51. Operational Insight: What I learned from (almost) delivering a cleaning service to 1000 STR properties
Plus lots of templates to swipe
5 years ago I worked with a property management start up in the STR (Short Term Rental) space.
Their aim was to manage 1000 STR flats in 36 months. At the time, they had 120 flats in 11 cities around the UK.
The business wanted to set up an FM function to deal with their soft service requirements - cleaning, laundry and property maintenance.
My role was to help them find the right service providers to outsource the work to. They needed national coverage, service quality and capacity to scale with the business.
Agenda
What does the client want?
What does the client have?
What’s their budget?
Key Takeaway
What does the client want?
I had some experience in the STR space.
We cleaned a handful of AirBnB properties at the time but nothing at this scale.
Before reaching out to service providers, I needed a clear understanding of the client’s requirements.
Using this information, I created an STR cleaning checklist.
This helped me understand the cleaning, toiletry and consumable requirements at each property.
It also gave me granular information that I could use when I speaking with the service providers.
What does the client have?
After establishing what services the client wanted, I started researching service providers.
STR cleaning is a niche market. Commercial cleaning businesses are not set up for this type of cleaning. Instead, I focused on housekeepers and hotel cleaning companies.
I also found some domestic cleaning franchises that offered STR cleaning.
I also needed service providers (or franchises) with national coverage, which limited my choices.
After researching for a couple of weeks, I found a shortlist of 8 companies to approach.
I called each company to find out who I needed to speak with to handle this sort of enquiry.
Due to the size of the project, I spoke with the sales/business development/commercial director at each of the 8 companies.
Then I sent them this email to confirm what we discussed:
The initial conversations with all 8 companies went well. 7 wanted to find out more.
They wanted further information about the individual properties and asked specific questions.
I collated all the questions into a spreadsheet and sent them over to the client:
If you want to access a copy of the question, go here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_Esm5nD1DkGkCsMtYiObvGCA3JtMYzgbtpUks3POei0/edit?usp=sharing
Make a copy of the Google Sheet so that you can use it in your business.
After collecting information for all 120 flats, I was ready to follow up with the interested parties.
What’s their budget?
The crucial question.
What was the client budgeting for each clean?
Also, is the budget realistic for the services they wanted?
This information gave me a starting point when speaking with the cleaning companies.
I meet with 3 out of the 7 companies and had positive discussions about setting up the service.
Not long after this research, the client decided to go in another direction. They chose to recruit an in-house team to manage all FM requirements.
Key Takeaway
Despite the client’s change of heart, this was a learning experience for me.
Even though I wasn’t very familiar with the type of cleaning (STR), I approached it the same way as I would a commercial, contract or deep clean. That meant finding out:
What the client wants;
What needs cleaning; and
What budget do we have to work with.
Keep that in mind the next time you’re quoting an unfamiliar clean.
Content to check out
In this week’s episode of The Growth Lab podcast, I share 5 sales tips that I’ve learned from guests on The Growth Lab podcast. Listen here.
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Thanks for reading!
Matt @ The Growth Lab
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