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It is a hard jump to detach yourself from other peoples perceptions and charge what you need to charge to be viable long term.
I found the change was easiest implimented in Spring before a new season, and strictly went on from their, once you start charging sensible prices for your labour, you dont look back - and only work for decent polite people - those two things make the world of difference.
My opinion on this matter is that most jobs have a price. You have a certain amount of influence on what you can charge using differentiation and suchlike, but as a business owner your job really is to build your business in a way that enables you to maximise profit from the job's 'going rate'. Once you can do that, you can start to leverage your advantage to differentiate your business further.
A 'price' is all very well - but did they turn up, do the job, do it well. were they polite, did they use quality materials? and on and on...
like the debateable fencing thread on here not so long ago - what was the outcome?
maybe 40 different ways to do /charge/give 'value' to a client...
even offering a variety of services:
gardening
mowing
maintenance
pruning
landscaping
tree surgery - we do all these and are a one-stop shop , they dont need 3/4 tradesmen of varying quality / trust/ reliability / payments/ etc
rob
You also need to be careful. Trying to gain an edge by offering loads of different services can be counter productive. The most obvious example is when gardeners and landscapers offer 'tree surgery'. Fine if you are actually qualified, insured and tooled up to do it, but there are a lot of cowboys about who have just done a couple of quick NPTC courses (usually only CS30, 31 and 32, and sometimes a couple more ) and then think it's OK to offer tree surgery. The public are becoming wise to the fact that a Jack of all trades is a master of none.
I'm not familiar with the fencing thread you mention as I'm new here. However, fencing is one of those services that almost anyone can get more work than they could ever need, but to make a decent profit from it you need to be a little bit clever. Fencing is generally seen as a commodity service by many prospective clients, so differentiation on service will only get you so far.
Gardens4u.co.uk said:
Mitchel ingham said:
I have been in business 6 yrs and get 90% of the quotes i give because they are from recommendations, which goes a long way.
I give good value for money, my money comes from the speed we do the job.
We rarely make less than £80 per hour.
Edit: just re-read thread, you do need to be making imho £50+ ph to be viable, really do your sums.. Even grass mowing we make £50ph, up your prices!!
Edit2: please cherry pick your jobs, £20 ph aint gonna cut it(pardon my pun)
Edit3: you are not a charity.
Any job is only worth what you can get for it. The quality of materials used is largely down to the customer's choice.
I find myself having to steer away from jobs where the perceived value is not high (for whatever reason)
Having said that, teams of two can certainly work a lot quicker and 50 as a basis point is fairly easy to achieve. I certainly set my sights higher for the two of us.
Mike Goodman said:
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