Proposals: What's Included and Why You Should Do One

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 minefield in your business journey. Hiring the right coach is a critical piece of success. Don't go at it alone. Click the link to MyCleanPivot and schedule your free one-on-one coaching session. 

Transcript

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What do cleaning proposals look like? What is a proposal? And why should you even do one? Hey, I'm Mark Lineberry with beyond the mop, and today I'm going to talk about proposals about how we put them together, and why you should do one. And even how a proposal can lead to greater profits. Well, first, like with any episode, I include a pro tip or resource, something that really helps your business out in one big way or another. And what I'm going to talk down today's resource is probably my favorite of all these pro tips I'm going to do in these eight planned episodes. This one is my favorite. Well, I'm going to talk about this. Well, let me ask you this first. Have you ever been stymied with all the cleaning possibilities out there? Have you ever received a lead only to visit and realize is too small to be a value for your cleaning company? Hey, guilty had been there done that, when it'd be neat to have a resource that you can see an overhead and street view without even leaving your home or office. Guys look no further than Google Earth and Google Maps, Google Earth and Google Maps brought in hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds actually 1000s of prospects into our cleaning company how was mentioned in episode one, I talked about creating that avatar or that ideal client, I don't know about you. But when I'm driving to my service area, I see hundreds of potential clients, it's impossible to get to a mall. So I have to niche down, I'll use Google Maps to search schools near me, churches near me. And that will show on map of all the prospects within that map that we can serve, complete with contact information addresses, phone, numbers, URLs, and so much more. But then I'll use Google Earth to zoom in on the building, I can now see how many floors that building has, whether or not there are other buildings on the property, and even get measurements for those buildings. You can also pull up a history of that property and see how old it is or how new it is. Finally, you could place place markers on Google Earth, zoom out, spin the globe a little bit and actually see all the cool clients that you could potentially reach out to, and 50,000 foot view of everything. It's really cool because he can label these little pins. And it's like, oh, wow, I got business here. And here and here. And here. And here. Oh, and there's like 1000. Others I'd like to go after to add so much fun with that, as you could tell. Finally, it gives you a chance to discover properties you've never noticed before. It's such a great free resource. Guys, go check them out. It's so cool. I think it's underutilized. Definitely check out Google. It's all free, man. It doesn't cost you a penny. Now, with all these prospects I mentioned through Google Earth and Google Maps, well, he got to start doing proposals, right. On today's episode, I'm going to talk about those proposals. Let's back up before we do the proposals, what do we do, right, we prospect to our prospects, so we call email as referrals network, so on and so forth. If you have enough touchpoints they're gonna reach out to you or through conversation, we call them next. They're going to tell you say, hey, I want a walkthrough. I'd like you guys to come out and give us a price. Well, hey, sign me up. Right? I love doing walkthroughs. They're great. They're fun. So I'll go out there. I'll do a walkthrough. I'll take plenty of notes and ask a ton of questions. I'll ask them stuff like, how did you find us? What do you like best about your cleaning service right now? What do you like least about your cleaning service right now? If you could change one thing tomorrow? What would that one thing be? I asked them plenty of questions. I take tons of notes, I figure out what their hot points are. And if they repeat words more than twice, I'll repeat that back to them say, hey, it sounds like security is really important to you. Tell me more about that? Or hey, it tells you tell me that paying people on time is really important to you. Tell me about that. So maybe there's a story there in UK extract that from it's really important that you do that. And as you do that, it increases the value of your service to perceive value. I talked about that last episode, right, increase your perceived value, increase your perceived value, they're more likely to buy and they're more likely to buy at a higher price. There's a study done and I'll know the source of it. So don't ask me but that study was done with a restaurant staff where they tracked waiters and they had some waiters who'd like memorize the order not writing anything down and and place it they found that those who did that got less tips than those who actually wrote it down? Yeah, those who wrote it down, can easily memorize it, and then put in the order, and try to impress the folks without even writing anything down. Now the customer wants them to write it down. Also, they included in the study, for those who repeated the order back to the customer, even though they're very clear on what the customer wanted, if they repeat it back to the customer, they got more tips than those who did it. So as you do your walkthrough, you ask questions, you take notes, what you want to do towards the end, is give a 32nd elevator pitch right talk about you, it's your time now you get 30 seconds congrats. And then dive in. Repeat everything that they told you during that walkthrough, not word for word or anything like that, make it succinct two to five minutes max, but cover everything that they talked about, even cover their hot points, and stress that back to them. So if they mentioned it again, if they mentioned, hey, cleaning in the corners is really important, or dusting or whatever like that. And they said that four times, then say, hey, it sounds like dusting is really important to him. They go Yeah. So they're always going to increase your value in their