April 5, 2022 • 20 mins
What do Cleaning Proposals look like? What is a proposal and why should you do one? In this episode, I dive into proposals, why we do them, and how you can use them to increase your perceived value to make more money.
At Universal Janitorial Services, we view proposals as a sales document. It’s meant to continue to sell to the prospect long after you do the walkthrough.
There's no right or wrong answer on proposal formats. Long, short, web-based, or even a PDF, there are many ways you can create a proposal. There's no right or wrong answer provided you're addressing your prospect's needs and winning new business.
Universal Janitorial Services includes the following into our proposals:
1) Cover page (incld our biz name, address, the prospect's name and address, both of our logos, contract period, proposal version number (in case we have multiple revised copies), expiration date, and a mention of services provided, like "Janitorial Service proposal for...").
2) Cover sales letter (brief intro and we cover 3-4 unique selling propositions).
3) Our brochure converted into letter-size paper
4) If over 20 pages, we included a table of contents.
5) Services offered company-wide and our mission statement
6) An info page with our affiliations, certifications, contact info, and executive summary.
7) 3-6 pages of solutions for them (staffing solutions, employee selection process, background checks, uniforms, green cleaning, insurances, supplies, training program, quality control program, org chart, employee benefits, safety program, and pandemic response).
8) Client reference page filled with logos of recognizable clients and the services we provide for them.
9) References filled with 2-4 examples with contact info, pictures, and client profile, and what we do to help them.
10) White paper doc with a client success story and testimonial.
11) Cleaning Specs (SOW)
12) Pricing summary
13) Contract
We put these proposals together with Microsoft Word and format over to an Adobe PDF. We send that PDF as an email attachment with a cover.
There are software you can consider, like Route, CleanGuru, CleanlyRun, Clean Proposals, Houscall Pro, ServiceTitan, Responsibid, Pandadoc, and Proposify.
Looking for proposal examples? Check out:
1) Google - simple searches like "Cleaning proposal", "Janitorial Contract" or "Janitorial PDF" can supply you with several examples.
2) Pinterest
3) RFPs - Many requests for proposals clearly spell out what that client wants to be included in pricing. Google "janitorial RFP" and I bet you'll find a few.
4) Software - Software like PandaDoc and Proposify do include free janitorial proposal templates. You can sign up for free and download these copies.
Resources Mentioned:
Google Maps
Google Earth
Route
CleanGuru
CleanlyRun
Clean Proposals
Housecall Pro
ServiceTitan
Responsibid
PandaDoc
Proposify
This episode is sponsored by MyCleanPivot janitorial coaching. You're wearing 17 hats in your business and most of them probably don't even fit. You're juggling too much and stepping on too many mines in the m
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:01):
What do cleaning proposals look like? What is a
proposal? And why should youeven do one? Hey, I'm Mark
Lineberry with beyond the mop,and today I'm going to talk
about proposals about how we putthem together, and why you
should do one. And even how aproposal can lead to greater
profits. Well, first, like withany episode, I include a pro tip
(00:25):
or resource, something thatreally helps your business out
in one big way or another. Andwhat I'm going to talk down
today's resource is probably myfavorite of all these pro tips
I'm going to do in these eightplanned episodes. This one is my
favorite. Well, I'm going totalk about this. Well, let me
ask you this first. Have youever been stymied with all the
(00:47):
cleaning possibilities outthere? Have you ever received a
lead only to visit and realizeis too small to be a value for
your cleaning company? Hey,guilty had been there done that,
when it'd be neat to have aresource that you can see an
overhead and street view withouteven leaving your home or
(01:07):
office. Guys look no furtherthan Google Earth and Google
Maps, Google Earth and GoogleMaps brought in hundreds upon
hundreds upon hundreds actually1000s of prospects into our
cleaning company how wasmentioned in episode one, I
talked about creating thatavatar or that ideal client, I
(01:29):
don't know about you. But whenI'm driving to my service area,
I see hundreds of potentialclients, it's impossible to get
to a mall. So I have to nichedown, I'll use Google Maps to
search schools near me, churchesnear me. And that will show on
map of all the prospects withinthat map that we can serve,
(01:52):
complete with contactinformation addresses, phone,
numbers, URLs, and so much more.
But then I'll use Google Earthto zoom in on the building, I
can now see how many floors thatbuilding has, whether or not
there are other buildings on theproperty, and even get
measurements for thosebuildings. You can also pull up
a history of that property andsee how old it is or how new it
(02:14):
is. Finally, you could placeplace markers on Google Earth,
zoom out, spin the globe alittle bit and actually see all
the cool clients that you couldpotentially reach out to, and
50,000 foot view of everything.
