Sean, Just a couple of questions on how you obtain your leads are they from direct marketing ? and how you establish contact with your commercial account prospects ?? Do you just pass by a building and say “hey we should be cleaning there windows” and then what is your steps to acquire??
My leads come from a bit of everything. Some direct marketing, some word of mouth (a lot of people know what I do and will give me a heads up when I see them), current customer referrals, but the majority is my own work and effort.
As far as establishing contact, that usually depends on the type of property we are talking about. For storefront, it’s usually just walking through the door and introducing myself and making a sales pitch. Storefronts are probably the easiest because they are in such abundance and usually you are going to get in front of the decision maker right away.
For larger properties, some time and effort may be involved. There are usually gatekeepers to get through, and generally you may not be able to get past them just walking off the street. Sometimes a little research can provide you with the answer to whom you must speak to in order to move forward. Try to get a name of someone in maintenance/facilities, then you should be able to find a phone number or email address and take it from there. I’ll be honest, a lot of our larger properties made contact with us first and then it’s up to me to meet with them, take a look at the job, put together a proposal and hopefully win that job.
One of our largest accounts, one of the biggest ones I’ve sold to date, I happened to know a few employees of the company. One of them told me he overheard the head of facilities mention they needed a new window cleaner. He passed him my card and the guy ended up calling me. I bid it out and was awarded the job. It’s a large corporate insurance center with three large buildings, one smaller one and a guest house. We get quite a few thousand dollars each time we do it and have been servicing it for 4 or 5 years now. It’s a great account that a few of our guys can get done in one - two days. We just contacted them the other day to get them set up for this years cleaning.
Hope that helps. If you have anything else specific always feel free to contact me.