How to Start a Cleaning Business

How to Start a Cleaning Business

Janitorial service providers, house cleaning businesses, commercial cleaning contractors, and even carpet cleaning businesses need a varied cleaning experience and knowledge base to provide cleaning services to all kinds of establishments, including educational institutions, hospitals, food manufacturing industry, construction, offices, theaters, government buildings and many others. Even homeowners hire a residential house cleaning business, maid services, and janitorial cleaning contractors to clean and maintain their homes on a regular basis.

So if you are planning to start a cleaning business, janitorial business, or carpet cleaning business, then you must select and purchase the right janitorial equipment; first be clear as to what kind of service you wish to offer. You can provide comprehensive janitorial services catering to all sectors or to a selected few sectors depending upon your resources. The market for a house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, and janitorial or commercial cleaning services company is huge and if done right can generate huge profits in a relatively short period of time.

This article gives you useful information on how to start a cleaning business on the right note, and presents the janitorial equipment that will meet your specific cleaning requirements.

Janitorial Business Pointers

Cleaning Franchise/Independent Business: You can either start your own house cleaning business or cleaning business in general as an independent commercial cleaning services contractor, or else register with a franchise operator for some national commercial cleaning services provider. One advantage of becoming a franchisee is the franchiser provides guidance, training, typically janitorial equipment guidance, and even customers. Franchisers take care of most of the business work for you while you can focus on what will make you money, namely cleaning. Once again, they may even you towards the type of janitorial equipment needed for the cleaning tasks upon which they specialize, or they may sell you the janitorial equipment as part of the franchise cost.

The franchiser's brand name and credibility are very crucial if you decide to go this route. The disadvantage is that you need to share your profits with the franchiser. When you work as an independent cleaning services contractor, you can operate as you like, buy janitorial equipment you desire, and do business your own way, but you must take care of the operational aspects, marketing, and other functions assumed by franchisers. Starting a house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, or janitorial services company outright definitely has its pros and cons.

Do Thorough Homework When you Start a Cleaning Business: When you are planning to start a house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, or janitorial service company, do thorough homework. First determine which sectors or markets you seek to target. Janitorial services can be provided for government and private offices, hotels and restaurants, airports and railway stations, schools/colleges/boarding schools, churches, hospitals/nursing homes and many others. Gather as much information about your competitors, how they operate, and the type of janitorial equipment they buy for their operation. Obviously, a house cleaning business and carpet cleaning business have huge potential in terms of the sheer number of prospective clients.

Find out various surfaces, areas, and equipment that need to be cleaned in your targeted sectors, how they operate, and their specific customers. Determine your scope of business by gathering information from books and cleaning related websites. Many wonderful nice books are available on the subject, plus you can also browse through useful cleaning articles online. Talk to other commercial cleaning services contractors or janitorial service providers and determine the services they offer, the rates they charge, and janitorial equipment they buy to satisfy their cleaning needs. Find out what janitorial supplies you will need and the best janitorial or sanitary supply store from which you can purchase these items.

Develop a through business plan and be specific about all details related to finance, scope of the business, your marketing strategies, risks involved, etc. Estimate your initial costs and identify the sources from which you can arrange funds or loans.

Hiring Workforce/Staffing: Determine how much staff you must need initially. Don't go on a hiring spree, but rather hire in phases. Initially hire a small team, and expand as your business starts rolling and expanding. When hiring, make sure you don't hire all inexperienced cleaning people. We suggest you develop a mixed team of experienced and inexperienced employees. Make sure you train the inexperienced staff so they know which janitorial equipment must be used for the particular cleaning job; cleaning work must be executed effectively and efficiently using the correct janitorial equipment, or you can lose business or customers. Gather some knowledge through interviews, other companies' policies and human resources information.

Janitorial Business Pricing: Your cleaning services must be priced competitively. A house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, janitorial cleaning business will ultimately fail as you will lose money be pricing cleaning jobs too low just to get the business. Sometimes this low-prices strategy works against you as prospective customers might think your service is of lower quality; you may be priced so much lower than their existing house cleaning, carpet cleaning, or janitorial service provider they may seek to replace, or other commercial cleaning contractors competing against you for the business.

Instead, develop a pricing structure or quote competitive prices that may be slightly less than competitors. Work towards convincing your potential customers that your company will provide a better cleaning service than their existing contractor. Do not price a cleaning job until you or a representative from your company actually visit the prospective customer's house or facility and assesses the amount of cleaning work required. Develop a detailed estimate so you can propose an appropriate price. You may even discover you must buy additional janitorial equipment for a particular customer. Keep in mind that to start a cleaning business and maintaining a successful operation whether it's a house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, or janitorial services provider, knowledge is power, and the more detailed information you can gather in advance, the better your chances for success.

