Cleaning Business Brochure Design and Printing

Check out our new Tri Fold Brochure Design and Printing Services at http://brochures.cleanoutlook.com/

Offer Gift Certificates for your cleaning services. Printing for as little as 75 cents each. More info at http://giftcertificates.cleanoutlook.com/

Cleaning Service Recognized by Business Peers

Cleaning Service Recognized by Business Peers
StartupNation made its selection from among thousands of home-based entrepreneurs who entered the competition.

StartupNation, a leading business advice and social networking site for entrepreneurs (http://www.startupnation.com) today named L & K Office Cleaning Services, (http://www.lk-clean.com/) a Top Ten “Highest Vote-Getters” in the first annual StartupNation Home-Based 100 ranking of the nation’s top home-based businesses. Organized into 10 categories such as Most Innovative, Boomers Back in Business and Best Financial Performers, the Home-Based 100 celebrates the innovative, nimble and resourceful home-based entrepreneurs who have gone largely unrecognized until now. The full results of the Home-Based 100 ranking are available on StartupNation’s Web site at http://www.startupnation.com/hb100.
“Although large companies often grab the headlines, home-based businesses today are thriving,” said Rich Sloan, entrepreneurial author, radio host and co-founder of StartupNation. “Millions of people are following their passions through entrepreneurship by pursuing innovative, sound business ideas.”
The StartupNation Home-Based 100, composed of ten Top Ten lists, presents a unique look at the nation’s top home-based businesses. Category winners span a wide range of revenue levels, sectors, ages and other characteristics.

Milwaukee, WI based L & K Cleaning, won in two categories, top vote achiever and grungiest. (http://www.startupnation.com/home-based-100/85/8924/winner.htm#WinnerTop and http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Extra/TopTenVoteGetters.aspx )
L & K Office Cleaning a family owned and operated janitorial service for commercial, industrial and retail properties was started in 1999 by Laura and Ken Galo. They offer green cleaning services to businesses in the Milwaukee and Waukesha areas. Ken along with his partners, Dave Crichton and Christy Caley operate CleanPeers and Global Cleaners Association to benefit the janitorial and residential cleaning industry by provide resources and networking opportunities.

About StartupNation
Founded by Rich and Jeff Sloan, StartupNation (http://www.startupnation.com) provides entrepreneurial advice via a nationally syndicated radio program and through online content for entrepreneurs who want to start a business. The Sloan brothers are successful inventors, experienced entrepreneurs and authors of StartupNation: Open for Business (Doubleday). They appear frequently as small business experts on national television and in online and print media. More information is available at http://www.startupnation.com.

More articles and information for cleaning contractors

Chad Burns of C&S Cleaning in Wichita, KS offers articles of interest to cleaning contractors on his blog, The Clean Slate at: http://thecleaningslate.blogspot.com/ where he not only posts articles but also provides an area for cleaning business owners and professionals to reply or ask cleaning related questions.

Some of Chad's recent articles include Be Gentle--an article advising cleaners to begin with the least aggressive method and progress with stronger agents and processes as needed. Burns also reminds pro's to utlilize the experience and assistance of their janitorial supplier.

Hiring and Staffing for cleaning business owners-'You can never have too much training' Expanding on your recruiting, hiring and management skills enables cleaning contractors to grow their businesses.

Cleaning Industry Editorials

There should have been a press release for this ;)

Ken Galo announced late last week that he will begin posting Cleaning Industry and cleaning related editorials on his blog at http://wwwcleanpeers.blogspot.com/

To open his new editorial site Ken writes about GS-42 the environmental leadership standard for certification of green cleaning services. In his article Galo explores the cost and benefits of this newly established certification. In addition a poll is posted where you can give your opinions about the cost of this program. Bet you wouldn't have guessed it starts at $7000. I'm NOT joking...check out his article...

A big thanks and a site worth mentioning

I wanted to post a big thanks to The Cleaning Entrepreneur, James Nokes. Chances are if you are reading my blog you've been doing a lot of searches about starting a cleaning business and have come across his site. But just in case you can find him and his wealth of information at: http://www.build-a-business.com/

The Cleaning Entrepeneur was the first cleaning business related site I found when I began my quest for information almost 4 years ago. So you can imagine my delight when my business was featured in their latest newsletter. You can read it here in Edition 134 http://www.build-a-business.com/newsletter_134_A.htm

When you have a chance look thru the rest of the website. There are tons of cleaning business related articles not only from Mr. Nokes but now also from the Janitorial Store, there are free reports, free ebooks, resources and there is even a start up cost comparission for commercial and residential cleaning. If you are looking to see an example of a cleaning contract this is the site to visit.

Thanks again James! It was an honor to be included in your newsletter.

Janitorial Communication Books- A New Approach

Communication Books left at a reception desk or worse yet in the janitorial closet are ineffective tools for the cleaning business with employees.

Although the thought behind them is with good intentions

• Customers write down concerns or special requests for the cleaners
• Cleaners in an ideal scenerio complete the task and leave a note in response to the client contact
• The cleaning business owner or supervisor reads this documented communication during their next visit to the building

Unless you are monitoring the communication book at all times you are missing out on important communication that you should have NOW not next time you inspect the account.

