Up to one-half of my in-person interviewees never even showed up. That's why I switched to Zoom or phone for my 2nd interview. One thing that did improve show up rates was that during my initial call/interview, I have them repeat back to me 3 or more times what the next steps are.

Different variations like..."What is our next step again?", "Can you read back your Zoom invite? I want to make sure I sent the right one.", "I didn't catch that, can you repeat what you just said about our next meeting?", or similar tactics.

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing. When life hands you lemons.... If/when any results from it happen, keep us posted. If they will email once, they'll email again. It's a practical monopoly on cleaning!

@Tracey Steger How did that walkthrough go?

Ditto. Gusto offered that, as did Paychex and Quickbooks. We also had a broker who would rate shop for us. I found their prices were cheaper than what I could get directly.

Whenever we bid, we never allow our prospects to provide any cleaning supplies or equipment. I make a profit every time I bring in a mop, microfiber, or whatever. And if they provide that, then that's a potential loss in revenue. I also train our employees on specific equipment and I don't want to have to worry about the client providing inferior product. And our SDS binder is honed in on specific supplies. I don't want to have to dig around online for a SDS if there were ever an emergency. So when we bid, I genuinely guess. From my experience, for every 20 hours per week we work, I'm spending $800-1000/yr in supplies and equipment. If we work 40, I'm at $1200-1500/yr (no need to buy two vacuums if we double time). At a minimum for any location, I'm at least at $500/yr. I'll adjust these based on the SOW. If they need consumables (e.g. TP), then that becomes a different calculation. If I am wrong in our supply costs, I don't sweat it. I added 50% more to this cost to cover these items via my gross profit (which comes to be 33% of the contract). If you have a contract, and it's set that they are to provide supplies, I'd be bullish in your requests. Don't settle for cheaper products because it will impact the quality of your cleaning. I avoid deep cleans. I know it's a good upsell, but for various reasons I prefer not to offer that. Depends on the client. If they're expecting baseboards, and you already provided a price expecting to already clean those baseboards, I personally would be honest with them and say there was no additional charge. Our contracts exclude exterior window cleaning except for glass entrance doors. In that case I would offer an upsell. On wall spot cleaning, I'm adding that in but with the caveat that we only devote X time in wall spot cleaning, like 10-15 minutes. Depends on total hours in there.