It's really cool because he canlabel these little pins. And
it's like, oh, wow, I gotbusiness here. And here and
(02:35):
here. And here. And here. Oh,and there's like 1000. Others
I'd like to go after to add somuch fun with that, as you could
tell. Finally, it gives you achance to discover properties
you've never noticed before.
It's such a great free resource.
Guys, go check them out. It's socool. I think it's
underutilized. Definitely checkout Google. It's all free, man.
(02:58):
It doesn't cost you a penny.
Now, with all these prospects Imentioned through Google Earth
and Google Maps, well, he got tostart doing proposals, right. On
today's episode, I'm going totalk about those proposals.
Let's back up before we do theproposals, what do we do, right,
we prospect to our prospects, sowe call email as referrals
network, so on and so forth. Ifyou have enough touchpoints
(03:20):
they're gonna reach out to youor through conversation, we call
them next. They're going to tellyou say, hey, I want a
walkthrough. I'd like you guysto come out and give us a price.
Well, hey, sign me up. Right? Ilove doing walkthroughs. They're
great. They're fun. So I'll goout there. I'll do a
walkthrough. I'll take plenty ofnotes and ask a ton of
(03:42):
questions. I'll ask them stufflike, how did you find us? What
do you like best about yourcleaning service right
now? What do you like leastabout your cleaning service
right now? If you could changeone thing tomorrow? What would
that one thing be? I asked themplenty of questions. I take tons
of notes, I figure out whattheir hot points are. And if
(04:04):
they repeat words more thantwice, I'll repeat that back to
them say, hey, it sounds likesecurity is really important to
you. Tell me more about that? Orhey, it tells you tell me that
paying people on time is reallyimportant to you. Tell me about
that. So maybe there's a storythere in UK extract that from
it's really important that youdo that. And as you do that, it
(04:27):
increases the value of yourservice to perceive value. I
talked about that last episode,right, increase your perceived
value, increase your perceivedvalue, they're more likely to
buy and they're more likely tobuy at a higher price. There's a
study done and I'll know thesource of it. So don't ask me
but that study was done with arestaurant staff where they
(04:51):
tracked waiters and they hadsome waiters who'd like memorize
the order not writing anythingdown and and place it they found
that those who did that got lesstips than those who actually
wrote it down? Yeah, those whowrote it down, can easily
memorize it, and then put in theorder, and try to impress the
folks without even writinganything down. Now the customer
(05:12):
wants them to write it down.
Also, they included in thestudy, for those who repeated
the order back to the customer,even though they're very clear
on what the customer wanted, ifthey repeat it back to the
customer, they got more tipsthan those who did it. So as you
do your walkthrough, you askquestions, you take notes, what
you want to do towards the end,is give a 32nd elevator pitch
(05:33):
right talk about you, it's yourtime now you get 30 seconds
congrats. And then dive in.
Repeat everything that they toldyou during that walkthrough, not
word for word or anything likethat, make it succinct two to
five minutes max, but covereverything that they talked
(05:54):
about, even cover their hotpoints, and stress that back to
them. So if they mentioned itagain, if they mentioned, hey,
cleaning in the corners isreally important, or dusting or
whatever like that. And theysaid that four times, then say,
hey, it sounds like dusting isreally important to him. They go
Yeah. So they're always going toincrease your value in their
(06:14):
head, and willing to pay ahigher price once they see that
price in the proposal from you.
I hope that makes sense. Now,another thing you want to do is
considered a format of yourproposals. There are so many
different ways, and I'm notgoing to judge Okay, well, I
will judge a little bit. Butthere's some folks who go out
there and just send a textmessage back to the client,
(06:36):
potential client, right? Or makea phone call and say, Hey, our
prices this, or maybe just asimple email, which is fine. Or
you can be all elaborate andfancy shmancy. And then create
like a web based proposal withheat map on it, see, see where
they're clicking, and thenmoving the mouse and then see,
you know, click on videos, seethis and this resource and that
(06:58):
and so forth. Yeah, you could goall out with this. So
there's different ways you coulddo proposals, I'm going to tell
you about our method, I'm goingto describe what we include in
our proposals. It doesn't meanit's perfect doesn't mean it's
right. But it's right for us ifthat makes sense. So we view
proposals as a sales tool, it'smeant to continue to sell to the
(07:22):
prospect long after you'vecompleted your walkthrough.
