Selling cleaning materials

Selling cleaning materials are an important revenue stream for office and commercial cleaning companies.

It is seen as an important upsell.  In an industry with low margins and constant pressure on costs, any place for more margin to come from is needed.

Customers normally choose the cleaning company to provide cleaning materials because then they do not have to worry about stock, ordering and having another separate bill to pay.  The cleaning company does all this form and puts it on the same bill that they pay for their cleaning with.

Cleaning materials are normally sold in 2 parts:

1, The cleaning materials that the cleaner needs for cleaning the client’s premises:

So these are things like vacuum cleaner, vacuum cleaner bags, cloths, chemicals such as toilet cleaner and so on.  This is a weekly amount and the same every week, so the cleaning materials belong to the company and are taken away if the client stops using the company.  The client is basically paying for the use of the cleaning materials.

It is important to have close stock control on cleaning materials to reduce the possibility of theft,

Training the cleaner in what measure of cleaning chemicals to use each time is also important, it is so easy for a cleaner to just pour toilet cleaner excessively down a toilet, loads of detergent into a mop bucket and so on.

Ways to budget this are:

  1. A cost per hour the cleaner is working, categorised by type of premises and cleaning processes being done
  2. The size of the client’s premises area being cleaned and how often the cleaner is going there, which leads to an amount per week.

At the time of writing this document we do the first, but are working on doing the second which we may find is an improvement.

Then check for each client how much you are spending on cleaning materials and what percentage you are getting in margin.

Different kinds of premises need different amounts of cleaning materials.  For example a car repair garage will create lots of dust and grease, the same for a restaurant that fries a lot of food.  They use up loads of degreasing chemicals and will be really intensive on materials such as cloths and mops.

A high end office will need high standards but will not produce so much of these kinds of intensive dirt’s and grease that needs cleaning.

So you will need to forecast cleaning material usage for each type of premises.

2, Cleaning materials that the customers need for cleaning themselves

These are things like toilet rolls, bin bags, hand soaps and so on.  The cleaning company cannot predict and forecast how many the client’s staff and customers will use.  As a result these are charged separately and per item.

We call this service ‘auto refill’ as we check their stock, order and add these to their invoice automatically.

Of the customers that choose to have us provide these kinds of materials, a small percentage may say that they would like to directly ask us for cleaning materials when they themselves see that they need them and not have us do their stock control.  So they will tell us when they want things.

Different customers will have different requirements for these. A high end customer showroom will need the highest quality toilet rolls even if they cost more, a builders yard will be fine with standard stuff.

Hand soaps and toilet rolls are personal things that the customers will use, they are a very different kind of proposition than the regular industrial type cleaning materials used by the cleaner.  This is why hand soaps and other personal hygiene materials is more of a boutique type industry.  It is important that the client is happy with what they are delivered as this is when they will notice issues.    People’s choices for these are very personal and need to listen to people’s personal needs on these.  For example with hand soaps, scented, colour, anti-bacterial or not is all choices that really matter too many customers and they all want different things.

If they are using it directly from the pump dispenser packet and not putting them in a wall dispenser, then the packaging container and pump also needs to be nice.

We recommend to customers that they use one of the wall mounted lockable toilet roll dispensers that use the jumbo toilet rolls, instead of the small domestic sized toilet roll holders.  This is because some companies find that a lot of toilet rolls are stolen by staff as one can easily be put in handbags, ruck sacks and so on.  People take them home and if a person steals one per day it all adds up.  This may or may not happen in an office where there are a smaller number staff of different people, so it depends if they have a person doing it.  However in places that the client’s customers use the toilet a lot such a restaurant or bar, it is even more important as there are lots of different people coming in to use the toilets.

The cleaning materials included in ‘the cleaning materials the cleaner needs for cleaning’

We have two levels of cleaning materials packages, standard and prestige.

The standard just has a basic range and the prestige ones have what is needed for a more advanced premises.

The standard ones are also a more basic formulation and potency, the prestige ones are a very high concentration and the best it is possible to get.

