How to Start Cleaning Business: A Complete Guide

Most people wish they could be like Monica Gellar when it comes to cleaning.

But let’s face the truth, they are not. 

And, a cleaning business owner, you can help them clean and organize their house. Cleaning business is one of the few businesses that can be started quickly with a shoestring budget. It offers a wide range of cleaning services including an end to end services including disinfecting, vacuuming, dusting, floor mopping and waxing. As per the requirement, one can ask for all the services or can choose a suitable cleaning service for their places. 

We will be covering a step to step guide to set up a cleaning business along with its scope, trends and future in the market. We will also go through some key low-cost strategies that can help in making your cleaning business scale and running on a budget. 

What is a Cleaning Business?

Cleaning Business includes a set of cleaning services which renders to offer general cleaning services of the place (floors)  along with items (carpets, curtains, sofa etc). 

The majority of people find it tough, stressful and time-consuming to clean their homes. Once you start with the cleaning business, you are tapping into this huge market. 

Cleaning businesses are segmented based on the end-customers: commercial and residential. 

Difference Between Residential & Commercial Cleaning Business

Now, let us take a look at some basic differences between residential and commercial cleaning businesses.

Here are some key differentiators to keep in mind:

• Typically a residential cleaning business is a low investment to start compared to a commercial cleaning business.
• The commercial cleaning business is more focused on square feet coverage to decide on pricing structure, which is unlikely in the case of the residential cleaning business.  
• The overall competitive spirit is comparatively low in residential cleaning businesses compared to commercial cleaning businesses. 

Scope of Cleaning Business- Today and Tomorrow 

Like every other industry, the cleaning sector has a tremendous transformation. Let us take a look at some of the stats. 

• The cleaning industry is growing at a CAGR of 6.5% (Allied Market Research)
• The global cleaning market is estimated to grow by roughly 46.9 billion U.S. dollars by 2026. (Statista)
• The total home cleaning market size is estimated to be $40.38 billion by 2025. (Franchise Help)
• The commercial cleaning market has been growing with an average of $15B for two years. (Safeguard Maintenance Corporation)

The huge spike in the home cleaning services operations is obviously contributed to COVID-19. So, the best time to transform or start your cleaning business is RIGHT NOW! 

How to get started with a cleaning business?

There’s a lot that goes into starting a cleaning business. In this section, we will discuss in detail, from market research to choosing the right technology for your business requirements. 

Step 1: Know the potential market

Identify and understand the potential market. Next, you need to focus and establish the major four Ps in the market.

Product, Price, Presence and Place- These are your pillars to establish a sustainable business in the market. You can offer residential or commercial cleaning services based on market needs.

How to achieve it?

• Do thorough market research to identify the demand and intensity of cleaning services in your preferred area.
• Complete the SWOT Analysis to make an informed decision about your cleaning business.
• Study your competition and understand how they place their services in the market.

Step 2: Create a Business Plan 

Develop a comprehensive business plan to smoothly anticipate and execute the cleaning business operations. It includes defining your business’ vision and mission and short-term and long-term expansion plans. This step will help create a futuristic roadmap for your business and allow you to identify and approach newer business expansions proactively. 

Ideally, a business plan acts as a framework to lay the foundation of your operations. It includes plan projections and implementation strategies too. 

Step 3: Set up your budget

Like the business plan, you need to set up and fix a budget for your cleaning business. Regardless of your investment, you need to play smartly with figures. It includes creating a budget estimate for purchasing the equipment, hiring the required talent pool, and creating a marketing budget.

License & permits, equipment cost, labor expenses, and office set-up are a few prerequisites for starting up your cleaning business. Make sure you have enough cash input to fulfil these requirements. Integrating your cleaning services with a smart tech partner is also an expense you need to make at the inception stage. 

Once you are ready with a budget, you can leverage the rest of the investment in creating a better brand position in the market.  you can leverage the rest of the investment in creating a better brand position in the market. 