Backing up to the walkthrough. Inever ever, ever, never, ever,
ever, ever, never, ever give aprice and a walkthrough. Never I
don't care how bad they ask ifthey get on your knees. Like
Sorry, Charlie, nope, I'm notgonna give you a price. I want
use the walkthroughs time tosell to them to get information
(07:44):
from them. Park company, andgives me a chance to think this
through and provide my bestprice. I don't want to be
pressured right there in frontof them to provide a price. So
we track all of our FrequentlyAsked Questions company wide. So
these are questions coming fromthe client to us. And these are
(08:06):
answers coming from ourquestions back to the client and
form of answer form, right. Andwe track all of that
information. We know what theirhot points are company wide. We
know what our average clientasked for. We know their hot
months. So that way, when we'redoing the proposal, we know what
to include before they ask thequestion. Because there's a
(08:27):
pattern, there's a historythere, we know it, we see it.
And within that we make surethose questions are answered
within our proposal. And here'swhat's in our proposal. First
off, we have a cover page, ourcover page is simply this their
name, their address, contractperiod. And we add in there a
version number, becausesometimes he might have multiple
(08:50):
copies of the same contractwith, you know, through
negotiation, whatever. And thenwe'll have an expiration date.
We also include our name, ourcontact information, and our
logo, so composes back and forththeir logo to ours, right. And
then we add in a cover letter,this cover letter is very
(09:11):
simple. All we do is includetheir name, we put in paragraph,
a very short paragraph about usthe services we provide, how
long we've been around and thenwe include three to four unique
selling propositions or USPS.
That is meant to separate usfrom the competition what makes
us or let me back up what makesyou different from your
(09:35):
competitors. And don't say lowprice. Everyone says that, hey,
we're licensed, bonded insured.
No, that's not USP, everyone'slicensed, bonded insured, figure
out what makes you different inyour marketplace, and include
that. Next section we have, wehave a brochure that we
(09:57):
converted from brochure format,you know the trifold We
converted that into kind of aletter format. So a two page
letter format with low Baygraphics in there, talking about
our company, and where we'vecome from, and where we're going
to, and so forth. So that'smeant to sell to them as they go
through this proposal. Anothersection we have, well, if the
(10:20):
proposals over 20 pages, we havea table of contents, we want to
make it easy for them. If theyneed to flip around, we don't
want them to be frustratedbecause they can't find the
pricing on page 18. Anothersection we have is services
offered. So we talked about allthe different services,
basically, we have a littlegraphic that describes our
(10:42):
services, and then our missionstatement. That's very important
to us. So we include that. Andthen we have a information page
in this information page thatbasically has our contact
information, all of ourcertifications, all of our
affiliations, like I SSA, BSC AIand so forth. And then we add in
(11:04):
an executive summary about ourcompany.
The next section we have isabout three to six pages, on the
solutions for our company. Sothis includes various things.
And we add and subtract based onwhat we see in the walkthrough.
(11:25):
Or based on the client type, theniche. So we'll include staffing
will include employee selectionprocess, background checks,
uniforms, green cleaningprogram, insurances supplies
will include our trainingprogram, quality control
program, will add in ourorganization chart, employee
(11:46):
benefits, safety program, andeven a pandemic response because
they want to know, hey, are yougetting cleaned the next day, if
all of your sick or all of youremployees get sick with COVID,
on Monday, are you gonna bethere Tuesday to continue
cleaning, because they need itright. And then so we'll add in,
(12:07):
also reference page. So we'llhave a page filled with
recognizable logos of locationswe clean. So they'll see a logo,
and they'll instantly know whatcompany that is. So these are
major brands that we cleanedfor. And then we add in their
reference pages. So we'll add inthree or two to four references.
(12:32):
And we'll add in the contactsname, their email address, their
phone number, their mailingaddress, obviously, the client
name, and then we'll add inpicture of the client. And we'll
add in kind of a breakdown ofwhat we do for them, or the
client size, you know, hey, thisschool has 1000 students or
(12:53):
whatever, client size, squarefootage, acreage, whatever, and
then we'll put in there, this iswhat we do for him. This is how
we solve their problems and soforth. Sometimes I'll add a
white paper in their white paperesque type document where we're
going in profiling just onesingle client, and the success
(13:16):
that they got by using ourservices, and will feature them
or talk about them or eveninclude a video, we've done that
in the past on our HTMLversions. And then what else we
add in there, cleaningspecifications. So the scope of
work, right, so we break it downeasily by location. And within
each location, the individualtasks like, you know, remove
(13:39):
trash can replace liners, or,you know, you get the idea, you
know, replace and refill,toilet, paper rolls and so
forth. We'll add that in thereexactly what day and how
frequent we do it. And then werecently start adding we got
this from a RFP from theNational botanical garden in DC.
