Nearly every commercial cleaning contract is already held by somebody. Winning one is a question of being in the conversation before the renewal, and then pricing the building instead of guessing at it.
Ask a janitorial owner how they win new buildings and the honest answer is usually that they wait. Somebody calls, unhappy with their current company, and there’s a chance. That works. It also means the size of the business is decided by how often somebody else fails, which is a strategy in the same way that standing under a tree is a strategy for catching apples.
The alternative has two halves, and most contractors only do one of them. The first is timing: being known to the property manager before the contract comes up. The second is the part that decides whether the win is worth having, which is arriving with a number built from the building instead of from nerves.
In short
- One question opens the door: when does the current cleaning contract come up for renewal?
- Offer a walkthrough, never a price. A price competes. A walkthrough gets you inside.
- Underbidding is a measurement failure. Workload the building with production rates and the floor stops being a guess.
It starts with the renewal date
Cleaning contracts are usually annual, and they usually renew quietly, because nobody puts a building out to bid when it’s not causing complaints and everyone involved has better things to do. So the window where a new contractor gets considered is short. It also opens on a schedule somebody already knows.
That somebody is the property manager, and they will tell you if you ask plainly.
“I’m not trying to sell you anything today. When does your cleaning contract come up for renewal?”
Write down the answer and the building. Do that on enough properties and you stop waiting for somebody else’s failure. You have a calendar instead, and the calendar tells you who to call and when.
Most contractors never ask. They open with what they do, get a polite no, hang up, and never learn the single piece of information that would have made the call worth making in the first place. One question. Nobody asks it.
Offer a walkthrough, never a price
When a manager shows interest, the instinct is to send a number fast. Resist it. That instinct has cost more cleaning contractors more contracts than any competitor ever has, because it trades the one advantage you hold for the appearance of being responsive.
A price with no walkthrough behind it’s a guess, and the manager knows it’s a guess. Worse, it puts you in a column beside two other guesses, where the only thing being compared is which company was most willing to be wrong. You don’t want to win that.
Ask to walk the building instead. The walk gets you inside, it lets you see what the current contractor is actually doing, and it produces the only thing that makes a proposal defensible: real square footage, real fixture counts, real problem areas.
“Before I put any number in front of you, can I walk the building? Forty minutes, and I’ll leave you a page either way.”
Leave the page whether or not you bid. It costs you an afternoon and a sheet of paper, and it’s the cheapest reputation a cleaning contractor will ever buy, because the manager keeps it in a folder with your name on it long after they have forgotten who else called. Cheap at the price.
More buildings to walk
Abstrakt sets appointments with the property managers, facility managers, and owners who hold cleaning contracts, so your team is walking buildings instead of building lists. The walk, the number, the proposal, and the contract are yours.
Why contractors underbid, and the fix
Underbidding is rarely a pricing decision. It’s a measurement failure wearing a pricing costume: the contractor doesn’t actually know how many labor hours the building takes, so the number gets set by what feels competitive against bidders who don’t know either, and the first month on site is where everybody finds out. The truth arrives with the first payroll.
The industry solved this a long time ago and a lot of contractors have never used it. Production rates are published times for how long a cleaning task takes. ISSA, the trade association, describes them as the starting point for preparing bids and estimates for budgeting labor and workloading, and publishes them in the Official ISSA Cleaning Times & Tasks as average times for individual tasks and for bundled processes.
The arithmetic they give isn’t complicated.
1. Measure by area typeOffice, restroom, corridor, warehouse and lobby all clean at different speeds. One building-wide square footage number is where underbidding begins.
2. Apply a production rate to eachISSA’s formula: square footage to be cleaned, divided by the production rate per hour, multiplied by 60, gives minutes.
3. Count fixtures separatelyRestrooms are counted, not measured. Number of fixtures multiplied by the production rate in minutes. ISSA’s own worked example uses three minutes per fixture.
4. Add the things that aren’t cleaningTravel between floors, setup and breakdown, supply runs, breaks. This is the step contractors skip, and it’s usually where the margin went.