Step 4: Join hands with the right Tech

The right tech partner can help fill the potential blind spots in your cleaning business operations. From setting up an action plan based on the job requirements to anticipating the precise execution, the right cleaning business software can do wonders in your business. 

As you decide to outreach your cleaning services to the targeted market, you need to own software that can customize, optimize and navigate your team to daily tasks. This will be an upgraded advantage of leveraging the maximum potential of your resources at peak times. 

Step 5: Get Started 

Once you have worked on the market research, budget, and choosing the tech, you need to apply for the required work permits, and licenses to roll out your cleaning business in the market.

You also need to devote some time to onboarding a team of professional cleaners who can offer the required services to your potential clients.

Starting a cleaning business is one step to success. However, you need to opt for strategies that can help expand and scale your business for continued success. 

Strategies to Expand your Cleaning Business 

1. Pay attention to details in your processes

Cleaning business is customer-centric. Therefore, it is important to ensure high customer satisfaction. Negative reviews can hamper your business reputation. 

To create delightful customer experiences, ensure that your business follows pre-decided SOPs and pays attention to each detail. This can help in filling the efficiency gaps in your business processes. It also helps in adding operational supremacy and precise management to your cleaning business. 

2. Make customers your first priority

Businesses thrive when they offer a seamless and delightful customer experience. And you can do this by making your cleaning services accessible, approachable and economical to your customers. 

Analyze the types of services your customers choose. And tailor packages that best suit your customers. In addition, factors such as quick services, humble customer care support, less turnaround time play a vital role in making your business a significant and instant hit in front of the customers. 

3. Automate your work cycle process 

Most cleaning businesses struggle with day-to-day operations. Why? Because they are not leveraging technology to automate repetitive and mundane tasks. 

Automate processes like order acceptance, job scheduling, route navigation, job starting and completion rate, etc. With fewer orders coming your way, you might be able to manage the processes manually. 

But when orders increase, use end-to-end automated software to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs. 

4. Track Employee Performance 

The key to any successful business is happy employees. Happy employees translate to happier customers. 

Analyze your employees’ performance and identify who’s performing well (and whos’ not). In addition, set targets and incentives for your employees. This increases their morale and improves their productivity. 

Talk to your employees if they are not performing well. Identify their pain points and provide necessary training. Failing to do so will result in a high attrition rate. And it can create a vicious loop of hiring new resources and then training them. It can be a time-consuming and costly affair that can let any business go down in terms of numbers and performance. 

Adopt these strategies and experience the comfort of expanding your cleaning business operations.

How NetworkON can scale your cleaning business

NetworkON offers the most advanced and feature-loaded solution to manage and optimize your field services. We provide a centralized platform that helps plan, anticipate, and execute daily tasks.  Features such as auto-dispatch, job allocation,  predictive ETA visibility, and route optimization can help in catering a delightful customer experience with your every cleaning service. 

Reasons to choose NetworkON

• Intuitive customer app that collects order requests 
• Powerful analytics dashboard to analyze service time, completion time, customer feedback and more insights.
• Electronic Proof of Delivery to let your field agents validate their service time directly from the customers. 
• End to end automation of the processes to bring up the operational efficiency
• Centralized dashboard to manage and oversee on-ground actions with complete visibility
• Get real-time tracking of job status, and resource location at one place.

And many more. If you are looking for specific business requirements, we are here to customize and offer you the best. For further assistance, feel free to meet us for a coffee and discuss more. 

Wrapping Up 

Venturing out and starting your own cleaning business is a bold and smart step that can help you to begin your entrepreneurial journey. In the above discussion, we have discussed various low-cost strategies to get your cleaning services up and running. Once you have started to deliver your services, you are on your way to establishing your distinguished presence. 

The cleaning business comes with its own set of challenges and complexities, However, partnering with the right and tech-driven software can help in minimizing the risks and focusing more on operational efficiency. 

You can create an effective business plan with lucrative strategies to make it happen. For more information, feel free to connect with our experts here.