Anyone else tearing their Hair out??

[likeitorlumpit]

another thing about pricing small jobs..if costumer is ok to wait for you to do them then you can arrnage 4 small ones in a day..which i do often.

 

4 small jobs at £150 - £200 each. easy day and good profit.

 

I will often quote small jobs very cheap if i know i can fit them in with other jobs booked in coming up so i can hit my day rate

 

Have to ask

How do you get 4 customers to agree on a date that suits all of them!!?

[Little Steven]

We'll have to start charging you more mate

 

Hi Chris,

was going to comment last night that you and I buy our calculators from the same store....

But thought Northern Arb may read and charge me more for blade grinding! ....

looks like your supplier also reads this!!!!

Steve

[likeitorlumpit]

Also, I have found on more than a few occasions that ill get a call from a customer with an enquiry for a reduction. I will price it to be done properly and lets say it will take a day and my day rate is £500, I will not hear anything back from the customer so ill have a drive past to see if the work has been done and to my horror someone has butchered the tree! This must have only taken the person 3 hours or so!

 

People are doing sub-standard work and getting away with it due to lack of customers knowledge, and customers being so price driven!

 

A lot of the time customers are more interested in how cheep they can get the job done for, rather than how well the job will be done.

 

Makes me sick

 

This is the problem in a recession

Customers are more price concious because they feel they HAVE to be. Drive down prices mentality.

We know the reasons why quotes vary

- firms 'buying in' work

- novices working for below cost wages

- super efficient firms naturally winning more work

- novices pricing wrong

- cowboys working for cash

Theres no point getting wound up over it

I think £500 + VAT for a 2 man team with chipper and waste away is very competitive. No point in going in under this price unless as I said you are buying in work- ie. need the work to pay overheads because work is scarce.

[Little Steven]

Ok, lets throw a hypothetical spanner into the works. Lets say you look at a job, using the gear you have every day, and you see 1.5 days work for 2 men, lets say for simplicity sake 2x man day truck and chipper is £400, and £300 for the half day = £700. Then i turn up, look at the job and think, with the kit available to me, 2x men + equipment = £550, but I (hypothetically of course) work faster and more Efficiently than your team can, get the job done in just under a day, done and dusted. Thats a saving to the client of £150, ive seemingly undercut you, but in fact my day rate is higher than yours, but greater experience and skill, more advanced vehicles etc, have won me the day. Now multiply that across every job you price and I win, i build an even bigger, more efficient business, and you blunder along wondering whats gone wrong.

 

Hi Andy

Sounds very familiar!!!!!

This is the bonus of investment, which does pay with a shorter day, moving on quickly to next task.

 

The client wants you in, out, gone!

 

Please don't think by spreading it out you can justify the fee. Your expertise and work is what they want.

 

They will see the value, whilst they marvel at the speed & efficiency.

Steve

[DN22 Gardening]

Also, I have found on more than a few occasions that ill get a call from a customer with an enquiry for a reduction. I will price it to be done properly and lets say it will take a day and my day rate is £500, I will not hear anything back from the customer so ill have a drive past to see if the work has been done and to my horror someone has butchered the tree! This must have only taken the person 3 hours or so!

 

People are doing sub-standard work and getting away with it due to lack of customers knowledge, and customers being so price driven!

 

A lot of the time customers are more interested in how cheep they can get the job done for, rather than how well the job will be done.

 

Makes me sick

 

 

 

Chris, give your client the choice.

 

They won't bite your head off if you give them one price for doing the job how you'd want it done, and another budget price for a lower standard job.

 

Tree surgery is seen as an expensive service for very little return.

If your boiler is broken, you need a plumber.

If you want building work, you need a builder

Trees grow all by themselves, they dont need us

 

We went to a large very posh house this winter which had a small orchard in the back which hadn't been touched for years.

Now, i dislike pruning apple trees, its BORING !!! and there were about 20 odd, all between 10 and 15' high.

