick and it is not magic, it is just hard work.

Getting the contract is not the hard part anyway. Keeping the contract year after year is the hard part. I was lucky in that when I was learning the business I worked for a man that did not understand losing a building for poor service.

“Ethics, shmethics, great sales people do or say whatever is necessary to close deals”.

Truly great sales people have an ethical code they live by. They live in such a way that they have nothing to be ashamed of personally or in business, (he was married 46 years). Great sales people keep their word. My friend was a great sales person but he was equally as effective in operations. People trusted my friend. People that signed contracts with him and people who worked for him knew he kept his word.

My friend was an example to me as I learned very early on in my career to keep my word. My friend did not teach me that but someone who we both trusted did, King Solomon (who has been dead now for about 3,000 years).

A few days ago, I saw what happens when you live a whole life that way. People that come to your funeral do not get a seat and have to stand up through the service. In a sense, my friend got the last word but I got a seat up front and I heard him loud and clear.

I Did NOT Steal Those Books In Chicago, But if I Did I Would Steal These

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 03:43:00 +0000

Dateline: August 31, 2011 in the Chicagoland section of The Chicago Tribune, headline reads; Janitor charged with stealing thousands of books from Lisle library, By Brian Slodysko, Tribune reporter.

“Security procedures at the Lisle Library will be evaluated after a Glen Ellyn man who worked as a late-night janitor was charged with carting off thousands of stolen library books”.

For the record, I have not been to Chicago since August of 2010; I have never lived in Glen Ellyn and have never worked that night shift at that library. To those reading this headline and just naturally assuming it was I are wrong. I never stole a book from any library and feel that this sort of crime is one of the lowest.

To keep the record straight, once I reported a library book lost and paid the library for it but I knew where it was all the time. After checking with Strand’s in New York City, the final authority on hard to find books, paying the library for this book was the only way I could have it.

Now that I have cleared up this late breaking news, cleared my own good name and made a confession of my one misdeed against any library, we can all now move on past all this ugliness.

I am the sum total of the genetics I inherited from my parents, every person I have ever met and had any conversation with, every broom, janitor’s and utility closet I have been in across the United States but most of all every book I have ever read. (My antique book collection once numbered 4,000 volumes and those were just my collectibles).

What books would a janitor steal? I will share with you the list of books I would steal if I were a book thief. This is not in any order but this is my drop-dead list of the books I NEED around me just to feel OK.

How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

The Book of Proverbs by King Solomon (to be read one chapter every day)

Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples

Quality Is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain by Philip B. Crosby

Time Power: The Revolutionary Time Management System That Can Change Your Professional and Personal Life by Charles R. Hobbs

Computer Lib/Dream Machines by Theodor H. Nelson

Stronger Than Steel: The Wayne Alderson Story by R. C. Sproul

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

The Book of Proverbs by King Solomon (to be read one chapter every day)

Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell

If I'm in Charge Here Why Is Everybody Laughing? By David P. Campbell

My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers (to be read every day)

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

The Book of Psalms by King David (read five chapters every day)

I do not read business books anymore. I used to but then it just got dumb with books on what I could learn about business from packs of wolves.

This one along with several others I could write what I learned for a very long time but every leader needs to read The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli.

If this list looks daunting then start with How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler. One of the best books you will ever read. Adler was the general editor of the Encyclopedia Britannica for many years and one of my favorite authors of all time. He said there was no such thing as an educated person under the age of 50, it simply is not possible. He said many things about education and as I grow older, I see how right he was.

Let me know when you get through this list and I will share the next one with you gladly. Since some of you care and want to know, I also have with me when I read a soft 4B pencil and either jelly beans or orange marshmallow Circus Peanuts (zero fat grams and good for you)!

It's not JUST the Devil in the Details

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 18:34:00 +0000

The details matter. They matter on a grander scale then we can imagine. Sometimes those details matter to those who we do not expect them to matter too.