Standard materials list:

  • Toilet cleaner
  • Toilet microfibre cloth
  • Disinfectant for cleaning kitchen and toilets
  • Kitchen microfibre cloth
  • General purpose cleaning fluid
  • General microfibre cloth
  • Long window cleaning cloth or blade
  • Vacuum cleaner
  • Replacement bag for vacuum cleaner
  • Bucket for mop
  • Mop
  • Gloves (always making sure there is a spare set in case one breaks)
  • Hazard warning sign

The prestige materials also has:

A higher grade of cleaning materials to what the standard ones are, plus:

  • Window cleaning fluid (as this is more expensive for cleaning chemicals than using a pole and reach system)
  • Window cleaning microfibre cloth
  • Limescale remover for sinks and basins
  • Kettle limescale remover

We of course recommend the prestige cleaning chemicals, there is more that we can do with them and being really good they help the cleaner to do an even better job.  However many customers do go for the standard ones because their budgets really do matter.

Supplying cleaning materials to smaller customers

For a customer that is 10 hours or more per week, it is easy to create a set rate for supplying the cleaning materials that the cleaner needs for cleaning.  This is because the larger number of hours means that the:

  1. It more covers the cost of organising the initial cost of the cleaning materials when the cleaner starts.  The cost of a good vacuum cleaner, cloths, mop and buck and so on are a big up front cost
  2. The client needs enough cleaning materials that the delivery amounts are above the janitorial suppliers threshold for free delivery
  3. Doing stock takes at the customer’s site, ordering and organising the cleaning material stock
  4. The client normally has a larger premises and room for these things to be stored

For 6-10 hours per week for the reasons above, we need to charge the customer the same amount for cleaning materials that the customer pays for 10 hours per week.   This is because it costs there is a minimum threshold where below this it is not economic.

For clients below 6 hours per week, we needed to find a solution that customers could still have us supply the cleaning materials but it still be economic for us to do so.

This is how we deal with the issues above:

1, Costs of setting up the cleaning materials and taking them back if they cancel:

For the up front costs of the cleaning materials and the costs if they eventually cancel with us.  At the time of writing this article, we charge customers  £40 + VAT for the standard materials and £60 + VAT for the prestige ones, please check our website for the current prices.  This is refunded to the customer if they return the cleaning materials, including if and when they eventually cancel with us.

2 and 3, Minimum delivery amounts and stock taking:

We charge a minimum amount for standard cleaning materials is £2.50 per week and prestige is £3.50 + VAT.  The cleaners then buy the cleaning materials, take a picture of the receipt with their phone, send it to us and we then pay them the amount.  This is less economic to organise and the prices we pay for cleaning materials are higher, but this gets around the delivery charges on smaller orders from suppliers.

4, Lack of storage space at the clients:

We create a micro box, it is the size of one file archive box, it contains a smaller vacuum cleaner, mop and bucket etc.  This can be stored more easily by the clients.

Before we deliver the micro box we have to ask the clients if we are cleaning their kitchen and toilet.  Also if they have hard wood floors or carpet, if they do have carpet then how much they have.

This is because many of the smaller customers are in a building where they share the toilets and kitchen with other companies and so we are not cleaning these areas.

The contents of the micro boxes are carefully sourced for being able to fit in small containers spaces and also being able to do the job well and properly.

Standard:

  • Toilet cleaner
  • Toilet microfibre cloth
  • Disinfectant for cleaning kitchen and toilets
  • Kitchen microfibre cloth
  • General purpose cleaning fluid
  • General microfibre cloth
  • Micro vacuum cleaner of the type that uses a filter and not a vacuum cleaner bag
  • Bucket for mop
  • Mop
  • Gloves (always making sure there is a spare set in case one breaks)
  • Hazard warning sign

The prestige materials also have:

A higher grade of cleaning materials to what the standard ones are, plus:

  • Limescale remover for sinks and basins
  • Kettle descaler

Summary

So in summary, when we sell cleaning materials we quote for ‘the cleaning materials that the cleaner needs for cleaning the client’s premises.  Cleaning materials that the customer’s staff and clients need for cleaning themselves are charged separately.