This is the second article in a two-part series on time management practices that lead to growth in your cleaning business revenue.

If you haven’t read the first part, Why You’re Not Getting More Done In Your Janitorial Business — we recommend doing that first. It will lay the foundation for what I’m about to teach you.

So, what're we about to teach you?

A Key To Increasing Your Cleaning Business Revenue is a Technique Called “Revenue Block Time”

Now, this is not to be confused with regular time-blocking, which we discussed in the first post. This is taking regular time-blocking a step further and planning out what you will do with the block of time you’ve set aside for “growth.”

(Hint: this means you should actually have time set aside in your calendar for growth!)

For me, every morning from 9 to 10 a.m. is dedicated to brainstorming and working on ways to increase revenue and grow my company.

In this post, we will share the five questions to ask yourself when revenue blocking your time. They will help keep you focused and guide your brainstorming.

Questions to Ask Yourself When Revenue Blocking Your Time

Cleaning Business Revenue Tip #1 - How can I sell more to existing customers?

This is perhaps the easiest and most effective question to focus on during revenue block time because it doesn’t require you to build new relationships or start the sales process from scratch the way selling to new customers does.

All it requires you to do is brainstorm ways you can add more value to your existing contracts, and then reach out to those clients.

When we ran our cleaning company we did this with offers like a weekend cleaning for customers who were only receiving weekday cleanings, or an additional hour of cleaning tacked on to a weekday cleaning.

To make this work you’ll need to come up with a plan for who you’re going to contact, what you’ll offer them, and presenting the additional service as being as value-driven as possible.

We recommend starting with a phone call and following up with an email, or vice-versa.

For instance, if you want to come in on the weekend, you’ll want to clearly outline what you will do for them during that weekend cleaning shift that you don’t have time for during the week. Always focus on the benefit for them!

For Example: On Monday morning your employees will arrive at a very clean office to start off their week on a good foot.

Cleaning Business Revenue Tip #2 - How can I increase the price of what I’m selling?

This is one method many business owners avoid because they fear it will harm existing relationships with otherwise happy customers, and cause them to lose out on new contracts because their bid is higher than their competitors.

We hear you.

But there is absolutely a safe way to increase your rates while keeping existing customers happy and winning new contracts.

It’s all about reframing the way they view the janitorial industry. It requires you to change their expectations of commercial cleaning companies by showing them you are not only a better-managed company, but that you understand the impact your cleaning services have on their business goals.

In doing so, you’ll be able to command a higher price and have people willing to pay it and even excited about hiring your company.

Note: When increasing prices for existing customers, this news needs to be delivered in a way that clearly outlines why this change is necessary, and how the benefits them.

For instance, many Swept customers charge a $10 – $15 technology fee to not only cover the cost of our software but make money off it! Because there is a direct relationship between having the technology and increasing the quality of service the contractor is able to provide, the client understands and accepts the increase.

We’ve put together an entire video workshop on how to do this, as well as the 21-Day Sales Challenge. Both will teach you to use this method of selling and Swept technology to command a higher price for your services.

Cleaning Business Revenue Tip #3 - How can I decrease the time between purchases?

Many companies have picked up on the fact that our society likes the idea of “spring cleaning” and have used this to offer an annual deep clean in the spring months.

So why not decrease the time between purchases by offering a special cleaning service specifically tailored to each season?

You could offer:

• Holiday cleaning (get the office ready for the holiday party!)
• Post-holiday cleaning (take care of the extra mess following the holiday party!)
• Flu season cleaning (buy UV lights to kill germs during flu season)
• Spring cleaning (freshening the office after the winter months)
• Summer cleaning (take advantage of fewer people in the office to work in high-traffic areas)
• Fall season (get the office squeaky clean as things begin to ramp up again after the summer months)

Cleaning Business Revenue Tip #4 - How can I Increase opportunities to present an offer?

This method involves building new relationships, and (hopefully) winning new contracts.

Take some time to brainstorm all the ways you could get your message in front of new potential clients (ie. cold calling, ad campaigns, email marketing, etc.)  and what you’ll say to them when you do.

>> Sign up for our 21-Day Sales Challenge to receive scripts, templates, checklists and video tutorials to help you win new contracts. <<

Cleaning Business Revenue Tip #5 - How can I Improve conversations & speed of sales?

Often if you have the opportunity to pitch a new potential client it’s because their current or past contractor has let them down and they are looking for a new one.

This gives you an opportunity to change their expectations as we discussed above. The goal is to get them to “yes” quickly so that you don’t end up with a long list of leads who might possibly, maybe, one day hire you.

I did this by proving I was different from the competition. If you’re not sure what makes your company different than all the others, try using Swept software as proof you are a better-managed company. We offer a Free Account so that you can see for yourself how well this works!

Some final advice…

All the topics we covered are just suggestions for how to kick off your daily 1-hour brainstorming session for Revenue Block Time.

Feel free to break from this once you get the hang of it and let the hour unfold. Don’t be frustrated if you feel that you are running out of ideas — you could spend the entire hour reading blog posts on growth to generate more ideas and keep moving forward with growth experiments/ideas!

The important thing is building the habit of investing quality time in strategy and not letting the day-to-day tasks of putting out fires in your business get in the way of long-term growth.

How to Win More Janitorial Contracts Using Swept