I just read a story of Steve Job’s concern over a small detail. I will let you read that story here yourself: Steve Jobs and the Google Logo Ambulance. The story immediately brought to mind a man who worked for me as a day porter in the headquarters of a large company. His name also was Steve.

This week I followed a conversation about the frustration of finding and keeping good help. I was in the business long enough to fix that problem for good and never had to advertise as all my competitors did.

My Steve was no genius and was in fact developmentally disabled. Steve took his job very seriously. Though he was finished with work at 4pm, one night I get a call from Steve at 11pm.

Steve was bothered about a spot on a faucet that he was not able to remove in a men’s room on the second floor. He could NOT rest and called me to tell me he was working on it but it really was bothering him.

Steve cared and at 11 at night, he cared just a little too much, I remember thinking. A very small detail that he cared about more than me at that hour. For over two years, Steve was never late or called out sick. Steve cared.

During his second year with me, the company awarded the Employee of the Year to Steve. He was not the company’s employee but won that award even though he was on my payroll. My day porter became part of their organization as far as they were concerned. He was a simple man with a singular focus on his job. Steve was a star in that building and it was recognized. I had several people who worked for me like Steve but the story I read about Apple’s outgoing CEO reminded me of someone I was fortunate not just to know but have on my payroll.

Some care about the details and that is what makes them exceptional. Being exceptional can happen on many levels both very large and very small. Both Steve’s cared about details, the famous one and the one that I knew.

Sometimes those people stick out from the rest of the crowd. I made it a habit to identify who those people were in my company and I did find them. You can also if you look for them. They are out there waiting on a mission.

Postscript on Steve: This is the part that I have a hard time with. I cannot ever tell this without being shaken up and have never before written this down.

A few months after Steve won Employee of the Year he came to me and asked me for a raise. As I always did, I asked Steve why he deserved it and he told me why. I agreed he was right and asked him how much he deserved. Steve told me 25 cents, a whole quarter and then he looked at me carefully to gauge my reaction. I held out my hand to shake his and smiled, telling him I agreed with him 100 percent. It would begin this pay period and thanked him for the good job he was doing. I will never forget the look on his face. Steve was so very happy and I was too.

Next morning I get a phone call from Steve’s mother in tears. He lived with his mother because of his disability. Steve was so happy because of the raise he had earned; he celebrated that night by drinking two cans of beer, which was extremely rare. Steve drowned in the pool of his apartment complex that night.

That headquarters building where Steve worked controlled manufacturing facilities all over the world. In cubicles throughout that, building hung notes and poems about Steve from all over the world. Because Steve cared, he was both loved and terribly missed by not only those who knew him but by those who only knew him from a great distance.

Therefore, it is not JUST the Devil in the details. The details are of great concern from above also and we are surrounded with the evidence but we have to look a little harder.

Why the Web Matters and Why it Matters Even MORE Today

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 21:24:00 +0000

A $50,000 per month janitorial contract with a 22% gross profit that came off a web site hit got my attention. With all the competition for accounts like this one, I was shocked. I built one of the largest janitorial companies in the US without knocking on a single door but I was still shocked.

I was the guy that licked 5,000 envelopes when computers were the size of trucks. I learned how direct marketing worked, was successful at it, and then spent the next 25 years listening to people telling me that it didn’t work. (It just did not work for them because they were doing it wrong).

The first chance I got to run out and buy a computer I bit the bullet and spent more than the car I was driving at the time. Then there was a way to talk to other people with computers over phone lines. Once again, I was there, we could type with a keyboard, and it would show up on the screen of the person on the other end of the phone line. No pictures, no sound just very plain type that looked like what telegrams used to look like. This was before Al Gore invented the World Wide Web.

Last weekend I spent some time getting hooked up to something called Tumblr. One of the big stars there is Jenna Marbles. She is also one of the stars of Web 2.0. Everyone my age will look at Jenna Marbles whining about the girls she hates, why her cat is better than a boyfriend, advice on how to avoid people that she doesn’t want to talk to and how to trick people into thinking you look good (which is strange coming from a very attractive young lady in her early 20s) and dismiss her completely. Here’s the deal though, Jenna invites you to then comment or tell her what you, the viewer thinks and people do.

