The Market’s Needs

Look at the specific needs of the customers in your target market based on the location, climate, demographics and types of homes in the area. If the area is prone to flooding, cleaning services for flood-damaged basements may be popular. If the community has a high number of families, services associated with cleaning up after children may be needed. If the town experiences a lot of turnover of homeowners or renters, deep cleaning services preparing for sales or new tenants may be in high demand.

The Cost of Services

Some services will be more costly to offer, based on the skills needed (if you have to hire or train more qualified workers), the time involved, or special equipment required. If your strategy is to provide general cleaning services to as many customers as possible, you may forgo specialty services like smoke and fire damage, post-construction cleaning, or organization services. However, if you focus on special services that competitors don’t do or aren’t skilled at, you may be able to build additional revenue streams in those areas.

The Expected

As you survey the competition, note if there are certain services they all provide. If they are listed everywhere, these may be necessary for you to offer to be able to compete successfully, even if they are less profitable services. In those cases you just have to bite the bullet and seek to make up for this with higher profit offerings you can up-sell customers to.

Tile cleaning and grout cleaning should be done frequently in places like kitchen where sticky remnants of cooking easily get plastered to tiles and accumulate in the grout. Wiping the kitchen tiles daily in the areas most prone to dirt accumulation is the best preemptive way of grout cleaning. Weekly, or at least fortnightly, kitchen tiles should be cleaned with good tile cleaning agents. An effective tile cleaning agent that is available in everybody’s home is vinegar. A mixture of equal amounts of water and vinegar can be splashed on the floor in grimy areas and can be cleaned off after a few minutes. In more grimy areas, especially in the grout, vinegar can be applied directly, without diluting it with water. Lemon juice is also a good grout cleaning agent.

With white tiles, whether on the floor or otherwise, bleach will work as a tile cleaning agent. However, bleach should ideally be avoided on colored tiles. On all types of tiles, it is better to avoid tile cleaning agents with too much chemicals as they may cause the tile to fade in the long run. While buying tile cleaning liquids, check the composition to ensure that they do not contain harsh chemicals. Tile cleaning may not be necessary in the bathroom on a daily basis as in a kitchen. However, a quick cleaning every day will minimize slime build-up so that the weekly or bi-weekly tile cleaning and grout cleaning will become a faster, easy process.

There are floor scrubbers and steam cleaners that will suck the dirt out of the grout and will maintain the tiles sparkling clean. However, even a discarded toothbrush can be used for grout cleaning, especially around shower faucets, around the sink in the kitchen, and on the tiles directly against the cooking range on to which drops of oil and seasonings easily get plastered. It is always best to have small rugs or carpets in areas, which are more prone to accumulation of dirt in the form of cooking residuals, or from garden shoes, or by children’s activities. That will preempt the need for heavy tile cleaning and grout cleaning.