​Are You Following Up?

[How to Increase Your Commercial Cleaning Sales Conversions.]

In a perfect world, your commercial cleaning sales conversions would go like this:

How about if I come out tomorrow and give you an estimate? Around 10AM?”

“Perfect. See you then.”

But in the real world, conversions are rarely that smooth.

Enter the key ingredient: following up.

How Important is Follow-Up?

If you run a commercial cleaning service, you will understand that follow-up is absolutely crucial.

As part of my client service, I regularly talk to commercial cleaners who lament that they work tons of leads from prospects who seem interested, but don’t ultimately turn into clients.

One of my first questions is always, “How are you following up, and how often are you following up?

”While there are exceptions, more often than not I’ll hear something like…

“Follow-up. Right. We should probably start doing that.”

Read any B2B marketing resources, and you’ll soon learn the importance of following up.

You’ll see things like,

“…follow-up is one of the most important aspects of B2B marketing” (Kinetic Business Marketing), and even, “…follow-up is why 10% of sales agents are closing 90% of the deals” (ringDNA).

Do you want your company to be getting those deals?

Then you have to start following up.

Don’t Waste Your Leads

Through modern digital marketing, it’s easier than ever to generate leads.

Instead of making annoying and invasive cold calls or sending out salespeople to knock on doors, you can automatically warm up leads and get interested prospects knocking on your door, using techniques like SEO, paid search, and informational content and our proprietary Commercial Lead Engagement And Nurturing (CLEAN®) System.

Once you’ve put in all of that up-front work to generate those leads, it’s much more efficient to follow up with them rather than generate a whole new batch of leads.

You already know that those prospects are interested, right?

Now it’s time to get that money in the bank rather than throwing it out the window.We call this avoiding the Leaky Bucket.

Track Every Lead

Many clients come to me with no follow-up tracking system whatsoever. I ask how they’re tracking who to follow up with, when to follow up, and what the outcome was. I ask whether they’re making sure to follow up with every lead within the shortest possible amount of time, so that the competition doesn’t get there first.

Sadly, many commercial cleaning companies are so focused on their day to day work—cleaning, management and even cold-calling—that they fail to put lead management systems in place.Well unfortunately that can be very short-sighted and, over the long term, it can cause your business to fail.

But what if you could have a steady flow of warm leads, fresh contacts, sales conversations and an automated follow-up system in place?

You think that you have a solid client base right now, but what happens when some of those clients move on to a different service, relocate out of your area, or go out of business themselves? You need a steady pipeline of new leads to keep your business thriving.

If you’re current ‘system’ seems to be lacking effectiveness in getting desired results or efficiency in generating deals, you should review our free video case study. 

Get There First

When a potential client contacts you, they generally need you to solve a problem.

Maybe that problem is critical. Their current cleaning service didn’t show up, or the office is filthy and they’ve got a major client coming in tomorrow, or someone spilled a gallon of grape juice on the new rug and the landlord is furious. They’re in crisis mode, and you know who they’re most likely to hire?

The cleaning company that responds in five minutes, not three days.

I ask all of my clients this question: has a client ever complained about you responding to them too quickly?

Think about it.

Is there ever a disadvantage to following up immediately? No way. So, another key to effective follow-up is that it has to be prompt.

If you’re struggling to follow up on leads in a timely manner, let’s get a better system in place so that it doesn’t feel like such a chore or a dog chasing its tail.

Make It Easy for Your Clients

When commercial cleaning clients come to me for help growing their businesses, I diagnose a lot of them with a major problem: a surplus of optimism.

They’ve got a few jobs, so it’s only a matter of time until the referrals start coming in, right?

They fire off a quote, and then hope that the client will follow up with them.

But How Many Times Should I Follow Up?

I get asked that a lot too. And after testing many different methods, one thing is clear…

You need to follow up as many times as it takes to get an answer.

Now this doesn’t mean spamming or bugging the heck out of prospects. No.

It means showing up consistently, with valuable reminders of how you have the answer to questions. Or the solution to a problem. It means staying the course and staying in front of potential clients with value even if you get a ‘No’.

Success

One of the number one ways to succeed in the cleaning business is to make your clients’ lives easier.

Show up on time.

Be completely and totally reliable, every single time. Remind them of upcoming events: do they need extra cleaning over the holidays? Could they use some deep cleaning over the summer, when employees are on vacation? And the first place you make life easy for them is when you follow up on their initial inquiry.

Next Steps

Now that you understand why follow-up is important, it’s time to start doing it. Let’s turn your very next lead into your new favorite client. BR Marketing is here to help.

Review our new case study here: 

​How To Generate New Commercial Client Accounts Every Month & Stay In Front of Key Decision Makers - Without Working Crazy Hours or Getting Into Bidding Wars.

Then if it makes sense, we can set up a time to discuss your business further.

Find out why business owners have trusted Bref to generate more than $10 million in revenue, and let him get to work on those same results for you.

Contact us to find out if our Commercial Lead Engagement And Nurturing (CLEAN®) System is a good fit for your business. We have multiple strategies and over the course of your complimentary strategy session we’ll uncover which, if any, may make sense for your specific business.