I would like to try and change the balance of my customers from, heavily in favour of domestic work to more commercial.
Things are going pretty good and I have enough customers to keep my busy, BUT, I have had a run recently (perhaps due to the weather change / time of year) of customers saying to me " don't bother this month or next month can you do just the front blah blah or, they havn't paid for a couple of months or leave it this month and I will give you a call when we are ready to start up again....you know the drill. Its just starting to niggle me as I try to run a professional / organised small business.
The Commercial work on the other hand never gives me any issue. They don't appear to care whether its rain or shine just pay up on the due dates. (Perhaps I am lucky with the ones that I have)
Anyway, I want to change the balance toward more Commercial work but am loathed to jump through the hoops of contacting Procurement Departments in another part of the country in the hope that I can find the right person that will make a decision in my favour on a local store / office. A lot of the chain stores /coffee houses/Banks etc etc have nationwide contracts that are negotiated by the big cleaning firms, their admin departments and the respective Head Office, wherever that may be in the country.
I don't expect any of you to declare your specific methods of attracting Commercial work on an open forum but any genuinely helpful pointers would be great. I regularly walk into commercial type businesses offering my professional services (window cleaning of course)...... but usually get the same reply," its all dealt with by head office in XXXXX, you should contact them"
A couple of the big boys around here have got commercial work coming out of their ears....it seems. Any tips ?
Things are going pretty good and I have enough customers to keep my busy, BUT, I have had a run recently (perhaps due to the weather change / time of year) of customers saying to me " don't bother this month or next month can you do just the front blah blah or, they havn't paid for a couple of months or leave it this month and I will give you a call when we are ready to start up again....you know the drill. Its just starting to niggle me as I try to run a professional / organised small business.
The Commercial work on the other hand never gives me any issue. They don't appear to care whether its rain or shine just pay up on the due dates. (Perhaps I am lucky with the ones that I have)
Anyway, I want to change the balance toward more Commercial work but am loathed to jump through the hoops of contacting Procurement Departments in another part of the country in the hope that I can find the right person that will make a decision in my favour on a local store / office. A lot of the chain stores /coffee houses/Banks etc etc have nationwide contracts that are negotiated by the big cleaning firms, their admin departments and the respective Head Office, wherever that may be in the country.
I don't expect any of you to declare your specific methods of attracting Commercial work on an open forum but any genuinely helpful pointers would be great. I regularly walk into commercial type businesses offering my professional services (window cleaning of course)...... but usually get the same reply," its all dealt with by head office in XXXXX, you should contact them"
A couple of the big boys around here have got commercial work coming out of their ears....it seems. Any tips ?