When you are first starting your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is a matter that was recently inspired to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Place. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you haven’t done so, log towards the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your community. There is a good chance another yard works lawn mowing service care business owner in the area can give you the going rate. You furthermore want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the business? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.
Another response that was posted was to contact a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to service your lawn. If instead of a lawn then ask a friend to acquire a few estimates to service their lawn. When get three estimates, you can have a good idea just how much to charge. You knows the price, plus you can find the square footage dimensions your lawn and doable ! divide that out determine how much to charge per square ft. Ought to actually give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you ought to run your lawn care business can drastically differ from another lawn care business owner’s expenses, so know your expenses.
The next question you most likely are wondering is should you charge by the square foot or man hour?
Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, has been walk the property certainly not be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when Received there I was set for a surprise. I didn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need for you to become manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still discovered to what I wished.”
If you are a new lawn care business owner, you may want to charge based on man hour. Author Joel LaRusic of mowboy.com suggests “you want to quote quality, not time. In short it’s better to say “I’ll perform these regarding services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than health “I’ll spend an hour at your house for $50.” Of course, you should use your hourly rate to base your price on but you don’t wish to pass those pricing exactly to the customer. You don’t want the customer watching the clock and as you get good at your job and shave a few minutes off of it, that should be to your advantage.”
Kurt explained further “What I do when estimating large properties is I figure out how long it’s going to take me. Break it on to smaller sections if I’ve got to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I must make from the property and put a price together from that. More often than not commercial properties are usually broken up into a few mowing areas, I find it easier to just locate the time it will take for each and then figure out the total time plus drive time.”
Another more advanced strategy is to charge per square foot based on formulas. Using formulas requires a not much more experience, because it critical your formulas are suitable.