r/cleaningbusiness

When should I start looking to hire a sales person? How have you gone about hiring one and how has it benefited your business?

I have a small cleaning business that I own and operate. A new client recently hired me for monthly cleanings. As usual, I gave a cleaning checklist with my quote. She emailed me a week after with pictures of her grout saying she didn’t clarify expectations but wanted it to be deep cleaned with embedded dirt removed. She also wants the caulk around toilets cleaned and all the grout in her house deep cleaned.

Her email was very nice but that definitely wasn’t in the checklist, and I do checklists to avoid this kind of misunderstanding. I typically tell clients that if they have special areas they’d like me to focus on, to let me know and I can give extra TLC to them, but this feels unreasonable. Should I

1. refer to checklist and say this is out of the scope and will take hours longer?

2. offer to clean grout a little each cleaning as part of regular cleans?

3. refer her to someone who does grout to get it deep cleaned and then maintain it from there?

What do you to in this situation? I've had two people in a row ask about deep cleaning only their kitchen, or only a single bathroom and nothing else in the home.

A lot of leads we get don’t say yes or no right away. They ask for an estimate, compare options, ghost us, and then randomly text back two weeks later: "Hey, can you guys still do next Thursday?"

At that point, I’m scrambling. I have to dig through my messages to remember:

* What price did I quote them?

* What specific areas did they want cleaned?

* Does our schedule even still work for next Thursday?

* Did I already follow up with them once?

If I only track our booked jobs, these open estimates get buried.

A full field-service CRM like Jobber, ZenMaid, or Housecall Pro feels way too heavy (and expensive) for my current size. I don’t need routing or automated booking forms yet—just a simple way to track quotes.

I’m thinking about setting up a tiny estimate follow-up tracker with just: Customer, Quoted Service, Last Contact, Next Follow-up, and Status.

For those of you running cleaning or other appointment-based businesses, how do you stop these open estimates from slipping through the cracks without adding a heavy, expensive system?

Hey guys,

Looking for some insight from shop owners on the operational side of running a cleaning business.

How are you incentivizing or forcing your cleaners/crews to actually get Google reviews before they pack up their supplies and leave a house or commercial site?

We all know that local SEO heavily relies on a steady stream of reviews to compete with those massive franchise outfits, but getting crews in the field to consistently remind clients to leave a review is like pulling teeth. They either forget, or they feel awkward asking.

If you use a CRM like Jobber, ZenMaid, Housecall Pro, or QuickBooks, do you just rely on their native automated text follow-ups? Or do you find that clients just completely ignore those generic automated text strings because they look like robotic receipts?

Curious to hear how you guys handle the bottleneck—whether it's a specific bonus structure for the cleaners when their name is mentioned, or a unique follow-up workflow that actually gets residential homeowners to click the link and leave a rating.

How are you guys handling this

My sister called a furniture/upholstery cleaning company and I happened to be there. I started chatting with the guy and he was the owner himself we kinda talked and he said he is making around 800-1000$ per person and he has 3 more people working for him. He spends around 800-1000$ per week on meta ads and around 500$ on supplies which calculates around 4000-5000$ per week in revenue and idk about other expense but ad spend and products would be 1500$ and thats per person. The biggest thing was that he started 3 months ago but he had experience working for a cleaning company for 6 months.

I recently signed up for GLSA. Everything is completed except for Identity verification. So I assumed that I have to wait to week or 2 to get verified. I was wrong I guess. Before I signed I was receiving so many scam calls so I barely picked up and once I in GLSA I'll pick up always. Still the Identity verification not complete. Apparently I got a lead yesterday, I thought it was a scam, so I didn't pick up and I got charged $60. I was shocked to find out it was this expensive for a single lead. I had the AI talk to the lead. I called them back today when I realized it was a lead. Too bad I didn't covert them because she need the cleaning today in the morning and I called late evening.

I know this hurt my Google ranking. What sucks is that I'm a new business and I only have 8 reviews from friends and family. Still don't have a single client yet.

I will make sure to always have the phone on me and pick up no matter what it is. But now what do I do with Google ranking? Will I ever get calls from GLSA?

Hi everyone,
I (20f) am preparing to launch residential cleaning service and want to keep my startup overhead low while I focus on saving money.
I plan to offer standard home maintenance, recurring schedules (weekly/bi-weekly), and move-in/move-out services. For marketing, I have a basic social media profile set up and some business cards printed out to hand our.
As a complete beginner starting from scratch, I would love some advice from those who have built this type of business:
What low cost or free marketing strategies worked best for landing your very first 3 recurring accounts?
If you approached local property managers or leasing offices to offer move out services, what is the best way to handle that conversation professionally?
What essential, budget friendly equipment or supplies are absolute must haves for a solo startup?
Thanks in advance for any tips or guidance!

I have contemplating this idea of starting a commercial cleaning business in 2026. However a thought that keeps bothering me is the over saturated marketed. Almost all commercial premises would already have a cleaning company that does this for them.