When we were asked to bid onthat project, they add in what
(14:02):
tools and materials are used toaccomplish that task. I thought
that was really cool. So we juststarted converting that over to
our new proposals. We'll add ina pricing summary. So we'll,
we'll dive in deep to thenumbers, we'll want them to know
how much profit we're making,unless they demand a no, we
don't want that. We just want tooffer a general idea of how much
(14:25):
our prices and how that breaksdown, and so forth. And then
lastly, we'll add in a contract.
A contract is very important,where we go in and dive in deep
Hey, these are terms this is ourprice. This is what's going on
within the contract, and it'susually about three to four
pages for us. We put all of thisinformation together. And within
(14:47):
this information, we do it onMicrosoft Word. It's just one
big template for us. And we havedifferent templates for schools
and churches and bang in officebuildings, and so on and so
forth, and we change all theinformation now, but 80% of it's
similar. The other 20% iscustomizable. So we're going in
(15:08):
there and editing about 15 20%,give or take, after we put all
together, then we'll convert itinto a PDF. And we just use
Adobe for that, change it to aPDF, and make sure it's under 10
megabytes, because we do getsome rich graphics in there. And
then we'll email it off alongwith a cover email back to our
(15:30):
potential client with thatinformation. So as I go through
this, maybe your head spinningis like Mark, man, that's just a
ton of information, I just wantto go back and send an email or,
you know,send a text message, hey, go for
it. Go for it. There's nothingwrong with that. As long as
(15:50):
you're winning clients.
There's a few things he can useto really help you with this.
The common question I see onthese Facebook groups is, well,
how do you get the information?
How do you get the text? How doyou get the ideas for it? Well,
I just ran through the ideas.
But there's some other resourcesthat you could pull from one of
(16:11):
those is route. Shout out toRicky Regalado, right, putting
all that together his team andeverything. So they got the
software, you could put in thenumbers and actually spit out a
proposal for you, I believe.
Another one is CleanGuru.
Another one is cleanly run.
Another one is clean proposals.
(16:31):
Another example is house callPro or even I think service
Titan does this as well. Andlastly, there are some web based
ones like responsive bid. Pandadoc and proposal five. The last
two I'm gonna talk about rightnow. There's examples and
templates you could actuallyfind. If you do sign up the
(16:52):
panda doc and proposal phi. Theyactually have janitorial
contracts. So I shouldn't saycontracts proposals that you
could download as a PDF, andsave for yourself if you wanted
to, and use that information foryour future contracts. You don't
have to use their software. Butyou could actually get free
templates right now, if you justsign up to those websites. It
(17:14):
doesn't cost any money. There'sa free trial, you can sign up
free trial, download theinformation and use use it to
your heart's delight. Anotherexample to find contract
proposals is simply Google. JustGoogle around look around for
something like janitorialproposal where janitorial bid or
what have you just startGoogling all these terms or
(17:37):
janitorial proposal PDF as anexample. I remember doing this
recently. And I remember seeingdozens and dozens of proposals,
I mean, complete with contractsand everything. I'm surprised
more people don't do this. Butlaw, these government agencies
and so forth are thesedepartments still, they'll
actually put all this together.
And so you'll see 678 proposalsall together in one ginormous
(18:00):
PDF that you could pull from asa resource. So just look around
on that. Another one isPinterest. I haven't seen this
myself. But I've seen a couplepeople posting on Facebook, he
could actually go into Pinterestand pull this information up.
Here's another great resource.
Just look the PDFs out there.
Google round janitorial PDF,right. Not PDF RFP, I'm sorry.
So request for proposal whereyou'll see organizations,
(18:24):
schools, churches, publicgovernment, whatever, they'll
send up RFPs. And they'll tellyou within the RFP RFP exactly
what they want done. Within theproposal, I just responded to
one last month, and they gave mea list of about 12 things got to
be in this proposal if you wantto win this contract. So they'll
(18:47):
tell you exactly what they want.
And they'll spell it out. Imean, with detail too. It's not
like, hey, we want a safetyprogram. Now they'll tell you,
Hey, this is what we want to seewithin your safety program, if
that makes sense. Another sourceis, again, Panda doc proposal
phi, that same example. And thenthere's different software like
(19:08):
I previously mentioned in thelast section, where you just I'm
sure there's templates in there,too. I'm not sure. I'm not too
familiar with these so much. Butyou could go in probably see it.
