How to get commercial cleaning contracts

By Travis Heurtelou · 9 min read · Updated September 12, 2026

What a contract is, and where it's actually won

A commercial cleaning contract is a recurring account: a building cleaned on a schedule, billed monthly, usually on a twelve-month term with a thirty to sixty day cancellation clause. It is priced per square foot per month and scales with frequency. A 5,000 square foot office cleaned three nights a week bills somewhere around $500 to $800 a month in most US markets. A 20,000 square foot building cleaned nightly, $2,500 to $4,000. Floor stripping, carpet extraction, windows and post-construction bill on top, usually at better margin.

The contract is won in the walkthrough. A manager who has agreed to walk the building with you has already decided their current cleaner is a problem. Your job in the walkthrough is to notice what the current crew is missing, quote it with a method they can follow, and get the paper out the same week. Every channel below is a way to get more walkthroughs. None of them signs the account for you.

Who signs it

The title changes with the building. At a single-tenant office it's the office manager or operations manager, or the owner at a smaller firm. At a multi-tenant building it's the property manager, and one property manager often runs a portfolio. At a medical or dental practice it's the practice manager. At a private school it's the business manager; public districts run a formal bid. At a warehouse it's the plant or operations manager. At a dealership it's the general manager. Aim your outreach at the person who signs, not the front desk, and expect the front desk to answer anyway. Working that reply up to the manager is part of the job.

1. Referrals

The cheapest account you will ever win and the one that closes best. Nobody has to be convinced you're real. The problem is scheduling: referrals come when they come, which is never the month you lose an account. Two things make them less random. Ask at the right time, which is after the third or fourth month of clean service, not at signing. And ask a specific question: not "know anyone who needs a cleaner" but "do you know another property manager who's fed up with theirs". A one-time credit on the next invoice for a referral that signs is normal and works.

2. Your Google Business Profile and reviews

When a manager is searching for a commercial cleaner this week, they search the city and the phrase. A complete profile with the right category, a defined service area and a steady flow of reviews is what puts you on that page. Ask every account for a review after a good month, from a link they can tap on a phone. Respond to every review. This channel is slow to build and cheap to keep, and it caps out: once you're on the first page for your city, more reviews don't get you more buildings. That's when the outbound channels below matter.

3. Cold email to the managers in your area

The channel that reaches the manager who isn't searching this week but has been meaning to switch for three months. A list of the buildings in your service area, the manager at each one, and a short email in your name about their building. The mechanics matter more than the words: separate sending domains so your own email is never at risk, two weeks of warmup before anything sends, verified addresses, and every reply screened the day it lands. Get any of those wrong and the campaign is in spam before it starts.

That's the whole email. A facility manager reads it on a phone between vendor visits. The one who is happy with their cleaner deletes it. The one who isn't writes back, and that reply is a walkthrough waiting to be scheduled. There's a longer guide to this channel below.

4. Cold calling

Facility managers answer their phones during business hours, which is more than most buyers do. The script that works is short: ask for the person in charge of janitorial, say you clean commercial buildings in the area, ask if they'd be open to a quote. Anything longer loses the call. Tuesday to Thursday, late morning to mid-afternoon, and expect the first call of the day to hit voicemail. Cold calling is faster than email to a first conversation and slower to scale, because every dial is a person's time. It also works in the same campaign as email: a manager who has seen your name in their inbox picks up differently.

5. In person

In a dense office park or a downtown core, walking in works. Bring a one-page leave-behind with a photo, your accounts, and a phone number. Block a morning, cover a couple of dozen buildings, and expect to reach a decision-maker in a small share of them. It doesn't work at gated industrial parks, at Class A towers where everything routes through procurement, or anywhere the buildings are spread out. Once outbound is producing walkthroughs on its own, your time is worth more on the walkthroughs than on the doors.

6. Partnerships with the vendors who already know your buyer

The manager who buys cleaning also buys HVAC service, pest control, landscaping, security and plumbing, and none of those vendors compete with you. Commercial real estate brokers see new tenants before anyone. Property management firms are the biggest lever: one relationship can be thirty buildings. A quarterly coffee, a written tracking sheet, and a referral fee on signed accounts (a month of cleaning revenue is the common number) turns five or ten of these into a steady trickle of warm introductions. Skip janitorial supply vendors; they're too close to your trade and the conflicts get messy.

7. Bids and RFPs

Public districts, hospitals, government buildings and some large private facilities run formal bids. The upside is size: a district contract can be five figures a month. The downside is that you're pricing against everyone who read the same posting, the incumbent often wrote the spec, and pre-qualification takes months. Worth doing once you have the crew and the insurance to carry a large account. Not a channel for your first ten.

The order, when you're small

1. Fix the Google profile this week. It costs nothing and it's where a searching manager checks you exist.
2. Ask every current account for a review and, after month three, a referral.
3. Pick one outbound channel and run it for a full quarter. Cold email if you want reach and can answer a reply the same day. Calling if you'd rather talk and have the hours.
4. Add partnerships once you have accounts to point to.
5. Add bids once you have the crew for a large building.

The mistake that costs the most

Slow follow-up. A manager who wrote back on Tuesday and hears nothing until Friday has moved on, and a lead that goes cold on your side is the one failure no channel can protect you from. Whoever is going to answer replies needs to be able to do it the same day, and to get a walkthrough on the calendar within the week. If nobody on your team can do that right now, fix that before you spend a dollar on any channel above.

What we do, if you'd rather not build it

We run cold email to the facility, office and property managers in your service area, in your company's name, and screen every reply. You get a meeting-ready lead: a manager who fits the profile you wrote down and replied wanting a quote or a walkthrough, with the whole thread. One flat monthly fee with every lead included, scoped on the call in about four minutes. Month to month, no minimum term. Cold email only; we don't call and we don't do LinkedIn.

Questions

Related guides

• Commercial cleaning leads: the five ways to get them, and what each one costs
• Cold email for commercial cleaning companies: who to email, what to say, what a lead is
• Who signs the commercial cleaning contract? Facility managers, office managers and property managers, by building