Hello everyone, I'm very new to this business so any tips would be very much appreciated. I work at a company out of Illinois by the name of Comfort Cleaning Solution, Inc. and we have about 6 clients and I need some advice on expanding and making sales. I used to be a sales rep for a cell phone company but this is just a whole new ball game! How do you guys go about making sales? Telemarketing? Door to door? What if there's places that don't allow solicitors? Again, any tips will help guide me in the right direction. Thank you.

The 'company' doesn't have a plan?

Are you a paid worker or the owner?

If You are owner of the company then promotion and marketing of your business is must.If you are employ then you will have to follow rules and regulations of your company and do work according to that.

In my opinion nothing beats a phone. Just call introduce yourself and make a friend then follow up with a visit or another call.

Does Comfort Cleaning Inc, have a website? What type of services do you offer Commercial? Residential? or both, Do you offer carpet cleaning? Window cleaning? Since you have 6 customers, consider marketing to customers near or around those customes, do a mix of direct mail & cold calling for 3 months 6 months measure which gets the best results.
Brad BD Janitorial

Proper seo will get that phone ringing.

Online marketing, as well as offline marketing will help you to increase your sales.

Biodegradable degreaser
eco friendly cleaner

I am currently in the same situation of looking for more clients for my cleaning business. I plan to rely on door to door sales and cold calling to get most clients and I will also use postcards and online advertising which I think will be less effective.

Hey nestor,

I've helped many new cleaning companies over the years and so I feel confident that these tips will help you:
1. If you offer local services, get a yelp page set up as well as a Google Local Business Page.
2. Brand the yelp page and google local business page by adding your company's logo and designing a nice cover photo that is consistent with your company's website design and style.
3. Get reviews however you can for both your yelp and google local business page.
4. Do keyword research and competitor analysis to determine what keywords drive the most qualified traffic to your website.
5. Learn and start doing SEO and Local SEO immediately.

That works for long term but what about today? How many customers can you get today? I'm all for making a plan but most people need money TODAY to eat. I'll use a big name company.... 2 Maids And A Mop..... it took them several months to get passed the 4th page of Google in Ft Worth. They are now on top 9+ months later and they have to spend time at it each and every day. In Atlanta, the last time I checked, they still weren't anywhere close to being on the first page.

I keep up with them because I think it's FUNNY that the founder has no clue how to clean even a rental beach house with no one living in it yet idiots buy a franchise from him.

Hey sprintcar93, I can definitely understand the need to make money quick. In my experience, Yelp has helped immensely. Also, it really depends on the seo work that 2 Maids and a mop is doing because it can often take only 5-6 months to rank to the first page. What are you doing currently to get your new clients? Give me more info about how you're marketing so I can help you optimize it or give you other possible ideas.

2 Maids has a very good SEO guy that spends 100% of his time working on their SEO at their office. He is dedicated to them only. In smaller markets I can see it only taking 5-6 months and sometimes maybe much less but that comes with time dedicated to getting it to the top.

Personally, I don't have a problem getting customers. If I wanted 2 new customers today then I'd go pass out flyers. Even nowadays I don't like to wait months to get a new customer. I also like to have control over exactly where the customer lives. With flyers I can target the exact neighborhood I want my customer(s) in. I have great luck with flyers because I have perfected them.

I'm going to let my head girl run this business and in 2016 I'm going to start a mow n go business and have sub contractors do the work. If this works locally, in 2017 I will have people all over the country passing out flyers. I say, "If it works" because I will be depending on others to do the manual labor. In lawn care I can usually get about a 10% return on my flyers. In cleaning it is no where near that but..... I can control where the customers are at and I can get them TODAY! I could go the internet route for lawn care, and I will have a website, but flyers will be and always have been my bread and butter. I'm not saying the internet doesn't work because it does, but I can do it so much faster and much more targeted with flyers.

It's great to hear you're doing so well with flyers. I'm glad that is has been giving you a lot of success, and quick too! A lawn care company can be very profitable, sounds like you're going to be really 'raking' in the money haha

If you don't mind me asking, how many bookings do you do on average per month? A lot of companies I know haven't had much success with flyers so I'm curious as to how you've been able to continue growing from it. Any tips?

For my own personal sanity I like to have none. The only reason I keep customers is because I have a few people that want to work. I hate this business more and more each day.

But, if I had flyers passed out Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday for 3 hours each day and a person continued doing that week after week you would have a steady stream of calls coming in. After a few weeks you would have atleast 2 bids a day set up every day of the week.

