PH
"We're booking 3 to 4 calls a month for contracts worth over $50K a month."
Peter Holfelder
Owner, 360Clean
Case study / Commercial Cleaning
How we helped 360Clean build $3.5M in pipeline
A 360Clean franchisee in Connecticut with a working residential business and no route into commercial. $3.5M in pipeline in three months, from schools, hospitals, offices and nonprofits.
$3.5M
In pipeline
10.97%
Average reply rate
3
Months to $3.5M
Complete facility care for commercial buildings.
Headquarters
Connecticut, United States
Business model
Franchise, owner-operated territory
// The challenge
A residential business with no way into commercial.
Pete had the residential side of the business working. Commercial was where the contracts were, and he had no idea how to get in front of the people who award them.
01
Commercial was a different market entirely
The residential business ran on referrals and local reputation. Neither of those gets you in front of a facility manager at a hospital, and nothing about the first market taught him how to reach the second.
02
The buyer changes building to building
Sometimes it is a facility manager. Sometimes the owner. Sometimes an office manager who happens to have picked up the task. There is no single job title to target, which makes list building the hard part rather than the easy part.
03
Nobody in the category does this
Commercial cleaning has not adopted outbound in any serious way. That is a problem when you are trying to learn it from your peers, and an advantage once you are running it.
// The approach
Hyper-local, and an offer to meet in person.
One territory, named buildings, and an ask that only works locally: come and meet. The campaign was built around the two things Pete could do that a national competitor could not.
// 01
Data & targeting
- Hyper-local to Pete's territory rather than a state or a region
- Professional offices, hospitals, medical practices, schools and nonprofits
- Facility managers, owners and office managers, because the title varies by building
- Buildings large enough to need a contract rather than a one-off clean
// 02
Reach & response
- 4,800 emails sent in the opening window
- A 10.97% reply rate, the highest on any account we run
- 38 qualified opportunities inside the first nine days
- A $10,000 a month retainer closed in the first week
// 03
Messaging & personalization
- The offer is a meeting in person, not a call or a demo
- Local specificity throughout: the building, the area, the kind of facility
- Written to the person who owns the cleaning problem, whatever their title
- Pete closes what we book, which is the half of this that no campaign supplies
// The results
$3.5M in pipeline, in three months.
Three months in, Pete is booking 3 to 4 calls a month with buildings worth more than $50,000 a month each, on one-year contracts.
$3.5M
In pipeline
10.97%
Average reply rate
38
Opportunities in 9 days
$50K+
Monthly contract values
$10K
Retainer closed in week one
3
Months running, and still going
// The outcome
Opportunities a residential business would never see.
The pipeline is large because the buildings are. Schools, a university and a casino are not accounts that arrive through referrals.
- $3.5M in pipeline inside three months
- 3 to 4 calls a month with buildings worth over $50,000 a month
- A $10,000 a month retainer closed in the first week
- A 10.97% reply rate across 4,800 emails, the highest on any account we run
- 38 qualified opportunities in the first nine days
- Opportunities including a school, a university and a casino
// Key takeaways
What made this work.
// 01
Hyper-local beats clever copy
One territory and named buildings did more than any amount of personalization would have. The campaign worked because it could credibly offer something a national competitor cannot: turning up.
// 02
The offer was a meeting, not a demo
In a local market the strongest thing you can ask for is twenty minutes in the building. It converts because it is easy to say yes to and because it plays to what Pete is good at.
// 03
Why the pipeline number is so large
Commercial cleaning contracts run on one-year lock-ins at over $50,000 a month for a building of any size. A handful of those compounds fast, which is how three months produces $3.5M without anything unusual happening.
// Get my free meetings
Want results like these?
We run a 7 day free pilot. We do a focused first campaign to your ICP before you pay a cent.