So what would be the point? Wouldn’t it be incredible difficult to break into? Is there anyone who can advise?

For those running a cleaning business, what do you currently use to manage things like:

• new customer inquiries
• quotes
• scheduling and rescheduling
• assigning cleaners
• customer notes
• follow-ups and missed calls

Is it mostly phone/text + Google Calendar, spreadsheets, or are there any softwares?

Hey everyone!

I’m an active Thumbtack Pro from Washington, and over the past year I built an app called NAVI because I couldn’t find a simple tool that fit the way I actually work.

NAVI is designed specifically for solo cleaners and small service businesses.

Current features include:

✅ Calendar for jobs
✅ Client management
✅ Follow-up reminders (never forget repeat customers)
✅ Notes & job photos
✅ Estimates & invoices
✅ Backup & restore
✅ Revenue insights

I’m not selling anything.

I’m looking for about 20 business owners willing to use NAVI and give honest feedback.

Everyone who joins early will receive NAVI Pro for free during testing.

If you’re interested, comment below or send me a message and I’ll send the TestFlight invite.

I’d really appreciate any feedback—good or bad. Thanks!

Hey all-I'm building a simple scheduling + invoicing tool for solo and small cleaning businesses. Most of what's out there (Jobber, ZenMaid, etc.) seems built and priced for bigger teams with multiple employees.

Before I build further, I'd like to know: what do you currently use to manage your schedule and bill clients? What's the most annoying part of it?

Not selling anything - Just trying to understand the real pain points. Appreciate any thoughts.

Hi everyone, I opened my home cleaning business about 4 months ago, I'm having the most difficult time finding reliable cleaners who will show up and not cancel at the last minute. I've been posting job listings on Indeed, LinkedIn and Care.com. Every time I find a new cleaner who says they are reliable and will definitely show up, that same cleaner cancels either the day before or the day of leaving me scrambling to find a replacement to having to try to smooth over things with the client. I've lost so many clients because of this.

Has anyone else had this problem? When I interview them, I let them know that I need someone who is reliable and will be at an appointment when they say they will and not cancel at the last minute so I'm making myself very clear. I've spent over $20K to get this business up and running, with paying for advertising, buying leads and operating expenses that I'm in the hole every month. I don't want to quit and shut it down but I don't see anything improving. Where do you find your cleaners?

Full disclosure I’m the founder. Got tired of paying $300/mo for software that didn’t feel built for operators like us. Spent 6 months building a CRM with the same core features as Jobber/BookingKoala, plus a few extras. 390 businesses using it now, mostly organic growth.. Happy to answer questions if you’re evaluating options.

For those who have experience cleaning public, charter, or private schools, when do you start pursuing contracts for the upcoming school year? Do you start reaching out before summer break, during summer, or closer to the start of the school year?

How you find opportunities? Do you monitor procurement sites, build relationships with facilities staff, or mostly wait for RFPs to be released? If you’ve won school contracts, what do you think made the biggest difference?

it feels like every Airbnb owner who hires me is treating me as if i was mentally slow. The previous client repeated same simple thing over 3x in row, i said ok sure, then again repeated. When i had a question ( first time clean , every client has different rules), she sent me voicemail With almost screaming voice , impatient, and in tone as if i asked the most stupid question in word. My current client ( Airbnb clean) was quite respectful, but recently he started overusing word ‘ obviously’ so everything is obvious. He cancelled 2 days before cleaning, turned out he tried to clean it himself as he stayed in property for a week, then asked me to come immediately to reclean as guests are too difficult and obviously scammers. I found it hilarious;-) as i never have a complain, but understand scammers do try it. but my point is, should i take the way to speak to me personally? i like cleaning but as i studied several years i am soon hopefully starting my new career, and i need to drop cleaning because of the way i am being treated here, it takes a confidence away.
Anyone here feels the same, how you go on with that feelings? Its a shame i cant continue as i like cleaning, ocassional, its a good exercise and keeps me in balance with the mental work.

I’ve been talking with a few cleaning companies recently, and one issue keeps coming up:

Calls after business hours go to voicemail.
Leads are lost because people call the next company.
Owners end up answering calls at night and on weekends.

I’m exploring an AI receptionist that answers 24/7, qualifies leads, answers common questions, books appointments, and sends SMS follow-ups.
Before I spend more time building it, I’d like to hear from actual cleaning business owners.

A few questions:

How many calls do you think you miss each week?
Do you currently use a live answering service, voicemail, or something else?
What would a solution like this actually need to do for you to consider paying for it?
What would be a reasonable monthly price?

I’m looking for honest feedback—not trying to sell anything. If you’ve tried something similar, I’d love to hear what worked and what didn’t

Started my business and am practicing cleaning my whole house (Didn't realize how long it takes to declutter everything and you need to declutter first in order to clean properly) and was wondering do you guys tell your clients to declutter before you come? Or do you charge extra for de-cluttering or is it included in your price?