Abe Abraham founded CMI in 1987. CMI offers facilities maintenance and operations support services for government and commercial organizations. CMI is SBA 8(a) Certified.
Abe can be reached by phone at 703-941-0300 or by e-mail at cmimgmt@
aol.com.
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Abe Abraham - CMI
President and CEO - facilities maintenance/operations support services firm"Our target market is large government and commerical facilities management accounts. We subscribe to a service called the Federal Procurement Data System that compiles information about government contract procurement. For a few hundred dollars, this service searches by SIC code for government contracts over $100,000. It informs us of the contract specifics, including the contract terms, option years and the name of the contract officer to contact - all separated by state. We also have the service search for information about expiring contracts, which gives us the opportunity to plan for future bids. This service is invaluable. It's the true point of allowing technology to do most of the leg work, which makes the bidding process easier for us.
CMI also uses EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) to bid on government contracts. You must have the software and a provider to allow you access to EDI, but if you do it right, it is a targeted approach to government procurement contracts. You receive the RFQ (Request for Quotation) electronically, complete your quote using electronic forms and submit your bid. If your numbers are right, you can win a contract instantly. You can also find out if one of your competitors won a contract for which you were both bidding. It's quick and effortless. A sign of how all government bids will be submitted in the future.
We receive opportunities to bid on commercial contracts through word-of-mouth advertising and satisified customer referrals. Many of the property managers who are pleased with our work move on to other companies and ask us to bid on new contracts. Part of the reason our customers are so satisified with us is because of our quick response. We have a 'floater' (or troubleshooter) who we can send to a client site within 30 minutes. There is no charge for this service. It's all part of building customer satisifaction. We later contact the client after our floater has been to the site to make sure that the problem has been resolved.
Opinion surveys are also part of our marketing process. We provide surveys to the tenant of the building and encourage their personnel to complete the forms and fax them to us. This is a tremendous tool for us. It alerts us immediately to any problems and also allows us to share information with the property manager about tenant concerns that have nothing to do with the janitorial services we provide. This feedback also enables us to prepare training programs for our staff so we can offer the best service possible.
Occasionally we use custom-designed candy jars (with the words 'you deserve a sweet deal' on the jar cover) as a 'leave-behind' for prospects. We can meet with someone in January and present them with one of our candy jars at the end of the meeting. Six months later we'll get a call from someone that the person we met with in January referred to us. Networking is an amazing process.
We advertise in targeted publications, such as The Manager's Source Guide for property managers. We think it's important to really target the publications for advertising or you can waste a lot of money.
We make it a point to find out what the competition is doing. Some of our people are even hired by our competition so we can find out how big the workload is on a contract that may be coming up for renewal. We also talk with other janitorial services to find out information about an account.
One more thing - we go where our competition won't. Many of the facilities management companies we compete with only want big contracts in large cities. We make it a point to also bid on contracts in rural areas. This has been a very lucrative move for us."
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