When you are starting your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is a query 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 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 may 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 yard works landscaping service their lawn. When own three estimates, you could have a good idea the amount to charge. You will know the price, plus you uncover the square footage proportions your lawn and place divide that out to figure how much to charge per square ft. This could give you a ballpark idea. Keep in mind, the expenses you must run your lawn care business can drastically alter from another lawn care business owner’s expenses, so know your expenses.
The next question you may well 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, can be walk the property certainly not 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 couldn’t know there were four ditches in the front lot that would need being manually trimmed and gone around while mowing. Luckily for me it still took the estimated time that I figured and my price still worked out to what I looked for.”
If you are a brand-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 associated with services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than condition expertise “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 details on to the customer. Probable disappointment the customer watching the time and as you get better at your job and shave a few minutes associated with 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 down into smaller sections if I have 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 several mowing areas, I get it easier to just uncover the time it may for each and then figure out the total time plus drive season.”
Another more advanced technique to charge per sq . ft . based on formulas. Using formulas requires a much more experience, because it is important your formulas are accurate.