Who hires commercial cleaners, how to walk a building and bid it, what goes in the proposal, and where your first accounts come from if you clean homes today.
You get commercial cleaning contracts by finding the person who decides, walking their building, and sending a written bid priced from your own cost per hour. Not from a per-square-foot number you found online. The first accounts almost always come from people who already know you.
If you clean homes now and want steadier, scheduled work, commercial is a good move. It's also a different business. The client is an office manager or property manager, not a homeowner, the work happens at night, and the contract matters more than the thank-you at the door.
Small offices, dental and medical practices, gyms, churches, daycares, retail shops, apartment and condo managers, and property management companies. Local, state and federal government buildings too.
The decision-maker is rarely the owner. It's an office manager, practice manager, facilities lead or property manager. A property manager is worth the extra effort: one good relationship can mean several buildings.
"We clean everything" is a hard thing to bid and a hard thing to sell. Pick the buildings you can do well, such as small offices under a few thousand square feet, gyms or churches, and say so on your website. A page that says "Commercial cleaning for offices and clinics in [your area]" gets found by the people searching for exactly that.
Commercial clients ask for proof before they ask for a price. Have these ready:
A bid is your cost to do the work, plus enough to pay you for running it. Start with what a cleaner-hour really costs you.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts median pay for janitors and building cleaners at $17.71 an hour as of May 2025 (BLS). That's the wage alone. Your real cost per hour adds payroll taxes, insurance, supplies, travel to the site and the time you spend supervising and fixing problems.
Then learn how long the building really takes. Time your first visit with a stopwatch, by area: restrooms, floors, trash, kitchen, desks.
Here's the math, with made-up numbers. If a cleaner-hour costs you $25 all in, and the building takes 10 hours a week, your cost is $250 a week. Your bid has to clear that by enough to cover the days a cleaner calls out, the supplies you didn't count and your own time. Quote the building, not the hour. Winning an account by bidding at cost doesn't make you a commercial cleaner. It makes you a cheap one who's about to lose money.
Walk the space with the decision-maker, with a notepad. Ask:
Send the proposal within a day. Speed tells them how you'll run the account.
One or two pages, in plain words:
The first month is when you lose it. Inspect after every few visits, keep a short log in the building, and fix any complaint within a day. Ask your contact for an honest Google review once they've seen a couple of months of clean. Don't offer anything for it.
With the TechBridge Platform, every inquiry from your website form lands in one Leads list and texts your phone once your number is linked (calling back is still yours), and your job photos become short videos that wait for your approval. The cleaning company website page has the details. Request access.
It depends on the building, how often you clean it and your own cost per hour, so any number you read online is a guess about someone else's business. Use the method above and the BLS wage as your starting point.
Most commercial clients ask for a certificate of insurance before they sign. Ask your insurance agent what coverage commercial accounts typically expect, and have the certificate ready to attach.
Yes, by starting small: one small office, bid honestly and done well, becomes your reference. Ask your first client if you can use them as one.
You can, once you're registered in SAM. Many owners start with private accounts, because government bids take more paperwork and more time.
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