Imagine it’s next year.

Your biggest client, Sarah, just called to say she’s thrilled. Your admin, sales, and crews make her feel like royalty.

The best part?

You don’t clean anymore. Your business is now passive income.

There’s a real path to that sparkling future, and thousands of cleaning business owners have already followed it.

This guide on how to grow a cleaning business is packed with tips and advice from 53 of them.

Hint: It’s all about efficiency.

How to grow a cleaning business: The short answer

The quickest ways to grow your cleaning business are:

1. Be more efficient
2. Break up with “bad” customers
3. Get better referrals
4. Sell smarter
5. Find better employees

Let’s see each of those in detail.

1. Be more efficient

Here’s a terrifying fact:

In a small business, 80% of the “work” doesn’t earn money.

It’s back-end stuff:

• Scheduling
• Rescheduling
• Writing estimates
• Creating invoices
• Chasing late payments
• Driving
• Phone calls
• Emails
• Text messages
• Ordering supplies
• Battling problems

The good news? Trash the waste from your to-do list, and you’ll have more time to delight your customers and grow your cleaning business fast. Start by listing all the non-cleaning tasks you do each week and putting them in efficient systems.

Cleaning business software can do this for you, handling your invoicing and follow-ups and automating 90% of the back-and-forth between you, your customers, and your crews. It can also make professional estimates, follow up automatically on late payments, and even plan your schedule and routes so you can fit more billable work into your day.

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“They have got this right!!!!!”

I’ve been using GorillaDesk from the start of my business in 2017 and their team has made themselves INDISPENSABLE to my business. I now cannot imagine going back and working without it. I Love GorrillaDesk!!!!!

–Jeremy P. 

2. Break up with “bad” customers

This is a hard lesson, but it’s essential if you want to grow your cleaning business.

You have to say goodbye to customers who waste your time.

They:

• Complain constantly
• Haggle over price
• Demand extra
• Ask for unusual services

Those kinds of customers eat your precious time, stealing it from others who are easy to satisfy and pay fair prices for good work.

So — If you have a customer who only wants you to come once a month, but expects a deep cleaning (including the attic and garage), say a polite but firm, “We’re not a fit.” It’s better to have five happy customers who pay $1,000 a month each than 30 grouchy ones who pay $100.

Pro Tip: It may be hard to say goodbye to steady money, but once you set firm boundaries, you’ll find higher-paying, easy-to-please customers to fill the gap.

3. Get better referrals

The biggest cleaning companies have one thing in common:

Word of mouth.

If you do great work (we mean really, really great work) your customers will brag about you to their friends. Soon, your schedule will overflow with the highest-paying clients in the area.

But don’t stop there.

Once customers are raving about you at the water cooler, in restaurants, and on social media — 

Ask for more referrals

To do it:

1. Listen carefully for compliments (and train your staff to do it).
2. When you get one, give the customer a business card.
3. Make sure the card has a review link and QR code on it.
4. On the card, offer a discount on cleanings for each review or referral that turns into a new customer.

4. Sell smarter

Here’s a prediction:

You already know you should advertise on Facebook and Google.

The trouble is, those ads can cost a lot of money and vacuum up a lot of time.

So — here are a few advertising ideas to really grow your cleaning business.

Face-to-face sales

Yes, it can feel daunting, but face-to-face selling works for cleaning companies because so few are doing it. Do an online search and make a spreadsheet of all the property management companies and apartment buildings in your service area. Then print up flyers with price lists and hit the bricks. See tips on how to zap the jitters below.

Cold calls

This is another fear-inspiring cleaning business sales technique that works because it’s scary. Since other cleaning companies in your area most likely aren’t cold calling, your call will be unique. Douse the fear by asking ChatGPT for some starter scripts. Then watch a few cold calling videos on YouTube. Finally, see it as a numbers game. Each time you hear, “No thank you,” add it to your total call count and move on.

Door hanger campaign

How visible is your company? You can grow your cleaning business by getting it in front of more potential customers. Print up some door hangers and hang 10 a day between cleanings. (Vistaprint has some good templates.) Then consider printing up some flyers, business cards, t-shirts for you and your employees, and vehicle magnets or wraps. You might also offer a discount to customers who place lawn signs.

Google Business Profile (GBP)

Your Google Business Profile is your digital shop-front window. If you don’t have one, even your website can pass unnoticed. It only takes a few minutes to create it. Just visit the GBP builder at Google and enter your company name, address, website, hours, and a pic or two. Then start asking your most delighted customers for reviews because more positive reviews will make it rank higher in the search results. (See the referral step above for tips on how to get reviews.)

Smart social media

You may not have time to post six times a week on social media advertising your cleaning business. So grab the low-hanging fruit first:

1. Make a Facebook Business Page.
2. Create a free ad at Edit.org.
3. Post the ad on the Facebook Marketplace. It’ll show up first for anyone who searches “cleaning business” or “house cleaning” on Facebook — even if they don’t search in the marketplace.
4. Every time you or your crew does a cleaning, take a 1-minute phone video and post it on your page.
5. Ask thrilled customers to share your ad or video on Facebook, in exchange for a small discount.

Nextdoor

Register your cleaning business on Nextdoor, Thumbtack, Angi, or all of them. There’s a monthly fee, but several of the cleaning business owners in our survey got dozens of new customers this way.

5. Find better employees

You won’t get good word-of-mouth or run an efficient business if your cleaners are always no-shows.

So —

• Offer competitive rates: Learn what others are paying in your area and exceed it by 10% to 15%. Your costs will go up, but so will the reliability.
• Post on Indeed: Most of the cleaning business owners in our survey found good cleaners on Indeed.
• Screen employees: Pick the top 10% of the resumes you read, do a phone interview, and ask if you can call their last supervisor. If they say no, you have your answer. Checking with past supervisors weeds out duds.
• Do background checks: Background checks are quick, inexpensive, ethical, and they’ll save you from making a costly mistake.
• Consider testing for integrity: Integrity tests uncover bad hires before you make them, reducing turnover by 37% and workers’ comp claims by 57%.

See how GorillaDesk can grow your cleaning business

A cleaning business CRM like GorillaDesk can slash the waste from your scheduling, invoicing, and route mapping with a drag-and-drop calendar and map. GorillaDesk’s full-featured field service software tool can create fast quotes and invoices, automatically follow up on late payments, save time with templated messages, and help you clean up every task on your to-do list.

GorillaDesk is the highest-rated cleaning company software on top review sites like Capterra for a good reason. Our interface is legendary for its ease of use and full-featured power, and our legendary customer service team chats with you in three minutes on average. Call for a free demo today.