The 30-60-90 day plan for a new cleaning account

I ran a janitorial company for thirty years. The pattern never changed. The first week decided how the customer talked about us to their own boss, and the first month decided whether they called us with problems or quietly started collecting quotes from somebody else, which you only find out about when the notice arrives.

Remember that somebody put their name on hiring you. For a property manager, switching cleaning companies means new keys, new alarm codes, a new crew in the building at night, and the fear that if you fail, they look like an idiot in front of the owner. I used to tell them we were going to make them look like a hero. Then we had to do it.

Before day 1

Get the keys, fobs and alarm codes in hand before the first shift and test every one of them, because the first night is the wrong time to learn a fob does not open the loading door. Get the startup kit on site the day before: vacuum, janitor cart, labelled spray bottles, floor cleaner, dusters and a starting stock of supplies. Put the safety data sheets for every product in the building. Make sure the crew arrives in uniform. The customer notices every one of these small things.

Then do the thing almost nobody does. Inspect the building before your crew touches it. Walk every area against the checklist you are going to clean to, photograph the worn carpet and the chipped counters and the stains that were there before you, and score it. Say it comes in at 67.

After the first night you are into the 70s. A week later it is in the 80s, and eventually it holds in the 90s. Now you can sit down with the property manager and say something most cleaning companies never can: you made the right decision choosing us, and I can prove it. The baseline protects you too. When somebody asks in March why the lobby carpet looks tired, you have a dated photo showing it looked tired the week you started.

Days 1 to 30: be visible to people who never see you

Most customers never see a cleaner. We come in after they go home and leave before they arrive, so the only evidence they have of us is the state of the building in the morning. That works when everything is perfect and hurts when it is not. In the first month, add contact. Call the day after the first shift. Call again at the end of the first week, ask what they have noticed, and write down what they say, because those notes are your to-do list for the next three weeks.

Inspect weekly from week 1. Every failed item goes to a named cleaner with a date. I also wanted the owner or the operations manager to walk the building in person at least once in that first month. Customers remember who showed up. Some of our customers saw someone from our office maybe four times a year once the account settled, and those four visits carried more weight than anything we ever sent them by email.

Days 31 to 60: keep your best cleaner where they are

Month two is when an account starts to slip, and the reason is almost always internal. The new account is running, the next new account needs covering, and the strongest cleaner gets moved. Do not do it. Keep that cleaner on this building until day 90. If a crew change cannot be avoided, tell the customer before it happens, and have the supervisor walk the new cleaner through the building in person, area by area, with the scope in hand and the last few inspection reports open on a phone.

Keep inspecting weekly and compare every score to the baseline. Measure how long failed items take to fix and how long they take to confirm, as two separate numbers. I wrote about why that gap matters in how to keep cleaning clients past the 90-day drop. At the end of month two, send the customer a short report showing how many visits you made and what was found and fixed.

Days 61 to 90: the review meeting

Book the 90-day review before month three starts, so it is on the calendar before anybody gets busy. Bring the baseline score and the current score side by side, with the fixes in between. Bring the scope too. Some of the frequencies you agreed on the walkthrough will be wrong for how the building is used, and this is the meeting to correct them in writing.

Our goal was to be at 90 percent or higher at all times, and by the review I wanted the numbers to show it. When they did, the meeting was short. The customer had the evidence they needed to defend their decision to their own boss, and we had the start of the record we would bring to the renewal a year later.

The worksheet below is the whole plan on one page. Print it for each new account and keep it with the scope. If you are writing the scope now, the scope of work template is built to be filled in on the walkthrough, and the commercial cleaning inspection checklist is a reasonable standard to inspect against from week 1.