How to Get Medical Facility Leads for Your Cleaning Business
Do you wish you had more medical facility leads? Would you like to expand your commercial cleaning business into the medical industry? It can be a great place to find new clients, but there are some preparation steps to do first before expanding your business into cleaning medical facilities. In this post, you'll learn some of the steps you should take to start attracting cleaning clients from the medical industry.
Get the necessary training to handle medical facility leads for your commercial cleaning business
You might think that cleaning a medical facility is the same as any other business, but the reality is that there is much more that goes into it. If you want to expand into the medical facility niche, you are going to have to invest time in specialized training.
Safety training should be a priority because in medical facilities your cleaners will run into issues that are unique to that industry. For example, your cleaning technicians will have to deal with bloodborne pathogens when they clean.
Protection for your employees is another crucial factor you'll need to consider when moving into the medical industry. If your employees aren't safe, it can lead to lawsuits and a high employee turnover rate.
You'll likely have to invest in a higher level of PPE or personal protective equipment for your cleaning technicians as well. This PPE could include things like protective eyewear, gloves, isolation gowns, and face masks.
Other essential training for cleaning medical facilities
Specialty training on cleaning medical facilities and equipment and having EVS, or environmental services technicians that are responsible for sanitation and cleaning, is also important.
Other things to consider are having a focus on cleaning high touch areas such as exam rooms, patient rooms and restrooms. High touch areas could also include things like sinks, door handles, exam tables, nurse call buttons, or even bed adjustment remotes. Some of these high touch areas are important for traditional commercial cleaning but others are extremely important and only relevant for medical facility cleaning.
Included in this is isolation cleaning procedures. These kinds of procedures are extra steps that need to be taken to prevent airborne illnesses from spreading. Some steps could include wearing a mask or respirator, making sure doors are closed, frequent hand washing, and extra sanitation of equipment.
Hot zone cleaning is another important step in cleaning medical facilities. The "hot zone" is basically the area that is closest to the infected patients. This means areas like their bed, tray table, bed rail, etc. You'll need to start with the hot zones and work your way out when cleaning medical facilities.
You'll also want to train your cleaners on how to properly clean occupied rooms. This could include telling the patient who you are and why you are there, asking permission to enter the room, telling the patient how long you expect to be, and explaining exactly what you are cleaning.
As you can see there is more to cleaning medical facilities, and proper training is essential for your employee and patient safety.
Start small and work your way up to larger medical facilities
One misconception with commercial cleaning and cleaning medical facilities is that you can start off by getting huge accounts like hospitals. Typically that isn't what happens.
Businesses are looking for a history of experience and results before they hire you to clean their facility. If you've never cleaned a 10,000 square foot facility before, a business won't likely hire you to clean their 50,000 square foot facility.
You need to work your way up to the larger facilities especially in the medical industry. A way to do this is by starting in a similar industry like small dental offices and then working your way up to larger medical facilities.
One reason why cleaning dental offices is a good place to start is that they are similar to medical facilities. They have some of the same specialized training required that medical facilities do, but they aren't as difficult to clean as medical facilities.
Once you have some experience cleaning dental offices, you could move into small medical offices or private practices, and then from there continue to move up into urgent care facilities and larger medical buildings or hospitals.
Getting medical facilities as clients is similar to getting schools as cleaning clients
As far as cleaning schools go, the larger they are, the more likely they will have cleaners in-house or you need a lot of experience to become their primary cleaner. With schools, you need to start small with private schools, and then transition into larger public schools or universities.
The same process applies to medical facilities. The larger hospitals will often have a team of in-house cleaners. Likely this makes getting your foot in the door difficult.
Certainly, some hospitals do hire outside cleaning companies, and with those one way to get into them is through outsourcing opportunities. Occasionally you'll find hospitals and medical facilities that outsource their cleaning or small portions of cleaning to subcontractors. Carpet cleaning services is a good example of getting your foot in the door to cleaning medical facilities. We did this at a small, local hospital.
When you find medical facilities that do this, it can give you a chance to prove yourself and your company. Once you have proven yourself it could eventually lead to your cleaning company handling the entire account.
Be on the lookout for these opportunities as they can be your gateway to getting more medical facility leads.
Ways to market your commercial cleaning business to get medical facilities as cleaning clients
Now that you understand the basic process and training required to handle medical facilities cleaning clients, the next step is to set up your marketing to attract these leads and clients.
There are several things you can add to your cleaning business website to attract more targeted leads from medical facilities. The first thing you should do is create an industry page dedicated to medical facilities. You could also do one for dental offices if you are starting with that.
When people are searching online for commercial cleaning services and find your site, if they see you serve their specific industry they know they are in the right place. Technically, you should make an industry page for every industry you serve. This is especially true for the medical industry if you are wanting to attract medical facility leads.
In addition to an industry page, you should also make a services page that is related to the medical industry. For example, most commercial cleaning companies do some kind of floor care, so having a service page related to that can attract clients interested in floor care. You simply apply the same principle and talk about your commercial cleaning specialty services in relation to medical facilities.
Highlight your cleaning technicians specialized training and certifications your company has to generate more medical facility leads
Another thing you should do is highlight the specialized training and certifications your cleaning technicians may have related to the medical industry. As we mentioned above, the medical facility niche requires specialized knowledge and training to provide quality service.
When someone is looking to hire a commercial cleaning service in the medial industry, they are looking for companies that have that specific training and certifications. If someone can easily find that on your site, they will be much more likely to reach out to your company for an estimate or hire you as a subcontractor.
An additional benefit of listing these certifications is that it can establish your cleaning company as an expert. All things being equal, most people will choose to do business with the company they perceive as an expert. Therefore, the more credibility you can build the better.
Another way to add additional credibility is by listing the medical industry clients you already serve. If people know you do business with medical facilities, the likelihood that they will hire you increases.
Be sure to get approval first before listing all of your clients. If they approve of putting their logo, it can add a lot of credibility. If they don't approve, ask if you can use them as a reference. Most of our clients that loved our services were happy to do that for us.
Create content specifically aimed at helping the medical facility niche
In addition to following the steps above, you'll also want to start creating content aimed at the medical facility niche. A great place to start with this process is by creating blog posts that are targeting the medical industry.
For example, you might create a blog post on the topic of something like, "The top 5 mistakes you need to avoid while cleaning hospital rooms". Another post could be something like, "6 tips on sanitizing patient rooms better".
Alongside writing blog posts, you can also create a specific lead magnet that is geared towards cleaning medical facilities. For example, you could offer some kind of checklist or ebook download. It could be something such as a "Quality control checklist for hospital cleaning".
In exchange for your download, you will get a name, email, and phone number. This can give you opportunities to generate leads from people who haven't yet requested a quote from your company. Once you have these leads you can also continue to remarket to them. From there you can turn them from leads into paying customers in the future.
Follow these steps in this post, and you'll start attracting more medical facility leads to your business in no time!
By the way, if you are interested in learning more about our marketing agency and how we can help you grow your commercial cleaning business, click here to learn more about our marketing packages.
P.S. If you are struggling to get quality leads for your cleaning business, Click Here to Learn How to Get More Clients for your business with these Top 10 Lead Sources For Cleaning Business Owners.
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