When you are starting your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a yard works lawn care service? This is an issue that was recently asked to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Forum. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you’ve never done so, log onto the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your part. There is a good chance another lawn care business owner in the market can give you the going rate. You could also want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the concern? 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 you have to a lawn then ask a friend to get yourself a few estimates to service their lawn. When get three estimates, you will have a good idea simply how much to charge. You will know the price, plus you can find the square footage measurements of your lawn and can certainly divide that out to figure how much to charge per square ft. Amount 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 might be wondering is should you charge by the sq . ft . or man hour?
Kurt Chance said “The first thing you always want to do, when giving an estimate, is walk the property and don’t be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when I got there I was looking for a surprise. I didn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need regarding 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 wanted.”
If you are an additional 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 set of services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than capable “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 have a need to pass those pricing information on to the customer. Discontent and the customer watching the time and as you get better 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 into 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. From time to time commercial properties are probably broken up into a few mowing areas, I find it easier to just calculate the time it may for each and then figure out the total time plus drive season.”
Another more advanced method is to charge per sq . ft . based on formulas. Using formulas requires a a bit more experience, because it is vital your formulas are accurate.