By Denise Williams | WFBSC Exchange

Mark Herbick got his first taste of contract cleaning as a teenager. The 15-year-old jumped at the chance to earn spending money by filling in when the BSC his father worked for needed an extra pair of hands overnight. Those experiences lined his pocket but also shaped his career choices as an adult, including many years as an operator in the cleaning industry. Today, 45 years after his introduction to the BSC world, Herbick now leads the advisory firm he founded — Pursant LLC — which specializes in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private capital market financing, transaction advisory services, financial leadership support, and business value enhancement consulting. The company services a broad range of clientele, including the janitorial sector.

As 2026 gets underway, Herbick — whose company has offices in the Chicago area and in Florida — notes that the M&A outlook for building service contractors around the world is not remarkably changed from last year — or from the last few decades, for that matter. There have been gains in efficiency and productivity over time, he agrees, pointing for example to the arrival of robotics in recent years. But, in essence, he maintains, BSCs “still basically do the same thing” and go about it much in the same way. As a result, he continues, “There’s just not a big difference at face value from one company to the next as far as the underlying service that’s provided.”

Herbick sat down with WFBSC Exchange to discuss the fundamental realities of the market and how M&A fits into the picture, especially for international commercial cleaners eager to expand into the United States.

Considering the general heterogeneity of the contract cleaning sector, how do buyers identify attractive prospects for acquisition?

Two of the biggest drivers of valuation are the underlying customer base — how attractive it is — and the talent of the management team. What has to go hand-in-hand with that is the financial profile of the business. So it comes down to those two factors together: the people (customers and employees) and the money. Specifically, is the business making money and is it the right amount of money?

Financials are fairly straightforward, but why the emphasis on employees? Can’t the acquiring company just hire new staff?

We can’t take care of customers unless there are some rockstar people in the business and, unfortunately, this industry is talent-starved. Everybody’s looking for people — not just the janitors to do the work … they’re also looking for leadership. They’re looking for management. This is a tough industry to recruit people into, as it doesn’t have the same ‘sex appeal’ as some other industries. So when you get really good people who are really motivated, who are focused more on doing great things and not hyper-focused on how sexy the industry is, those people are highly valuable.

Are there any ways the landscape differs from country to country?

It’s the same thing whether you’re in France or Asia or the United States.

However, if we watch the public markets, the world is trying to do business in the United States. So, I will say that, all things being equal, you’ve got more international buyers trying to acquire here than U.S. companies looking to do business elsewhere.

What are some key considerations for companies looking to break into America?

It’s different to do business in California versus New York versus, say, the South, so one of the questions would be whether there something about the geography of where it [a target] is located and what is it like doing business there. Do you know how to navigate unions, for example? Do you want to go into some of the more challenging parts of the country where there are a lot more complexities to doing business in those states? If you’re going to go into any country, or any area of a country, there is a certain playbook for what to expect — regulatory and nonregulatory — for how you’re going to survive there. That could be as straightforward as customers signaling a preference to work with local operators, whereas in other parts of the country, it’s the norm to have outside service providers coming in.

Geography aside, is it better to be a contract cleaning buyer or a seller?

This industry remains more favored towards the seller, and that’s because there are more buyers than sellers. That imbalance has been there for a very long time, especially among mid- to large-size service providers. The vast majority of operators in this industry are very small and could have as few as 10 to100 employees; but buyers are mostly looking for larger companies with thousands of employees, although there’s a shortage of those. So, if you’re coming into this industry as a buyer, expect it to be very competitive and very challenging to find acquisition targets.

What can acquirers do to set themselves up for success against such a competitive backdrop?

You’re really going to have to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack — through relationships. I tell people, ‘You’ve got to go out there, you’ve got to meet people, you’ve got to get to know them. You’ve got to position yourself as a peer to them.’ If you’re just going to send emails and send notes through LinkedIn, you’re going to be thrown into the rest of the buyer pack. But if you go to the conferences — the annual events for WFBSC  and BSCAI, for example — [the dealmakers] all go there and spend time with the operators. At the end of the day, people want to do business with people that they know … and that includes doing deals. So you’ve got to get out there; you’ve got to network.

There are companies in this industry that are buying all the time because they’re very, very visible; and they’ve built relationships with people who are ultimately one day going to be a seller. The ones who are struggling are the ones who just don’t get out there and get to know people.

What about potential sellers — how do they position themselves as an attractive target?

What I tell people to do, if you’re an operator, is to run your company as if you want to sell it for top dollar. Even if you don’t want to. You may never sell it, but run it like you want it to be worth top dollar. What that means is you’re always pursuing high-value clients in growth sectors, which means you’re probably going to have a healthier margin profile. It means you’re probably going to have customers that are a little stickier, like a food processing facility or a health care environment; there’s a lot more stability in that customer base as long as you’re providing the level of service that they need. Leverage technology to the maximum extent that you can, and cultivate a business that has a great leadership team.

Even if you take out the word “sale,” that’s how you should run your business:  to be more profitable, to attract sticky customers, to have great leaders, and to utilize technology.