bidding & estimating Getting To The By: William R. Griffin Best Price W When we calculate a bid, we add up all our costs, add a percentage for profit and come up with a magic number that we hope will get us the job. Challenges include knowing what our costs are and being able to control those costs. In April, I attended the World Federation of Building Service Contractors Convention (WFBSC) in New York City. Mary Miller, one of the speakers, caught my attention as her topic was how to elimi-nate employee turnover. Going beyond that, how do we get our employees to do the best possible job they can each day. First, she was talking about reducing the cost of finding, screening, hiring, training and firing employees. High employee turnover rates are some-thing we take for granted in the cleaning industry. Studies indicate industry turnover rates from 75 percent to 300 percent or more. We often don’t realize how much these high rates of turnover cost us. The numbers I see range from $100 to $500 per employee who leaves your em-ployment. If you can reduce turnover, then overhead costs are reduced, and you can submit a more competitive bid and earn a profit. Second, Miller asked how we get employ-ees to be productive and motivated when completing assigned tasks? This has always been a problem for the cleaning industry as most people don’t se-lect or see the cleaning industry as a career path or goal. They end up here because they need a job, and for one reason or another, they never left. Our challenge becomes one of getting and keeping people excited about clean-New ideas to address the core issues of bidding and turnover. ing toilets, sweeping floors and dumping trash cans. you should charge in order to provide qual-ity service, pay your bills and turn a profit. At ISSA/INTERCLEAN Amsterdam, I at-tended a keynote presentation for the Young Cleaning Professionals group, all un-der 35 years old. Yes, there are some, but only about 10 showed up. The presentation was by a local cleaning contractor who has been experimenting with a new customer service and business model. His concept is to use self-directed employ-ee teams and total open transparency with the customer. All the numbers are on the table, and after costs, the agreement is that he gets to add 5 percent profit. If the company earns more profit it is re-turned to the customer and/or shared with the employees. After three years, his division has roughly 350 employees and does about 10 million Euros in business per year. An interesting concept; my disappoint-ment was that only a handful of young peo-ple showed up to hear the presentation, yet in the show hall at least 30 percent of attend-ees were under 35 years of age. For some reason the organizers are not reaching these people. Maybe they need some gray beards as mentors to help them with the process. A New Idea My theory is that when we hire people, we say the wrong things. We talk about the toilets we want cleaned (the job) and instead we should be talking about what we offer (the opportunity). Back to Miller, her concept is to help each employee identify their personal dreams and then come up with a plan and support system to reach them. This is powerful stuff and I think she is on to something that we need to pay attention to. Miller’s “Dream Manager” is a way to do that. I truly believe she is offering us one of the key pieces to the puzzle of building a suc-cessful business and industry. Establish a program to help people iden-tify and reach their dreams, and they will provide the motivation to do the best job possible in the least amount of time. This will reduce costs and allow opera-tions to be more profitable and more com-petitive. The # 1 Question: How Much Should I Charge? Gary Clipperton and Lynn Krafft have been answering questions on the ICAN/ATEX website in conjunction with CMM for going on 10 years now. We get all kinds of questions, but the number one question is: How much should I charge? And our answer remains the same: There is no magic number. You have to collect the basic information you need about the job you are bidding on, and you have to know what your costs are. Doing it any other way is a total shot in the dark and may have nothing to do with what July 2014 William (Bill) Griffin is the president of Cleaning Consultant Services Inc. and president of the International Custodial Advisors Network (ICAN). ICAN is a nonprofit association comprised of indus-try professionals providing free consultation ser-vices through the Cleaning Management Institute (CMI) and their Ask The Experts page. Comments and questions about bidding and estimating are encouraged: (206) 849-0179 or WGriffin@ CleaningConsultants.com. 14 CM/Cleaning & Maintenance Management ®
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