No leads Left Behind: Sales and Marketing tactics for commercial cleaning business owners.

By Samuel Klein

Success in the commercial cleaning industry requires a strategic marketing plan. Far from leaving it up to chance, you need to know exactly what you will do – and how you will do it. This book dives deep into the nuts and bolts of commercial cleaning marketing, including many strategies designed and tested specifically for this industry. Below are just some of the things you’ll learn -

· Why following up with leads is absolutely critical to your success

· How to choose and use the right ads platforms to collect quality leads

. How to acquire cleaning contracts without spending advertising dollars

· What’s the proper way to use a CRM tool to keep your system organized

· What role SEO should play in your marketing strategy, and how to implement it

· Much, much more

Cleaning In Motion is a marketing leader in the commercial cleaning space, and we have developed deep expertise in this field by working with some of the biggest names in the industry. Benefit from our experiences and leverage the knowledge in this book to take your business to new heights!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Oct 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798354805488

Book preview

FRONT.jpg

No Leads

Left Behind

Sales and marketing tactics

for commercial cleaning

business owners

By Samuel Klein

Table of Contents

Introduction

Best Strategies toAcquire More CommercialCleaning Leads

The Key to Growing Your Commercial Cleaning Business is Following Up!

No Leads Left Behind

Cold Calling

A Good ol’ Database

The PowerfulPotential of LinkedIn

Pay-Per-Click Marketing

(Google Ads & Bing Ads Search)How to maximize the profitability of your pay-per-click marketing efforts.

How To Sell More Unit FranchisesAn Exclusive Chapterfor Commercial Cleaning Master Franchises

How to Acquire Unit Franchises for Your Commercial Cleaning Business

Facebook & Instagram Ads

TikTok Ads

Advertising on Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and TikTok

The Hispanic Market

The Importance of a CRM - Every cleaning company needs one

Why Is It Important?

The Importance of SEO and How it Works

How To Optimize For Keywords

Local SEO andGoogle Business My Business

Building a Cleaning Website that Generates Leads

Website Conversions into LeadsWebsite Conversion Fundamentals- How to ensure that your website converts visitors into leads in the form of calls and web submissions

Know Your Numbers,Top Metrics to Understand Your Marketing

Know Your Numbers– Top Metrics to Understand Your Marketing

Final Thoughts

Final Thoughts

Resources

Resources - Checklist, training, Guides, Scripts, Blog post, podcast, and much more.

Introduction

Marketing is essential for all businesses. From cleaning services to computers, and from cars to coffee, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling – marketing is a critical piece of the puzzle.

There are common elements found in marketing that will be seen across the board, regardless of what goods or services are being promoted. That said, not all markets are the same. Successful marketing requires a plan that is customized to what needs to be sold and to who is likely to buy it. This is the foundation behind Cleaning in Motion.

Prior to founding Cleaning in Motion, I ran an agency that performed marketing services for a wide range of clients across many sectors. Although that was an exciting time, there was an inherent challenge that was always going to be hard to overcome. There was no way to become deeply knowledgeable about any of these sectors because I was trying to serve all of them simultaneously.

It became obvious that focusing on a specific market was going to be the only way that my clients would get the results and performance they deserved. After coming into an opportunity to work on marketing projects for a commercial cleaning company, the future became obvious – I would develop deep expertise in this field and master the techniques needed to reach the right audience and grow these kinds of businesses.

And that is where we are today. Cleaning in Motion is proud to work with more than 100 commercial cleaning companies across the country. We are able to lead coaching calls with these clients regularly, to learn what is working, what isn’t working, and where we can improve. Because all of our efforts are focused solely on this one industry, we know it inside and out and have a level of familiarity with commercial cleaning marketing that few – if any – can match.

In using the word we, it is obvious that the success of Cleaning in Motion is owed as much to my talented team as it is to anyone else. There are many, many people to thank for their hard work and dedication, including those listed below –

Adina Wapinski, General Manager and master of keeping things afloat and moving in the right direction

Ana Cristina, Maria Valentina, Aaron, and Jubs, who form the all-important growth hacking team

Miriam, Alexandra, and Edgar for their excellent design work

Ayelen, Ana, and Claudia for serving as dependable, supportive coaches and account managers

The SEO masters, Adriana and Ousman

Plenty of others deserve mention here, including Daniel Stramwasser, Nathalie Kleiner, Dennis, Trace Thompson, and Laura Ricchino. These individuals trusted us with their businesses, to get the ball rolling on this marketing agency and build it to where we are today.

Of course, my wife deserves a special mention all to her own, for the endless support and patience while dealing with long nights and all that comes with starting and growing a business such as this. I’ll never be able to fully express my love and appreciation.

So, who is this book for? We’ve compiled the information in the pages that follow to serve any cleaning company that wants to either improve on the marketing they are doing or start marketing efforts from scratch. We encourage you to learn from what you find in this book and reach out to us if our team can be of assistance.

Best Strategies to

Acquire More Commercial

Cleaning Leads

The Key to Growing Your Commercial Cleaning Business is Following Up!

There are some themes that you are going to notice coming up again and again in the pages of this book. It’s important for us to drive home the key marketing concepts for commercial cleaning companies, and few – if any – ideas are as important as the concept of constantly following up on your leads.