Do you have a computer? Have you ever sent or received an email? Have you walked into any Fortune 500 company to sell janitorial services? Face it, in 2011 if you do not use a computer then you might as well get rid of your telephone. Oh and while you are at it, get rid of that new fangled floor machine too and then you can go back to the “good old days” when floors were polished by attaching rags to your feet. So the bottom line is your computer is here to stay if you are in the janitorial business. The internet isn’t a fad either, it’s here to stay.

Jenna Marbles matters and so does Web 2.0 and here is why. Al Gore’s wonderful invention of the Web was not worth very much to the average person. Do you know who were the first bunch of Joe Averages who it did matter too? The fans of the Grateful Dead were the first to use Gore’s invention for their own purposes. Stoned out Deadheads found out that there was something called Mosaic (the very first web browser) and they used Mosaic to organize each other. Deadheads traveled around in brightly painted VW vans, following their favorite band. Jenna Marbles’ twenty something very public angst is today’s permutation of those stoned out Deadhead’s partying.

To those of you who say I am stretching a point, try selling any of your services to any Fortune 500 company or any government agency without first going to their web site and filling out a vendor registration form. You can stand in the lobby for as long as you like handing business cards to a receptionist and if you are not a registered vendor you are wasting your time.

You started out with a web site thinking all it is supposed to do, is to act like a brochure. You PUSHING out your message in the form of a electronic brochure and hoping someone that can sign a cleaning contract will see it and spend the time to read it. Web 2.0 is here and your web site is only one small piece of any serious company’s presence on the Web. If you want to grow and thrive in this new electronic landscape, I really hate to tell you this but you are going to have to learn what Jenna Marbles knows.

Now you will not be able to say you have not been warned because I just warned all of you.

How a Harvard Professor Convinced Me to Become a Full Time Janitor

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 11:57:00 +0000

I started a list of all the people that either had started their careers or had worked as janitors in the past and it is a very impressive list. World leaders, politicians and familiar entertainers all once worked in our industry. I wanted to be one of them, someone just doing cleaning work temporarily until I launched into a career of money, glory, and success.

My first cleaning job was in college where I started by sweeping and mopping the street in front of several of Miami’s most prestigious hotels. I had to work my way up to be assigned to the inside, mop the lobbies, and vacuum those fabulous waterfront nightclubs.

I had a dreadful time in college because it was there that I fell in love with learning and confused that with college attendance. I changed majors after a couple of years but in the meantime picked up a wife, a mortgage, and car payments. I got it straightened out by understanding college was to make a living and learning was a solitary activity one undertakes for a lifetime and had nothing at all to do with so called institutions of higher learning.

With a new university major in Engineering, I purchased two office cleaning contracts and started my own little business just to get me through school. It was a perfect situation for me working only three hours a night, five days per week. Yes, we used to make good money at this and I was able to pay all my bills.

In preparation for a yet undeclared minor in International Business, my reading led me to an article that was the equivalent of a 2 X 4 smashing my skull. A Zen like moment of enlightenment, inspiration as the mystics of the past experienced, and a possibility I could skip calculus.

An article titled A Production-Line Approach to Service by Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School got me to thinking about my little cleaning business and the application of engineering principals to the service industry. What if services like cleaning were performed and delivered with the precision of an assembly line? Levitt’s article opened up a completely new way of thinking about what I was doing for those three hours every night.

Those closest to me are used to my pointing out that there are no accidents. Therefore, I do not believe it was an accident that I received information from a fellow student during a casual conversation that the restaurant where he worked, hated their cleaning service. I fumbled through a meeting with the restaurant manager, guessed what a janitorial proposal might look like, and settled on a price that was well over what a graduate Engineer made upon graduation.

