How to get clients for your cleaning business (commercial contracts)

Homeowners look for a cleaner nearby and trust what their neighbours say. Residential is a local visibility game.

• Google Business Profile. Set your service area, add real photos, list every service and show prices if you can. This is where “house cleaning near me” searches land.
• Reviews. Ask every happy client the day you finish. Recent reviews decide who gets the call.
• Referrals. Offer a discount or a free clean for every referred client who books.
• Neighbourhood groups. Nextdoor and local Facebook groups, where people ask for recommendations every day.
• Door hangers. Around the homes you already clean, where neighbours see your car.
• Home services marketplaces. Quick first jobs, but you pay per lead and compete on price.

None of these need a contact list. Homeowners are consumers, and cold outreach to consumers runs into stricter calling and email rules, so keep homes on local channels. Commercial is different: the buyer is a named person at a business, with a work email and phone, and that's where going direct wins.

Commercial work also stacks. A property manager who likes your work at one building can add the rest of the portfolio, and the other tenants in a building you already clean are the easiest walkthroughs you'll ever book.

The person who signs is almost never the CEO. It's whoever gets the complaint when the bins aren't emptied.

Tip: Start with one or two building types. Clinics and offices have different checklists, and an email about “disinfecting exam rooms” lands far better than “we clean all kinds of buildings”.

Calling and emailing a list you built yourself is the only channel you fully control. Everything else is a bonus on top.

The example follows Northwind Facility Care, a fictional commercial cleaner in Columbus, Ohio, going after clinics and offices.

Your crews drive to every job, so your market is the area you can reach in about 30 minutes. In Company Location, Northwind adds Columbus, Dublin, Westerville, Hilliard, Grove City and Gahanna.

Northwind runs two segments: Healthcare > Medical Practices and Dentists for clinics, and Business Services plus Financial Services for offices. One saved search per segment means each email can talk about that building's needs.

Under Employee Headcount, pick 11 to 20, 21 to 100 and 101 to 250. Many offices under 10 staff clean themselves or share the building's cleaner, and the largest companies tend to run formal bids.

For clinics: Practice Manager, Office Manager and Practice Administrator. For offices: Office Manager, Operations Manager and Facilities Manager. Under Exclude job titles, add Assistant and Intern. Leave matching on Smart, and switch to Exact only if Smart brings in titles you don't want.

On the exclude side of Services, add Cleaning Services. In the Keywords exclude box, add “janitorial” and “cleaning”. Now the list is buyers, not competitors.

Tip: Facility management companies subcontract cleaning across many sites. Run a separate search on Real Estate > Facilities Services with Facilities Manager and Account Manager titles, keeping the cleaning exclusions on.

Turn on Phone required for your call list and Email required for email. ContactYard includes the mobile number when available in the same credit as the verified email, so a call-first list costs no more than an email list.

Results appear with the total count. Check a page of rows, save one search per segment, then export. Sort the CSV by city so walkthroughs booked on the same day are close together. How to build a prospect list goes deeper on each filter.

Calling is where cleaning companies win contracts. The decision is local, the buyer is reachable, and a voice builds trust faster than an email. Call a day or two after your first email, mid-morning or mid-afternoon, and skip Monday mornings when office managers are buried.

• Dial by hand and honour every “don't call”. Check the calling rules in your country before you start.
• Ask about the current cleaner, not about you. Most prospects already have one. Your opening is the gap between their score and a 10.
• Note the contract end date. “Not now” often means “when the contract is up”. Set a reminder a month before.
• Book the walkthrough on the call. Offer two times, not “whenever suits you”.

Need more numbers? How to get phone numbers for cold calling covers every source, and how to find decision makers in a company helps when you're not sure who signs.

Send the email first, then call. The email makes the call feel expected, and the call makes the email get read.

Follow up once or twice in the same thread. What a cold email is covers the setup that keeps you out of spam folders.

The walkthrough is where commercial contracts are won. Treat it as a sales meeting, not just an estimate.

1. Arrive with questions. What does the current cleaner miss? Who complains, and about what? When does the contract end?
2. Measure and note everything. Square footage, restrooms, kitchens, floor types, and special areas like exam rooms or locker rooms.
3. Quote in writing within a day. A clear scope per visit, per week and per month, with one monthly price.
4. Bring proof. Insurance certificates, references from similar buildings and how you vet your staff.
5. Offer a low-risk start. A 30-day trial, or a one-off deep clean before the contract starts.
6. Follow up. If the answer is “not yet”, ask when the current contract ends and call a month before.

Four contracts at several nights a week each is steady, recurring revenue that renews without new marketing. The data behind all of it is $49.

• Cold-calling homeowners. Residential runs on local search and referrals. Keep outbound for businesses.
• Pitching the CEO of a 200-person company. The office or facilities manager runs cleaning. Call them.
• “We clean everything”. Pick building types and speak to their needs.
• Going outside your radius. A contract 50 minutes away eats its margin in drive time.
• Quoting without a walkthrough. You'll underprice the job or lose trust.
• Giving up at “we already have a cleaner”. Almost everyone does. Ask how happy they are and when the contract ends.
• Calling from an old list. Office managers move jobs. ContactYard refreshes its data every 30 days, so rerun the saved search monthly instead of reusing last quarter's file.

How do I get clients for my cleaning business?

For homes, use a Google Business Profile, reviews, referrals and neighbourhood groups. For commercial contracts, build a list of office, practice, facilities and property managers in your service area in ContactYard, email and call them, and offer a free walkthrough with a written quote.

How do I find clients for a cleaning business fast?

Call businesses directly. Export office and practice managers near you with Phone required turned on, send a short email, then call two days later to book walkthroughs. You can start the same day you build the list.

How do I get customers for a cleaning business with no experience?

Start with small offices and clinics, where one manager decides. Get insured, ask early residential clients for references, and offer a 30-day trial or a one-off deep clean so the first yes is low-risk.

How do I get more cleaning clients from the ones I have?

Ask every happy client for a referral, offer to clean other tenants in the same building, ask property managers about their other buildings, and add services like deep cleans, carpets and windows.

Is commercial cleaning better than residential?

For steady growth, yes. Commercial contracts recur several times a week, cover a whole building, usually come with a written agreement and run in the evenings. Residential is easier to start but grows one home at a time.

Who do I contact to win a commercial cleaning contract?

The person who gets the complaints: the office manager or operations manager in offices, the practice manager in clinics, the facilities manager in larger buildings, and the property manager for multi-tenant buildings.

Start free, build your first segment inside your service area, and book your first walkthroughs this week. For more ways to fill the pipeline, read how to get B2B leads and what sales leads are.