[D woods]

Hi Fox and CMS
What percentage of quotations you put forward do you win ?

[CMS]

I used to convert 50% but in the past two years it's fallen a little. Perhaps two out of five now.

[Fox]

CMS - That is where you are wrong - the profit is the same or higher based on the overheads and the overheads cover more because the turnover is higher - oh I do love the 'profit is sanity' bit (although I think I lost mine a long time ago  ) so it would only be a contridiction to the saying if I had a high turnover and my profit margin was say 5%!

D woods - I expect to be successful in 3 out of every 5 quotes I actually put in, it is getting through the door to do the quotes that is the difficult one!

[CMS]

I don't always quote, of course..............

Before I quote the Client has to agree to this concept.

(Taken from our web site)


Our Pricing Policy

"It is unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing that you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it cannot be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder it is well to add something for the risk you run. If you do that, you will have enough money to pay for something better"..........John Ruskin 1819 - 1900

In the highly competitive world of Contract Cleaning it is tempting for a supplier to offer you a 'loaded' cleaning specification for very little charge. The service will normally start well and will deteriorate after a few months as the supplier looks for ways to make savings. There are two ways that a company like this can succeed..........they can either ask their staff to do some of the work for nothing, or they can miss a few things out and hope that you don't notice.       

Which do you think they will do?

We never take this approach. We take the view that every cleaning operation has a time value attached to it and therefore must contain an element of cost. As long as you agree with this concept we can design a cleaning service to fit your budget and the service will remain constant throughout the period of the contract.

[Fox]

Well said CMS - I couldn't agree more with your last couple of paragraphs.  I always ask at a quotation if the client is looking for best value or lowest cost!

[AJCleaningServices]

Interesting discussion,
domestic bliss, could you tell us how much you are going to quote?

[CMS]

Well said CMS - I couldn't agree more with your last couple of paragraphs.  I always ask at a quotation if the client is looking for best value or lowest cost!

Once they have agreed with the concept and STILL want to save money, I ask them directly..........

"What do you want to leave out?"

[D woods]

Hi CMS and Fox
You both have a very high strike rate, especially at the hourly charge's you
both put in.

Do you have this strike rate on big contracts (ten cleaners or more) or is it more on small one cleaner contracts ?

[CMS]

I do have that conversion rate on larger contracts but that's mainly because I'm particular about what I quote.

It's fair to say that there are folks who collect quotes as a hobby.

I won't quote unless I'm SURE they want to change and even more certain that we're in with a chance.

Lots of groundwork before we agree to quote.

[D woods]

A problem we have a lot of the time is that the person showing you round the
building (usually the office junior) is not the decision maker.

Do you have a technique for dealing with this situation ?

[CMS]

Yes, I wouldn't do it.

What often happens though is that I would have a meeting with the decision maker to ascertain that he wanted change and that he agreed with the 'concept'. Then we would probably be shown around by a 'junior' and I would return for a further chat with the decision maker.

I often return the quote by hand and discuss it with the decision maker, sometimes even getting a decision there and then.

I could spend all day (and have done so) traipsing round buildings with someone who hasn't got any say.

I wouldn't enter into the scenario that you suggested.

In my opinion every bit of selling time must be productive.

[CMS]

I have always kept detailed records of every sale and it makes interesting reading/analysis.

For instance, 70% of the acceptances I have had have been obtained on either the first or second follow up telephone call. The other 30% of the acceptances have been obtained on the 3rd, 4th or even 5th follow up call.

So.............what did I do about it?

I stopped making that 3rd, 4th or 5th follow up call and spent my time looking for NEW business.

Result - the conversion rate went up!

[D woods]

Hi CMS
You may not want to answer this , what do you find the most cost effective
method for obtaining quality leads?

[Fox]

Hi D woods

The strike rate on larger contracts (10 or more) are lower yes, the size of contract we are most successful with are between 3 and 6 cleaners. 

Unlike CMS I am not too bothered who shows me around the building, I will already have the name of the decision maker (and obviously would prefer it to be him or her) and would always insist on a meeting with them at the time of survey.

I believe our success rate is due to the type of contract we quote for - usually the size stated above but more importantly they have, 9 times out of 10 times, already got a national contractor in and are unhappy.  When selling you have to have good body language skills, be enthusiastic and knowledgable about what you do and show you are sincere.  Many of the clients we clean for have told me that our price is slightly higher than the competition but not out of the market and they chose us because of presentation.  They also liked the idea of having the person who does the selling for liasion throughout the contract period.

Domestic bliss - How did the quote go?

Fox

[Ian Gourlay]

I use this section as a learning experience, in case I ever wanted to enter this section of the industry,

So how do we know the job is going to take as long as stated.

If it takes longer could be on a looser.

I thought you used a square foot calculation to work out time.?

[CMS]

Hi CMS
You may not want to answer this , what do you find the most cost effective
method for obtaining quality leads?

Get out there - on foot!

[CMS]

I use this section as a learning experience, in case I ever wanted to enter this section of the industry,

So how do we know the job is going to take as long as stated.

If it takes longer could be on a looser.

I thought you used a square foot calculation to work out time.?

Years of experience for a start.

It's not always possible to use a square foot calculator. Imagine a two storey office.................

Ground floor - busy call centre, one person sitting every 4 feet! Hundreds of desks.

First floor - MD's office, meeting rooms, board room.

Buth have the same area so would they take the same time to clean?

[Fox]

Ian - I 'eyeball' the site and listen to the client to decide on hours etc. 
As CMS says though this does take experience to get it right.  Think about
how long it would take if you had to clean somewhere - then add some!

You also get a good idea from the number of hours the current cleaners are
putting in and whether the building is clean or not!

Fox

[domestic bliss]

 Crikey i started something now,cms and fox
I am going to quote about £200 but i don't think they will pay it.
They said they have trouble keeping people because they have such high standards which is understandable but not if you are only paying the minimum wage.
I also think i will have trouble getting anyone to do the weekends round here as no one wants to work at weekends everybodys having problems.  Due to my hobby i am never here either at weekends either so i couldn't do it myself

[CMS]

We've done a lot of hotels (used to have the Holiday Inn Express at Dartford).

On the larger ones (50 rooms plus) it is very difficult to estimate the hours as you can't estimate the occupancy. Also some will require beds to be made, others will require beds to be changed. On average though it's 20 mins per room/bathroom).

The way we quoted was like this................

Imagine a 100 bed hotel. Along with the manager we 'guestimated' that it would have 80% occupancy i.e. 80 rooms full at any time. We then allowed 20 mins per room i.e. 27 hours.

We then had to keep accurate records and clean all occupied rooms whether there was 50 or 100.

Invoices were constant throughout the year but we invoiced extra or gave a credit every quarter to take account of adjustments.