The best phone system for cleaning and facility management companies

A field sales team needs a mobile business line and a dialer, not a switchboard.

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Hundreds of companies use to make every call pay off

The situation

What holds you back today

01

Facilities decision makers spread across sites

02

Tenders to chase inside the deadline

03

Field reps with no way to log a call

The answer

What Skipcall changes

Business number on mobile, every call logged

The mobile app →

Chase campaigns on live tenders

The parallel dialer →

A dashboard of field sales activity

The mobile app →

Specific to your industry

Who really decides on a cleaning contract

On a commercial site, the person who puts up with the service, the person who orders it and the person who pays for it are rarely the same. Calling the right one in the wrong order wastes as much time as calling the wrong one.

The facilities or workplace manager

They take the complaints from the occupiers and they know exactly what is wrong: a morning clean that gets in the way, washrooms that are not held, a contractor who changes operative every three weeks. They own the need, but they rarely sign on their own. In a smaller business the role falls to the office manager or the EA, and that person does decide.

The procurement lead, in larger organisations

They frame the tender, set the scoring matrix and compare bids they did not write. Calling them before you have spoken to the site means arriving without knowing what happens there. Calling them too late means finding that the specification has already been written in a competitor's words.

The site or operations manager

They see the quality every day, they settle the incidents, and they carry real weight at renewal even when the decision goes back to head office. They are the contact who will tell you whether the contract is genuinely in play or the tender is a formality.

The managing agent, in multi-let buildings

The service is procured by whoever manages the building and recharged to the occupiers through the service charge. The tenant you are calling has neither the contract nor the decision, only the dissatisfaction. The right contact is the managing agent, and the right moment is when the service charge budget is being prepared.

The FM provider, when cleaning is subcontracted

In a bundled contract the client has handed the lot to a total facilities management provider who subcontracts each service line. You are then selling to the incumbent, on a defined scope, not to the site. The question to ask early is simple: who holds the cleaning contract today, the organisation itself or an FM provider?

The first call is there to map, not to sell: how many sites, which contractor, what end date. Skipcall lets you call several contacts on the same account inside one session and attach every summary to the same record, so you do not start from nothing with each new name.

The script

The first call to a commercial site

You are calling the facilities manager or the office manager of a site you do not know. The aim is neither to sell a service nor to force a meeting: it is to find out who holds the contract, with which contractor, and until when.

The opener

“Morning, [first name last name], from [company], we are a cleaning contractor across [area]. I am not calling to sell you anything today. I am trying to work out who looks after the cleaning on your site: is that you?”

Saying you are not selling today defuses the reflex to hang up, as long as you hold to it for the whole call. A rep who switches to their offer by the third sentence does not get called back.

“We already have a contractor”

“I assumed so, everybody has one. Two questions and I will leave you: when does your contract end, and at that point do you go out to tender or do you roll it over?”

“We are very happy with them”

“Good, that is rarer than people think. I will make a note to call you before [month]. One thing though, for the day you do go out: changing company does not mean changing the people who work in your building. On a change of cleaning provider TUPE normally applies, and the operatives on your site transfer to whoever wins.”

This is what unlocks the conversation most often, because what the manager is worried about is the operatives they know by name, not the price.

“Send me a brochure”

“I can, but it will tell you nothing until I have seen the site. What I would rather do is twenty minutes on site: I look at the washrooms, the circulation areas and the glazing, and I tell you what I see.”

If it is a multi-let building

“Then the contract is not with you, it sits with whoever manages the building and it comes back to you through the service charge. Do you have the name of the managing agent? I will call them and say you gave me their name, if that is all right with you.”

Asking permission to use their name costs one sentence and turns a cold call to the agent into a call recommended by an occupier.

Closing

“So: [number] sites, [X] as contractor, contract ends in [month], tender usually goes out in [month]. I will call you then. And if your contractor lets you down before that, you have my number.”

A first call has worked when it produces a date, even without a meeting: that is what builds, over a year, a list sorted by contract end.

At Skipcall, every call is recorded, transcribed and summarised, so the script gets corrected against what your reps actually say rather than what we imagine they say.

Avoid this

Three mistakes this industry makes on the phone

The mistake

Calling procurement at a large organisation before speaking to the site

Do this instead

Without the occupier complaints, the service hours and the incident history, the call to procurement is just a request to be added to a supplier list, and it gets treated as one. Go through facilities or the operations manager first, then call procurement with something they do not have.

The mistake

Answering on price when the objection is about losing the team

Do this instead

On a commercial site the occupiers know the operatives by name and the manager is afraid of breaking that. Deal first with the fact that on a change of provider TUPE normally transfers the people assigned to the contract; the rate is only worth discussing after that.

The mistake

Chasing a public sector bid the way you chase a private quote

Do this instead

In public procurement contact is controlled and runs through the buyer's portal: a call can only cover a procedural point or a date, and pushing counts against you. In the private sector, set the chase on the evaluation date given in the tender documents, never on the day you submitted.

A calendar full of meetings starts with a call.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions, Cleaning & facility management

Start at the site, not at head office. The facilities manager or the operations manager will tell you who holds the contract, with which contractor and until when, which is exactly what procurement will not give you on a first call. In multi-let buildings the order comes from the managing agent, not from the occupiers. Once you know all that, the call to procurement has a subject and is no longer a cold call.
Do not try to contradict them, get the date. Ask when the contract ends, what the notice period for rollover is, and in which month the tender usually goes out, then diarise a call before that date. It is also worth saying that changing contractor does not mean changing the people on site: on a change of cleaning provider TUPE normally applies and the operatives assigned to the contract transfer to the incoming company. That point, rather than price, is often what opens the conversation.
At the point of submission, note the evaluation date given in the instructions to tenderers, and set the chase after it rather than before. In the public sector contact is controlled and goes through the buyer's e-tendering portal: a call can only cover a procedural point or a date. In the private sector the call is free, and the right moment is when the buyer is comparing bids, not when they receive them. Always ask for feedback, including on a loss, because the reason you were rejected is what wins the next one.
To businesses, public bodies and managing agents, yes, provided the corporate numbers are screened against the Corporate Telephone Preference Service and you meet UK GDPR: a documented lawful basis, telling people where their data came from, honouring objections, and telling people when the call is recorded. Sole traders and unincorporated partnerships count as individuals for these rules, so screen them against the Telephone Preference Service as well. For consumers, domestic cleaning for instance, a live marketing call cannot go to a number registered with the TPS or to anyone who has told you to stop.
A rep who spends the day on visits needs a business number they can use from their mobile and a record that does not mean re-keying everything in the evening. Skipcall records, transcribes and summarises every call, pushes all of it natively into HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce or Attio, and dials four lines in parallel for chase sessions. Call and SMS sequences cover campaigns on live tenders. It receives inbound calls on the line of the person they are for, but it does not route them: no IVR, no queue.

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