My first night cleaning that restaurant was the last night I did my reading for class and like Bill Gates, I dropped out of college. That first night was 21 man-hours to complete the cleaning. I looked at every single task to be performed, the steps taken to perform each task and a way to do each one faster. In two weeks, I had the job down to seven hours per night. At seven hours, money poured out of that account.

That was 35 years ago and if it had not been for Theodore Levitt, I would have never become a full time janitor. I wish I could thank him now but maybe he is pleased just the same.

With the Price of Success Secrets Seriously Dropping

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 19:02:00 +0000

The price of the secrets of success is dropping. Once upon a time, the secrets of success were only available through accomplished role models of good character and success or in the books, they wrote. The internet came and the secrets of success began to leak out all over the web but they were secrets of a lesser quality. The biggest secrets should be more expensive or maybe the level of success determines the price but make no mistake about it, the price has gone right down the toilet.

In order to make a full disclosure, I too am a purveyor of secrets for a price but I figure what you save on Band-Aids make mine a good deal. My highest value secrets have left wounds and scars so buying my secrets are a bargain.

The secret selling business has grown right along with the janitorial business. More people today are selling secrets and it’s no secret there are more people selling janitorial services than ever before.

My dad died when I was ten years old so I was always on the lookout for good advice. In my early twenties, I started a very careful study that has continued to this day for wisdom. Applied wisdom is the best kind so anytime I found those principals I put them at the top of my list.

Here is wisdom that is a secret as far as I can tell from everything I see my fellow janitors putting out to the property and facility management community. Whoever would be the greatest among you, will be the servant of all. This is a law just like the law of gravity, it is immutable and universal.

To illustrate, think how Hitler rose to power. Hitler appeared as a SERVANT of the German people. This law works for good or for evil. It works for dictators and it works for leaders across the entire spectrum of human endeavors including janitorial company owners. Does not matter how you FEEL... as fake as Hitler or as heartfelt as Mother Theresa, it just works.

All you who are yelling and screaming at your prospects who manage facilities and properties about how great you are, are simply wasting your time. Here is another secret, to the managers and facility professionals who sign cleaning contracts, you just aren’t special in any way shape or form. You are becoming a commodity that can be bought by the pound. As Tyler Durden said, ever so clearly “you are NOT a beautiful and unique snowflake”.

You want power in your market place? Do you want to be a leader in the industry in your town? Then become a servant to those you seek to influence. Look for ways that you can serve them by bringing solutions, connections, answers to problems they are dealing with, new stuff of value to them or old stuff of value to younger prospects.

Are you in the market for the latest secret to success? Or true wisdom?

Learn first what matters to prospects (and employees), and then be on the lookout for resources, solutions that matter to those you want to hear what you have to say.

When you start to look, you will find no shortage of these. I know a whole bunch of them (but I am keeping them a secret). The biggest secret of all I just gave you free.

Little People

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 16:48:00 +0000

I have a confession to make.

There is a movie I have watched 50 times and I cry each time I see it. It is called You Can’t Take It With You. In the movie a quirky old man teaches a powerful, wealthy industrialist what is important in life. This film was produced in the 1930’s so I don’t really mind giving it away but what comes out is the value of a man’s life can be measured through the relationships he has accumulated by the end.

I learned what is important early in my career and it is the people I meet. Some I sell to, some I buy from and some I manage and pay. Business owners value people who can and do buy from them. Smart business owners know their biggest asset never show up on balance sheets and are the people in their companies.

The janitorial business is about managing people who clean buildings for other people. I have experienced every single level of involvement from cleaning person (once I was even an ASSISTANT to a cleaning person) to company president and held every position in between, cleaning the smallest buildings to the very largest in the United States. From starting several companies up all by myself to senior executive in several national companies, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Oceans, I have a whole pile of company shirts.

Here’s the deal, you have to get other people to do really good work at the lowest level for not a lot of money. Who is that service person at that lowest level in your company?

