Quoting prices

[heatherlynn]

I am new here tryin to start my own business I dont have a clue what to charge potential clients. Any suggestions?

[heatherlynn]

Actually my business is a Home and Business cleaners. I guess I should been more precise. Also all the sites I have seen so far all charge you to get the information. HELP lol

[Vishal P. Rao]

Hi heatherlynn!

Welcome to the forum

Your best option would be check out what your competitors are charging for the service. If you don't have any competitors in your loacl area, check out your national yellow pages for similar businesses and enquire what they charge for their service.

Well, if your business is completely unique (which I don't think so), you may conduct sample surveys in your locality to see what price your cutomers might be comfortable with.

Best wishes,

Vishal

[heatherlynn]

ok...so how do i go about doing this survey thing?

[Vishal P. Rao]

Though I haven't yet done this thing, here's what I think may work.

Prepare a sample questionnaire which may contain questions like whether people would be interested in your service; If yes, what are they looking for in such a service and the price they would be comfortable with. Be sure to include some incentive for filling out the survey. Nobody likes to fill out surveys for free! You may also want to bribe them even more if they give out information about their friends who might be interested in your service.

Request your local newspaper guy to include these questionnaires along with the newspaper.

Vishal

[heatherlynn]

ok...so will this cost me money to get the newspaper guy to put it in with their papers and is this legal?

[Vishal P. Rao]

Yes, it might cost you some money. You need to ask your local newspaper guy about it. Regarding legality, I'm not very sure about it in your country. In our country (India), we do it most of the time and it's the most cost effective ways of reaching your local area

Vishal

[dashserv]

Hi Heatherlyn,
I thought I would throw in a few tips on pricing your service.

What I have done in the past with a number of small businesses I've started is to phone a number of competitors and get their cost for a similar service and price myself initially in the mid to low end of the range until I had sufficient work coming in to raise my prices.

You also need to look at what is viable for you. I run a decorating business at the moment and what a lot of people forget is the amount of admin work associated with each contract that they don't allow for.

If you price too low you spend hours trying get it all done and when you work out your hourly earnings you would be better off working at Macdonalds.

The trick is, to promote sufficiently to get enough leads that you don't just grab the first job that comes along at any price and you price the work high enough to make it viable. Value yourself more highly and you get more satisfaction. Try to be the cheapest and you just stress out.

You get ten leads and you price low and get six jobs at $100 each

or you price higher and get three at $200 same cost less stress.


You must keep promoting for this to work otherwise you will cannibalize yourself. Anything not clear just let me know.

[JA-HI]

I charge less because I'am not quoliffed and may staff is not, but as i get more expearance I will charge more, but i get all my staff to do the work.

I just get parts (pay cash) premote and get the work in the door, with the money i get from the jobs goes strate into more equipment.