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Clean Eye for the Cleaning Pro

By Ken Galo

I recently completed a series of bid walks at several different potential customer sites, industrial, medical and standard office buildings. One thing stood out in these bid walks and that was the attire chosen to be worn by the various contractor’s attending these functions.

Each of the past 5 bid walks in the last 4 weeks were attended by at least 5 different cleaning contractors including myself. Not one of us we’re dressed in a suit and tie and the women were also in jeans with polo shirts. Now, many of us service business owners have complained that we get no respect from our customer base or their employees. We are constantly defending and standing up for our chosen profession against an onslaught of poor attitudes and demeaning commentaries by the general public.

The question is: Do we bring this upon our selves? Does the fact that we choose to dress casual create a casual, non-professional image? By projecting a laid-back image with our jeans/khaki’s and polo’s are we then telling the general public that we are just like the kids that collect shopping carts from the parking lots? I don’t know about where you live, but our kids wear white shirts with ties while packing your groceries and collecting carts! They actually looked sharper than some of the people I was on the bid walks with.

In an effort to determine if my style of dress had an impact I conducted a little experiment. For the last 2 weeks, every morning, I put on a suit and tie and went out visiting existing customers. Some of these people had not seen me in a tie since their original bid party 6 years ago and some have never seen me in a tie.

The results, comments and remarks were numerous and all complimentary. Many, questioning why I was dressed up and many more not realizing that I owned my business and that I was a professional and not the guy in blue jeans who came around at night to check on the cleaners. While my contacts themselves made comments about my apparel most notable were the regular office staff who did not realize that I owned the company but we’re under the impression that I supervised for the cleaning company!

A primary focus in our industry is to improve the public perception. All they ever hear about is the strikes, illegal at Wal-Mart and what janitor got caught stealing what. Maybe dressing professionally won’t make that big of an impact but it’s a start.

I will not attend another bid walk or customer meeting without a suit and tie. Steps have to be taken, even small, baby steps, but steps in the right direction.