head, and willing to pay a higher 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 your proposals. There are so many different ways, and I'm not going to judge Okay, well, I will judge a little bit. But there's some folks who go out there and just send a text message back to the client, potential client, right? Or make a phone call and say, Hey, our prices this, or maybe just a simple email, which is fine. Or you can be all elaborate and fancy shmancy. And then create like a web based proposal with heat map on it, see, see where they're clicking, and then moving the mouse and then see, you know, click on videos, see this and this resource and that and so forth. Yeah, you could go all out with this. So there's different ways you could do proposals, I'm going to tell you about our method, I'm going to describe what we include in our proposals. It doesn't mean it's perfect doesn't mean it's right. But it's right for us if that makes sense. So we view proposals as a sales tool, it's meant to continue to sell to the prospect long after you've completed your walkthrough. Backing up to the walkthrough. I never ever, ever, never, ever, ever, ever, never, ever give a price and a walkthrough. Never I don't care how bad they ask if they get on your knees. Like Sorry, Charlie, nope, I'm not gonna give you a price. I want use the walkthroughs time to sell to them to get information from them. Park company, and gives me a chance to think this through and provide my best price. I don't want to be pressured right there in front of them to provide a price. So we track all of our Frequently Asked Questions company wide. So these are questions coming from the client to us. And these are answers coming from our questions back to the client and form of answer form, right. And we track all of that information. We know what their hot points are company wide. We know what our average client asked for. We know their hot months. So that way, when we're doing the proposal, we know what to include before they ask the question. Because there's a pattern, there's a history there, we know it, we see it. And within that we make sure those questions are answered within our proposal. And here's what's in our proposal. First off, we have a cover page, our cover page is simply this their name, their address, contract period. And we add in there a version number, because sometimes he might have multiple copies of the same contract with, you know, through negotiation, whatever. And then we'll have an expiration date. We also include our name, our contact information, and our logo, so composes back and forth their logo to ours, right. And then we add in a cover letter, this cover letter is very simple. All we do is include their name, we put in paragraph, a very short paragraph about us the services we provide, how long we've been around and then we include three to four unique selling propositions or USPS. That is meant to separate us from the competition what makes us or let me back up what makes you different from your competitors. And don't say low price. Everyone says that, hey, we're licensed, bonded insured. No, that's not USP, everyone's licensed, bonded insured, figure out what makes you different in your marketplace, and include that. Next section we have, we have a brochure that we converted from brochure format, you know the trifold We converted that into kind of a letter format. So a two page letter format with low Bay graphics in there, talking about our company, and where we've come from, and where we're going to, and so forth. So that's meant to sell to them as they go through this proposal. Another section we have, well, if the proposals over 20 pages, we have a table of contents, we want to make it easy for them. If they need to flip around, we don't want them to be frustrated because they can't find the pricing on page 18. Another section we have is services offered. So we talked about all the different services, basically, we have a little graphic that describes our services, and then our mission statement. That's very important to us. So we include that. And then we have a information page in this information page that basically has our contact information, all of our certifications, all of our affiliations, like I SSA, BSC AI and so forth. And then we add in an executive summary about our company. The next section we have is about three to six pages, on the solutions for our company. So this includes various things. And we add and subtract based on what we see in the walkthrough. Or based on the client type, the niche. So we'll include staffing will include employee selection process, background checks, uniforms, green cleaning program, insurances supplies will include our training program, quality control program, will add in our organization chart, employee benefits, safety program, and even a pandemic response because they want to know, hey, are you getting cleaned the next day, if all of your sick or all of your employees get sick with COVID, on Monday, are you gonna be there Tuesday to continue cleaning, because they need it right. And then so we'll add in, also reference page. So we'll have a page filled with recognizable logos of locations we clean. So they'll see a logo, and they'll instantly know what company that is. So these are major brands that we cleaned for. And then we add in their reference pages. So we'll add in three or two to four references. And we'll add in the contacts name, their email address, their phone number, their mailing address, obviously, the client name, and then we'll add in picture of the client. And we'll add in kind of a breakdown of what we do for them, or the client size, you know, hey, this school has 1000 students or whatever, client size, square footage, acreage, whatever, and then we'll put in there, this is what we do for him. This is how we solve their problems and so forth. Sometimes I'll add a white paper in their white paper esque type document where we're going in profiling just one single client, and the success that they got by using our services, and will feature them or talk about them or even include a video, we've done that in the past on our HTML versions. And then what else we add in there, cleaning specifications. So the scope of work, right, so we break