Stand with a group of grizzled janitorial veterans and listen to their most memorable stories while the others roll their eyes and knowingly smile. I listen, I smile and nod and have my own contributions you can bet. However, what I can hear and never say anything about in that group is that I can tell who the service people in their organizations are to them.

I was most fortunate to have worked in an organization for a man; I would have walked through fire for. I learned from him and created organizations where my people would walk through fire for me. No, not all of them but enough. Today I want you to begin creating an organization filled with people who will walk through fire for you. You won’t get all of them but all you need is enough of them.

Why?

Because IF they are willing to walk through fire for you, they will clean the bathrooms, clean the corners and edges, leave everything that is supposed to shine, shiny for your client. Your mangers and supervisors will model your lead in dealing with those they oversee. If they don’t, fire them.

There are no little people in your organization. You may not know that but it is true. Tonight, go walk a building and catch someone doing something right. Stop them, look them in the eye and say “thank you, you are doing a really great job and I want you to know how much I appreciate it”.

Watch the look on their face and start LEADING instead of only managing. I have more to tell you but tonight is a good time to start with this simple step. There is more to come so stay tuned.

Ed

Especially in the Janitorial Industry, Only Wet Babies Like Change

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 16:43:00 +0000

The saying goes, "the only sure thing is death and taxes." Those that come up with profound proverbs are never questioned or doubted. Except by a few folks like me who do a lot of doubting. They missed an important one, which is, the only thing that will remain constant is the fact that things WILL change.

No one LIKES change except a wet baby. So with change comes tears. For many of us, the older we get, the more we cry about things changing. We get comfortable with our familiar routines, our abundance, and our knowledge of how things work. Then someone comes along and changes things.

Our beloved building services industry is full of old crybabies. They were (and many still are) fat and happy but then one day someone said they had to buy a fax machine and that was only the beginning. The floodgates broke open and then came a tsunami. Cell phones, email, websites, and the absolute WORST, computers on EVERY one’s desk?

I am not talking about kindly old Wilfred Brimley types, just back from the of the hardware store, smelling of tuna on toast, dressed in flannel shirts, rocking back and forth in the parlor. Some of these people owned large janitorial companies; some even own national ones.

“No one will do any work if I put computers in those offices,” exclaimed one company president and more than 30 offices nationwide used 3 part NCR forms, faxing and mailing them several times a week. To make matters worse, they paid rent to have offices to house mountains of NCR forms and a place to stuff them in envelopes.

Here’s the deal though, ALL of the giants of today, will be unrecognizable ten years from now and some will not survive at all. Ten years from now EVERY SINGLE ONE of the giant companies will be run by someone who understands the changes that are happening all around us riThese changes are happening at lightning speed. The time to be in this business, to be creative, to not listen to the old folks crying, could not be any better.

Social media, new message delivery rules, the whole world available on a smart phone that fits in your pocket, the global positioning system, electronic funds transfers, RAM priced below what a magazine or a couple of Happy Meals cost, terabytes of storage, Wi-Fi through entire downtown corridors and competitors that are hungry, ALL mean the game changers already walk among us.

Innovation, creativity and a “why CAN’T we do this” stream of thought is about to change things again and again. I am one of the old guys but I am not crying at all. I am excited to see what is coming and some of what is already on its way. I have faith and trust the young folks I come across. Just wait until you see what they have been working on.

Think back to that very first time you played “52 Pick Up” with a deck of cards and that makes you smile. Well you ain’t seen nothing yet!

Ed

How our Prehistoric Predecessors Learned to Bid and Estimate Janitorial Services

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 16:37:00 +0000

In prehistoric times, when janitors roamed the wilds, hunting and gathering clients and buildings, there was a method they used to bid and estimate new jobs.

These were very different days, long before cell phones, computers, high speed burnishers and internet connections. At night these savages did primitive dances with mops after commandeering office overhead radio systems. An unrelenting, primal beat of the Doors, Sly and The Family Stone and the Jefferson Airplane blared as they helped themselves to candy not meant for them, from receptionist’s desk top, glass containers which they enjoyed without remorse.