Who knows. So I hope all thisinformation. I hope I didn't
rifle it through too quick. Ikind of rushed this out. But
hope this made sense to you. Ihope it did. So. If this does
(19:33):
make sense, definitely use itrun with it. Now you get some
free tips and free guides. Andthis, this podcast was brought
to you by my clean pivot. Again,I do coaching, I help law folks
in the commercial cleaningspace, grow their business, and
I'll work with you on bi weeklyformat to help facilitate that.
(19:54):
Because let's face it, we can'tdo this alone, can we? It's just
impossible. It's just too muchof everything. going on out
there and your heads jumbled upbecause mine was too at that
point. And without Coach orwithout someone guiding you
along the way it's easy to getlost so I'm there to help you
out if you ever need anythingyou could go to Mike clean
pivot.com Or even reach outdirectly at market Mike clean
(20:15):
pivot.com And for moreinformation about the show
definitely check out theresources mentioned. Also go to
beyond the mop show.com If youfelt that this show was worth a
five star review or share areview or rating or anything
like that through your podcastplatform like Apple podcast,
(20:35):
Spotify or wherever you listento definitely goes do that. I
appreciate it. So I hope thiswas a value to and have a great
and fantastic and blessed day.
Go conquer
What do cleaning proposals look like? What is a
proposal? And why should youeven do one? Hey, I'm Mark
Lineberry with beyond the mop,and today I'm going to talk
about proposals about how we putthem together, and why you
should do one. And even how aproposal can lead to greater
profits. Well, first, like withany episode, I include a pro tip
(00:25):
or resource, something thatreally helps your business out
in one big way or another. Andwhat I'm going to talk down
today's resource is probably myfavorite of all these pro tips
I'm going to do in these eightplanned episodes. This one is my
favorite. Well, I'm going totalk about this. Well, let me
ask you this first. Have youever been stymied with all the
(00:47):
cleaning possibilities outthere? Have you ever received a
lead only to visit and realizeis too small to be a value for
your cleaning company? Hey,guilty had been there done that,
when it'd be neat to have aresource that you can see an
overhead and street view withouteven leaving your home or
(01:07):
office. Guys look no furtherthan Google Earth and Google
Maps, Google Earth and GoogleMaps brought in hundreds upon
hundreds upon hundreds actually1000s of prospects into our
cleaning company how wasmentioned in episode one, I
talked about creating thatavatar or that ideal client, I
(01:29):
don't know about you. But whenI'm driving to my service area,
I see hundreds of potentialclients, it's impossible to get
to a mall. So I have to nichedown, I'll use Google Maps to
search schools near me, churchesnear me. And that will show on
map of all the prospects withinthat map that we can serve,
(01:52):
complete with contactinformation addresses, phone,
numbers, URLs, and so much more.
But then I'll use Google Earthto zoom in on the building, I
can now see how many floors thatbuilding has, whether or not
there are other buildings on theproperty, and even get
measurements for thosebuildings. You can also pull up
a history of that property andsee how old it is or how new it
(02:14):
is. Finally, you could placeplace markers on Google Earth,
zoom out, spin the globe alittle bit and actually see all
the cool clients that you couldpotentially reach out to, and
50,000 foot view of everything.
It's really cool because he canlabel these little pins. And
it's like, oh, wow, I gotbusiness here. And here and
(02:35):
here. And here. And here. Oh,and there's like 1000. Others
I'd like to go after to add somuch fun with that, as you could
tell. Finally, it gives you achance to discover properties
you've never noticed before.
It's such a great free resource.
Guys, go check them out. It's socool. I think it's
underutilized. Definitely checkout Google. It's all free, man.
(02:58):
It doesn't cost you a penny.
Now, with all these prospects Imentioned through Google Earth
and Google Maps, well, he got tostart doing proposals, right. On
today's episode, I'm going totalk about those proposals.
Let's back up before we do theproposals, what do we do, right,
we prospect to our prospects, sowe call email as referrals
network, so on and so forth. Ifyou have enough touchpoints
(03:20):
they're gonna reach out to youor through conversation, we call
them next. They're going to tellyou say, hey, I want a
walkthrough. I'd like you guysto come out and give us a price.
