If you're reading this article, I hope you're already thinking "1 million, is that it? I want 10, 20, 30, 100 million in yearly sales.”. The truth is most people I speak to about growing their Janitorial Business are still trying to figure out how to get the first $100,000.00 a year. 

Most Jansan owners aren't aware, but the average company only does around $300,000 a year in sales, That means most companies do substantially less. One of the reasons their numbers are much lower is because you need to factor in the giants of the industry; they account for 30% of all the yearly sales and that’s billions of dollars a year.

Now, this article will break down the five main steps I took to grow my business by million dollars in new sales, in just under one year. 

STEP ONE - MAKE A DECISION  

The first step sounds simple, but it's the most difficult. You need to make a decision that your company will do millions of dollars a year in sales, PERIOD! 

Every time I tell this to people, they seem shocked and say "I do!" "I want my business to do millions!" But they don't understand the gravity and consequences of their decisions. 

Making a decision to have a company that will grow by $1 million in sales this year, means less family time, less time with friends, more work, more stress, and the need to re-educate yourself. You’ll also deal with the inevitable rejection, and so forth.

You truly need to grow into the type of person who can build and maintain a multi-million dollar business. If you don't thoroughly commit to your decision and become the person your company needs, you will not achieve your dreams. You will be added to the list of millions of people who made a decision to accomplish something amazing and then got sidetracked by weekends out with friends, sports, ball games with the boys and so on.

STEP TWO - SET A TARGET, DO THE MATH

This is the fun part! At least for me, I love working with numbers, it makes everything seem so much more achievable.

The first thing to do is look at where you are now and where you want to be. Keep in mind you need to make your goals big enough to help excite you and keep you focused. I'll give you an example of what my last target was and how I did the math.

One of the last targets I set was to go from $1,000,000 a year in sales to $2,000,000 a year in sales. The first step in making this decision was to do the millionaire math.

EXAMPLE:

To grow by a million dollars in one year, you need to average $83,333.33 in sales each month. ($1,000,000 divided by 12) But since the janitorial industry's sales are recurring (which means we get to bill every month for the service), you don't need $83,333.33 in new sales each month, you only need $13,000 in new contracts each month!

Below is an excel sheet that breaks down exactly how many contracts you need to grow by each month. I do the math based on 1 contract equaling $1,300.00 a month. That is what my company currently averages. (It’s actually a little more, but it's easier to do the math and show you with a round number) 

SIDE NOTE: Never trust a number ending in zero. It's always fake.

BAM, you have a million dollars in growth.

STEP THREE - SKILL UP & PERFECT A PROCESS

Maybe now you’re thinking, “thanks for the math lesson, but I don't know how to get ten new contracts a month. “ Well, truth be told, getting new contracts is the easiest part, a huge amount of work, but easy.

The first thing you will need to do is Skill Up. Like I mentioned before, you need to become the type of person that can create and maintain a multi-million dollar business. The skill that I learned was sales; that's right, sales. I learned how to Prospect, Fact Find, Present, Close & Follow-up.  In short, we Cold Call & Door Knock to generate leads and close them.

At this point, some, if not most, of you are saying cold calling doesn't work. I’m here to tell you it does, and I'm proof of it. I know you read all these online posts on how cold calling is dead and you should be using online marketing and fancy funnels to get deals or it's about warm calling and building a relationship with your customer before they buy, right? Wrong.

I'm not saying those techniques don’t work; they do. The problem I have is just how incredibly long it takes. I need deals right now, not six months from now or when someone fills out our online lead capturing form. Marketers always say "go where your customers are," well your customers are at their business just waiting for you to call or stop by.

For free sales training videos visit Grantcardonetv.com

STEP FOUR - PERFECT A PROCESS & HIRE GREAT SALESPEOPLE

Once you have skilled up and learned how to sell and close deals, you can now move on to the most crucial step. You need to create a process for you and all your new sales staff to follow.

Here is a breakdown of my sales process:

1) Purchase leads from a reputable company 

2) Call them using a predictive dialer, capture information and set an appointment 

3) Do the initial estimate in person where we fact find or online

4) Present our proposal over the computer and then close

5) If we cannot close, we put them into a funnel follow-up campaign

This is a bare-bones breakdown, but it gives you an idea of where to start.

Without sales staff, you will not be able to reach your goals of a building a 10 - 100 million dollar business. An above average salesperson can close anywhere from 5 - 8 clients a month, so if you hire two sales staff (I have three right now) your company will grow by $1,000,000.00 a year.

STEP FIVE - REPEAT

This is the never ending cycle of running a business, once you reach the targets you set for yourself you will need to immediately set new ones and go through the whole process again.

When I went through this process the second time from $2 - 4 million a year I had to modify the skill I learned. Instead of focusing on sales I needed to focus on leadership. Because leading a company that operates in four cities and has 140+ staff is where my skill set was lacking. 

GOOD LUCK!

I hope you found this information helpful if you have any questions or would like some clarification on a few steps or process to feel free to email me at Peterb@oraclebm.ca