Six Specifications Of A Quote

A reader writes: "How do you advise clients on complicated specifications? There is a lot of information missing to give a good quote."

It was great speaking with you today and following is a basic summary from a quick overview of the specs. These are general observations which may change as we get more information. Getting clarification is very important.

1. Prestige cleaning is 104 x year and Basic is 52 x year with Special Requirements varying but some are 251 x year. This can impact travel if the four buildings are far apart.
2. I also noted in the building inventory that each area is listed but not necessarily contiguous. A site visit is highly recommended.
3. You should run a general estimator with a few guesses on floor surfaces.
4. I suggest that you assign 75 percent carpet, 20 percent hard floor needing finish/buffing and 5 percent hard floor not needing finish/buffing until you can conduct an actual inventory.
5. Suggest we clarify wording as follows: “At time of service, area shall be...” since we need to make sure that the areas are approved/rejected soon after work is performed especially since the service is less than 5 days per week.
6. There should be an initial walk through the day before or day service is to begin to document the current condition of the floors, dusting, etc. The customer can pay to have all areas brought up to the published specs at a charge or they can allow for 90-120 days for you to get everything up to speed to fulfill specs.
7. We need to clarify access times to make sure that we have access to clean as per published schedule.
8. We need to clarify that if we are NOT allowed entry to an area within scheduled times, it will not be cleaned until next scheduled visit.

We will continue some thoughts in a future article.

Your comments and feedback are always appreciated. I hope to hear from you soon. Until then, keep it clean...

Mickey Crowe has been involved in the industry for over 35 years. He is a trainer, speaker and consultant. You can reach Mickey at 678-314-2171 or CTCG50@comcast.net.