Well, hey, sign me up. Right? Ilove doing walkthroughs. They're
great. They're fun. So I'll goout there. I'll do a
walkthrough. I'll take plenty ofnotes and ask a ton of
(03:42):
questions. I'll ask them stufflike, how did you find us? What
do you like best about yourcleaning service right
now? What do you like leastabout your cleaning service
right now? If you could changeone thing tomorrow? What would
that one thing be? I asked themplenty of questions. I take tons
of notes, I figure out whattheir hot points are. And if
(04:04):
they repeat words more thantwice, I'll repeat that back to
them say, hey, it sounds likesecurity is really important to
you. Tell me more about that? Orhey, it tells you tell me that
paying people on time is reallyimportant to you. Tell me about
that. So maybe there's a storythere in UK extract that from
it's really important that youdo that. And as you do that, it
(04:27):
increases the value of yourservice to perceive value. I
talked about that last episode,right, increase your perceived
value, increase your perceivedvalue, they're more likely to
buy and they're more likely tobuy at a higher price. There's a
study done and I'll know thesource of it. So don't ask me
but that study was done with arestaurant staff where they
(04:51):
tracked waiters and they hadsome waiters who'd like memorize
the order not writing anythingdown and and place it they found
that those who did that got lesstips than those who actually
wrote it down? Yeah, those whowrote it down, can easily
memorize it, and then put in theorder, and try to impress the
folks without even writinganything down. Now the customer
(05:12):
wants them to write it down.
Also, they included in thestudy, for those who repeated
the order back to the customer,even though they're very clear
on what the customer wanted, ifthey repeat it back to the
customer, they got more tipsthan those who did it. So as you
do your walkthrough, you askquestions, you take notes, what
you want to do towards the end,is give a 32nd elevator pitch
(05:33):
right talk about you, it's yourtime now you get 30 seconds
congrats. And then dive in.
Repeat everything that they toldyou during that walkthrough, not
word for word or anything likethat, make it succinct two to
five minutes max, but covereverything that they talked
(05:54):
about, even cover their hotpoints, and stress that back to
them. So if they mentioned itagain, if they mentioned, hey,
cleaning in the corners isreally important, or dusting or
whatever like that. And theysaid that four times, then say,
hey, it sounds like dusting isreally important to him. They go
Yeah. So they're always going toincrease your value in their
(06:14):
head, and willing to pay ahigher price once they see that
price in the proposal from you.
I hope that makes sense. Now,another thing you want to do is
considered a format of yourproposals. There are so many
different ways, and I'm notgoing to judge Okay, well, I
will judge a little bit. Butthere's some folks who go out
there and just send a textmessage back to the client,
(06:36):
potential client, right? Or makea phone call and say, Hey, our
prices this, or maybe just asimple email, which is fine. Or
you can be all elaborate andfancy shmancy. And then create
like a web based proposal withheat map on it, see, see where
they're clicking, and thenmoving the mouse and then see,
you know, click on videos, seethis and this resource and that
(06:58):
and so forth. Yeah, you could goall out with this. So
there's different ways you coulddo proposals, I'm going to tell
you about our method, I'm goingto describe what we include in
our proposals. It doesn't meanit's perfect doesn't mean it's
right. But it's right for us ifthat makes sense. So we view
proposals as a sales tool, it'smeant to continue to sell to the
(07:22):
prospect long after you'vecompleted your walkthrough.
Backing up to the walkthrough. Inever ever, ever, never, ever,
ever, ever, never, ever give aprice and a walkthrough. Never I
don't care how bad they ask ifthey get on your knees. Like
Sorry, Charlie, nope, I'm notgonna give you a price. I want
use the walkthroughs time tosell to them to get information
(07:44):
from them. Park company, andgives me a chance to think this
through and provide my bestprice. I don't want to be
pressured right there in frontof them to provide a price. So
we track all of our FrequentlyAsked Questions company wide. So
these are questions coming fromthe client to us. And these are
(08:06):
answers coming from ourquestions back to the client and
form of answer form, right. Andwe track all of that
information. We know what theirhot points are company wide. We
know what our average clientasked for. We know their hot
months. So that way, when we'redoing the proposal, we know what
to include before they ask thequestion. Because there's a
(08:27):
pattern, there's a historythere, we know it, we see it.
And within that we make surethose questions are answered
within our proposal. And here'swhat's in our proposal. First
off, we have a cover page, ourcover page is simply this their
name, their address, contractperiod. And we add in there a
version number, becausesometimes he might have multiple
(08:50):
copies of the same contractwith, you know, through
negotiation, whatever. And thenwe'll have an expiration date.