it down easily by location. And within each location, the individual tasks like, you know, remove 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 there exactly what day and how frequent we do it. And then we recently start adding we got this from a RFP from the National botanical garden in DC. When we were asked to bid on that project, they add in what tools and materials are used to accomplish that task. I thought that was really cool. So we just started converting that over to our new proposals. We'll add in a pricing summary. So we'll, we'll dive in deep to the numbers, 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 to offer a general idea of how much our prices and how that breaks down, 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 our price. This is what's going on within the contract, and it's usually about three to four pages for us. We put all of this information together. And within this information, we do it on Microsoft Word. It's just one big template for us. And we have different templates for schools and churches and bang in office buildings, and so on and so forth, and we change all the information now, but 80% of it's similar. The other 20% is customizable. So we're going in there and editing about 15 20%, give or take, after we put all together, then we'll convert it into a PDF. And we just use Adobe for that, change it to a PDF, and make sure it's under 10 megabytes, because we do get some rich graphics in there. And then we'll email it off along with a cover email back to our potential client with that information. So as I go through this, maybe your head spinning is like Mark, man, that's just a ton of information, I just want to go back and send an email or, you know, send a text message, hey, go for it. Go for it. There's nothing wrong with that. As long as you're winning clients. There's a few things he can use to really help you with this. The common question I see on these Facebook groups is, well, how do you get the information? How do you get the text? How do you get the ideas for it? Well, I just ran through the ideas. But there's some other resources that you could pull from one of those is route. Shout out to Ricky Regalado, right, putting all that together his team and everything. So they got the software, you could put in the numbers and actually spit out a proposal for you, I believe. Another one is CleanGuru. Another one is cleanly run. Another one is clean proposals. Another example is house call Pro or even I think service Titan does this as well. And lastly, there are some web based ones like responsive bid. Panda doc and proposal five. The last two I'm gonna talk about right now. There's examples and templates you could actually find. If you do sign up the panda doc and proposal phi. They actually have janitorial contracts. So I shouldn't say contracts proposals that you could download as a PDF, and save for yourself if you wanted to, and use that information for your future contracts. You don't have to use their software. But you could actually get free templates right now, if you just sign up to those websites. It doesn't cost any money. There's a free trial, you can sign up free trial, download the information and use use it to your heart's delight. Another example to find contract proposals is simply Google. Just Google around look around for something like janitorial proposal where janitorial bid or what have you just start Googling all these terms or janitorial proposal PDF as an example. I remember doing this recently. And I remember seeing dozens and dozens of proposals, I mean, complete with contracts and everything. I'm surprised more people don't do this. But law, these government agencies and so forth are these departments still, they'll actually put all this together. And so you'll see 678 proposals all together in one ginormous PDF that you could pull from as a resource. So just look around on that. Another one is Pinterest. I haven't seen this myself. But I've seen a couple people posting on Facebook, he could actually go into Pinterest and 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 where you'll see organizations, schools, churches, public government, whatever, they'll send up RFPs. And they'll tell you within the RFP RFP exactly what they want done. Within the proposal, I just responded to one last month, and they gave me a list of about 12 things got to be in this proposal if you want to win this contract. So they'll tell you exactly what they want. And they'll spell it out. I mean, with detail too. It's not like, hey, we want a safety program. Now they'll tell you, Hey, this is what we want to see within your safety program, if that makes sense. Another source is, again, Panda doc proposal phi, that same example. And then there's different software like I previously mentioned in the last 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. But you could go in probably see it. Who knows. So I hope all this information. I hope I didn't rifle it through too quick. I kind of rushed this out. But hope this made sense to you. I hope it did. So. If this does make sense, definitely use it run with it. Now you get some free tips and free guides. And this, this podcast was brought to you by my clean pivot. Again, I do coaching, I help law folks in the commercial cleaning space, grow their business, and I'll work with you on bi weekly format to help facilitate that. Because let's face it, we can't do this alone, can we? It's just impossible. It's just too much of everything. going on out there and your heads jumbled up because mine was too at that point. And without Coach or without someone guiding you along the way it's easy to get lost so I'm there to help you out if you ever need anything you could go to Mike clean pivot.com Or even reach out directly at market Mike clean pivot.com And for more information about the show definitely check out the resources mentioned. Also go to beyond the mop show.com If you felt that this show was worth a five star review or share a review or rating or anything like that through your podcast platform like Apple podcast, Spotify or wherever you listen to definitely goes do that. I appreciate it. So I hope this was a value to and have a great and fantastic and blessed day. Go conquer