In 2009 we had a goal. That goal was to add enough commercial accounts, so that we wouldn't need to rely on our residential clientele to get by. One goal was to pick up an average of one new account, every month. We picked up 15. Another goal was to get some of our current accounts to clean more often. We did just that by offering a better deal and make it appealing to do the work more often. That really helped to change the dynamics of our business.

2010 has picked up where 2009 left off. We picked up 3 new accounts (one of them is 5 locations), in the past 2 weeks and have 5 total new accounts for the year. One of our best accounts is adding 2 new locations and have expanded 2 others. I have a feeling that this is going to be an awesome year.

Our new business in NC is also starting to pick up steam as well.

We will be out of the residential carpet cleaning business,on Long Island by the end of November and are planning to do mostly commercial work in NC.

Every time we land a new account, I get fired up and want to go out and get more. It's like an addiction, I just can't stop!

Wow, that's pretty awesome! Not to mention you are doing all of this during a recession!

Do you have a favorite type of business you like to go after?

That's awesome Fred!

For the sake of the audience here, would you mind sharing your techniques? What types of businesses are you targeting? And if you could run through your approach for landing accounts - I'm sure the guys would appreciate it.

Keep up the good work!





Rick Gelinas

Thanks guys.

Our main targets are medical professional offices and buildings and condominium/co-op buildings. we seem to have the best luck with those.

With the medical professional buildings, I either start by approaching the offices in the building or contacting the property manager. I recently picked up an office building that I stopped in between jobs and called the number on the board. I was able to talk to the property manager and sent him some info. I sent a proposal and got the job.

With the condominium/ co-op buildings, I approach the supers in the building and find out who the management company is and who the HOA board members are. I will either give some of my info to the super and or send the info to the president of the board. More often than not, We get to submit a proposal and have had very good success. The best things about those buildings is that no one else has ever approached them about their carpet cleaning and I can do those, either day or night. Most of these buildings are 3-4 floors of hallway carpet, averaging around 4000-5000 sqft. most of them have us clean every 3 months and some have us in monthly for the high traffic areas.

With those accounts, I have followed Ricks advice. We offer to do a demo and we always do follow up calls. Doing the same approach and being consistent has increased our success rate. I feel that I have found my sweet spot and am comfortable going after those type of accounts. We don't have to go after the 20,000 sqft+ jobs. We are happy to get the 2000-5000 sqft building that the giant(one-stop-shop) companies overlook.

Very good info! Great approach/strategy. Another good thing about having many small to medium accounts is that you can lose one and it won't kill you.

Yes. Having smaller accounts is nice and we also work for several different property management corps. If we lose one, it won't really hurt (well maybe a little). It's also easier to schedule or fit in a smaller job and easier to fill in any unexpected cancellations.

It's also nice to be able to pick and choose residential. We still have many good customers and enjoy working for them. The rest can find someone else.

Do you mainly do the work during or after business hours?

What is the typical scenario with access to the buildings after hours, do they give you the keys and you drop them back the next day?

What about alarm codes, do they give you codes to use, do you have any issues with this?

Thanks,
Grant.

We've got both keys and alarm codes to several accounts. Some buildings have a key pad with a 4 digit code to get in. Some buildings remain unlocked until 10-11pm.

We do most of offices after 6pm weekdays and after 2pm on Saturday. We do the common walkways in buildings after 8pm. Some offices have Mondays off or close early one day. Many of the Condominiums buildings let us clean the hallways during the day. We do those from 10am-2pm, when there is less traffic. Others are done after 8pm.

We also do some T&G jobs for pizza and bagel shops. These range from every 1-3 months. Some of the pizza places are done at 6am and others after 11pm. Most of the bagels shops are done after 6pm.

Thanks for the tips, happy things are working out for you.

Sent you an email.

Bill Martins