Recommendation letter, Brookhaven Grammar School for Nettlefold Cleaning
Letter of recommendation for a business, written so it can be checked
A recommendation letter is worth nothing if every sentence could have been written about any supplier. This one page example from a school puts the engagement in a three row table, gives two results with numbers attached, admits the contractor was not the cheapest quote, and offers a phone number to anyone who wants to test it.
The document, page by page
Every page as it renders and as it prints, with nothing summarised. Read the wording before you reuse it.
Section by section
What each section is for, so you can keep the ones you need and drop the rest.
- Letterhead
- The school's masthead letterhead with its address, email and phone.
- Date and addressee
- 11 May 2027, to whom it may concern, naming the contractor.
- Subject
- A recommendation for the named cleaning contractor, in one line.
- Who is writing
- The business manager, what they see, and an invitation to check the claims.
- The engagement
- Three rows covering the period, the site and scope, and the crew and contract value.
- Two measurable results
- The complaint count before and after, and the deep clean finished three days early.
- Beyond the contract, and the caveat
- The flooded library, the 2024 repricing, and the admission about price.
- Contact and sign off
- A direct number, an offer of a site visit, and the writer's name and role.
How to adapt this document
For a supplier you would recommend with reservations, keep the structure and put the reservation in its own sentence with a condition attached, such as strong on delivery, thinner on reporting, and worth asking how they would staff a site twice this size. That is more useful to the reader and fairer to the supplier than a warm letter that quietly omits the problem. For a recommendation supporting a tender, add the tender number to the subject line and swap the engagement table for the two criteria the panel is scoring, because a scored submission rewards evidence against the criteria rather than general praise. For an individual contractor rather than a company, replace the crew row with the named person and say how much of the work they did themselves.
What makes this document work
The writer explains why their opinion counts
The first paragraph says the writer is the business manager, holds the contract, and sees the invoices, the complaints and the audit results. A recommendation from someone who cannot see the numbers is an impression. This one comes with its own credentials before it makes a single claim.
Two results, both countable
Staff cleaning complaints ran at 30 to 40 a term before the contractor started and have totalled 11 across the last four terms, each closed within two days. At the 2026 winter deep clean they finished in nine days against a twelve day window, which reopened the gym a week early.
It says what is not good about them
They were not the cheapest quote in either tender, and the letter says so before adding that on a site with children in it the difference has not been regretted. A letter with no caveat reads as a favour, and a reader discounts the whole of it.
Questions people ask
What should a business recommendation letter include?
Who you are and why you can judge, the engagement dates and scope, at least one result with a number in it, and a way to check. This one adds a caveat about price. Anything that could be said about any supplier, such as professional and reliable, does no work and can be cut.
Is a recommendation letter the same as a reference?
In business use they overlap, but a reference is usually given on request about a specific bid, while a recommendation is written for the supplier to carry with them. This letter is the second kind: addressed to whom it may concern, offered to any prospective client, and backed by a phone number rather than a job title alone.
Can a business get in trouble for a recommendation letter?
It can if the letter overstates. Claims a business uses in its marketing must be able to be proved, and a testimonial that is not genuine or that misrepresents a result can be misleading. Keep to what you saw and can document, which is why the results here are a complaint count and a schedule that the school's own records support.
Should a recommendation letter name a price?
Name the contract value if you are comfortable, as this one does at $214,000 a year, because it tells the reader what scale of engagement the opinion is based on. Do not publish a rate card that the supplier treats as confidential, and check with them before including anything that would undercut their next negotiation.
How long should a recommendation letter be?
One page. This one uses a table for the facts so the prose can spend its words on the two results and the caveat. A two page recommendation invites skimming, and a skimmed recommendation loses the specific numbers that are the only reason it persuades anyone.
Should the letter be addressed to a named person?
Only if it is for one bid. A letter the supplier will use repeatedly is addressed to whom it may concern with the subject naming the supplier, as here, so it stays usable. If you are writing for a specific tender, address the panel and say which tender, because a generic letter in a scored submission scores less.
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