Expand Slowly: Consider focusing on specific cleaning niches, perhaps starting with a couple of sectors. For example, if you are a carpet cleaning business or janitorial services company, you can begin by targeting only office cleaning contracts or focus only on carpet cleaning or floor care. Once you develop the necessary cleaning experience, you can slowly begin to target other sectors and all type of surfaces within other markets, such as the food industry, manufacturing industries, educational institutions, hospitals, and others; adding markets one at a time, and slowly expand your workforce, janitorial equipment, office staff if necessary. Growing your business in this way will help ensure your best chances of success and staying in business for many years. Investing in expensive janitorial equipment and other cleaning machines all at once is not wise a wise decision. The same growth strategy holds true for a house cleaning business.

Quality Service: Make sure that you don't compromise quality. Pay particular attention to detail. Your employees must ensure every corner is clean and are honest about their work. Tell them you don't want complaints from your customers. Customers will want you to return on a regular basis if they are happy with the quality of your service; your cleaning staff must be punctual, behave professionally, use the correct janitorial equipment, and environmentally-safe green cleaning chemicals, solutions, and tools.

Train your staff on health and safety issues as well. Plan for accident and illness prevention, and develop emergency procedures.

Treat your customers well and they should be happy to offer testimonials for your cleaning services to prospective customers. Your house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, and janitorial cleaning business can really accelerate.

Marketing and Expansion: Advertise in directories, newspapers, print professional brochures with photographs and other important, specific details of the cleaning services you offer to the market. Make sure your target audience knows about your business. Develop a web presence and market online on various suitable websites. Even try to build good relationships with other house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, and janitorial cleaning service providers. They may be of great help in case you are out of resources or may need help with particular cleaning jobs.

While placing bids to win cleaning contracts make sure your bid sounds professional and provides the necessary details of your services cleaning services offerings. Try to build a string network as it will help ensure your janitorial cleaning business success in the long run.

Motivate Yourself: Be determined to succeed by offering the best cleaning services, using the right janitorial equipment, and target complete customer satisfaction. Consider offering additional services such as outdoor cleaning like parking lots when you are hired to clean building interiors. When you will provide the right service and have a willingness to make your business work, you surely will succeed.

Managing the Business: Managing the business is a key aspect of any business and a house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, and janitorial cleaning business are no different. Ensure you either have or develop the basic business skills like dealing with and managing employees, interfacing with clients, managing your finances, etc. Manage your time efficiently, be disciplined and ensure your cleaning staff and employees are also disciplined, punctual, and also follow a proper code of conduct when at work. You must be able to build relationships with both your employees and your customers effectively to help you succeed in your house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, and janitorial cleaning business.
Buy Daimer's Janitorial Equipment to Make Your Cleaning Business Venture a Success

Daimer is just the right place where you can find quality janitorial equipment and cleaning machines with many unique features to help you maximize your productivity and effectiveness. Time is money and Daimer can help you clean properly and in less time.

Some of the janitorial equipment we offer:

Commercial carpet cleaners can help considerable time and earn more profits. All of our janitorial equipment and cleaning machines are subjected to rigorous testing before leaving the factory. Our goal is to provide the highest-quality, most reliable janitorial equipment in the industry. Daimer's commercial carpet cleaners include XTreme Power® XPC-9200 and XPH-9300 as well as other carpet cleaners in our product line.

Commercial and industrial pressure washers: Daimer's pressure washers are the best rated commercial pressure washers that are not only very powerful but also portable and easy to use. These pressure washers can be used to successfully clean concrete, brick, chewing gum residue, machinery, tile and grout cleaning, restroom floors, restaurants and food service floors and walls, exhaust hoods, within food and other manufacturing plant facilities, for other industrial cleaning markets and applications, and many more. The applications are virtually endless.

Some pressure washer models include:

Vapor-Flo™ 8800 Series Commercial/Industrial Electric Pressure Washers.

Super Max™ 6000, 7000, 9000 and other Commercial/Industrial Steam Pressure Washers.

Steam Floor Cleaners: We offer over 200 models of Commercial Steam Cleaners.

Some of our commercial steam cleaners include:

KleenJet® MEGA 1000CV commercial steam vacuum cleaner.
KleenJet® Supreme 3000CV commercial steam vacuum cleaner.
KleenJet® Ultra 5000CV industrial steam vacuum cleaner.

XTreme Power® XP-HSC14000 Commercial High Speed, Hard Surface and Floor Cleaning Machine: This special, powerful, patented floor cleaning equipment is ideal for restoration, flood damage, post construction, hazmat, stripping wax, large area surface cleaning, concrete, tile/grout, quarry, travertine, limestone, marble, granite, V.C.T, sport tile, other irregular surfaces, and much more both indoors and outdoors. You will be amazed at the cleaning results using this cleaning machine as janitorial equipment in your business.

Whether you want to start a house cleaning business, carpet cleaning business, or janitorial service company, Daimer can help you with the correct cleaning equipment for your specific cleaning needs. Search our website and call an application consultant to assist you in selecting the right solutions. We have helped hundreds of thousands of customers!