We also include our name, ourcontact information, and our
logo, so composes back and forththeir logo to ours, right. And
then we add in a cover letter,this cover letter is very
(09:11):
simple. All we do is includetheir name, we put in paragraph,
a very short paragraph about usthe services we provide, how
long we've been around and thenwe include three to four unique
selling propositions or USPS.
That is meant to separate usfrom the competition what makes
us or let me back up what makesyou different from your
(09:35):
competitors. And don't say lowprice. Everyone says that, hey,
we're licensed, bonded insured.
No, that's not USP, everyone'slicensed, bonded insured, figure
out what makes you different inyour marketplace, and include
that. Next section we have, wehave a brochure that we
(09:57):
converted from brochure format,you know the trifold We
converted that into kind of aletter format. So a two page
letter format with low Baygraphics in there, talking about
our company, and where we'vecome from, and where we're going
to, and so forth. So that'smeant to sell to them as they go
through this proposal. Anothersection we have, well, if the
(10:20):
proposals over 20 pages, we havea table of contents, we want to
make it easy for them. If theyneed to flip around, we don't
want them to be frustratedbecause they can't find the
pricing on page 18. Anothersection we have is services
offered. So we talked about allthe different services,
basically, we have a littlegraphic that describes our
(10:42):
services, and then our missionstatement. That's very important
to us. So we include that. Andthen we have a information page
in this information page thatbasically has our contact
information, all of ourcertifications, all of our
affiliations, like I SSA, BSC AIand so forth. And then we add in
(11:04):
an executive summary about ourcompany.
The next section we have isabout three to six pages, on the
solutions for our company. Sothis includes various things.
And we add and subtract based onwhat we see in the walkthrough.
(11:25):
Or based on the client type, theniche. So we'll include staffing
will include employee selectionprocess, background checks,
uniforms, green cleaningprogram, insurances supplies
will include our trainingprogram, quality control
program, will add in ourorganization chart, employee
(11:46):
benefits, safety program, andeven a pandemic response because
they want to know, hey, are yougetting cleaned the next day, if
all of your sick or all of youremployees get sick with COVID,
on Monday, are you gonna bethere Tuesday to continue
cleaning, because they need itright. And then so we'll add in,
(12:07):
also reference page. So we'llhave a page filled with
recognizable logos of locationswe clean. So they'll see a logo,
and they'll instantly know whatcompany that is. So these are
major brands that we cleanedfor. And then we add in their
reference pages. So we'll add inthree or two to four references.
(12:32):
And we'll add in the contactsname, their email address, their
phone number, their mailingaddress, obviously, the client
name, and then we'll add inpicture of the client. And we'll
add in kind of a breakdown ofwhat we do for them, or the
client size, you know, hey, thisschool has 1000 students or
(12:53):
whatever, client size, squarefootage, acreage, whatever, and
then we'll put in there, this iswhat we do for him. This is how
we solve their problems and soforth. Sometimes I'll add a
white paper in their white paperesque type document where we're
going in profiling just onesingle client, and the success
(13:16):
that they got by using ourservices, and will feature them
or talk about them or eveninclude a video, we've done that
in the past on our HTMLversions. And then what else we
add in there, cleaningspecifications. So the scope of
work, right, so we break it downeasily by location. And within
each location, the individualtasks like, you know, remove
(13:39):
trash can replace liners, or,you know, you get the idea, you
know, replace and refill,toilet, paper rolls and so
forth. We'll add that in thereexactly what day and how
frequent we do it. And then werecently start adding we got
this from a RFP from theNational botanical garden in DC.
When we were asked to bid onthat project, they add in what
(14:02):
tools and materials are used toaccomplish that task. I thought
that was really cool. So we juststarted converting that over to
our new proposals. We'll add ina pricing summary. So we'll,
we'll dive in deep to thenumbers, we'll want them to know
how much profit we're making,unless they demand a no, we
don't want that. We just want tooffer a general idea of how much
(14:25):
our prices and how that breaksdown, and so forth. And then
lastly, we'll add in a contract.
A contract is very important,where we go in and dive in deep
Hey, these are terms this is ourprice. This is what's going on
within the contract, and it'susually about three to four
pages for us. We put all of thisinformation together. And within
(14:47):
this information, we do it onMicrosoft Word. It's just one
big template for us. And we havedifferent templates for schools
and churches and bang in officebuildings, and so on and so
forth, and we change all theinformation now, but 80% of it's
similar. The other 20% iscustomizable. So we're going in
(15:08):
there and editing about 15 20%,give or take, after we put all
together, then we'll convert itinto a PDF. And we just use
Adobe for that, change it to aPDF, and make sure it's under 10
megabytes, because we do getsome rich graphics in there. And
then we'll email it off alongwith a cover email back to our
(15:30):
potential client with thatinformation. So as I go through
this, maybe your head spinningis like Mark, man, that's just a
ton of information, I just wantto go back and send an email or,
you know,send a text message, hey, go for
it. Go for it. There's nothingwrong with that. As long as
(15:50):
you're winning clients.
