Don't let your cleaning company grow to quickly

Commercial and residential cleaning services are still in high demand meaning that cleaning company owners are in an excellent position to grow their business. However, not all growth is equal and if your cleaning company starts growing too fast it will hurt you more than help you. Growing and maintaining growth at your cleaning company is a skill and it can be hard to spot when you are doing something wrong. Here are a few signs your cleaning company may be growing too quickly.

Strained Cash Flow

A strain in cash flow is the most common sign that your cleaning business is growing too fast. This occurs when companies start taking on too many clients and the increased cost of labor and cleaning materials means you don’t have the capital to cover those costs before clients pay you.

Don't take on the cost of new clients if your cash flow can survive until payday

Ryan Knoll, Owner of residential cleaning company Tidy Casa said when you business is starting to grow it can be very tempting to take on any clients you can close. However, you will learn very quickly just because you can take on x number of clients per month does not mean you should.

"It takes a lot of discipline to turn down business. There are times throughout the year when I can bring in $60,000 of business a week, but that means I have to hire the people to do that business and pay for the extra materials," Knoll said. "Bringing on that much business too quickly will eat into your cash flow which hurts your ability to spend money on things like marketing that help you grow steadily."

Knoll takes an incremental approach to growth by taking on his clients strategically with cash flow and his team’s workload in mind.

John Waters, a Business Consultant for Waters Business Consulting Group works with cleaning companies on growth management and he said a growth forecast model is essential to healthy growth.

"The best way to know what growth you can handle is to properly model and forecast your growth. Ask yourself what your business would need if you went from $100,000 to $150,000 in revenue." Waters said. "Be proactive and forecast your growth and figure out what the cost of goods and labor would be when you grow. This will ensure you are growing at a rate your business can handle."

Quality and Efficiency Decline

Strained cash flow is not the only issue when your business grows too quickly. When a business grows too fast the quality and efficiency of your work will suffer.

When you take on more clients and you start to see inefficiency in your general operations and quality declines in your work it is a sure sign your business is growing too fast.

Quick growth hurts the efficiency and quality of your cleaning company because the sudden increase in new clients pressures the infrastructure of your business which is not set up to do that volume of work. You are doing more work with the same amount of people and with the same processes meant to deal with a smaller workload.

The best way to avoid this issue is to ensure you hire properly to meet the new labor demand and create new processes to deal with more clients.

Knoll at Tidy Casa maintains quality and efficiency by committing to hiring new managers who have experience training new people. This ensures that labor demands can be met while training new employees to maintain quality.

Brad Pierce, owner of OSA Specialized Cleaning said he does not take on new clients unless he has the right number of managers to ensure a job is done with the quality their customers expect.

“Understanding how many managers you need to oversee a new amount of work is key to continuing to work at a high quality when you take on new clients,” Pierce said. “If I don’t hire enough good managers to oversee the new work then things will slip through the cracks and hurt our reputation as a diligent cleaning company.”

Pierce went on to say that not having enough managers to delegate the increased workload is a mistake that inexperienced cleaning companies make all the time.

A growing business is something every cleaning company strives to be, but growing without a plan is cutting the nose to spite the face. Taking the time to model and forecast your growth will help your business succeed without having to deal with the growing pains.