These were brutal and lawless days, eons before CIMS, the Cleaning Industry Management Standard, which codified how janitors were expected to behave and organize their tribes. The janitorial business was only rock and roll back then.

Public production rates did not exist but very large tribes knew and protected them as sacred secrets. Their high priests of sales committed them to memory.

What these savages, the leaders of small, local tribes did when they got a shot at bidding a building is they would go in and guess how long it would take to clean. Then they would clean it themselves and figure out if they were making money after the fact.

Now some were very crafty and knew once they had one, they could figure out how to price any other building of the same type. So they would figure out the fastest way to clean that one building.

Cleaning top to bottom, moving right to left, keeping tools as close as possible to them and most important saving steps in between tasks. Each time improving on the time they spent, keeping track of that time and improving it each time.

Then they found the size of the building, the area by measuring it. Measuring length and then multiplying by the width would give them the area in square feet.

Back at the cave with the information they had gathered, they now knew how much time it took to complete a set of tasks in a given amount of area (in square feet).

Then they would continue on their hunt but each time they became better and better at guessing what to bid and estimate by following the above method. Thought that this little history lesson would help you come up with your own sacred formula that you can use to grow your tribe.

Ed

Owner Cloning, Dead Fish and Dead Companies

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:29:00 +0000

When my daughter first wanted a pet, I wanted a teachable moment on responsibility so we started with a gold fish. She fed it and despite doing what I thought was a good job; Goldie was floating lifeless in less than two weeks.

We went and bought a hamster and named him MC. We were set with a great cage; toys and everything MC Hamster would need, even played his theme song, “U Can’t Touch This” as he ran around his wheel. Again, she did a great job and MC Hamster lived several months.

There were tears as we buried him in the backyard during our family memorial service. During the eulogy, everyone agreed that MC Hamster was the best hamster that ever lived PLUS he was with us longer than Goldie. MC Hamster had a good life and now he and Goldie were together. Some animals and companies die young, some live longer and some grow old. It is what happens to the survivors that I want you to know about today.

Sometimes the death of a young cleaning company can be a good thing for the survivors. That seemingly premature death may only be a detour if the owner can transport the skills learned into another company. With a dead company behind them, think about everything they can bring with them into the next organization. No fear of long hours of work, a certain degree of technical proficiency plus a network of former employees and clients.

Let’s go across town to another cleaning company, the Super ABC Good Vibes and Smiley Faces Cleaning Company (please go to Facebook and “Like” their page). Every janitorial company and its owner in the beginning are one and the same. The company IS what the owner DOES minute by minute, day after day. Here is a test, if you get sick and are in the hospital what happens to your company? Are buildings cleaned without you, are employees supervised, and are client’s phone calls answered?

Enough buildings and accounts have been acquired that the owner of Super ABC now has no more hours in the day to complete everything that needs to be done. Client phone calls, following up on sales opportunities, buying supplies, hiring and managing cleaning people, collections, invoicing, banking and dodging sales people, fills the owner’s day. Day turns into night, family takes a second place but the business is up and running. Spousal smileys become rare.

The President of Super ABC is doing well but is running up against a brick wall, his own clock. Super ABC could expand if only there were more hours in the day. Every growing company faces this plateau. What would be a better way for this company president to clone him or herself, than to bring someone else into the company that has gone through exactly the same thing? Wouldn’t it make sense for Super ABC to bring in someone who spent their days with client phone calls, following up on sales opportunities, buying supplies, hiring and managing cleaning people, collections, invoicing, banking, and dodging sales people? Could you find a better clone?

For the survivor of the company that died, there can be no better place to take everything that has been learned. This is the School of Hard Knocks and the job prospects for the graduates of this hallowed institution could not be brighter! The death of a cleaning company can open a door to an opportunity where someone else has been waiting for a graduate of that School and welcomes them with open arms.

Ed