 

We gave the guy 3 different quotes, with vastly different prices.

First price was to spend 5 days thinning them all out and reducing.

Second price was to 'butcher' the lot

And the third price was a mixture of both.

 

When the guy asked why such a big difference in prices, i explained the time that could be taken on each tree, and the implications of this.

 

He gave us the job, although we wern't the cheapest, because of my 'honesty'

It wasn't honesty, it was just me explaining my pricing structure !!!

[Pedroski]

Hi Andy

Sounds very familiar!!!!!

This is the bonus of investment, which does pay with a shorter day, moving on quickly to next task.

 

The client wants you in, out, gone!

 

Please don't think by spreading it out you can justify the fee. Your expertise and work is what they want.

 

They will see the value, whilst they marvel at the speed & efficiency.

Steve

 

This is what we do - work fast and efficiently with the proper equipment for the job. HOWEVER, it can get to the point where it starts to backfire. For example, we had a small clearance job last week. Priced it £180+vat, which customer very happy with. He went out to work just after we got there, and expected us to still be there when he got back. Fact is, we were done in 3 hours. Top notch job we did which he was very very happy with, but was hoping he'd catch us before finishing so he could get us to mow the back lawn! Thing is, there are loads of other firms around that would have charged him same rate, or maybe lower, but would have got half the amount of work done or been there for an extra day.

[WorcsWuss]

This has turned into an interesting thread. In my 'other life' I price construction work. Sometimes it's tendered, and when it is we're rarely the cheapest, but if we are it's when up against bigger firms with a higher overhead.

The same applies to when I do my little bit of tree work, my overhead is far lower, I have no chipper or tipper, just a Discovery I pay for anyway and equipment I have built up over the last 16 or 17 years... And I don't go after work I can't do with the kit I have, so no waste away or massive trees etc. I'm also conscious of going up against pros, so I don't advertise, only work for people I know on jobs I'm comfortable with [i recommend others on complex stuff or waste away jobs] and I don't set out to undercut the market rate.

As has been pointed out, what I charged on the Euc 'sounds' cheap, but if it was a 2 man pro team working to the clock, you'd probably have done it on your way home [it was a 'fit in whenever' job and it would only have taken you an hour or so if you really put your foot down] so £100 would have likely been the 'most likely' market rate.

Obviously teams seeking to make a living from that work with a higher overhead would have had to charge more, and someone just starting out and trying to build up their book would probably have charged less. I just charged what I thought was fair [not to mention as much as I could get away with under the circumstances!] and enjoyed doing the job....

[Old Mill Tree Care]

Two weeks ago I was called at the last minute to postpone a job due to the garden being waterlogged. Frustrating but fair enough.

Two days later I drove past and saw gypos doing the job!!!!!!

 

 

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[Little Steven]

This is what we do - work fast and efficiently with the proper equipment for the job. HOWEVER, it can get to the point where it starts to backfire. For example, we had a small clearance job last week. Priced it £180+vat, which customer very happy with. He went out to work just after we got there, and expected us to still be there when he got back. Fact is, we were done in 3 hours. Top notch job we did which he was very very happy with, but was hoping he'd catch us before finishing so he could get us to mow the back lawn! Thing is, there are loads of other firms around that would have charged him same rate, or maybe lower, but would have got half the amount of work done or been there for an extra day.

 

Point taken, quite right there is always the downside....

 

3 weeks ago a client had been given a price by another company of similiar cost to do a take down and another small prune and with a time scale of 2.5/3 days. I got the work and did it in less than 2 days. Then debate started on time/cost price using my efficiency against the price when it came to pay.

It was resolved when I ask if the job had taken 4 days, would he have been paying double!

 

Steve

[skyhuck]

Two weeks ago I was called at the last minute to postpone a job due to the garden being waterlogged. Frustrating but fair enough.

Two days later I drove past and saw gypos doing the job!!!!!!

 

 

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How do you know this????

 

Were their caravans on the lawn???