How to get cleaning contracts
/ 11 min read
Commercial cleaning contracts are almost never won at the moment a building needs cleaning. They are won at renewal, by whoever was already talking to the person who signs.
Before you quote
- Find out who signs — it is rarely who you meet first
- Ask when the current contract renews
- Walk the building before you name a number
Before you leave
- Send the bid within 24 hours
- Follow up at renewal minus 90 days, every year
- Keep the losers on a list — they renew too
Renewal is the only moment that matters
Most commercial cleaning contracts run twelve months and renew quietly. The window in which a building will genuinely consider a change is roughly ninety to thirty days before renewal, and outside it your bid goes in a drawer.
So the real work is a list: every building you would like, who signs, and when it renews. That list, kept for two years, is worth more than any advertising you could buy.
Finding the person who signs
In a small office it is the owner or the office manager. In a managed building it is the property manager, who often runs several buildings and is the single most valuable relationship in commercial cleaning. In a school or a care home it is a facilities lead with a procurement process behind them.
Ask one question on the first visit: 'who handles the cleaning contract, and when does it come up?' It is not a sales question, it gets answered honestly, and it is the whole basis of the follow-up.
The walkthrough wins it
Turning up, measuring, and asking what annoys them about the current cleaner is what separates a bid from a quote. Every building has one specific grievance — the restrooms on Mondays, the glass doors, the bins in the kitchen. Name it in the bid and you have already beaten a lower price.
Take the floor area yourself. Bids built on an area the client supplied are bids built on a number nobody has checked.
What a winning bid contains
Scope by zone, frequency by task, the production rate you used, the insurance you carry, who will actually be in the building, and the price. In that order, with the price last.
A procurement team comparing three bids at similar prices picks the one they can defend internally. Show your working and you are that bid.
Residential is a different game
Residential recurring work comes from referrals, local groups and the properties on your existing route. The cheapest client you will ever acquire is the neighbour of a client you already have — ask, on the doorstep, with a price and a date.
Density beats volume. Ten homes on one street is a better business than twenty across a county.
Keeping what you win
Contracts are lost on communication far more often than on cleaning. A signed sheet left where the client expects it, a same-day report of anything broken, and a named person who answers the phone will hold a contract through a bad month.
Ask for the renewal ninety days out, in writing, every year. The cleaner who asks is the cleaner who keeps it.