[DanielWelford]

Hi Guys

Looking to get into this side of cleaning. Any tips as finding it a bit of a closed shop!

Dan

[Griffus]

You'll need to get in with a property management company, and therein lies the problem.

Same as always, if this is what you really want to get into then put yourself / company about abit, by all available means.

We clean a fair few communals, but this is at build stage. After this they are handed over and we have nothing more to do with them.

Deals are usually in place between the management company and their preferred cleaner and have been for many years so this is a hard nut to crack.

Be prepared for loads of knock-backs and a higher than usual number of rude people, from secretaries upwards, on the other end of the phone line during the preliminaries.

[martin19842]

hi there

you wll find now that many managing agents are under increasin gressure from the resident companies to get better prices for the services including the cleaing.

therefore there are more opportunites to provide quotes, mailshots, emails etc.
arla association of residential letting agents, and more importantly ARMA associatiaon of residential managing agents, you need to get their member listings

the annual ARMA conference is on the 4th November, they charge about £500 per delegate to attend. i was there last year and over half of the delegates were new people attending for the first time.

so there are new companies out there ofering this service, so keep knocking on the doors.

regards

martin

[R H Phillips]

Some managing agents who use their own cleaning staff may look to outsource cleaning for various reasons.

A cleaning company can offer a few benefits to a managing agent; cover and personnel issues are taken care of, the cleaning company will supply its own materials, if the cleaning company does not perform its contract can be terminated more easily than an employees contract.

So I would say it's definitely worth knocking on doors. (Maybe offer a special deal to cover for a week the next time their cleaner is on holiday? - use this as an opportunity to impress - you'll probably be a hell of a lot better than some temp drafted in from an employment agency.)

Some of the bigger managing agents are increasingly requiring their contractors to belong to a safety accreditation scheme such as SafeContractor. This can be a very handy database to be listed on, as it's a lot smaller than the Yellow Pages!