Choosing Your Commercial Cleaning Area and Minimum Job Size
Published · 6 min read
Two decisions shape every commercial cleaning campaign: where you will work, and the smallest job worth your time. Get them right and every enquiry is one you can actually serve. Get them wrong and you spend weeks visiting sites you should have turned down.
There is no universal answer. A six-hour minimum might suit one company and be wrong for another. This guide gives you the questions to set your own.
Start from real travel, not a circle on a map
A ten-mile radius means very different things in a city centre and in a rural county. Instead of a radius, map actual travel time at the hours you clean. Early mornings and evenings often look nothing like midday. Mark the towns and postcodes your team can reach reliably, and the ones that only look close.
Account for travel time and travel costs, not just the hours on site. For each area ask: does the job still make sense once travel is counted for your team? That is a travel-versus-earnings check, and it should come before any outreach.
Staff capacity decides more than demand
Winning a contract you cannot staff is worse than not winning it. Look at where your cleaners live, which hours they can work, and how much spare capacity you have this quarter. Areas near existing sites are often easiest, because staff and supervisors are already nearby.
Recurring hours and frequency
The useful unit is recurring hours per week. A site cleaned for two hours, five days a week is very different from one cleaned for three hours once a week, even if both sound “small”. Frequency also affects how easy the job is to staff: daily cleans suit a regular cleaner; weekly ones may need to fit around other work.
Margin and decision authority
Your minimum should come from your own costs and the margin you need, not from what a competitor charges. We don’t publish figures here because they depend entirely on your wages, overheads and area.
Also check who decides. A single-site practice manager can often agree a walkthrough quickly. A branch of a large group may have cleaning bought centrally, which changes how you approach it.
A worked example (hypothetical)
Imagine a cleaning company with spare evening capacity on one side of town. These numbers are made up to show the method, not drawn from any client.
Hypothetical example
- Site A: 1.5 hours a night, 5 nights a week = 7.5 hours a week. 10 minutes from an existing site.
- Site B: 2 hours, once a week = 2 hours a week. 35 minutes’ travel each way in the evening.
- Site C: 3 hours, twice a week = 6 hours a week. 15 minutes away, but cleaning is bought by a head office elsewhere.
Add up the time each site really takes. Site A: 7.5 hours of cleaning plus about 1 hour 40 minutes of travel a week (10 minutes each way, five nights). Site B: 2 hours of cleaning plus 70 minutes of travel a week. Site C: 6 hours of cleaning plus 1 hour of travel a week, and an extra step to reach the buyer. These numbers do not tell you which site is profitable. That depends on your own wage, vehicle and supply costs, your capacity in that area, and the margin you need. Put your own figures against each total, then decide. Write the result down as a rule (for example, a minimum weekly hours figure for sites over a certain travel time) so a campaign can filter for it.
Test a territory before you commit to it
A new area does not need to be a permanent decision. Treat it as a reversible test: pick one area, agree the building types and minimum in writing, and set a review point before you start, such as after a fixed number of walkthroughs or a set number of weeks.
At the review, look at what you actually learned: did prospects in that area meet your minimum, could your team staff the visits, and did travel match your estimate? If yes, widen the building types or add a neighbouring area. If not, narrow the area or raise the minimum, and keep the notes so the next test starts from facts. Avoid opening several new areas at once; you will not know which change made the difference.
Questions to set your own area and minimum
- Where do my current staff live, and where do they already work?
- How long does it really take to reach this postcode at the time the clean happens?
- Do I have people who can work the hours this site needs?
- How many hours a week would this site need, and on how many days?
- After travel and staff costs, does the job still make the margin I need?
- Will I be able to reach the person who decides?
- Is it a building type I clean well and want more of?
Write the answers down as a one-page brief. It becomes the qualification rule for any outreach, which is exactly what our qualified lead checklist and appointment setting guide build on. For how this played out in a real campaign, see the Battima case study and the contracts playbook. Past campaigns are examples, not a promise of results in your area.