How to get commercial cleaning contracts (without underbidding)

Understand what you're selling now

In residential you sell trust to a homeowner who decides in an afternoon. In commercial you sell risk reduction to a facilities manager, office manager, or property manager whose main concern is never having to think about the cleaning again.

Nobody in that chain gets promoted for finding a cheaper cleaner. They get in trouble when the office is dirty on a Monday. Sell reliability, coverage, and responsiveness — not price.

Pick a niche instead of chasing every building

The companies that win consistently specialise. Specialising gives you reference sites in the same category, which is the single most persuasive thing you can bring to a bid.

• •Small professional offices — easiest entry, 2,000–10,000 sq ft
• •Medical and dental — higher rates, real compliance requirements
• •Gyms and studios — high frequency, high wear
• •Childcare and schools — background checks required, very sticky once won
• •Property management common areas — one relationship, many buildings
• •Post-construction — lucrative, lumpy, and equipment-heavy

Where commercial contracts actually come from

Almost none come from advertising. In rough order of return: direct outreach to local property and facilities managers; referrals from adjacent trades (HVAC, landscaping, security, handyman services); local business associations and BOMA-style chapters; and finally formal RFPs and bid boards, which are competitive and price-driven.

The unglamorous truth is that walking into small offices in a single business park and asking who handles the cleaning still outperforms most digital tactics at this size.

Pricing: production rates, not guesses

Commercial cleaning is priced from production rates — how many square feet one cleaner covers per hour for a given building type. Standard office space typically runs 2,500–4,000 sq ft per hour; medical and heavily-trafficked space is far slower.

Work it in this order: square footage ÷ production rate = hours. Hours × fully-loaded labour cost = labour. Add supplies, equipment amortisation, insurance, and travel. Then add 20–35% margin.

• •Small office, monthly: roughly $0.08–$0.20 per sq ft per clean
• •Medical: higher, driven by compliance and disinfection requirements
• •Always walk the building before quoting — floor type and restroom count change everything
• •Quote per month, not per visit — it reads as a service, not a transaction

Write a bid that gets read

Most bids are a price and a paragraph, and they lose. A bid that wins is three pages: a scope matrix showing exactly what's done daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly; your insurance certificates and any background-check policy; and two reference sites in the same building category with contact details.

Include your response time for issues in writing. Facilities managers care more about that than about your price per square foot.

Why most bidders never hear back

It usually isn't the price. A property manager collects three bids, and then one of two things happens: the cleaner who followed up in 48 hours gets the contract, or the manager calls with a question about scope and nobody picks up.

Commercial buyers assume that how you handle their inquiry is exactly how you'll handle their building. A missed call during the bid stage isn't a missed call — it's a live demonstration that you'll be hard to reach once you're under contract.

Keeping the contract once you've won it

Commercial churn is driven by small things going unreported and unfixed. Do a documented monthly walkthrough with photos, keep one named point of contact, and respond to every complaint the same day even when the fix takes a week.

Contracts renewed on autopilot are worth more than new contracts won on price, because they cost nothing to keep.