But the problem is.... people just love those pretty flyers with all kinds of pretty pictures all over them and text that has nothing to do with what a potential customer wants to read. They like telling them what they do instead of why the potential customer would be happier with them. And they have them printed on a glossy door hanger..... and before you know it..... they ran out of money for door hangers because their pretty design didn't get any calls and they paid a boat load of money to get them printed. But they swear up and down the reason for no calls isn't because of their pretty lil flyer. It's the economy.... the people in my town just don't need a cleaner... .......place excuse here.......

A long time ago I learned to not do all of that and just recently I finally figured out another trick.

Everyone needs to look at their marketing material..... how many 'I' and 'we' do you have? Not much talk about the customer but lots of talk about yourself.

Since you asked, I got ahold of this girl here in town that I've been helping. She has paid for me to train her with cleaning, bidding, paper work... everything. So she has been passing out flyers for 2 weeks exactly tomorrow (although I told her to not start on a Friday but she just had to see for herself). She has passed out flyers like I said, Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday and is getting about 1 bid a day as of today.

The biggest thing about what she is doing is that she bought my flyer with the magic words which is in a sense a marketing plan. It's not just a flyer but a whole plan of flyers. And she started out with my cleaning routine which has gotten her compliments she has said.

I'm still with you on the website though..... it is needed in today's world but let me give some people a little help.... on your advertising materials do you want to lead people to your website or do you want to lead them to your phone? Your answer will probably make the difference between a bid or 2 a day vs 1 - 2 bids a week.

I personally struggle with 4 and 5. How do you do it? Where do you go to find this type of information and how do you do #5? Is this for commercial or residential?? Thanks

[QUOTE=seoconquer;81873
4. Do keyword research and competitor analysis to determine what keywords drive the most qualified traffic to your website.
5. Learn and start doing SEO and Local SEO immediately.[/QUOTE]

I am just starting to put my business together but I am including my phone and website on all my material... do you think that is a good or bad idea? I understand you completely in that a phone call is better than a website hit but do you leave out a web address? Thanks

goodworks,
Unless you are either going to devote a LOT of time to SEO or pay someone to spend a lot of time getting your site to the first page and keep it there (not cheap and not a 1 time thing)... then why have one? Just to be cool so you can tell people, "I'm cool. I have a website!"? The thing I LOVE about calculators is that they have no letters and they can not talk. So sit down with a calculator and see if a website is right for you. Just like the guy above you was saying... he/she is having a hard time doing #4 & #5.

It doesn't matter to me if others send what would have been potential customers to the internet, it's those people that are losing money, not me. While they are spending money to have potential customer go to the internet.... type in their www... oh look, a squirrel..... now what was I looking for? Oh well, I'll think of it later. Or they also pull up 5 other cleaning services right in their area so now they go to 5 other sites as well... they are all the same to someone who doesn't know any better..... screw it, lets call this other company, the picture has a chick with big boobs. <<<< if you don't think that happens you are CRAZY!! I'm a guy, it's what we do.

Let me ask you a question..... why do you want to send people to your website instead of talking to them on the phone or texting. Making sure the potential customer knows they can text is a GREAT thing by the way.

SprintCar,

I am with you that it is almost a given that we all have a website, it is just an expected practice now days. I would certainly rather a phone call over a website hit as well and a face to face most of all. I was just trying to find out how others implement their SEO plan for their website since it is very time consuming unless you want to pay for clicks etc. At this juncture I do have my web address on all my marketing materials but it is by no means my primary way of marketing a customer. I much prefer cold calling. I am a throwback (another way of saying old) guy who likes to shake hands, talk to you and find out where I can help if possible. But I will have a website in case that somehow brings validity to me and my business (I guess it does to some).

lmao @ myself because I didn't see that you was the person having trouble with #4 & #5. lol

Maybe I didn't read it correctly but just in case here is what I mean

Materials with phone number only = all calls go to me.

Materials with website = who knows if I will ever get a call from that piece of marketing material at all since I sent the potential customer who I had a chance to talk privately to, to the internet where everyone else is. Kinda like I sent them to a party instead of a private meeting.

Being found on the internet and getting a call from the website is GREAT.... and lucky since you was in competition with so many others on the internet.

It took me many hours of reading and studying and I did get my sites (I used to have several businesses but am getting old so getting rid of them I think) to the first page and many times to #1. And then just as I get them to the top.... Google changes the rules. Which the 1st time they did it, it helped me but then when they made me need a landing page it screwed me for awhile. It's all too much to keep up with.... if a person runs a cleaning business they don't have time to be an SEO expert at the same time.

Much easier and stress-less to pay a few people to pass out flyers and I know the calls will come in. Cheaper too.... but are you in residential or commercial?