When you are beginning your lawn care business, how do you find how much you should charge to mow a lawn? This is an issue that was recently inspired to us on the Gopher Lawn Care Business Discussion board. Here are a few ideas.
First off, if you have never done so, log on top of the lawn care business forum and post your question along with your community. There is a good chance another lawn care business owner in your community can give you the going rate. You likewise want to ask yourself, do you have any friends in the career? If so, ask them what they charge per lawn.
Another response that was posted was to make contact with a few local lawn care businesses in your area and get an estimate from them to yard works landscaping service your lawn. If you don’t have a lawn then ask a friend to get a few estimates to service their lawn. When get three estimates, you could have a good idea the amount to charge. You will know the price, plus you come across the square footage measurements of your lawn and can certainly 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 end up being run your lawn care business can drastically differ from another lawn care business owner’s expenses, so know your expenses.
The next question you may be 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, is actually walk the property certainly not be in a rush to get in and out. I did this once and when Received there I was looking for a surprise. I couldn’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 solved to what I demanded.”
If you are fresh 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 simple terms it’s better to say “I’ll perform these group of services, to your satisfaction, for $50” than health “I’ll spend an hour at your house for $50.” Of course, you can use your hourly rate to base your price on but you don’t need to pass those pricing details on to the customer. Discontent and the customer watching 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 want to. Then I figure my hourly rate or what I want to make from the property and put a price together from that. A lot of times commercial properties are usually broken up into a few mowing areas, I get it easier to just figure out the time it needs for each and then figure out the total time plus drive a chance.”
Another more advanced approach is to charge per square foot based on formulas. Using formulas requires a not much more experience, because it is vital your formulas are suitable.