Simply put, wasting leads is the fastest way to ruin your marketing efforts. Significant time and money will be invested in tracking down as many quality leads as possible, so letting some of those leads slip through the cracks in the follow-up process is an expensive mistake. Taking your sales process to the next level requires both mastering the art of following up and consistently executing the strategies you put in place.

In this chapter, we’d like to provide you with some motivation for why you should be persistent with your follow-up efforts. The best motivation in this area comes from cold, hard numbers—in other words, looking at statistics that demonstrate just how important it is to always follow up on your leads.

Following Up After a Meeting

If you tend to think that people are going to do business with you after a couple of phone calls, this report is going to change your mind. According to data collected by the National Sales Association, 80% of sales occur after at least five follow-ups in the aftermath of a meeting. That’s right – at least five calls after meeting with the prospect to present your services. The incredible thing about that statistic is that half of all salespeople only bother with one single follow-up call after a meeting, before writing off the lead entirely. If that sounds familiar to your own marketing efforts, just think about how many opportunities you’ve been leaving on the table by not sticking with it and coming back to your leads time and time again.

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There are two ways to think about having to follow up with your leads this many times. One way is how most salespeople approach the subject and why most give up too quickly—they believe they are being annoying. You have a meeting and follow up once, it seems like that should be enough to get the point across. If the lead wants to do business, they have your information and will contact you, right? Not really. In the real world, it takes much more effort on your end to build a relationship and the trust that goes along with it.

The better way to think about doing this much follow up and effort, is that you are going above and beyond your competition. If you are reaching out for a sixth, seventh, or even eighth time, you are spending more time on the lead than anyone else, and they are likely to notice that determination and commitment. This persistence speaks well of the service that will be provided if the lead does eventually decide to turn into a customer.

Calling New Leads Repeatedly

So far, we’ve been talking about how many times you should follow up after having a meeting with a lead. As it’s hopefully clear by now, you should be following up as many times as it takes to get to know the prospect and move toward signing a contract.

Only when a lead officially asks you not to contact them anymore, should you finally put that lead to rest and focus your attention elsewhere.

But what about when making calls to contact leads for the first time? How many times should you call them in that situation? As a Harvard Business Review report (HBR) highlights, the answer – again – is a lot. The same pattern of salespeople giving up on leads too early is repeated in this context, and that mistake winds up leaving a lot of opportunities on the table. Incredibly, only 9.4% of leads received the recommended 12 touches in this study. Let’s look at a few other numbers to highlight this point —

Roughly 30% of sales reps make a single call to a lead before giving up.

Fewer than 5% of sales reps make six calls in an effort to contact a lead.

When a lead is called six times, there is a 90% chance of making contact. With just a single call, that number drops under 40%.

Calling between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. are the best times to qualify leads. In fact, this time window can boost your chances by 164% as compared to calling between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m.

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The numbers above paint a clear picture. You can more than double your chances of getting in touch with a lead, if you are willing to call six times instead of just once, yet fewer than 5% of sales reps actually do that. So, simply by changing your habits and committing to making those six calls, you can significantly increase your chances of success.

Typically, we think about doubling our leads as being an expensive process that requires a new marketing strategy, ad spend, and more. But that doesn’t have to be the case at all. Just by respecting the value of following up with the leads you have already collected, you can massively boost your opportunity to secure new contracts.

Being Ready to Call

One of the most interesting pieces of data to be found in this report is the importance of calling leads quickly after they request information. How fast? Within five minutes is ideal. In fact, there is a huge decline in responsiveness when leads are called ten minutes later, as opposed to five. That might seem like a minimal difference, but the numbers don’t lie - calling leads as soon as possible will go a long way. Once again, most businesses don’t get the job done, as just 4.7% of companies make their calls in the five-minute window. If you are going to invest the money required to run Google or Facebook Ads, for instance, you should be ready and waiting to make calls immediately when leads roll in from those sources. 

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Living in the Real World

On your end, it may seem like your leads should answer the phone the first time you call, and every time. After all, you aren’t making cold calls when dealing with leads – you are calling a number that was provided to you by someone who voluntarily signaled their interest in your cleaning services. Why wouldn’t they answer the phone to learn more? It seems a little odd until you think carefully about what is going on here. More on this later in the book. 

Another thing to consider here is the fact that your number will not be known to the leads when they receive an incoming call. Many people—most people, perhaps—simply decline phone calls out of habit when they don’t recognize the number. So, you won’t get a lot of answers on that initial call, as you’ll need to first overcome this hurdle. After leaving a voicemail on such a call, the lead will then realize where the call was coming from and may be more likely to answer it in the future.

Some Other Data Points

We mentioned earlier in this chapter the Best Practices for Lead Response Management report that was published in the Harvard Business Review. This is a fascinating study, with many relevant details to the topic of following up with your leads. Let’s look at a few other points that you should keep in mind –

Responses vary by day. Generally speaking, Wednesday and Thursday tend to be the best days to get phone calls answered. So, if you get a new lead on Monday and call right away, you’ll want to make sure to try again later in the week if that first call went unanswered. How big is this difference? The study found that nearly 50% more calls were answered on Thursday as compared to Tuesday, so your odds will get much better when the day of the week is working in your favor.

Most companies are too slow. Becoming faster about following up with your leads as soon as they submit a form, could give you a huge advantage over competitors in the commercial cleaning space. The average company takes 44 hours to call a lead after a form is submitted – compare that to the optimal delay between form fill and call, which is just five minutes. If you can be organized and prepared in such a way that you are able to quickly make that phone call, you should get