There's a few things he can useto really help you with this.
The common question I see onthese Facebook groups is, well,
how do you get the information?
How do you get the text? How doyou get the ideas for it? Well,
I just ran through the ideas.
But there's some other resourcesthat you could pull from one of
(16:11):
those is route. Shout out toRicky Regalado, right, putting
all that together his team andeverything. So they got the
software, you could put in thenumbers and actually spit out a
proposal for you, I believe.
Another one is CleanGuru.
Another one is cleanly run.
Another one is clean proposals.
(16:31):
Another example is house callPro or even I think service
Titan does this as well. Andlastly, there are some web based
ones like responsive bid. Pandadoc and proposal five. The last
two I'm gonna talk about rightnow. There's examples and
templates you could actuallyfind. If you do sign up the
(16:52):
panda doc and proposal phi. Theyactually have janitorial
contracts. So I shouldn't saycontracts proposals that you
could download as a PDF, andsave for yourself if you wanted
to, and use that information foryour future contracts. You don't
have to use their software. Butyou could actually get free
templates right now, if you justsign up to those websites. It
(17:14):
doesn't cost any money. There'sa free trial, you can sign up
free trial, download theinformation and use use it to
your heart's delight. Anotherexample to find contract
proposals is simply Google. JustGoogle around look around for
something like janitorialproposal where janitorial bid or
what have you just startGoogling all these terms or
(17:37):
janitorial proposal PDF as anexample. I remember doing this
recently. And I remember seeingdozens and dozens of proposals,
I mean, complete with contractsand everything. I'm surprised
more people don't do this. Butlaw, these government agencies
and so forth are thesedepartments still, they'll
actually put all this together.
And so you'll see 678 proposalsall together in one ginormous
(18:00):
PDF that you could pull from asa resource. So just look around
on that. Another one isPinterest. I haven't seen this
myself. But I've seen a couplepeople posting on Facebook, he
could actually go into Pinterestand pull this information up.
Here's another great resource.
Just look the PDFs out there.
Google round janitorial PDF,right. Not PDF RFP, I'm sorry.
So request for proposal whereyou'll see organizations,
(18:24):
schools, churches, publicgovernment, whatever, they'll
send up RFPs. And they'll tellyou within the RFP RFP exactly
what they want done. Within theproposal, I just responded to
one last month, and they gave mea list of about 12 things got to
be in this proposal if you wantto win this contract. So they'll
(18:47):
tell you exactly what they want.
And they'll spell it out. Imean, with detail too. It's not
like, hey, we want a safetyprogram. Now they'll tell you,
Hey, this is what we want to seewithin your safety program, if
that makes sense. Another sourceis, again, Panda doc proposal
phi, that same example. And thenthere's different software like
(19:08):
I previously mentioned in thelast section, where you just I'm
sure there's templates in there,too. I'm not sure. I'm not too
familiar with these so much. Butyou could go in probably see it.
Who knows. So I hope all thisinformation. I hope I didn't
rifle it through too quick. Ikind of rushed this out. But
hope this made sense to you. Ihope it did. So. If this does
(19:33):
make sense, definitely use itrun with it. Now you get some
free tips and free guides. Andthis, this podcast was brought
to you by my clean pivot. Again,I do coaching, I help law folks
in the commercial cleaningspace, grow their business, and
I'll work with you on bi weeklyformat to help facilitate that.
(19:54):
Because let's face it, we can'tdo this alone, can we? It's just
impossible. It's just too muchof everything. going on out
there and your heads jumbled upbecause mine was too at that
point. And without Coach orwithout someone guiding you
along the way it's easy to getlost so I'm there to help you
out if you ever need anythingyou could go to Mike clean
pivot.com Or even reach outdirectly at market Mike clean
(20:15):
pivot.com And for moreinformation about the show
definitely check out theresources mentioned. Also go to
beyond the mop show.com If youfelt that this show was worth a
five star review or share areview or rating or anything
like that through your podcastplatform like Apple podcast,
(20:35):
Spotify or wherever you listento definitely goes do that. I
appreciate it. So I hope thiswas a value to and have a great
and fantastic and blessed day.
Go conquer
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