Now you have hours. Hours times your loaded labor cost is the floor, and the floor is a fact instead of a feeling. You can still choose to bid thin to win a building you want. The difference is that you’ll know you’re doing it.
It also changes what you can say out loud. A contractor who can explain that the restrooms carry forty fixtures and that’s eight hours a week is having a specific conversation. The one who says their price is competitive is having no conversation at all.
Build the list before you need it
Both halves need volume behind them. One renewal date is a note in a phone that you’ll lose. Two hundred renewal dates, sorted by month and worked through steadily by somebody whose job it’s, is a book of business that refills itself without anybody having to feel clever about it. That’s the whole play.
| What to capture | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| Building and approximate square footage | Tells you whether it fits your crews before you spend a call on it |
| Property manager name and direct line | The main number sends you to a gatekeeper every time |
| Renewal month | The whole point. Sort the list by it and you have a call schedule |
| Incumbent, if they will say | Tells you what you’re bidding against and how they price |
| Anything they complained about | The opening line of your next call, in their words |
None of this requires a CRM. A spreadsheet sorted by renewal month, kept current by one person who actually calls the buildings on it, beats an expensive system that three people have licenses for and nobody updates. Keep it boring.
When they’re happy with their current company
Most of the time they will be. Arguing with that’s how you get remembered badly.
So agree with them. Then ask for the renewal date anyway, and ask to be included when it does come up. Managers say yes to that far more often than they say yes to a meeting, because it costs them nothing today and it hands them a second option for a day they already know is coming.
“Good, that’s what I hoped you would say. When it does come up, would you put us on the list to quote?”
That’s a yes you can bank, a date you can call on, and a relationship that started without you criticizing anybody. Three things the lowest bidder doesn’t have.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you win commercial cleaning contracts without underbidding?
Get in before the renewal so you’re not bidding blind against an incumbent, then build the number from a workload instead of a guess. Measure by area type, apply published production rates, count restroom fixtures separately, and add time for travel, setup and supplies. Hours times loaded labor cost gives you a floor you can defend.
What is the best question to ask a property manager about cleaning?
When the current cleaning contract comes up for renewal. It’s a scheduling question, so managers answer it without feeling sold to. Ask it on enough buildings and the answers become a call calendar instead of a waiting list. That’s the entire method.
What are ISSA production rates?
Published average times for cleaning tasks, issued by ISSA in the Official ISSA Cleaning Times & Tasks. ISSA describes cleaning times as the starting point for preparing bids and estimates for budgeting labor and workloading. The rates let a contractor convert a building’s measurements into labor hours instead of estimating from experience alone.
Should you send a cleaning price before walking the building?
No. A price without a walkthrough is a guess dressed as a bid, and it puts you in a column beside two other guesses where the only thing under comparison is which contractor was most willing to be wrong about a building none of them measured. Walk it first. Leave a written page whether or not you bid.
How many buildings should be on the list?
Enough that renewals arrive continuously. One is a note in a phone. A few hundred, sorted by month, becomes a schedule that tells you who to call this week without anybody having to sit down and decide, which is the difference between a pipeline of buildings and a habit of waiting.
What if the property manager is happy with their cleaner?
Agree with them. Then ask to be added to the list when the contract next comes up. It costs the manager nothing and hands them a second option for a day they already know is coming, and you’re now in the conversation without having said a word against the incumbent.
Keep going
- Commercial cleaning lead generation
- When to send a commercial cleaning bid
- What to say when you cold call a facility manager
- How to get past a gatekeeper
- Outsourced SDR services
About this article
Jeff Winters is Chief Executive Officer at Abstrakt. Reviewed by Neil Erker, Chief Marketing Officer. Abstrakt sets appointments for commercial cleaning contractors and the rest of the trades, and the questions here come from that calling.
Jeff Winters is the CEO of Abstrakt Marketing Group, a U.S.-based B2B lead generation and appointment-setting company that books qualified sales meetings for clients across the commercial trades, IT and managed services, manufacturing, and B2B services. He has spent his career building and running outbound sales programs at scale, and he breaks down what actually works in sales and lead generation on Abstrakt's podcast, The Grow Show.