By using an online version of a Cleaning Communication Book you are able to monitor communication between your employees and your customer. In addition to monitoring resolution of conerns these portal type systems allow you a secure area for employee and client imformation, specifications and printables.

www.cleanoutlook.com offers Cleaning Portals for commercial cleaning services that are practically priced and easy to maintain. Visit us at www.cleaningportals.com to learn more about these innovative solutions to 'Communication Book Break down'

Why You Should Have An Original Logo For Your Cleaning Business

Why you should purchase an original licensed logo for your cleaning business

A logo is the first step in developing a corporate identity. By using stock images, clipart or free logos you are likely to end up with a logo identical to another companies or possibly a mascot image that is over used across several industries.
A vast amount of our traffic comes from people surfing to find free logos for cleaning services. While we will provide these as a free service we can not endorse the use of free or stock logos as a corporate identity.
Please take a moment to look thru the options and features that come with our purchased logo packages. These include various file sizes and versions and best yet we never create two alike. Cleaning service logo packages >>

Why are Clean Outlook's regular logo packages so expensive when I can get a logo on graphics or elance sites for $50?

Please understand our logo packages are not just a logo image. We use your original logo image and give it to you in over 10 formats and include black and white copies for newsprint. In addition we create templates for letterhead and envelopes that use your image in the proper format for printing. From your logo we also create over 10 sizes in gif format for use on your website and we create a minimum of 3 website banners from your logo.
Why do we do that?
The first few logos we sold we, as most graphic artists and e-lancers do, only provided the original image of the logo. As time went by we noticed our customers saving or printing their logos in the improper format or creating web graphics from them that ended up as distorted versions of the original.
You own a cleaning business. Imagine if you will stripping and waxing a vct then burnishing it until you could see your reflection only to come back a week later and find out that your client had cleaned up a spill with bowl acid! Of course you would see the etches in your once show room perfect floor and wish the client had consulted you before trying to take care of the problem themselves.
We're no different...Our finished product is important to us yet we realized that our customers need more variety for the ways in which they use their logos. They don't always have time to contact us and they don't always have the graphics tools that we own and use daily. Purchasing graphics software or learning a program to edit your logo is nothing more than downtime and lost money for you.
By providing images for every possible use for your logo we eliminate the need for you to make edits and revisions yourself. The time you save from this far exceeds the money you would save using a site that provides you with one version of your logo.

Remember our business was developed to take care of YOU!

This article and others may be read on our website

Cleaning Business Brochures

Cleaning Business Brochures

With spring over and cleaning business owners already looking toward getting their Fall Marketing in full swing we have been getting numberous inquiries about using and creating brochures for cleaning and janitorial marketing.

Using color brochures when you are out cold calling, as inserts in proposals or as mailings are a great way to showcase your business and give quick information about the services you provide.

Putting together information for your brochure is as simple as writing an outline of the services that you provide. Rhonda Pressgrove founder of HelpMeRhonda Cleaning Services in greater Memphis and Residential Cleaning Bidding Peer Mentor at the Global Cleaning Association has often hired students for the final product after providing layout and content.

Printing brochures is best left to the pro's though unless you have a high quality laser printer.

Several online editors such as Vista Print will allow you to create your brochure online and Microsoft Word is just as effective in putting together a nice brochure as the more expensive MS Publisher.

To assist our community of cleaning business owners we have created a free brochure template that requires only MS Word to edit and print. It's downloadable in zip format at our website http://www.cleanoutlook.com/freebies/marketing.html

The cleaning pictures in this brochure template were provided free by CleanPeers and can easily be replaced with your own.

How To Write A Cleaning Proposal

One of the top searches at my website this past week was 'How to Writing A Cleaning Proposal', 'Writing Cleaning proposals', 'Cleaning Proposals, creating', and the like so we put together a page of information ranging from finding the components to put in a proposal package, what to present the proposal in, what is the bid sheet? and how to present the proposal package to your prospective client. Links thru out this article will take you directly to the information on our home site.

Creating a Cleaning Proposal can seem overwhelming if you have never seen one before. Structurally a proposal package is easy. The time involved to put together the perfect packet to represent your company can be a process that spans over the course of your years of operation as new qualifications, services, certifications and programs are added.

What is the difference between a cleaning bid and a cleaning proposal?

How large or how many pages should my cleaning proposal have?

A basic cleaning proposal would be composed of the following items

Optional Items That Can Be Included In Your Cleaning Proposal Packages

How do I present it? What do I put it in?



Saving yourself time with commercial cleaning proposals!







Starting off with a great template that can be edited and revised on the fly will save you loads of time. Cleanpeers.com features a great Commercial Cleaning Template in Microsoft Word Format. Priced at only $40 this complete proposal pack with 3 sets of cleaning spec's, green cleaning, communication program documentation, if a time saver that no building service contractor should pass up. After customizing it to your company many pages could be pre printed and ready to go increasing your delivery time for professional looking cleaning bids.