Bidding on Cleaning Jobs
Welcome to today’s Grow My Cleaning Company Podcast episode where our host Mike Campion talks with Kieran Reed about bidding on cleaning jobs.
Kieran started The Office Cleaners in Canada (www.theofficecleaners.ca) and has done an amazing job marketing and growing the company in the short time he has been running it. Today he and Mike dive deep into how to systematize bidding on cleaning jobs and whether or not to bid by job or per square foot.

Mike shares what to focus on around bidding for both internal conversations (among staff) as well as external conversations (with the customer)- trust me, you are going to want to get this one right!

HINT: You do NOT want to be talking dollars/ hour with your prospect- listen in and find out why

BONUS HINT: You DO want to talk about the pain you are solving for them

Mike gives Kieran the right way to bid a job (as well as what NOT to factor in) so you can systematize the process without losing money! Once you have a couple of key numbers, it is easy to put together a bid.

Once you have your basic data (how many man hours the job should take) you can create a per hour pricing scale where your price per hour goes down as the hours per week goes up.

Mike also reminds cleaning nation that you need to protect your company with minimums- you can use these bad boys for minimum job size, gross margin, services per week, but they definitely need to be a big part of your arsenal when bidding jobs.

Next up is the sales process- how it is different from the bidding process and how so many cleaners get this WRONG!

HINT: Half the sale should be done before you even get to the job site and 90% should be done before you give them your bid!

Listen in and discover how setting ground rules for how the bid is going to go before you ever leave your office can save you time and make you money!

Mike also explains to cleaning nation that you cannot let just anybody take sales calls and how to set appointments properly so you can go on fewer junk appointments and close more of the appointments you do go on.

Of course, once you are on site, there is a wrong way and a right way to handle yourself. Done properly, you know their true pain, their budget and their decision making process before you even discuss things like square footage and frequency of cleaning.

BONUS LOVIN: Sales and estimating are TOTALLY different skill sets- don’t have one do the others job.

Even if you the owner have to go on sales calls in the beginning- do NOT send an estimator to do a salesperson’s job!

Mike also covers being specific not only about what you are proposing to do, but what you are NOT proposing to do so you don’t run into a cleaners worst enemy- scope creep! Remember- your prospect doesn’t care about you, how many hours it will take or how many awards your company has won- they just care about if you are able to solve their true pain.

HINT: Their true pain is price far less often than you think

Just before your head explodes with too much amazing info, Mike transitions to the lightning round and Kieran knocks it out of the park! Here is what he shares:

Good marketing can’t be bad business- manage your expenses
Don’t try to be everything to everybody
Leverage other people’s strengths
Once you get the bidding process down, you are going to need employees to do the work- check out THIS EPISODE on exactly how to do just that.

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